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        Title: Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 07: 1861
   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
     __________________________________________________________________

                             Consolation in Christ

   A Sermon

   (No. 348)

   Delivered on Sabbath Morning, December 2nd, 1860, by the

   REV. C.H. SPURGEON

   At Exeter Hall, Strand.

   "If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of
   love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and
   mercies."--Philippians 2:1.

   THE language of man has received a new coinage of words since the time
   of his perfection in Eden. Adam could scarce have understood the word
   consolation, for the simple reason that he did not understand in Eden
   the meaning of the word sorrow. O how has our language been swollen
   through the floods of our griefs and tribulations! It was not
   sufficiently wide and wild for man when he was driven out of the garden
   into the wide, wide world. After he had once eaten of the tree of
   knowledge of good and evil, as his knowledge was extended so must the
   language be by which he could express his thoughts and feelings. But,
   my hearers, when Adam first needed the word consolation, there was a
   time when he could not find the fair jewel itself. Until that hour when
   the first promise was uttered, when the seed of the woman was declared
   as being the coming man who should bruise the serpent's head, Adam
   might masticate and digest the word sorrow, but he could never season
   and flavour it with the hope or thought of consolation, or if the hope
   and thought might sometimes flit across his mind like a lightning flash
   in the midst of the tempest's dire darkness, yet it must have been too
   transient, too unsubstantial, to have made glad his heart, or to soothe
   his sorrows. Consolation is the dropping of a gentle dew from heaven on
   desert hearts beneath. True consolation, such as can reach the heart,
   must be one of the choicest gifts of divine mercy; and surely we are
   not erring from sacred Scripture when we avow that in its full meaning,
   consolation can be found nowhere save in Christ, who has come down from
   heaven, and who has again ascended to heaven, to provide strong and
   everlasting consolation for those whom he has bought with his blood.

   You will remember, my dear friends, that the Holy Spirit, during the
   present dispensation, is revealed to us as the Comforter. It is the
   Spirit's business to console and cheer the hearts of God's people. He
   does convince of sin; he does illuminate and instruct; but still the
   main part of his business lies in making glad the hearts of the
   renewed, in confirming the weak, and lifting up all those that be bowed
   down. Whatever the Holy Ghost may not be, he is evermore the Comforter
   to the Church; and this age is peculiarly the dispensation of the Holy
   Spirit, in which Christ cheers us not by his personal presence, as he
   shall do by-and-bye, but by te indwelling and constant abiding of the
   Holy Ghost the Comforter. Now, mark you, as the Holy Spirit is the
   Comforter, Christ is the comfort. The Holy Spirit consoles, but Christ
   is the consolation. If I may use the figure, the Holy Spirit is the
   Physician, but Christ is the medicine. He heals the wound, but it is by
   applying the holy ointment of Christ's name and grace. He takes not of
   his own things, but of the things of Christ. We are not consoled to-day
   by new revelations, but by the old revelation explained, enforced, and
   lit up with new splendour by the presence and power of the Holy Ghost
   the Comforter. If we give to the Holy Spirit the greek name of
   Paraclete, as we sometimes do, then our heart confers on our blessed
   Lord Jesus the title of the Paraclesis. If the one be the Comforter,
   the other is the comfort.

   I shall try this morning, first, to show how Christ in his varied
   positions is the consolation of the children of God in their varied
   trials; then we shall pass on, secondly, to observe that Christ in his
   unchanging nature is a consolation to the children of God in their
   continual sorrows; and lastly, I shall close by dwelling awhile upon
   the question as to whether Christ is a consolation to us--putting it
   personally, "Is Christ a present and available consolation for me."

   I. First, CHRIST IN HIS VARIED POSITIONS IS A CONSOLATION FOR THE
   DIVERS ILLS OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD.

   Our Master's history is a long and eventful one; but every step of it
   may yield abundant comfort to the children of God. If we track him from
   the highest throne of glory to the cross of deepest woe, and then
   through the grave up again the shining steeps of heaven, and onward
   through his meditorial kingdom, on to the day when he shall deliver up
   the throne to God even our Father, throughout every part of that
   wondrous pathway there may be found the flowers of consolation growing
   plenteously, and the children of God have but to stoop and gather them.
   "All his paths drop fatness, all his garments which he wears in his
   different offices, smell of myrrh, and aloes and cassia, out of the
   ivory palaces, whereby he makes his people glad."

   To begin at the beginning, there are times when we look upon the past
   with the deepest grief. The withering of Eden's flowers has often
   caused a fading in the garden of our souls. We have mourned exceedingly
   that we have been driven out to till the ground with the sweat of our
   brow--that the curse should have glanced on us through the sin of our
   first parent, and we have been ready to cry, "Woe worth the day in
   which our parent stretched forth his hand to touch the forbidden
   fruit." Would to God that he had rested in unsullied purity, that we
   his sons and daughters might have lived beneath an unclouded sky, might
   never have mourned the ills of bodily pain or of spiritual distress. To
   meet this very natural source of grief, I bid you consider Christ in
   old eternity. Open now the eye of thy faith, believer, and see Christ
   as thine Eternal Covenant-head stipulating to redeem thee even before
   thou hadst become a bond-slave, bound to deliver even before thou hadst
   worn the chain. Think, I pray thee, of the eternal council in which thy
   restoration was planned and declared even before thy fall, and in which
   thou wast established in an eternal salvation even before the necessity
   of that salvation had begun. O, my brethren, how it cheers our hearts
   to think of the anticipating mercies of God! He anticipated our fall,
   foreknew the ills which it would bring upon us, and provided in his
   eternal decree of predestinating love an effectual remedy for all our
   diseases, a certain deliverance from all our sorrows. I see thee, thou
   fellow of the Eternal, thou equal of the Almighty God! Thy goings forth
   were of old. I see thee lift thy right hand and engage thyself to
   fulfil thy Father's will--"In the volume of the book it is written of
   me, I delight to do thy will, O God.'" I see thee forming, signing, and
   sealing that eternal covenant by which the souls of all the redeemed
   were there and then delivered from the curse, and made sure and certain
   inheritors of thy kingdom and of thy glory. In this respect Christ
   shines out as the consolation of his people.

   Again, if ever your minds dwell with sadness upon the fact that we are
   at this day absent from the Lord, because we are present in the body,
   think of the great truth that Jesus Christ of old had delights with the
   sons of men, and he delights to commune and have fellowship with his
   people now. Remember that your Lord and Master appeared to Abraham in
   the plains of Mamre under the disguise of a pilgrim. Abraham was a
   pilgrim, and Christ to show his sympathy with his servant, became a
   pilgrim too. Did he not appear also to Jacob at the brook Jabbok? Jacob
   was a wrestler, and Jesus appears there as a wrestler too. Did he not
   stand before Moses under the guise and figure of a flame in the midst
   of a bush? Was not Moses at the very time the representative of a
   people who were like a bush burning with fire and yet not consumed? Did
   he not stand before Joshua--Joshua the leader of Israel's troops, and
   did he not appear to him as the captain of the Lord's host? And do you
   not well remember that when the three holy children walked in the midst
   of the fiery furnace, he was in the midst of the fire too, not as a
   king, but as one in the fire with them? Cheer then thy heart with this
   consoling inference. If Christ appeared to his servants in the olden
   time, and manifested himself to them as bone of their bone, and flesh
   of their flesh, in all their trials and their troubles, he will do no
   less to thee to-day; he will be with thee in passing through the fire;
   he will be thy rock, thy shield, and thy high tower; he will be thy
   song, thy banner, and thy crown of rejoicing. Fear not, he who visited
   the saints of old will surely not be long absent from his children
   to-day; his delights are still with his people, and still will he walk
   with us through this weary wilderness. Surely this makes Christ a most
   blessed consolation for his Israel.

   And now to pursue the Master's footsteps, as he comes out of the
   invisible glories of Deity, and wears the visible garment of humanity.
   Let us view the babe of Bethlehem, the child of Nazareth, the Son of
   Man. See him, he is in every respect a man. "Of the substance of his
   mother" is he made; in the substance of our flesh he suffers; in the
   trials of our flesh he bows his head; under the weakness of our flesh
   he prays, and in the temptation of our flesh he is kept and maintained
   by the grace within. You to-day are tried and troubled, and you ask for
   consolation. What better can be afforded you than what is presented to
   you in the fact that Jesus Christ is one with you in your nature--that
   he has suffered all that you are now suffering--that your pathway has
   been aforetime trodden by his sacred foot--that the cup of which you
   drink is a cup which he has drained to the very bottom--that the river
   through which you pass is one through which he swam, and every wave and
   billow which rolls over your head did in old time roll over him. Come!
   art thou ashamed to suffer what thy Master suffered? Shall the disciple
   be above his Master, and the servant above his Lord? Shall he die upon
   a cross, and wilt not thou bear the cross? Must he be crowned with
   thorns, and shalt thou be crowned with laurel? Is he to be pierced in
   hands and feet, and are thy members to feel no pain? O cast away the
   fond delusion I pray thee, and look to him who "endured the cross,
   despising the shame," and be ready to endure and to suffer even as he
   did.

   And now behold our Master's humanity clothed even as ours has been
   since the fall. He comes not before us in the purple of a king, in the
   garb of the rich and the respectable, but he wears a dress in keeping
   with his apparent origin; he is a carpenter's son, and he wears a dress
   which becomes his station. View him, ye sons of poverty, as he stands
   before you in his seamless garment, the common dress of the peasant;
   and if you have felt this week the load of want--if you have suffered
   and are suffering this very day the ills connected with poverty, pluck
   up courage, and find a consolation in the fact that Christ was poorer
   than you are--that he knew more of the bitterness of want than you ever
   yet can guess. You cannot say, "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the
   air have nests, but I have not where to lay my head;" or if you could
   go as far as that, yet have you never known a forty-day's fast. You
   have some comforts left to you; you do know at least the sweet taste of
   bread to the hungry man, and of rest to the weary; but these things
   were often denied to him. Look at him, then, and see if there be not to
   you comfort in Christ.

   We pass now, O Jesus, from thy robe of poverty to that scene of shame
   in which thy garments were rent from thee, and thou didst hang naked
   before the sun. Children of God, if there be one place more than
   another where Christ becomes the joy and comfort of his people, it is
   where he plunged deepest into the depths of woe. Come, see him, I pray
   you, in the garden of Gethsemane; behold him, as his heart is so full
   of love that he cannot hold it in--so full of sorrow that it must find
   a vent. Behold the bloody sweat as it distils from every pore of his
   body, and falls in gouts of gore upon the frozen ground. See him as all
   red with his own blood, wrapped in a bloody mantle of his own gore, he
   is brought before Herod and Pilate, and the Sanhedrim. See him now as
   they scourge him with their knotted whips, and afresh encrimson him, as
   though it were not ehough for him to be dyed once in scarlet, but he
   must again be enwrapped in purple. See him, I say, now that they have
   stripped him naked. Behold him as they drive the nails into his hand
   and into his feet. Look up and see the sorrowful image of your dolorous
   Lord. O mark him, as the ruby drops stand on the thorn-crown, and make
   it the blood-red diadem of the King of misery. O see him as his bones
   are out of joint, and he is poured out like water and brought into the
   dust of death. "Behold and see, was there ever sorrow like unto his
   sorrow that is done unto him?" All ye that pass by, draw near and look
   upon this spectacle of grief. Behold the Emperor of woe who never had
   an equal or a rival in his agonies! Come and see him; and if I read not
   the words of consolation written in lines of blood all down his side,
   then these eyes have never read a word in any book; for if there be not
   consolation in a murdered Christ, there is no joy, no peace to any
   heart. If in that finished ransom price, if in that efficacious blood,
   if in that all-accepted sacrifice, there be not joy, ye harpers of
   heaven, there is no joy in you, and the right hand of God shall know no
   pleasures for evermore. I am persuaded, men and brethren, that we have
   only to sit more at the Cross to be less troubled with our doubts, and
   our fears, and our woes. We have but to see his sorrows, and lose our
   sorrows; we have to see his wounds, and heal our own. If we would live,
   it must be by contemplation of his death; if we would rise to dignity
   it must be by considering his humiliation and his sorrow.

   "Lord, thy death and passion give

   Strength and comfort in my need,

   Every hour while here I live,

   On thy love my soul shall feed."

   But come now, troubled heart, and follow the dead body of thy Master,
   for though dead, it is as full of consolation as when alive. It is now
   no more naked; the loving hands of Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus,
   and the Magdalene and the other Mary, have wrapped it in cerements, and
   have laid it in the new tomb. Come, saints, not to weep, but to dry
   your tears. You have been all your lifetime subject to fear of death:
   come, break your bonds asunder; be free from this fear. Where your
   Master sleeps, you may surely find an easy couch. What more could you
   desire than to lie upon the bed of your royal Solomon? The grave is now
   no more a charnel-house or a dark prison; his having entered it makes
   it a blessed retiring-room, a sacred bath in which the King's Esthers
   purify their bodies, to make them fit for the embraces of their Lord.
   It becomes now not the gate of annihilation, but the portal of eternal
   bliss,--a joy to be anticipated, a privilege to be desired. "Fearless
   we lay us in the tomb, and sleep the night away, for thou art here to
   break the gloom, and call us back to day."

   I am certain, brethren, that all the consolations which wise men can
   ever afford in a dying hour will never be equal to that which is
   afforded by the record, that Jesus Christ ascended from the tomb. The
   maxims of philosophy, the endearments of affection, and the music of
   hope, will be a very poor compensation for the light of Jesus' grave.
   Death is the only mourner at Jesus' tomb, and while the whole earth
   rejoices at the sorrow of its last enemy, I would be all too glad to
   die, that I might know him, and the power of his resurrection. Heir of
   heaven! if thou wouldst be rid once for all of every doubting thought
   about the hour of thy dissolution, look, I pray thee, to Christ risen
   from the dead. Put thy finger into the print of the nails, and thrust
   thy hand into his side, and be not faithless but believing. He is
   risen; he saw no corruption; the worms could not devour him; and as
   Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, he has become the first fruits of
   them that slept. Inasmuch as he has risen, thou shalt rise. He has
   rolled the stone away, not for himself alone, but for thee also. He has
   unwrapped the grave-clothes, not for his own sake, but for thy sake
   too, and thou shalt surely stand in the latter day upon the earth, when
   he shall be here, and in thy flesh thou shalt see God.

   Time would fail us, if we should attempt to track the Master in his
   glorious pathway after his resurrection. Let it suffice us briefly to
   observe that, having led his disciples out unto a mountain, where he
   has delighted often to commune with them, he was suddenly taken up from
   them, and a cloud received him out of their sight. We think we may
   conjecture, by the help of Scripture, what transpired after that cloud
   had covered him. Did not the angels

   "Bring his chariot from on high

   To bear him to his throne,

   Clap their triumphant wings and cry,

   His glorious work is done?"

   Do you not see him, as he mounts his triumphal chariot,

   "And angels chant the solemn lay,

   Lift up your heads, ye golden gates,

   Ye everlasting doors give away?"

   Behold angels gazing from the battlements of heaven, replying to their
   comrades who escort the ascending Son of Man. "Who is the King of
   Glory?" And this time those who accompany the Master sing more sweetly
   and more loudly than before, while they cry, "The Lord strong and
   mighty, the Lord mighty in battle! Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and
   be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of Glory may come
   in." And now the doors

   "Loose all their bars of massy light,

   And wide unfold the radiant scene,"

   and he enters. "He claims those mansions as his right," and all the
   angels rise to "receive the King of Glory in." Behold him, as he rides
   in triumph through heaven's streets; see Death and Hell bound at his
   chariot wheels. Hark to the "Hosannas" of the spirits of the just made
   perfect! Hear how cherubim and seraphim roll out in thunders their
   everlasting song--"Glory be unto thee; glory be unto thee, thou Son of
   God, for thou wast slain and thou hast redeemed the world by thy
   blood." See him as he mounts his throne and near his Father sits.
   Behold the benignant complacency of the paternal Deity. Hear him as he
   accepts him and gives him a name which is above every name. And I say,
   my brethren, in the midst of your tremblings, and doubtings, and
   fearings, anticipate the joy which you shall have, when you shall share
   in this triumph, for know you not that you ascended up on high in him?
   He went not up to heaven alone, but as the representative of all the
   blood-bought throng. You rode in that triumphal chariot with him; you
   were exalted on high, and made to sit far above principalities and
   powers in him; for we are risen in him, we are exalted in Christ. Even
   at this very day in Christ that Psalm is true--"Thou hast put all
   things under his feet; thou madest him to have dominion over all the
   works of thy hands." Come, poor trembler, thou art little in thine own
   esteem, and but a worm and no man! Rise, I say, to the height of thy
   nobility; for thou art in Christ greater than angels be, more magnified
   and glorified by far. God gives you grace, ye who have faith, that ye
   may now, in the fact of Jesus Christ's exaltation, find consolation for
   yourself!

   But now to-day methinks I see the Master, as he stands before his
   Father's throne, dressed in the garments of a priest; upon his breast I
   see the Urim and Thummim glittering with the bejewelled remembrances of
   his people. In his hand I see still the remembrance of his sacrifice,
   the nail mark; and there I see still upon his feet the impress of the
   laver of blood in which he washed himself not as the priest of old with
   water but with his own gore. I hear him plead with authority before his
   Father's face, "I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with
   me where I am." O my poor prayers, ye shall be heard! O my faint
   groans, ye shall be answered! Oh, my poor troubled soul, thou art safe,
   for

   "Jesus pleads and must prevail,

   His cause can never, never fail."

   Come, my poor heart, lift up thyself now from the dunghill; shake
   thyself from the dust; ungird thy sackcloth and put on thy beautiful
   garments. He is our advocate to-day, our eloquent and earnest pleader,
   and he prevails with God. The Father smiles--he smiles on Christ; he
   smiles on us in answer to Jesus Christ's intercession. Is he not here
   also the consolation of Israel?

   I only remark once more that he who has gone up into heaven shall so
   come in like manner as he was seen to go up into heaven. He ascended in
   clouds, "Behold he cometh with clouds." He went up on high with sound
   of trumpet and with shout of angels. Behold he cometh! The silver
   trumpet shall soon sound. Tis midnight: the hours are rolling wearily
   along; the virgins wise and foolish are all asleep. But the cry shall
   soon be heard--"Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye forth to meet him."
   That same Jesus who was crucified shall come in glory. The hand that
   was pierced shall grasp the sceptre. Beneath his arm he shall gather up
   all the sceptres of all kings; monarchies shall be the sheaves, and he
   shall be the kingly reaper. On his head there shall be the many crowns
   of universal undisputed dominion. "He shall stand in the latter day
   upon the earth." His feet shall tread on the mount of Olivet, and his
   people shall be gathered in the valley of Jehoshaphat. Lo, the world's
   great battle is almost begun; the trumpet sounds the beginning of the
   battle of Armageddon. To the fight, ye warriors of Christ, to the
   fight; for it is your last conflict, and over the bodies of your foes
   ye shall rush to meet your Lord--he fighting on the one side by his
   coming, you on the other side by drawing near to him. You shall meet
   him in the solemn hour of victory. The dead in Christ shall rise first,
   and you that are alive and remain shall be changed in a moment, in the
   twinkling of an eye, at the last triumphant sounding of the dread
   tremendous trump. Then shall you know to the full how Christ can
   console you for all your sorrows, all your shame, and all your neglect
   which you have received from the hand of men. Ay, to-day bethink you,
   there awaits the recompense of an earthly splendour for your earthly
   poverty; there awaits you earthly dignity for your earthly shame. You
   shall not only have spiritual, but you shall have temporal blessings.
   He who takes away the curse will take it away not only from your soul,
   but from the very ground on which you tread. He who redeems you shall
   redeem not only your spirit, but your body. Your eyes shall see your
   Redeemer; your hands shall be lifted up in acclamation, and your feet
   shall bear your leaping joys in the procession of his glory, in your
   very body in which you have suffered for him you shall sit with him
   upon the throne and judge the nations of the earth. These things, I
   say, are all full of the purest and highest consolation to the children
   of God.

   II. Having taken nearly all my time upon the first point, I can only
   say a word or two upon the second and on the third. The second point
   was to be this--CHRIST IN HIS UNCHANGING NATURE; a consolation for our
   continual sorrows.

   Christ is to his people a surpassing consolation. Talk of the
   consolations of philosophy? We have all the philosopher can pretend to;
   but we have it in a higher degree. Speak of the charms of music which
   can lull our sorrows to a blessed sleep?

   "Sweeter sounds than music knows,

   Charm us in our Saviour's name."

   "Jesus, the very thought of thee,

   With rapture fills my breast."

   Speak we of the joys of frienship? and sweet they are indeed; but
   "there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother"--"a brother
   born for adversity." There is one who is better than all friends, more
   able to cheer than those who are darest and nearest to our hearts. Or,
   speak we of the joys of hope? and certainly hope can console us when
   nothing else can do it. He is our hope. We cast the anchor of our hope
   into that which is within the veil, whither the forerunner hath for us
   entered. The consolations of Christ are unrivalled by any which can be
   offered by wit, by wisdom, by mirth, by hope itself; they are
   incomparable, and can never be surpassed.

   Again, the consolations of Christ, from the fact of his unchanging
   nature, are unfailing.

   "When every earthly prop gives way,

   He still is all our strength and stay."

   Look you at Job, and see the picture of how Christ can console. The
   messenger rushes in--"The Sabeans have taken away the oxen and the
   asses!" "Well, well," Job might console himself and say, "but the sheep
   are left." "But the fire of God hath fallen on the sheep! and the
   Chaldeans have carried away the camels and slain the servants!" "Alas!"
   the good man might say, "but my children are left, and if they be
   spared, then I can still have joy." "The wind has come from the
   wilderness, and smitten the four corners of the house, and all thy sons
   and daughters are dead!" Ah! well-a-day, penniless and childless, the
   patriarch might weep; but, looking on his wife, he would say, "There
   still remaineth one sweet comforter, my well-beloved spouse." She bids
   him "curse God and die;" "speaking as one of the foolish women
   speaketh." Yet might Job say, "Though my wife hath failed me, there
   remaineth at least three friends; there they sit with me on the
   dunghill, and they will console me." But they speak bitterness, till he
   cries, "Miserable comforters are ye all." Well, but at least he has his
   own body in health, has he not? No, he sits down upon a dunghill, and
   scrapes himself with a potsherd, for his sores become intolerable.
   Well, well, "skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for
   his life." He may at least cheer himself with the fact, that he lives.
   "Why should a living man complain?" Yes, but he fears he is about to
   die. And now comes out the grandeur of his hope: "I know that my
   Redeemer liveth, and though the worms devour this body, yet in my flesh
   shall I see God." All the other windows are darkened; but the sun
   shines in at the oriel window of redemption. All the other doors are
   shut; but this great door of hope and joy still stands wide open. All
   other wells are dry; but this flows with an unceasing stream. Brothers
   and sisters, when all things else depart, an unchanging Christ shall be
   your unchanging joy.

   Furthermore, the consolations of Christ are all powerful consolations.
   When a poor soul is so deep in the mire that you cannot lift it with
   the lever of eloquence, nor draw it up with the hands of sympathy, nor
   raise it with wings of hope, he can touch it with his finger and it can
   spring up from the mire, and put his feet upon a rock, and feel the new
   song in its mouth and its goings well established. There is no form of
   melancholy which will not yield before the grace of God; there is no
   shape of distress which will not give way before the divine energy of
   the Holy Ghost the Comforter, when he uses Christ as the consolation.

   Again: this consolation is everlasting consolation. It consoled you, O
   aged sire, when as a youth you gave your heart to Christ; it was your
   joy in the mid-winter of your manhood; it has become your strength and
   your song in the days of your old age; when tottering on your staff you
   shall go down to Jordan's brink, he will be your consolation then. In
   the prospect of your coming dissolution, yea, when you walk through the
   valley of the shadow of death, you shall fear no evil, for he is with
   you; his rod and his staff shall comfort you. All other things shall
   pass away as a dream when you awaketh; but this substantial support
   shall abide with you in the midst of the swellings of Jordan, in the
   hour of the departure of your spirit from your body.

   And then remember that this is a consolation which is always within the
   believer's reach. He is "a very present help in time of trouble." Ye
   may always cheer your heart with Christ when other things are far away.
   When a friend visits you not, and your chamber becomes lonely--when
   spouse has forgotten to speak the kind word to you, and children have
   become ungrateful, he will make your bed in your sickness, he will be
   your never-failing friend and abide with you in every dark and gloomy
   hour, till he brings you into his dear arms, where you will be
   emparadised for ever and ever.

   III. I close now with my last point--the grave and serious question, IS
   CHRIST AN AVAILABLE CONSOLATION FOR ME?

   Who art thou, friend? Art thou one who needs no consolation? Hast thou
   a righteousness of thine own? Let me put it in thine own words. You are
   a good man, kind to the poor, charitable, upright, generous, holy. You
   believe there may be some faults in yourself, but they must be very
   few, and you trust that what with your own merits and with God's mercy
   you may enter heaven. In the name of God, I do solemnly assure you,
   that Christ is not an available consolation for you. Christ will have
   nothing to do with you, so long as you have anything to do with
   yourself. If you are trusting in any measure whatever upon aught that
   you have ever done or hope to do, you are trusting in a lie, and Christ
   will never be friends with a lie. He will never help you to do what he
   came to do himself. If you will take his work as it is, as a finished
   work, well and good; but if you must needs add to it your own, God
   shall add unto you the plagues which are written in this Book, but he
   shall by no means give to you any of the promises and the comforts
   which Christ can afford.

   But instead thereof, I will suppose that I address myself this morning
   to a man who says, "I was once, I think, a believer in Christ; I made a
   profession of religion, but I fell from it, and I have lost for years
   all the hope and joy I ever had; I think I was a presumptuous man, that
   I pretended to have what I never had, and yet at the time I really
   thought I had it. May I think that there is consolation in Christ for a
   backslider and a traitor like me? Often, sir, do I feel as if the doom
   of Judas must be mine--as if I must perish miserably, like Demas, who
   loved this present world." Ah! backslider, backslider, God speaks to
   thee this morning, and he says, "Return ye backsliding children of men,
   for I am married to you;" and if married, there has never been a
   divorce between Christ and you. Has he put you away? Unto which of his
   creditors has he sold you? Where do you read in his Word, that he has
   divided from the affection of his heart one whose name was ever written
   in his Book? Come, come, backslider, come again to the cross. He who
   received you once will receive you again. Come where the flood is
   flowing; the blood that washed you once, can wash you yet once more.
   Come, come, thou art naked, and poor, and miserable; the raiment which
   was given to thee once, shall array thee again with beauty. The
   unsearchable riches which were opened up to thee aforetime, shall be
   thine again.

   "To thy Father's bossom press'd,

   Once again a child confess'd,

   From his hand no more to roam,

   Come, backsliding sinner, come."

   But I hear another say, "I am not a backslider, but simply one who
   desires to be saved. I can say honestly, I would give my right arm from
   its socket if I might but be saved. Why, sir, if I had ten thousand
   worlds I would freely cast them away as pebble stones, and worthless,
   if I might but find Christ." Poor soul, and does the devil tell thee
   thou shalt never have Christ? Why, thou hast a warrant to lay hold on
   Christ to-day. "No," sayest thou, "I have no right whatever." The fact
   that thou sayest thou hast no right should at least comfort the
   minister in addressing himself freely to thee. The right of a sinner to
   come to Christ does not lie in the sinner, nor in any feelings which
   the sinner may have had; it lies in the fact that Christ commands him
   to come. If one of you should receive as you went out of younder door a
   command to go at once to Windsor, and have an interview with the Queen,
   as soon as you had received the order and were sure it came from her,
   you might say, "Well, but if I had known this, I should have put on
   other clothes;" but the order is peremptory, "Come now; come just as
   you are;" you would, I think, without any very great doubt, though
   greatly wondering, take your place and ride there at once. When you
   came to the gate, some tall grenadier might ask you what you were at.
   "Why," he might say, "you are not fit to come and see Her Majesty; you
   are not a gentleman; you have not so many hundreds a year; how can you
   expect to be admitted?" You show the command, and he lets you pass on.
   You come to another door, and there is an usher there. "You are not in
   a court dress," says he; "you are not properly robed for the occasion."
   You show the command, and he lets you pass on. But suppose when at last
   you should come into the ante-room you should say, "Now I dare not go
   in; I am not fit; I feel I shall not know how to behave myself."
   Suppose you are silly enough not to go, you would be disobedient and
   ten times more foolish in disobeying than you could have been by any
   blunders in behaviour if you had obeyed. Now it is just so with you
   to-day. Christ says, "Come unto me." He does not merely invite you,
   because he knows you would think you did not deserve the invitation;
   but he gives the command, and he bids me say to you, "Repent, and be
   baptized every one of you;" he bids me command you in his name,
   "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." Of his
   grace and mercy he puts it as a command. "But," you say. Ah! what right
   have you to say "but" to the Lord's commands? Again,I say, away with
   your "buts." What right have you to be "butting" at his laws and his
   commands. "But," you say, "do hear me for a moment." I will hear you
   then. "Sir, I cannot imagine that if such a hard-hearted sinner as I am
   were really to trust Christ I should be saved." The English of that is,
   that you give God the lie. He says you shall be, and do you think he
   speaks an untruth? "Ah!" says another, "but it is too good to be true.
   I cannot believe that just as I am, if I trust in Christ, my sin shall
   be forgiven." Again, I say, the simple English of that is, that you
   think you know better than God; and so you do in fact stand up and say
   to his promise, "Thou art false." He says, "Him that cometh unto me I
   will in no wise cast out." "Ah!" you say, "but that does not mean me?"
   Can any language speak more plainly? "Him. What him? Why, any "him" in
   the world.

   "Yes," says one, "but the invitations are made to character--'Come unto
   me all ye that labour and are heavy laden;' I am afraid I am not heavy
   laden enough?" Yes, but you will mark, while the invitation is given to
   character, yet the promise is not given to the character; it is given
   to those who come--"Come unto me, and I will give you rest;" and while
   that one invitation may be confined to the weary and heavy laden, yet
   there are scores of others that stand as wide and free as the very air
   we breathe. If you have that qualification, do not come even with it,
   because you are unqualified when you think you are qualified; you are
   unfit when you think you are fit; and if you have a sense of need,
   which you think makes you fit to come to Christ, it shows you are not
   fit and do not know your need; for no man knows his need till he thinks
   he does not know his need, and no man is in a right state to come to
   Christ till he thinks he is not in a right state to come to Christ. But
   he who feels that he has not one good thought or one good feeling to
   recommend him, he is the man who may come. He who says, "But I may not
   come," is the very man that is bidden to come. Besides, my friends, it
   is not what you think, or what I think; it is what Christ says; and is
   it not written by the hand of the Apostle John, "This is the
   commandment, that ye believe on Jesus Christ whom he hath sent?" Men
   who say it is not the duty of sinners to believe, I cannot think what
   they make out of such a text as that--"This is the commandment, that ye
   believe on Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent;" and that one where God
   expressely says, "He that believeth not is condemned already, because
   he believeth not." Why, I should think I was addressing heathens, if I
   addressed a company of men who thought that God did not command men to
   repent; for Scripture is so plain upon the point, and I say, if God
   commands thee to do it, thou mayest do it. Let the devil say "Nay," but
   God says "Yes." Let him stand and push you back; but say to him, "Nay,
   Satan, nay, I come here in God's name;" and as devils fear and fly
   before the name of Christ, so will Satan and thy fears all fly before
   his command. He commands thee to believe--that is, to trust him. Trust
   him, soul, trust him; right or wrong, trust him.

   But some of you want a great temptation, and a great deal of despair,
   before you will trust him. Well, the Lord will send it to you, if you
   will not trust him without it. I remember John Bunyan says he had a
   black temptation, and it did him a great deal of good; for, said he,
   "Before I had the temptation I used always to be questioning a promise,
   and saying, May I come, or may I not come?'" But at last he said, "Yea,
   often when I have been making to the promise, I have seen as if the
   Lord would refuse my soul for ever: I was often as if I had run upon
   the pike, and as if the Lord had thrust at me, to keep me from him as
   with a flaming sword." Ah! and perhaps you may be driven to that. I
   pray you may; but I would infinitely rather that the sweet love and
   grace of God would entice you now to trust Jesus Christ just as you
   are. He will not deceive you, sinner; he will not fail you. Trusting
   him, you shall build on a sure foundation, and find him who is the
   consolation of Israel and the joy of all his saints.
     __________________________________________________________________

                              The Wailing of Risca

   A Sermon

   (No. 349)

   Delivered on Sabbath Morning, December 9th, 1860, by the

   REV. C.H. SPURGEON

   At Exeter Hall, Strand.

   "Suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment."--Jeremiah
   4:20.

   THE sorrow of the weeping prophet was exceeding heavy when he uttered
   these words of bitter lamentation. A great and present burden from the
   Lord is weighing so heavily upon our hearts this morning, that we
   cannot spare so much as a moment for sympathy with the griefs of past
   ages. God has visited our land, and his strokes have been exceeding
   hard. We are constrained to take up a wailing, and cry aloud, "Suddenly
   are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment." There is a spot in
   South Wales which has frequently yielded me a quiet and delightful
   retreat. Beautiful for situation, surrounded by lofty mountains,
   pierced by romantic valleys, the breathing of its air refreshes the
   body, and the sight of the eyes makes glad the heart. I have climbed
   its hills, I have seen the ever widening landscape, the mountains of
   Wales, the plains of England, and the seas sparkling afar. I have
   descended the hills and marked the mist creeping up the side of the
   hills and covering the woods in clouds. I have mingled with its godly
   men and women, and worshipped God in their assemblies. These lips have
   ministered the Word in that once happy valley. I have been fired with
   the glorious enthusiasm of the people when they have listened to the
   Word. Well doth my soul remember one night, which I shall never forget
   in time or in eternity, when, crowded together in the place of worship,
   hearty Welsh miners responded to every word of Christ's minister, with
   their "gogoniants" encouraging me to preach the Gospel, and crying
   "Glory to God" while the message was proclaimed. I remember how they
   constrained me, and kept me well nigh to midnight, preaching three
   semons, one after another, almost without rest, for they loved to
   listen to the gospel. God was present with us, and many a time has the
   baptismal pool been stirred since then by the fruit of that night's
   labour. Nor shall I ever forget when standing in the open air beneath
   God's blue sky, I addressed a mighty gathering within a short distance
   of that spot; when the Spirit of God was poured upon us, and men and
   women were swayed to and fro under the heavenly message, as the corn is
   moved in waves by the summer winds. Great was our joy that day when the
   people met together in thousands, and with songs and praises separated
   to their homes, talking of what they had heard. But now our visitation
   of that neighbourhood must ever be mingled with sorrow. How hath God
   been pleased to smite down strong men, and to take away the young men
   upon a sudden! "How suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a
   moment." Oh! vale of Risca, I take up a lamentation for thee: the Lord
   hath dealt sorely with thee. Behold, and see if there be sorrow in any
   valley like unto thy sorrow which is done unto thee. The angel of death
   has emptied out his quiver upon thee; the awful reaper hath gathered to
   himself full sheaves from thy beautifull valley.

   You all know the story; it scarce needs that I should tell it to you.
   Last Saturday week some two hundred or more miners descended in health
   and strength to their usual work in the bowels of the earth. They had
   not been working long, their wives and their children had risen, and
   their little ones had gone to their schools, when suddenly there was
   heard a noise at the mouth of the pit;--it was an explosion,--all knew
   what it meant. Men's hearts failed them, for well they prophesied the
   horror which would soon reveal itself. They wait awhile, the foul gas
   must first be scattered, brave men with their lives in their hands
   descend into the pit, and when they are able to see with the dim
   miner's lamp, the light falls upon corpse after corpse. A few, a
   handful are brought up alive, and scarce alive, but yet, thank God,
   with enough of the vital spark remaining to be again kindled to a
   flame; but the great mass of those strong men have felt the grip of
   death. Some of them were brought up to the top with their faces burned
   and scarred, with their bodies disfigured by the fire; but many are
   discovered whose faces looked as if they sweetly slept, so that it was
   scarcely possible to believe that they really could be dead, so quietly
   had the spirit quitted the habitation of clay. Can you picture to
   yourselves the scene? The great fires lit around the pit, flaming both
   night and day, the thick mist, the pouring rain drenching the whole of
   the valley. Do you see the women as they come clustering round the pit,
   shrieking for their sons, and their husbands, and their fathers. Do you
   hear that shrill scream as yonder woman has just discovered the partner
   of her soul; and there do you mark another bending over the form of her
   two stalwart sons, now alas taken from her for ever? Do you mark the
   misery that sits upon the face of some who have not found their sons,
   or their fathers, or their husbands, or their brothers, and who know
   not where they are, and feel a thousand deaths themselves because they
   feel convinced that their precious ones have fallen, though their
   corpses cannot be found? The misery in that valley is past description;
   those who have witnessed it, fail to be able to picture it. As the cry
   of Egypt in the night when the destroying angel went through all the
   land and smote the firstborn; as the wail of Rachel when she could not
   be comforted for her children, because they were not; such has been the
   howling, the weeping, the lamentation of that fair but desolate valley.

   My friends, this judgment has a voice to us, and the scarce buried
   bodies of those men which lie around us in vision, have each a
   sorrowful lesson. The cry of the widow, and of the childless mother,
   shall come up into our ears to-day; and, O Lord God of Saboath, may it
   so arouse us that we may hear, and fear, and tremble, and turn unto
   thee--that this dread calamity may be to us the means of our salvation,
   or if saved, the means of stirring us up more earnestly to seek the
   salvation of our fellow men.

   There are three points upon which I shall try to address you this
   morning, though I feel inadequate to such a task. First, I shall say
   somewhat upon sudden bereavements; then I shall dwell awhile upon the
   fact of sudden death; and afterwards we will say but a little, for we
   know but little, of the sudden exchange which sudden death shall bring
   both to saints and sinners.

   I. Our first sorrowful theme is SUDDEN BEREAVEMENTS.

   Alas! alas! how soon may we be childless; how soon may we be widowed of
   the dearest objects of our affections! O Lord, thou hast shown to us
   this day, how soon thou canst blast our gourds and wither all the
   fruits of our vineyard. The dearest ones, the partners of our blood,
   how soon can death proclaim a divorce between us--our children, the
   offspring of our loins, how soon canst thou lay them beneath the sod.
   We have not a single relative who may not become to us within the next
   moment a fountain of grief. All that are dear and precious to us are
   only here by God's good pleasure. What should we be to-day if it were
   not for those whom we love, and who love us? What were our house
   without its little prattlers? What were our habitation without the wife
   of our bosom? What were our daily business without our associates and
   friends to cheer us in our trials? Ah! this were a sad world indeed, if
   the ties of kindred, of affection, and of friendship all be snapped;
   and yet it is such a world that they must be sundered, and may be
   divided at any moment.

   From the fact that sudden bereavements are possible--not only to miners
   and to women whose husbands are upon the sea, but to us also--I would
   that we would learn profitable lessons. And first let us learn to set
   loose by our dearest friends that we have on earth. Let us love
   them--love them we may, love them we should--but let us always learn to
   love them as dying things. Oh, build not thy nest on any of these
   trees, for they are all marked for the axe. "Set not thine affections
   on things on earth," for the things of earth must leave thee, and then
   what wilt thou do when thy joy is emptied, and the golden bowl which
   held thy mirth shall be dashed to pieces? Love first and foremost
   Christ; and when thou lovest others, still love them not as though they
   were immortal. Love not clay as though it were undying--love not dust
   as though it were eternal. So hold thy friend that thou shalt not
   wonder when he vanishes from thee; so view the partakers of thy life
   that thou wilt not be amazad when they glide into the land of spirits.
   See thou the disease of mortality on every cheek, and write not Eternal
   upon the creature of an hour.

   Take care that thou puttest all thy dear ones into God's hand. Thou
   hast put thy soul there, put them there. Thou canst trust him for
   temporals for thyself, trust thy jewels with him. Feel that they are
   not thine own, but that they are God's loans to thee; loans which may
   be recalled at any moment--precious benisons of heaven, not entailed
   upon thee, but of which thou art but a tenant at will. Your possessions
   are never so safe as when you are willing to resign them, and you are
   never so rich as when you put all you have into the hand of God. You
   shall find it greatly mitigate the sorrow of bereavements, if before
   bereavement you shall have learned to surrender every day all the
   things that are dearest to you into the keeping of your gracious God.

   Further, then, you who are blessed with wife and children, and friends,
   take care that you bless God for them. Sing a song of praise to God who
   hath blessed you so much than others. You are not a widow, but there
   are many that wear the weeds, and why is it not your lot? You are not
   bereaven of your spouse, but there is many a man whose heart is rent in
   twain by such a calamity,--why is it not your portion too? You have not
   to follow to-morrow your little ones to their narrow graves--early
   flowers that did but bud and never ripened, withering alas! too soon.
   Oh! by the sorrow which you would feel if they were taken away, I
   exhort you to bless God for them while you have them. We sorrow much
   when our gifts are taken away, but we fail to thank God that he spared
   them to us so long. Oh! be not ungrateful, lest thou provoke the Lord
   to smite very low the mercy which thou dost not value. Sing unto the
   Lord, sing unto his name. Give unto him the blessing which he deserves
   for his sparing favors which he has manifested towards you in your
   household.

   And then permit me to remind you that if these sudden bereavements may
   come, and there may be a dark chamber in any house in a moment, and the
   coffin may be in any one of our habitations, let us so act to our
   kinsfolk and relatives as though we knew they were soon about to die.
   Young man, so treat thy hoary father as thou wouldst behave to him if
   thou knewest he would die to-morrow. When thou shalt follow him to the
   grave, amidst all thy tears for his loss, let there not be one tear of
   repentance because of thine ill behaviour to him. And you godly fathers
   and mothers, to you I have a special message--your children are
   committed to your care; they are growing up, and what if after they be
   grown up they should plunge into sin and die at last impenitent! Oh,
   let not the fierce regret sting you like an adder,--"Oh that I had
   prayed for my children! Oh that I had taught them before they
   departed." I pray you so live, that when you stand over your child's
   dead body you may never hear a voice coming up from that clay, "Father,
   thy negligence was my destruction. Mother, thy want of prayer was the
   instrument of my damnation." But so live, that when you hear the
   funeral knell, for a neighbour even, you may be able to say, "Poor
   soul, whether he is gone to heaven or to hell, I know I am clear of is
   blood." And with double earnestness be it so with your children. "Yes,"
   says one "but I have thought of teaching my children more of Christ,
   and being more earnest in prayer for them bye-and-bye," but what if
   they should die to-morrow? "Yes," says the wife, "I have thought of
   speaking to my ungodly husband, and trying to induce him to attend the
   house of God with me, but I was afraid he would only laugh at me, so I
   put it off for a month or two." Ah! what if he dies before you have
   cleared your conscience of him? Oh, my brothers and sisters in Christ,
   if sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our
   bodies; and if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about
   their knees, imploring them to stay, and not madly to destroy
   themselves. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the
   teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed
   for.

   In the light, then, of sudden bereavements, let not another hour pass
   over your head, when you have reached home, before you have freed your
   conscience of the blood of your children's souls. Gather them together
   around you this afternoon, and say to them, "My dear children, I have
   learned to day that you may die; I knew it before, but I have had it
   impressed upon my mind by a solemn incident. My dear children, I cannot
   help telling you, that as you must die, I am anxious that God's Holy
   Spirit should graciously lead you to repent of sin and seek a Saviour."
   And then, when you have told them the way to salvation in simple terms,
   put your arms about their necks, and bid the little ones kneel down and
   pray, "O God! upon their infant hearts, stamp thou, the image of
   thyself. As they are in the image of the earthy, so make them in the
   image of the heavenly, that at the last I may be able to say, Here am
   I, and the children thou hast given me.'"

   II. The second head of my discourse this morning was to be, SUDDEN
   DEATH, AS WE VIEW IT MORE PARTICULARLY IN RELATION TO OURSELVES.

   The miners of Risca had no more idea of dying that Saturday morning
   than you or I have, nor did there seem much likelihood that they would.
   They had gone up and down the pit, some of them, many thousands of
   times in their lives. It is true that some had perished there, but
   then, how very many had gone up and down and had not perished. Nay,
   they had grown so fearless of danger, that some of them even thrust
   themselves into it, and in defiance of every regulation for the
   preservation of human life, they were bold and careless, and would
   gratify a selfish indulgence when a spark might have caused the
   destruction of them all. We will not say that it was any negligence
   that caused this accident--God forbid that we should lay anything to
   the charge of those who have now departed, and have to answer before
   their God--but, at any rate, sure it is that men who have most to do
   with danger are generally the most callous, and those who are most
   exposed are usually utterly careless about the very danger which others
   see but which they will not see themselves. Any warning you or I might
   have given them would have been thought unnecessary, if not
   impertinent. "Why need I be so careful? I have done this fifty times
   before. Why may I not do it again?" But as in a moment, although there
   was no lightning flash, no earthquake, no opening of a pit to swallow
   them up, quick in a moment the gas explodes and they stand before the
   Eternal God. It was but the twinkling of an eye, even as though the
   last trump had sounded (and indeed it did sound as far as they were
   concerned), and down fell the lifeless corpse, and the spirit returned
   to God who made it. And you and I are in danger too. We are not in the
   pit in the midst of explosive air, but there are a thousand gates to
   death. How many there be who have fallen dead in the streets? How many
   sitting in their own homes? I stayed but a week or two ago with an
   excellent Christian man, who was then in the halest and most hearty
   health. I was startled indeed when I heard immediately after that he
   had come home, and sitting down in his chair had shut his eyes and
   died. And these things are usual, and in such a city as ours we cannot
   go down a street without hearing of some such visitation. Well, our
   turn must come. Perhaps we shall die falling asleep in our beds after
   long sickness, but probably we shall be suddenly called in such an hour
   as we think not to face the realities of eternity. Well, if it be so,
   if there be a thousand gates to death, if all means and any means may
   be sufficient to stop the current of our life, if really, after all,
   spiders' webs and bubbles are more substantial things than human life,
   if we are but a vapour, or a dying taper that soon expires in darkness,
   what then? Why, first, I say, let us all look upon ourselves as dying
   men, let us not reckon on to-morrow. Oh! let us not procrastinate, for
   taken in Satan's great net of procrastination we may wait, and wait,
   and wait, till time is gone and the great knell of eternity shall toll
   our dissolution. To-day is your only time. O mortal men, the present
   moment is the only moment you may call your own, and oh! how swift its
   wings! This hour is yours; yesterday is gone; to-morrow is with God,
   and may never come. "To-day if ye hear his voice harden not your
   hearts." Many have had their first impressions from thoughts of death,
   and hence it is that Satan never likes to let a man think of the grave.
   I know a family in which the governess, the daughter of a Christian
   minister, was told upon her entering her office, that she was never to
   mention the subject of death to the children. They were never to know
   even that children might die. I did not marvel when I knew the
   infidelity of the head of the household. What better atmosphere for an
   infidel to breathe in, than where the blast of death is never felt?
   Infidels ought to be immortal. They ought to live in a world where they
   can never die, for their infidelity will never be able to pass the
   stream of Jordan. There are infidels on earth, but there are none in
   heaven, and there can be none in hell. They are convinced--convinced by
   terrible facts--convinced that there is a God while they are crushed
   beneath his vengeance, and made to tremble at his eternal power. But I
   pray you, sirs, be not such fools as to live as though your bones were
   iron and your ribs were brass. Let us not be such madmen as to run as
   though there were no bounds to our race; let us not play away our
   precious days as though days were common as sands on a sea shore. That
   hour-glass yonder contains all the sands of your life. Do you see them
   running? How swiftly do they empty out! With some of you, the most of
   the sands are in the bottom bulb of the glass, and there are only a few
   to go trickling through the narrow passway of its days. Ah! and that
   glass shall never be turned again; it shall never run a second time for
   you. Let it once run out and you will die. Oh! live as though you meant
   to die. Live as though you knew you might die to-morrow. Think as
   though you might die now, and act this very hour as though I could
   utter the mandate of death, and summon you to pass through the portals
   of the tomb.

   And then take care, I pray you, that you who do know Christ not only
   live as though you meant to die, but live while you live. Oh what a
   work we have to do, and how short the time to do it! Millions of men
   unconverted yet, and nothing but our feeble voice with which to preach
   the Word! My soul, shalt thou ever condemn thyself in thy dying moments
   for having preached too often or too earnestly? No, never. Thou mayest
   rebuke thy soul, but thou canst never bemoan thy excessive industry.
   Minister of Christ! in thy dying hour it will never be a theme of
   reproach to you that you preached ten times in the week, that you stood
   up every day to preach Christ, and that you so preached that you spent
   yourself, and wasted your body with weakness. No, it will be our dull
   sermons that will haunt us on our dying beds, our tearless preaching,
   our long studyings, when we might have preached better had we come away
   and preached without them; our huntings after popularity, by gathering
   together fine words, instead of coming right up, and saying to the
   people, "Men and women, you are dying, escape for your life and fly to
   Christ;" preaching to them in red-hot simple words of the wrath to come
   and of the love of Christ. Oh! there are some of you members of our
   churches, who are living, but what are you living for? Surely you are
   not living to get money--that is the worldling's object. Are you living
   merely to please yourselves? Why that is but the beast's delight. Oh!
   how few there are of the members of our churches who really live for
   God with all their might. Do we give to God as much as we give to our
   own pleasures? Do we give Christ's service as much time as we give to
   many of our trifling amusements? Why, we have professional men of
   education, men of excellent training and ability, who when they once
   get into a church, feel that they could be very active anywhere else,
   but as Christians they have nothing to do. They can be energetic in
   parish vestries or in the rifle corps, but in the church they give
   their name, but their energies are dormant. Ah! my dear hearers, you
   who love the Saviour, when we shall come before Christ in heaven, if
   there can be a regret, it will be that we did not do more for Christ
   while we were here. I think as we fall down before his feet and worship
   him, if we could know a sorrow, it would be because we did not bring
   him in more jewels for his crown--did not seek more to feed the hungry,
   or to clothe the naked--did not give more to his cause, and did not
   labour more that the lost sheep of the house of Israel might be
   restored. Live while you live; while it is called to-day, work, for the
   night cometh wherein no man can work.

   And let us learn never to do anything which we would not wish to be
   found doing if we were to die. We are sometimes asked by young people
   whether they may go to the theatre, whether they may dance, or whether
   they may do this or that. You may do anything which you would not be
   ashamed to be doing when Christ shall come. You may do anything which
   you would not blush to be found doing if the hand of death should smite
   you; but if you would dread to die in any spot, go not there; if you
   would not wish to enter the presence of your God with such-and-such a
   word upon your lip, utter not that word; or if there would be a thought
   that would be uncongenial to the judgement-day, seek not to think that
   thought. So act that you may feel you can take your shroud with you
   wherever you go. Happy is he that dies in his pulpit. Blessed is the
   man that dies in his daily business, for he is found with his loins
   girt about him serving his Master; but, oh, unhappy must he be to whom
   death comes as an intruder, and finds him engaged in that which he will
   blush to have ever touched, when God shall appear in judgment. Power
   supreme; thou everlasting King; permit not death to intrude upon an
   ill-spent hour, but find me rapt in meditation high; hymning my great
   Creator; proclaiming the love of Jesus, or lifting up my heart in
   prayer for myself and my fellow-sinners. Let me but serve my God, and
   then, Death, I will not say to thee when thou mayest come--come when
   thou wilt; but if I might choose, come to me while I am yearning after
   souls; come to me when the cry of inviting love is on my lip, and when
   I am weeping over the souls of men. Come to me, then, that men may say,

   "He did his body with his charge lay down,

   He ceased at once to work and live."

   But I may talk thus about sudden death and the likelihood of it, but
   ah! sirs, I cannot stir your hearts, for I cannot stir my own as I
   would. The fact that so many die each day has very little force in it
   for us, because it is so trite an event, we have heard of it so many
   times. We look down the catalogue of deaths and take the average, and
   we say, "Fifty below the average, or a hundred above the average," but
   our dying never comes home to us. All men will persist in thinking all
   men mortal but themselves. If there were a great Hydra in the city of
   London, which every day ate ten of the inhabitants of London alive, we
   should be dreadfully miserable, especially if we never knew when it
   would be our turn to be eaten too. If we were certain that it would eat
   all in London by-and-bye, but would only eat ten in a week, we should
   all tremble as we passed by the huge monster's den, and say, "When will
   it be my time?" and that would cast a cloud over the whole metropolis,
   blacker than its usual fog. But here is a monster, Death, which devours
   its hundreds at its meal; and with its iron tongue the funeral knell
   keeps crying out for more; its greedy and insatiable maw never being
   filled; its teeth never being blunted; its ravenous hunger never being
   stayed. And here we are, and though it will be our turn by-and-bye to
   be devoured of this great monster, yet how little do we think about it!
   One reason I think is, because we so seldom visit the dying. I stood
   once by the side of a poor boy whom I had taught as a Sunday-school
   teacher; he had received very little good training at home, and though
   he was but a lad of seventeen, he became a drunkard and drank himself
   to death at one debauch. I saw him, and talked to him, and tried to
   point him to the Saviour, and heard at last the death-rattle in his
   throat, and as I went down stairs I thought everybody a fool for doing
   anything except preparing to die. I began to look upon the men who
   drove the carts in the street, the men who were busy at their shops,
   and those who were selling their wares, as being all foolish for doing
   anything except their eternal business, and myself most of all foolish
   for not pointing dying sinners to a living Christ, and inviting them to
   trust in his precious blood. And yet in an hour or so all things took
   their usual shape, and I began to think that I was not dying after all,
   and I could go away and be I fear as heartless as before. I could begin
   to think that men were after all wise in thinking of this world, and
   not the next; I mean not that I really thought so, but I fear I acted
   as if I thought so; the impression of the dying-bed was so soon
   obliterated. If you could see all die who die, perhaps the impression
   would be different. I would liken the sons of men to a company of South
   Sea Islanders, whose canoe being disabled, floated upon a raft, and
   they were attacked by sharks; they disappeared one by one, till but
   three or four were left. Can you conceive the despair which would
   settle upon the countenances of these few? If they knew a God, do you
   not think they would then indeed call on him? And in what respect,
   except that death was more apparent to them, were they different from
   us? Man after man is being taken away from us by the devouring monster.
   Friends and kinsfolk have been snatched into the deep, and some of us
   remain upon the edge of the raft. You gray-haired man may be the next
   that is carried away. The hosts of God are crossing the flood; some
   have already passed it and are singing the eternal song, and

   "We are to the margin come,

   And soon expect to die."

   God help us so to live in the expectation of death, that Christ may be
   glorified in us whether we sleep or wake, and that we may be able to
   say, "For me to live is Christ, to die is gain."

   III. I shall detain you but a few minutes longer, while I dwell upon
   the third theme, which is, THAT SUDDEN EXCHANGE WHICH A SUDDED DEATH
   WILL CAUSE.

   You see yonder Christian man, he is full of a thousand fears, he is
   afraid even of his interest in Christ, he is troubled spiritually, and
   vexed with temporal cares. You see him cast down and exceeding
   troubled, his faith but very weak; he steps outside your door, and
   there meets him a messenger from God, who smites him to the heart, and
   he is dead. Can you conceive the change? Death has cured him of his
   fears, his tears are wiped away once for all from his eyes; and, to his
   surprise, he stands where he feared he should never be, in the midst of
   the redeemed of God, in the general assembly and church of the
   first-born. If he should think of such things, would he not upbraid
   himself for thinking so much of his trouble, and for looking into a
   future which he was never to see? See yonder man, he can scarcely walk,
   he has a hundred pains in his body, he says he is more tried and pained
   than any man. Death puts his skeleton hand upon him, and he dies. How
   marvellous the change! No aches now, no casting down of spirit, he then
   is supremely blest, the decrepid has become perfect, the weak has
   become strong, the trembling one has become a David, and David has
   become as the angel of the Lord. Hark to the song which pours from the
   lips of him who just now groaned; look at the celestial smile which
   lights the features of the man just now racked with pain and tormented
   with anguish! Was ever change so surprising, so marvellous? When I
   think of it, I could almost long for it to come across myself this
   morning; to go from the thousand eyes of you that look upon me, to look
   into the eyes of Christ, and to go from your songs, to the songs of
   spirits before the throne, to leave the sabbath work on earth for an
   eternal sabbath of rest: to go from unbelieving hearts, from Christians
   who need to be cheered and sinners to be convinced, to be with those
   who need no preaching, but who in one eternal song, sing "Hallelujah to
   God and the Lamb." I can imagine that when a man dies thus suddenly,
   one of the first emotions he experiences in the next world will be
   surprise. I can conceive that the spirit knows not where it is. It is
   like a man waking up from a dream. He looks about him. Oh, that glory!
   how resplendent you throne! He listens to harps of gold, and he can
   scarce believe it true. "I, the chief of sinners, and yet in heaven? I,
   a doubting one, and yet in paradise?" And then when he is conscious
   that he is really in heaven, oh! what overwhelming joy; how is the
   spirit flooded with delight, covered over with it, scarcely able to
   enjoy it because it seems to be all but crushed beneath the eternal
   weight of glory. And next, when the spirit has power to recover itself,
   and open its eyes from the blindness caused by this dazzling light, and
   to think--when its thoughts have recovered themselves from the sudden
   effect of a tremendous flood of bliss,--the next emotion will be
   gratitude. See how that believer, five minutes ago a mourner, now takes
   his crown from off his head, and with transporting joy and gratitude
   bows before his Saviour's throne. Hear how he sings; was ever song like
   that, the first song he ever sang that had the fulness of Paradise and
   perfection in it--"Unto him that loved me and washed me from my sins in
   his blood, unto him be glory." And how he repeats it, and repeats it
   again, and looks round to cherubim and seraphim, and prays them to
   assist him in his song, till all the harps of heaven re-taught the
   melody of gratitude, re-tuned by the one faithful heart, send up
   another hallelujah, and yet another, and another; while the floods of
   harmony surround the eternal throne of God.

   But what must be the change to the unconverted man? His joys are over
   for ever. His death is the death of his happiness--his funeral is the
   funeral of his mirth. He has just risen from his cups; he has another
   cup to drain, which is full of bitterness. He has just listened to the
   sound of the harp and the viol, and the music of them that make merry;
   an eternal dirge greets his ears, mixed with the doleful chorus of the
   shrieks of damned souls. What horror and surprise shall seize upon him!
   "Good God," he says, "I thought it was not so, but lo, it is. What the
   minister said to me is true; the things I would not believe are at last
   really so." When the poor soul shall find itself in the hands of angry
   fiends, and lifts up his eyes in hell, being in torments so hot, so
   feverish, so thirsy, that it shall seem in that first moment as though
   it had been athirst for a million years, what will be his surprise!
   "And am I," he will say, "really here? I was in the streets of London
   but a minute ago; I was singing a song but an instant before, and here
   am I in hell! What! so soon damned? Is the sentence of God like a
   lightning-flash? Does it so instantaneously rive the spirit and destroy
   its joys? Am I really here?" And when the soul has convinced itself
   that it is actually in hell, can you imagine next the overwhelming
   horror that will roll over it. It, too, will be stunned with a mighty
   flood, not with a flood of glory but with a flood of anger, of wrath,
   of divine justice. Oh! how the spirit is tormented now--tormented
   beyond thought. And then at last, when the wave recedes a moment, and
   there is a pause, what black despair shall then seize upon the spirit!
   Have you ever seen men die without a hope? I read but yesterday a case
   of a young woman who had procrastinated many times, and at last whe was
   told by the physician that within nine hours he really believed she
   would be a corpse. Then, when death really became a matter of fact to
   her, she rose up in the bed upon which she had been laid by the sudden
   stroke of God, and she prayed--prayed till she fell back fainting, and
   her lips were livid and her cheek was pale, while she cried, "God be
   merciful to me a sinner." Friends talked to her, consoled and comforted
   her, and bade her trust in Christ; but she said, "It is of no use for
   you to comfort me; no, it is too late. I made a fatal resolve some
   months ago that I would again enjoy the world, and that resolve
   destroyed by soul." And then she rose up in bed again, with eyes
   starting from their sockets, and prayed again till she was breathless,
   and groaned and cried, and fell down again in a faint, needing to be
   restored once more. And so she did, till with ghastly look--an awful
   look of horror--as though she felt the anguish of another world, she
   expired.

   Now if such is the remorse of a spirit before it feels the wrath of
   God--if the first drops are sufficient thus to destroy all hope and
   beat in pieces all our boastings, what will the eternal hail be--what
   will the everlasting sleet of divine wrath be when once it is poured
   our? Sodom and Gomorrah! Why all their fiery hail from heaven shall be
   nothing compared with the eternal fire that must fall upon the sinner.
   Do you think I love to speak on such a theme as this? My soul trembles
   while she thinks of it. No, I would sooner preach of other things by
   far, but it is needful that men may be awakened. Oh! I implore you, men
   and brethren, ye that know not God, and are still condemned, because
   you believe not in Christ, I pray you think of these things. Oh that I
   had a Baxter's heart, that I could weep over sinners as he did; but my
   soul feels as true an anguish for your souls as ever Baxter felt. Oh
   that you would be saved! My eyes ache; my brow is full of fire now,
   because I cannot preach as I wanted to preach to you. Oh that God would
   take up the work and send that truth right home. I know I shall soon
   die and you too, and I shall face each of you, and your eyes shall
   stare on me for ever and ever, if you be lost through my
   unfaithfulness. And shall it be--shall it be? Oh that we had a hope
   that all of us might see the face of God and live! "Believe in the Lord
   Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved."

   Spirit of God, convince of sin, and bring the heart to Christ, and may
   we all without exception see thy face in joy and glory, and praise
   thee, world without end. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          A Blow at Self-Righteousness

   A Sermon

   (No. 350)

   Delivered on Sabbath Morning, December 16th, 1860, by the

   REV. C.H. SPURGEON

   At Exeter Hall, Strand.

   "If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am
   perfect, it shall also prove me perverse."--Job 9:20.

   EVER since man became a sinner he has been self-righteous. When he had
   a righteousness of his own he never gloried of it, but ever since he
   has lost it, he has pretended to be the possessor of it. Those proud
   words which our father Adam uttered, when he sought to screen himself
   from the guilt of his treason against his Maker, laying the blame
   apparently on Eve, but really upon God who gave him the woman, were
   virtually a clame to blamelessness. It was but a fig leaf he could find
   to cover his nakedness, but how proud was he of that fig-leaf excuse,
   and how tenaciously did he hold to it. As it was with our first parents
   so is it with us: self-righteousness is born with us, and there is
   perhaps no sin which has so much vitality in it as the sin of righteous
   self. We can overcome lust itself, and anger, and the fierce passions
   of the will better than we can ever master the proud boastfulness which
   rises in our hearts and tempts us to think ourselves rich and increased
   in goods, while God knoweth we are naked, and poor, and miserable. Tens
   of thousands of sermons have been preached against self-righteousness,
   and yet it is as necessary to turn the great guns of the law against
   its walls to-day as ever it was. Martin Luther said he scarcely ever
   preached a sermon without inveighing against the righteousness of man,
   and yet, he said, "I find that still I cannot preach it down. Still men
   will boast in what they can do, and mistake the path to heaven to be a
   road paved by their own merits, and not a way besprinkled by the blood
   of the atonement of Jesus Christ." My dear hearers, I cannot compliment
   you by imagining that all of you have been delivered from the great
   delusion of trusting in yourselves. The godly, those who are righteous
   through faith in Christ, still have to mourn that this infirmity clings
   to them; while as to the unconverted themselves, their besetting sin is
   to deny their guiltiness, to plead that they are as good as others, and
   to indulge still the vain and foolish hope that they shall enter into
   heaven from some doings, sufferings, or weepings of their own. I do not
   suppose there are any who are self-righteous in as bold a sense as the
   poor countryman I have heard of. His minister had tried to explain to
   him the way of salvation, but either his head was very dull, or else
   his soul was very hostile to the truth the minister would impart; for
   he so little understood what he had heard, that when the question was
   put, "Now then, what is the way by which you hope you can be saved
   before God?" the poor honest simpleton said, "Do you not think sir, if
   I were to sleep one cold frosty night under a hawthorn bush, that would
   go a great way towards it?" conceiving that his suffering might, in
   some degree at least, assist him in getting into heaven. You would not
   state your opinion in so bold a manner; you would refine it, you would
   gild it, you would disguise it, but it would come to the same thing
   after all; you would still believe that some sufferings, or believings
   of your own might possibly merit salvation. The Romish Church indeed,
   often tells this so very plainly, that we cannot think it less than
   profanity. I have been informed that there is in one of the Romish
   chapels in Cork, a monument bearing these words upon it, "I. H. S.
   Sacred to the memory of the benevolent Edward Molloy; a friend of
   humanity, the father of the poor; he employed the wealth of this world
   only to procure the riches of the next; and leaving a balance of merit
   in the book of life, he made heaven debtor to mercy. He died October
   17th, 1818, aged 90." I do not suppose that any of you will have such
   an epitaph on your tombstones, or ever dream of putting it as a matter
   of account with God, and striking a balance with him, your sins being
   on one side and your righteousness on the other, and hoping that a
   balance might remain. And yet the very same idea, only not so honestly
   expressed--a little more guarded, and a little more refined--the same
   idea, only taught to speak after a gospel dialect--is inherent in us
   all, and only divine grace can thoroughly cast it out of us.

   The sermon of this morning is intended to be another blow against our
   self-righteousness. If it will not die, at least let us spare no arrows
   against it; let us draw the bow, and if the shaft cannot penetrate its
   heart, it may at least stick in its flesh and help to worry it to its
   grave.

   I. Endeavouring to keep close to my text, I shall start with this first
   point--that THE PLEA OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS CONTRADICTS ITSELF. "If I
   justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me."

   Come, friend, thou who dost justify thyself by thine own works, let me
   hear thee speak. "I say that I have no need of a salvation by the blood
   and righteousness of another, for I believe that I have kept the
   commands of God from my youth up, and I do not think that I am guilty
   in his sight, but I hope that I may be able in my own right to claim a
   seat in paradise." Now, sir, your plea and this declaration of yours is
   in itself a condemnation of you, because upon its very surface it is
   apparent that you are committing sin while you are pleading that you
   have no sin. For the very plea itself is a piece of high and arrogant
   presumption. God hath said it, let Jew and Gentile stop his mouth, and
   let all the world stand guilty before God. We have it on inspired
   authority, that "there is none righteous, no, not one." "There is none
   good, save one, that is God." We are told by the mouth of a prophet
   sent from God, that "all we like wandering sheep have gone astray; we
   have turned every one to his own way." And thou, in saying that thou
   art righteous, dost commit the sin of calling God a liar. Thou hast
   dared to impugn his veracity, thou hast slandered his justice. This
   boast of thine is in itself a sin, so great, so heinous, that if thou
   hadst only that one sin to account for, it would be sufficient to sink
   thee to the lowest hell. The boast, I say, is in itself a sin; the
   moment that a man saith, "I have no sin," he commits a sin in the
   saying of it,--the sin of contradicting his Maker, and making God a
   false accuser of his creatures.

   Besides, dost thou not see, thou vain and foolish creature, that thou
   hast been guilty of pride in the very language thou hast used? Who but
   a proud man would stand up and commend himself? Who, but one who was
   proud as Lucifer, would in the face of God's declaration declare
   himself to be just and holy? Did the best of men ever speak thus? Did
   they not all of them acknowledge that they were guilty? Did Job, of
   whom God said that he was a perfect and an upright man, claim
   perfection? Did he not say, "If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall
   condemn me?" Oh! proud wretch, how art thou puffed up! How hath Satan
   bewitched thee; how hath he made thee lift up thine horn on high and
   speak with a stiff neck. Take heed to thyself, for if thou hadst never
   been guilty before, this pride of thine were quite sufficient to draw
   Jehovah's thunderbolts out of the quiver, and make him smite thee once
   for all to thine eternal destruction.

   But further, the plea of self-righteousness is self-contradictory upon
   another ground; for all that a self-righteous man pleads for, is
   comparative righteousness. "Why," saith he, "I am no worse than my
   neighbours, in fact a great deal better; I do not drink, or swear; I do
   not commit fornication or adultery; I am no Sabbath breaker; I am no
   thief; the laws of my country do not accuse, much less condemn me; I am
   better than the most of men, and if I be not saved, God help those who
   are worse than I am; if I cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, then who
   can?" Just so, but then all that you claim is that you are righteous as
   compared with others. Do you not see that this is a very vain and fatal
   plea, because you do in fact admit that you are not perfectly
   righteous;--that there is some sin in you, only you claim there is not
   so much in you as in another. You admit that you are diseased, but then
   the plague-spot is not so apparent in you as in your fellow-man. You
   admit that you have robbed God and broken his laws, only you have not
   done it with so desperate an intent, nor with so many aggravations as
   others. Now this is virtually a plea of guilty, disguise it as you may.
   You admit that you have been guilty, and against you the sentence comes
   forth--"The soul that sinneth it shall die." Take heed to thyself that
   thou find no shelter in this refuge of lies, for it shall certainly
   fail thee when God shall come to judge the world with righteousness and
   the people with equity.

   Suppose now for a moment that a command is issued to the beasts of the
   forest that they should become sheep. It is quite in vain for the bear
   to come forward and plead that he was not so venomous a creature as the
   serpent; equally absurd would it be for the wolf to say that though
   stealthy and cunning, and gaunt, and grim, yet he was not so great a
   grumbler not so ugly a creature as the bear; and the lion might plead
   that he had not the craftiness of the fox. "It is true," saith he, "I
   wet my tongue in blood, but then I have some virtues which may commend
   me, and which, in fact, have made me king of beasts." What would this
   argument avail? The indictment is that these animals are not sheep,
   their plea against the indictment is that they are no less like sheep
   than other creatures, and that some of them have more gentleness and
   more docility than others of their kind. The plea would never stand. Or
   use another picture. If in the courts of justice, a thief, when called
   up, should argue, "Well, I am not so great a thief as some; there are
   to be found some living in Whitechapel or St. Giles's who have been
   thieves longer than I have, and if there be one conviction in the book
   against me, there are some that have a dozen convictions against them."
   No magistrate would acquit a man on such an excuse as that, because it
   would be tantamount to his admission of a degree of guilt, though he
   might try to excuse himself because he had not reached a higher degree.
   It is so with you, sinner. You have sinned. Another man's sins cannot
   excuse you; you must stand upon your own feet. At the day of judgment
   you must yourself make a personal appearance, and it will not be what
   another man has done that will condemn, or acquit you, but your own
   personal guilt. Take heed, then, take heed, sinner; for it will not
   avail thee that there are others blacker than thyself. If there be but
   a spot upon thee thou art lost; if there be but one sin unwashed by
   Jesus' blood, thy portion must be with the tormentors. A holy God
   cannot look even upon the least degree of iniquity.

   But further, the plea of the self-conceited man is, that he has done
   his best, and can claim a partial righteousness. It is true, if you
   touch him in a tender place he acknowledges that his boyhood and his
   youth were stained with sin. He tells you that in his early days he was
   a "fast lad;" that he did many things which he is sorry for now. "But
   then," says he, "these are only like spots in the sun; these are only
   like a small headland of waste ground in acres of fruitful soil; I am
   still good; I am still righteous, because my virtues exceed my vices,
   and my good deeds quite cover up all the mistakes that I have
   committed." Well, sir, do you not see that the only righteousness you
   claim is a partial righteousness? and in that very claim you do in fact
   make an admission that you are not perfect; that you have committed
   some sins. Now I am not responsible for what I am about to state, nor
   am I to be blamed for harshness in it, because I state neither more nor
   less than the very truth of God. It is of no saving avail to you that
   you have not have committed ten thousand sins, for if you have
   committed one, you are a lost soul. The law is to be kept intact and
   entire, and the least crack, or flaw, or breakage, spoils it. The robe
   of righteousness in which you must stand at last must be without spot
   or blemish, and if there be but one microscopic stain upon it, which is
   supposing what is never true, yet, even then the gates of heaven never
   can admit you. A perfect righteousness you must have, or else you shall
   never be admitted to that wedding feast. You may say, "I have kept such
   a commandment and have never broken it," but if you have broken another
   you are guilty of the whole, because the whole law is like one rich and
   costly vase--it is one in design and fashion. Though you break not the
   foor, and stain not the margin, yet if there be any flaw or damage, the
   whole vessel is marred. And so if you have sinned in any point, at any
   time, and in any degree, you have broken the whole law; you stand
   guilty of it before God, nor can you be saved by the works of the law,
   do what you may.

   "It is a hard sentence," says one, "and who can bear it!" Indeed, who
   can bear it? Who can bear to stand at the foot of Sinai and hear its
   thunders roar? "If so much as a beast touch the mountain it must be
   stoned or thrust through with a dart." Who can stand when the
   lightnings flash and God descends upon Mount Paran and the hills melt
   like wax beneath his feet? "By the deeds of the law there shall no
   flesh living be justified." "Cursed is every one that continueth not in
   all things that are written in the law to do them." Cursed is the man
   who sins but once, yea, hopelessly cursed so far as the law is
   concerned. Oh! sinner, I cannot help turning aside from the subject for
   a moment to remind you that there is a way of salvation, and a way by
   which the law's demands can be fully satisfied. Christ bore all the
   punishment of all believers, so that they cannot be punished. Christ
   kept the law of God for believers, and he is willing to cast about any
   and every penitent sinner that perfect robe of righteousness which he
   himself has wrought out. But you cannot keep the law, and if you bring
   up your self-rigtheousness the law condemns both it and you; Out of
   your own mouth it condemns you, inasmuch as you have not done all
   things and have not kept all the law. A great rock lies in your path to
   heaven; a mountain insurmountable; a gulf impassable; and by that road
   no man shall ever enter into eternal life.

   The plea of self-righteousness, then, is in itself self-contradicting,
   and has only to be fairly stated to an honest man for him to see that
   it will not hold water for a single moment. What need of laboured
   argument to disprove a self-evident lie? Why should we tarry longer?
   Who but a very fool would maintain a notion which flies in its own face
   and witnesses against itself?

   II. But now I pass to the second point, THE MAN WHO USES THIS PLEA
   CONDEMNS THE PLEA HIMSELF.

   Not only does the plea cut its own throat, but the man himself is aware
   when he uses it that it is an evil, and false, and vain refuge. Now
   this is a matter of conscience, and therefore I must deal plainly with
   you; and if I speak not what you have felt, then you can say I am
   mistaken; but if I speak what you must confess to be true, let it be as
   the very voice of God to you. Men know that they are guilty. The
   conscience of the proudest man, when it is allowed to speak, tells him
   that he deserves the wrath of God. He may brag in public, but the very
   loudness of his bragging proves that he has an uneasy conscience, and
   therefore he makes a mighty din in order to drown its voice. Whenever I
   hear an infidel saying hard things of Christ, it reminds me of the men
   of Moloch, who beat the drums that they might not hear the screams of
   their own children. These loud blasphemies, these braggart boastings,
   are only a noisy way of drowing the shrieks of conscience. Do not
   believe that these men are honest. I think all controversy with them is
   time thrown away. I would never controvert with a thief about the
   principles of honesty, or with a known adulterer concerning the duty of
   chastity. Devils are not to be reasoned with, but to be cast out.
   Parleying with hell serves no one's turn except the devil's. Did Paul
   argue with Elymas? or Peter with Simon Magus? I would not cross swords
   with a man who says there is no God; he knows there is a God. When a
   man laughs at Holy Scripture, you need not argue with him; he is either
   a fool or a knave--perhaps both. However villainous he may be, his
   conscience has some light; he knows that what he speaks is untrue. I
   cannot believe that conscience is so dead in any man as to let him
   believe that he is speaking the truth when he denies the Godhead; and
   much more I am certain that conscience never did give assent to the
   utterance of the braggart, who says he deserves eternal life, or has no
   sin of which to repent, or which by repentance may be washed away
   without the blood of Christ; he knows within himself that he speaks
   that which is false. When Professor Webster was shut up in prison for
   murder, he complained to the prison authorities that he had been
   insulted by his fellow-prisoners, for he said that through the walls of
   the prison he could hear them always crying out to him, "Thou bloody
   man! thou bloody man!" As it was not consistent with law that one
   prisoner should insult another, the strictest enquiry was made, and it
   was found that no prisoner had ever said such a word, or that if he had
   said it, Webster could not have heard it. It was his own conscience; it
   was not a word coming through the walls of the prison, but an echo
   reverberating from the wall of his bad heart, as conscience shouted,
   "Thou bloody man! thou bloody man!" There is in all your hearts a
   witness who will not cease his testimony; it cries, "Thou sinful man!
   thou sinful man!" You have only to listen to it, and you will soon find
   that every pretence of being saved by your good works must crumble to
   the ground. Oh! hear it now, and listen to it for a moment. I am sure
   my conscience says, "Thou sinful man! thou sinful man!" and I think
   yours must say the same, unless you are given up of God, and left to a
   seared conscience to perish in your sins.

   When men get alone, if in their loneliness the thought of death forces
   itself upon them, they boast no more of goodness. It is not easy for a
   man to lie on his bed seeing the naked face of death, not at a
   distance, but feeling that his breath is breathing upon the skeleton,
   and that he must soon pass through the iron gates of death--it is not
   easy for a man to plead his self-righteousness then. The bony fingers
   thrust themselves like daggers into his proud flesh. "Ah!" saith Death,
   in tones which cannot be heard by mortal ear, but which are listened to
   by the mortal heart--"Where now are all thy glories?" He looks upon the
   man, and the wreath of laurel that was upon his brow fades and falls to
   the earth like blasted flowers. He touches his breast, and the star of
   honour which he wore moulders and is quenched into darkness. He looks
   at him yet again--that breast-plate of self-righteousness which
   glittered upon him like golden mail, suddenly dissolves unto dust, like
   the apples of Sodom before the touch of the gatherer, and the man finds
   himself to his own surprise naked, and poor, and miserable, when most
   he needed to be rich, when most he required to be happy and to be
   blessed. Ay, sinner, even while this sermon is being uttered, you may
   seek to refute it to yourself, and say, "Well, I believe I am as good
   as others, and that this fuss about a new birth, imputed righteousness,
   and being washed in blood, is all unnecessary," but in the loneliness
   of your silent chamber, especially when death shall be your dread and
   grim companion, you shall not need me to state this, you shall see it
   clearly enough yourselves; see it with eyes of horror; and feel it with
   a heart of dismay, and despair, and perish because thou hast despised
   the righteousness of Christ.

   How abundantly true, however, will this be at the day of judgment. I
   think I see that day of fire, that day of wrath. You are gathered as a
   great multitude before the eternal throne. Those who are robed in
   Christ's fine linen, which is the righteousness of the saints, are
   caught up to the right hand. And now the trumpet sounds; if there be
   any that have kept the law of God, if there be faultless ones, if there
   be any that have never sinned, let them stand forth and claim the
   promised reward; but, if not, let the pit engulph the sinner, let the
   fiery thunder-bolt be launched upon the impenitent offenders. Now,
   stand forth, sir, and clear thyself! Come forth, my friend, and claim
   the reward, because of the church you endowed, or the row of
   alms-houses that you erected. What! what! does your tongue lie dumb in
   your mouth? Come forward, come forward--you who said you had been a
   good citizen, had fed the hungry, and clothed the naked--come forward
   now, and claim the reward. What! what! is your face turned to
   whiteness? Is there an ashy paleness on your cheek? Come forward, ye
   multitudes of those who rejected Christ, and despised his blood. Come
   now, and say, "All the commandments have I kept from my youth up."
   What! are you seized with horror? Has the better light of judgment
   driven out the darkness of your self-righteousness? Oh! I see you, I
   see you, ye are not boasting now; but you, the best of you, are crying,
   "Ye rocks, hide me; ye mountains, open your stony bowels; and let me
   hide myself from the face of him that sits upon the throne." Why, why
   such a coward? Come, face it out before your Maker. Come up, infidel,
   now, tell God there is no God. Come, while hell is flaming in your
   nostrils; come, and say there is no hell; or tell the Almighty that you
   never could bear to hear a hell-fire sermon preached. Come now, and
   accuse the minister of cruelty, or say that we love to talk on these
   terrible themes. Let me not mock you in your misery; but let me picture
   to you how devils shall mock you. "Aha!" say they "where is your
   courage now? Are your ribs of iron and your bones of brass? Will you
   dare the Almighty now, and dash yourselves upon the bosses of his
   buckler, or run upon his glittering spear?" See them, see them as they
   sink! The gulf has swallowed them up; the earth has closed again, and
   they are gone; a solemn silence falls upon the ear. But hark below, if
   you could descend with them, you would hear their doleful groans, and
   hollow moans, as they now feel that the God omnipotent was right and
   just, and wise, and tender, when he bade them forsake their
   righteousness, and flee to Christ, and lay hold on him that can save to
   the uttermost them that come unto God by him.

   III. THE PLEA IS ITSELF EVIDENCE AGAINST THE PLEADER.

   There is an unregenerated man here, who says, "Am I blind also?" I
   answer in the words of Jesus, "But now ye say we see, therefore your
   sin remaineth." You have proved by your plea, in the first place, that
   you have never been enlightened of the Holy Spirit, but that you remain
   in a state of ignorance. A deaf man may declare that there is no such
   thing as music. A man who has never seen the stars, is very likely to
   say that there are no stars. But what does he prove? Does he prove that
   there are no stars? He only proves his own folly and his own ignorance.
   That man who can say half a word about his own righteousness has never
   been enlightened of God the Holy Spirit; for one of the first signs of
   a renewed heart is, that it abhors itself in dust and ashes. If thou
   dost to-day feel thyself to be guilty, and lost, and ruined, there is
   the richest hope for thee in the gospel; but if thou sayest, "I am
   good, I have merits," the law condemns thee, and the gospel cannot
   comfort thee; thou art in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of
   iniquity, and thou art ignorant that all the while thou art talking
   thus, the wrath of God abideth on thee. A man may be a true Christian,
   and may fall into sin, but a man cannot be a true Christian and boast
   in his self-righteousness. A man may be saved, though infirmity may
   bespatter him with much mire; but he cannot be saved who does not know
   that he has been in the filth, and is not willing to confess that he is
   guilty before God. There are, in one sense, no conditions of salvation
   on our part, for whatever may be conditions God gives; but thus I know,
   there never was a man yet who was in a state of grace who did not know
   himself, in himself, to be in a state of ruin, a state of depravity and
   condemnation. If you do not know this, then I say your plea of
   self-righteousness condemns you for ignorance.

   But then again, inasmuch as you say that you are not guilty, this
   proves that you are impenitent. Now the impenitent can never come where
   God is. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us
   our sins;" "but if we say that we have no sins, we make God a liar, and
   the truth is not in us." God will pardon all men who confess their
   iniquity. If we weep and lament, and take with us words, and say, "We
   have grievously sinned, forgive us--we have greatly erred, have mercy
   upon us, through Jesus Christ," God will not refuse the cry; but if we,
   out of our impenitent and hard hearts, put ourselves upon God's
   justice, God will give us justice, but not mercy, and that justice
   shall be the meting out to us of the full vials of his indignation, and
   of his wrath for ever and ever. He that is self-righteous is
   impenitent, and therefore he is not, and cannot be saved.

   Further than this, the self-righteous man, the moment that he says he
   has done anything which can recommend him to God, proves that he is not
   a believer. Now, salvation is for believers, and for believers only.
   "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth
   not shall be damned." Sir, you will be damned with all your
   self-righteousness, and your self-righteousness shall be like
   Dejanira's tunic, which she gave to Hercules, and which he put upon
   him, and, as the old fable hath it, it became a robe of fire to him; he
   tried to drag it away, but he pulled away pieces of his living,
   quivering flesh each moment, and perished miserably. Such shall your
   self-righteousness be to you. It seems a pleasant draught, and
   intoxicates for the moment; it is deadly and damnable as the venom of
   asps, and as the wine of Gomorrah. O soul! would that thou wouldst
   flee, above all things, from self-righteousness; for a self-righteous
   man does not and cannot trust Christ, and therefore he cannot see the
   face of God. None but the naked man will ever go to Christ for
   clothing; none but the hungry men will ever take Christ to be his food;
   none but thirsty souls will ever come to this well of Bethlehem to
   drink. The thirsty are welcome; but those who think they are good, are
   welcome neither to Sinai nor to Calvary. They have no hope of heaven,
   no peace in this world, nor in that which is to come.

   Ah! soul, I know not who thou art; but if thou hast any righteousness
   of thine own, thou art a graceless soul. If you have given all your
   goods to feed the poor; if you have built many and many a sanctuary; if
   you have gone about with self-denial among the houses of poverty to
   visit the sons and daughters of affliction; if you have fasted thrice
   in the week; if your prayers have been so long that your throat has
   become hoarse through your crying; if your tears have been so many that
   your eyes have become blinded through your weeping; if your readings of
   Scripture have been so long that the midnight oil has been consumed in
   abundance;--if, I say, your heart has been so tender towards the poor
   and the sick and the needy that you would have been willing to suffer
   with them, to bear all their loathsome diseases, nay, if adding all
   this you could give your body to be burned, yet if you trusted in any
   one of these things your damnation would be as sure as though you were
   thief or drunkard. Understand me, I mean what I say. I want you not to
   think I speak unguardedly now. Christ said of the Pharisees of old the
   very thing that I have said of you. They were good and excellent in
   their way; but, said he, the publicans and harlots enter the kingdom of
   God before you, because they would go the wrong way, while the poor
   publicans and harlots were led to go the right way. The Pharisee who
   went about to make a righteousness of his own, did not submit to the
   righteousness of Christ; the publican and the harlot, knowing that they
   had nothing whereof to glory, came to Christ and took him as he was,
   and gave their souls up to be saved by his grace. Oh! that we may do
   the same; for until we get rid of self-righteousness we are in a state
   of condemnation, and dying, the sentence must be executed upon us for
   ever and ever.

   IV. I close now upon the last point, namely, that this plea, if we
   retain it, not only accuses the pleader now, but IT WILL RUIN THE
   PLEADER FOR EVER.

   Let me show you two suicides. There is a man who has sharpened a
   dagger, and seeking out his opportunity he stabs himself to the heart.
   There he falls. Who shall blame any man for his death? He slew himself;
   his blood be on his own head.

   Here is another: he is very sick and ill; he can scarcely crawl about
   the streets. A physician waits upon him; he tells him, "Sir, your
   disease is deadly; you must die; but I know a remedy which will
   certainly heal you. There it is; I freely give it to you. All I ask of
   you is, that you will freely take it." "Sir," says the man, "you insult
   me; I am as well as ever I was in my life; I am not sick." "But," says
   the other, "there are certain signs which I mark in your countenance
   which prove to me that you will have a deadly disease about you, and I
   warn you." The man thinks a moment; remembers that there have been
   certain signs in him of this very sickness; a monitor within tells him
   that it is so. He obstinately replies to the physician a second
   time--"Sir, if I want your physic I will send for it, and if I need it
   I will pay for it." He knows all the while there is not a farthing in
   his pocket, and that he cannot get credit anywhere; and there stands
   the life-giving cup before him which the physician at great expense has
   obtained, but which he freely gives to him and bids him freely take.
   "No," says the man, "I will not take it; I may be somewhat sick, but I
   am not worse than my neighbours; I am not more ill than other people,
   and I shall not take it." One day you go to his bed and you find he has
   slept his last sleep, and there he lies stone dead. Who slew this man?
   Who killed him? His blood be on his own head; he is as base a suicide
   as the other.

   Now I will show you two more suicides. There is a man here who
   says--"Well, let what will happen in the next world, I will have my
   fill in this. Tell me where there are pleasures to be had and I will
   have them. Leave the things of God to old fools, and such like; I shall
   have the things of the present, and the joys and delights of time." He
   drains the cup of drunkenness, frequents the haunt of folly, and if he
   knows where there is any vice pursued he rushes after it. Like Byron;
   he is a very thunderbold, launched from the hand of an arch-fiend; he
   flashes through the whole firmament of sin, and blazes himself out,
   until decayed in body and soul, he dies. He is a suicide. He defied
   God; he went against the laws of nature and of grace, despised
   warnings, declared he would be damned, and he has got what he richly
   deserved.

   Here is another. He says, "I despise these vices; I am the most
   upright, honest, and commendable of men. I feel that I do not need
   salvation, and if I did need it I could get it myself. I can do
   anything you tell me to do, I feel I have mental force and manly
   dignity enough remaining in me to accomplish it. I tell you, sir, you
   insult me when you bid me trust in Christ." "Well," he says, "I
   consider there is such dignity in manhood, and so much virtue in me,
   that I need not a new heart, nor will I succumb and bend my spirit to
   the gospel of Christ on free-grace terms." Very well sir, when in hell
   you lift up your eyes, and you will do so as surely as the most
   profligate and profane, your blood will be upon your own head; and you
   will be as truly a suicide as he who wantonly and wickedly dashed
   himself against the laws of God and man, and brought himself to a
   sudden and hasty end by his iniquity and crimes.

   "Well," says one, "this is a sermon well adapted to self-righteous
   persons, but I am not one." Then what are you, sir? Are you a believer
   in Christ? "I cannot say I am, sir." Why are you not, then? "Well, I
   would be, but I am afraid I may not believe in Christ." You are
   self-righteous, sir. God commands you to believe in Christ, and you say
   you are not fit. Now what does this mean but that you are wanting to
   make yourself fit, and this after all is the spirit of
   self-righteousness; you are so proud that you will not take Christ
   unless you think you can bring something to him--that is it "Ah! no,"
   says one poor broken-hearted soul, "I do not think that is fair with
   me, for I do feel as if I would give anything, if I might hope to be
   saved; but oh, I am such a wretch! I am such a wretch! I cannot
   believe." Now, that after all is self-righteousness. Christ bids you
   trust him. You say, "No, I will not trust thee, Christ, because I am
   such-an-one and such-an-one." So, then, you are wanting to make
   yourself somebody, and then Jesus Christ is to do the rest. It is the
   same spirit of self-righteousness only in another garb. "Ah!" saith
   one, "but if I did but feel my need enough, as you just now said, sir,
   then I think I would trust Christ." Self-righteousness again, you want
   your sense of need to save you. "Oh! but, sir, I cannot believe in
   Christ as I would." Self-righteousness again. Let me just utter a
   solemn sentence which you may masticate at your leisure. If you trust
   to your faith and to your repentance, you will be as much lost as if
   you trusted to your good works or trusted to your sins. The ground of
   your salvation is not faith, but Christ; it is not repentance, but
   Christ. If I trust my trust of Christ, I am lost. My business is to
   trust Christ; to rest on him; to depend, not on what the Spirit has
   done in me, but what Christ did for me, when he did hang upon the tree.
   Now be it known unto you, that when Christ died, he took the sins of
   all his people upon his head, and there and then they all ceased to be.
   At the moment when Christ died, the sins of all his redeemed were
   blotted out. He did then suffer all they ought to have suffered; he
   paid all their debts; and their sins were actually and positively
   lifted that day from their shoulders to his shoulders, for "the Lord
   hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." And now, if you believe in
   Jesus, there is not a sin remaining upon you, for your sin was laid on
   Christ; Christ was punished for your sins before they were committed,
   and as Kent says:

   "Here's pardon for transgressions past,

   It matters not how black their caste;

   And oh! my soul with wonder view,

   For sins to come here's pardon too."

   Blessed privilege of the believer! But if you live and die unbelievers,
   know this, that all your sins lie on your own shoulders. Christ did
   never make any atonement for you; you were never bought with blood; you
   never had an interest in his sacrifice. You live and die in yourselves,
   lost; in yourselves, ruined; in yourselves, utterly destroyed. But
   believing--the moment you believe, you may know that you were chosen of
   God from before the foundation of the world. Believing, you may know
   that the righteousness of Christ is all yours; that all he did, he did
   for you; that all he suffered, he suffered for you. You do in fact, in
   the moment you believe, stand where Christ stood as God's accepted Son;
   and Christ stands where you stood as the sinner, and suffers as if he
   had been the sinner, and dies as if he had been guilty--dies in your
   room, place, and stead.

   Oh! Spirit of God, give faith this morning. Win us all from self; knit
   us all to Christ; may we be saved now by his free grace, and be saved
   in eternity.
     __________________________________________________________________

                              Plenteous Redemption

   A Sermon

   (No. 351)

   Delivered at Exeter Hall, Strand, by the

   REV. C.H. SPURGEON.

   "With him is plenteous redemption."--Psalm 103:7.

   REDEMPTION is a word which has gladdened many ears, when there was no
   heavenly sound in its blessed chime. Apart from any theological use of
   it, the word is a very sweet one, and has been melodious to many
   hearts. In those days when piracy was carried on continually along the
   coast of Africa, when our fellow Christian subjects were caught by
   corsairs, and carried away captive, you can well understand how the
   burdened soul of the manacled slave, chained to the oar of his galley,
   was gladdened by the hope that possibly there would be redemption. His
   cruel master, who had forced him into his possession, would not
   willingly emancipate him; but a rumour came, that in some distant
   nation they had raised a sum of money to purchase the freedom of
   slaves--that some wealthy merchant had dedicated of his substance to
   buy back his fellow-countrymen; that the king himself upon his throne
   had promised to give a liberal redemption that the captives among the
   moors might return to their home. Truly I can suppose the hours run
   happily along, and the dreariness of their toil would be assuaged, when
   once that word "redemption" had sounded in their ears. So with our
   fellow-subjects and our fellow-men, who once were slaves in our West
   India settlements. We can well conceive that to their lips the word
   redemption must have been a very pleasing song. It must have been well
   nigh as sweet to them as the marriage peals to a youthful bridegroom,
   when they knew that the noble British nation would count down the
   twenty millions of their redemption money; that on a certain morning
   their fetters should be snapped asunder, so that they should no more go
   out to the plantations to sweat in the sun, driven by the whip, but
   they should call themselves their own, and none should be their masters
   to possess thir flesh, and have property in their souls. You can
   conceive when the sun of that happy morn arose, when emancipation was
   proclaimed from sea to sea, and the whole land was at liberty, how
   joyful must their new-found freedom have appeared. O there are many
   sonnets in that one word "redemption."

   Now, ye who have sold for nought your glorious heritage; ye who have
   been carried bondslaves into Satan's dominion; ye who have worn the
   fetters of guilt and groaned under them; ye who have smarted beneath
   the lash of the law; what the news of redemption has been to slaves and
   captives, that will it be to you to-night. It will cheer your souls and
   gladden your spirits, and more especially so when that rich adjective
   is coupled with it--"plenteous redemption."

   This evening I shall consider the subject of redemption, and then
   notice the adjective appended to the word: "plenteous redemption."

   I. First, then, we shall consider the subject of REDEMPTION.

   I shall commence in this way, by asking, What has Christ redeemed? And
   in order to let you know what my views are upon this subject, I would
   announce at once what I conceive to be an authoritative doctrine,
   consistent with common sense, and declared to us by Scripture, namely,
   that whatever Christ has redeemed, Christ will most assuredly have. I
   start with that as an axiom, that whatever Christ ahs redeemed, Christ
   must have. I hold it to be repugnant to reason, and much more to
   revelation, that Christ should die to purchase what he never shall
   obtain; and I hold it to be little less than blasphemy to assert that
   the intention of our Saviour's death can ever be frustrated. Whatever
   was Christ's intention when he died--we lay it down as a very
   groundwork truth, which ought to be granted to us by every reasonable
   man--that Christ will most certainly gain. I cannot see how it can be
   that the intention of God in anything can be frustrated. We have always
   thought God to be so superior to creatures, that when he has once
   intended a thing, it must most assuredly be accomplished; and if I have
   that granted to me, I cannot for a moment allow you to imagine that
   Christ should shed his blood in vain; that he should die with an
   intention of doing something, and yet should not perform it; that he
   should die with a full intention in his heart, and with a promise on
   the part of God, that a certain thing should be given to him as a
   reward of his sufferings, and yet should fail to obtain it. I start
   with that; and I think that everyone who will weigh the matter, and
   truly consider it, must see it to be so, that Christ's intention in his
   death must be fulfilled, and that the design of God, whatever that may
   be, must certainly be carried out. Well then, I believe that the
   efficacy of Christ's blood knows no other limit than the purpose of
   God. I believe that the efficacy of Christ's atonement is just as great
   as God meant it should be, and that what Christ redeemed is precisely
   what he meant to redeem, and exactly what the Father had decreed he
   should redeem. Therefore I cannot for one moment give any credence
   whatever to that doctrine which tells us that all men are redeemed.
   Some may hold it, as I know they do, and hold it very strongly, and
   even urge it as being a fundamental part of the doctrine of revelation.
   They are welcome to it; this is a land of liberty. Let them hold their
   views, but I must tell them solemnly my persuasion, that they cannot
   hold such doctrine if they do but well consider the matter; for if they
   once believe in universal redemption, they are driven to the
   blasphemous inference that God's intention is frustrated, and that
   Christ has not received what he died to procure. If, therefore, they
   can believe that, I will give them credit for being able to believe
   anything; and I shall not despair of seeing them landed at the Salt
   Lake, or in any other region where enthusiasm and credulity can
   flourish without the checks of ridicule or reason.

   Starting, then, with this assumption, I beg now to tell you what I
   believe, according to sound doctrine and Scripture, Christ has really
   redeemed. His redemption is a very compendious redemption. He has
   redeemed many things; he has redeemed the souls of his people; he has
   redeemed the bodies of his people; he has redeemed the original
   inheritance which man lost in Adam; he has redeemed, in the last place,
   the world, considered in a certain sense--in the sense in which he will
   have the world at last.

   Christ has redeemed the souls of all his people who shall ultimately be
   saved. To state it after the Calvinistic form, Christ has redeemed his
   elect; but since you do not know his elect until they are revealed, we
   will alter that, and say, Christ has redeemed all penitent souls;
   Christ has redeemed all believing souls; and Christ has redeemed the
   souls of all those who die in infancy, seeing it is to be received,
   that all those who die in infancy are written in the Lamb's book of
   life, and are graciously privileged by God to go at once to heaven,
   instead to toiling through this weary world. The souls of all those who
   were written before all worlds in the Lamb's book of life, who in
   process of time are humbled before God, who in due course are led to
   lay hold of Christ Jesus as the only refuge of their souls, who hold on
   their way, and ultimately attain to heaven; these, I believe, were
   redeemed, and I must firmly and solemnly believe the souls of none
   other men were in that sense subjects of redemption. I do not hold the
   doctrine that Judas was redeemed; I could not conceive my Saviour
   bearing the punishment for Judas, or if so how could Judas be punished
   again. I could not conceive it possible that God should exact first at
   Christ's hands the penalty of his sin, and then at the sinner's hands
   again. I cannot conceive for a moment that Christ should have shed his
   blood in vain; and though I have read in the books of certain divines,
   that Christ's blood is fuel for the flames of hell, I have shuddered at
   the thought, and have cast it from me as being a dreadful assertion,
   perhaps worthy of those who made it, but utterly unsupported by the
   Word of God. The souls of God's people, whoever they may be, and they
   are a multitude that no man can number--and I could fondly hope they
   are all of you--are redeemed effectually. Briefly, they are redeemed in
   three ways. They are redeemed from the guilt of sin, from the
   punishment of sin, and from the power of sin. The souls of Christ's
   people have guilt on account of sin, until they are redeemed; but when
   once redemption is applied to my soul, my sins are every one of them
   from that moment for ever blotted out.

   "The moment a sinner believes,

   And trusts in his crucified Lord,

   His pardon at once he receives,

   Salvation in full through his blood."

   The guilt of our sin is taken away by the redemption of Christ.
   Whatever sin you may have committed, the moment you believe in Christ,
   not only will you never be punished for that sin, but the very guilt of
   that sin is taken from you. You cease to be in God's sight any longer a
   guilty person; you are reckoned by God as a justified believer to have
   the righteousness of Christ about you; and therefore, you can say--to
   recal a verse which we often repeat--

   "Now freed from sin I walk at large,

   My Saviour's blood's my full discharge;

   At his dear feet my soul I lay,

   A sinner saved, and homage pay."

   Every sin, every particle of guilt, every atom of transgression, is by
   the redemption of Christ, effectually taken away from all the Lord's
   believing family.

   And mark, next: not only the guilt, but the punishment of sin is taken
   away. In fact, when we cease to be guilty, we cease to be the objects
   of punishment altogether. Take away the guilt, the punishment is gone;
   but to make it more effectual, it is as it were written over again,
   that condemnation is taken away, as well as the sin for which we might
   be condemned. "There is, therefore, now, no condemnation to them that
   are in Christ Jesus." None of those who were redeemed by Christ can
   ever be damned; they can never be punished on account of sin, for
   Christ has suffered their punishment in their stead, and therefore,
   they cannot, unless God be unjust, be sued a second time for debts
   already paid. If Christ their ransom died, they cannot die; if he,
   their surety, paid their debt, then unto God's justice they owe no
   longer anything, for Christ hath paid it all. If he hath shed his
   blood, if he hath yielded up the ghost, if he hath "died, the just for
   the unjust, to bring us to God," how, then, would God be just, and yet
   the punisher of those whom he has already punished once in the person
   of Jesus Christ their Saviour? No beloved, through the plenteous
   redemtion of Christ we are delivered from all punishment on account of
   sin, and from all guilt which we had incurred thereby.

   Moreover the believing family of Christ--or rather, all for whom he
   died--are most effectually delivered from the power of sin. Oh! there
   are some who suck in the two truths I have been mentioning, as if they
   were honey; but they cannot endure this other point--Christ delivers us
   from the power of sin. Mark you this, then--we affirm it very
   strongly--no man can ever be redeemed from the guilt of sin, or from
   the punishment of sin, unless he be at the same time delivered from the
   power of sin. Unless he is made by God to hate his own sin, unles he is
   enabled to cast it to the ground, unless he is made to abhor every evil
   way, and to cleave unto God with full purpose of heart, walking before
   him in the land of the living, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, such
   a man has no right to believe himself redeemed. If thou art still under
   the dominion of thy lusts, O wicked sinner, thou hast no right to think
   thyself a purchased heir of heaven. If thou canst be drunk, if thou
   canst swear, if thou canst curse God, if thou canst lie, if thou canst
   profane the Sabbath, if thou canst hate his people, if thou canst
   despise his Word, then thou hast no right whatever, any more than Satan
   in hell, to boast that thou art redeemed; for all the Lord's redeemed
   are in due time brought out of the house of bondage, out of the land of
   Egypt, and they are taught the evil of sin, the horrible penalty of it
   and the desperate character of it in the sight of God. Art thou
   delivered from the power of sin, my hearer? Hast thou mortified it? Art
   thou dead unto it? Is it dead unto thee? Is it crucified unto thee, and
   thou unto it? Dost thou hate it as thou wouldst a viper? Dost thou
   tread on it as thou wouldst tread upon a serpent? If thou dost, albeit
   there be sins of frailty and infirmity, yet if thou hatest the sin of
   thy heart, if thou hast an unutterable enmity to it, take courage and
   comfort. The Lord hath redeemed thee from the guilt and penalty, and
   also from the power of sin. That is the first point of redemption. And
   hear me distinctly again, lest any should mistake me. I always like to
   preach so that there can be no mistake about it. I do not want so to
   preach that you will say in the judgment of charity, he could not have
   meant what he said. Now, I mean solemnly again to say what I have
   said--that I do believe that none others were redeemed than those who
   are or shall be redeemed from the guilt, the punishment, and the power
   of sin, because I say again, it is abhorrent to my reason, much less to
   my views of Scripture, to conceive that the damned ever were redeemed,
   and that the lost in perdition were ever washed in the Saviour's blood,
   or that his blood was ever shed with an intention of saving them.

   2. Now let us think of the second thing Christ has redeemed. Christ has
   redeemed the bodies of all his children. In that day when Christ
   redeemed our souls, he redeemed the tabernacles in which our souls
   dwell. At the same moment when the spirit was redeemed by blood, Christ
   who gave his human soul and his human body to death, purchased the body
   as well as the soul of every believer. You ask, then, in what way
   redemption operates upon the body of the believer. I answer, first, it
   ensures it a resurrection. Those for whom Christ died, are ensured by
   his death a glorious resurrection. "As in Adam all die, even so in
   Christ, shall all be made alive." All men are by virtue of the death of
   Christ quickened to a resurrection, but even here there is a special
   property of the elect, seeing that they are quickened to a blessed
   resurrection, whilst others are quickened only to a cursed
   resurrection; a resurrection of woe, a resurrection of unutterable
   anguish. O Christian, thy body is redeemed.

   "What though thine inbred sins require

   Thy flesh to see the dust,

   Yet, as the Lord thy Saviour rose,

   So all his followers must."

   What! though in a little time I shall slumber in the tomb, though worms
   devour this body, I know that my Redeemer liveth, and because he lives
   I know that in my flesh I shall see God. These eyes which soon shall be
   glazed in death, shall not be always closed in darkness; death shall be
   made to give back his prey; he shall restore all that he has taken. Lo,
   I see him there! He hath the bodies of the just locked up in his
   dungeons; they are wrapped up in their cerements, and he thinks they
   are secure: he has sealed their tombs and marked them for his own. O
   death! foolish death! thy caskets shall be rifled; thy storehouses
   shall be broken open. Lo, the morning is come! Christ hath descended
   from on high. I hear the trump, "Awake! Awake!" and lo! from their
   tombs, the righteous start; while death sits in confusion howling in
   vain, to find his empire all bereft of its subjects, to find all his
   dungeons rifled of their prey. "Precious shall their blood be in his
   sight;" precious shall be their bones! their very dust is blessed, and
   Christ shall raise them with himself. Think of that, ye that have lost
   friends--ye weeping children of sorrow! your redeemed friends shall
   live again. The very hands that grasped yours with a death clutch,
   shall grasp them in paradise; those very eyes that wept themselves away
   in tears, shall, with eye-strings that never shall be broken, wake up
   in the noon-day of felicity. That very frame which thou didst
   sorrowfully convey, with dread attire of funeral, to bury in its
   tomb--yes, that selfsame body, made like the image of Jesus Christ,
   spiritualized and changed, but nevertheless the selfsame body, shall
   rise again; and thou, if thou art redeemed, shalt see it, for Christ
   has purchased it, and Christ shall not die in vain. Death will not have
   one bone of the righteous--nay, not a particle of their dust--nay, not
   a hair of their heads. It shall all come back. Christ has purchased all
   our body, and the whole body shall be completed, and united for ever in
   heaven with the glorified soul. The bodies of the righteous are
   redeemed, and redeemed for eternal happiness.

   3. In the next place, all the possessions of the righteous which were
   lost in Adam are redeemed. Adam! where art thou? I have a controversy
   with thee, man, for I have lost much by thee. Come thou hither. Adam!
   thou seest what thou art now, tell me what thou once wast; then I shall
   know what I have lost by thee, and then I shall be able to thank my
   Master that all thou didst lose he has freely bought back to all
   believers. What didst thou lose? "Alas!" cries Adam, "I had a crown
   once; I was king of all the world; the beasts crouched at my feet and
   did me reverence; God made me, that I might have supreme command over
   the cattle upon the hills, and over all fowls of the air; but I lost my
   crown. I had a mitre once," said Adam, "for I was a priest to God, and
   ofttimes in the morning did I climb the hills, and sing sweet orisons
   of praise to him that made me. My censer of praise hath often smoked
   with incense, and my voice has been sweet with praise.

   'These are thy glorious works, parent of good,

   Almighty, thine this universal frame,

   Thus wondrous fair; thyself how wondrous then;'

   Oft have I bidden misty exhalations, sun, and moon, and stars, sing to
   his praise; daily have I bidden the herds upon the hills low out his
   glories, and the lions roar his honours; nightly have I told the stars
   to shine it out, and the little flowers to blossom it forth: but ah! I
   lost my mitre, and I, who was once a priest to God, ceased any longer
   to be his holy servant." Ah! Adam, thou hast lost me much; but yonder I
   see my Saviour; he takes his crown off his head, that he may put a
   crown on my head; and he puts a mitre on his head, to be a priest, that
   he may put a mitre on my head too, and on the head of all his people;
   for, as we have just been singing,

   "Thou hast redeemed our souls with blood,

   Hast set the prisoners free;

   Hast made us kings and priests to God,

   And we shall reign with thee."

   Just what Adam lost: the kingship and the priesthood of Christ, is won
   for all his believing people. And what else didst thou lose, Adam?
   "Why, I lost paradise." Hush, man! say nothing upon that; for Christ
   hath bought me a paradise worth ten thousand such Edens as thine. So we
   can well forgive thee that. And what else didst thou lose? "Why, I lost
   the image of my Maker." Ah! hush, Adam! In Jesus christ we have
   something more that that; for we have the perfect righteousness of
   Jesus Christ, and sure that is even better than the image of the Maker,
   for it is the very dress and robe that the Maker wore. So, Adam, all
   that thou hast lost I have again. Christ has redeemed all that we sold
   for nought. I, who have sold for nought a heritage divine, shall have
   it back unbought,--the gift of love, says Christ, e'en mine. Oh! hear
   it, then! The trump of Jubilee is blown; Christ hath redeemed the lost
   possesions of his people.

   4. And now I come to the last thing that Christ has redeemed, though
   not the last point of the discourse. Christ has redeemed this world.
   "Well, now," says one, "that is strange, sir; you are going to
   contradict yourself flatly." Stop a moment. Understand what I mean by
   the world, if you please. We do not mean every man, in it; we never
   pretended such a thing. But I will tell you how Christ has redeemed the
   world. When Adam fell God cursed the world with barrenness. "Thorns
   also and briars shall it bring forth unto thee, and in the sweat of thy
   brow shalt thou eat bread." God cursed the earth. When Christ came into
   the world they twisted a crown made of the cursed thorn, and they put
   that on his head, and made him king of the curse; and in that day he
   purchased the redemption of the world from its curse; and it is my very
   belief, and I think it is warranted by Scripture, that when Christ
   shall come a second time, this world will become everywhere as fertile
   as the garden of Paradise used to be. I believe that Sahara, the
   literal desert, shall one day blossom like Sharon, and rejoice like the
   garden of the Lord. I do not conceive that this poor world is to be a
   forlorn planetary wanderer for ever; I believe that she is yet to be
   clothed with verdure, such as she once wore. We have evidences in the
   beds of coal underneath the earth, that this world was once much more
   fertile than it is now. Gigantic trees once spread their mighty arms,
   and I had almost said one arm of a tree in that day would have builded
   half a forest for us now. Then mighty creatures, far different from
   ours, stalked through the earth; and I believe firmly that a luxuriant
   vegetation, such as this world once knew shall be restored to us, and
   that we shall see again a garden such as we have not known. No more
   cursed with blight and mildew, with no more blast and withering, we
   shall see a land like heaven itself--

   "Where everlasting spring abides,

   And never withering flowers."

   When Christ cometh he shall do even this.

   In the day of the fall, too, it is currently believed that animals for
   the first time received their ferocious temperament, and began to fall
   on each other; of this we are not sure; but if I read Scripture
   rightly, I find that the lion shall lie down with the kid, and that the
   leopard shall eat straw like the ox, and that the weaned child shall
   put his hand on the cockatrice den. I do believe that in millenial
   years that are coming, and coming soon, there shall be known no more
   devouring lions, no blood-thirsty tigers, no creatures that shall
   devour their kind. God shall restore to us again, and even to the
   beasts of the field, the blessing which Adam lost.

   And, my friends, there is a worse curse than that which has fallen on
   this world. It is the curse of ignorance and sin: that, too, is to be
   removed. Seest thou yonder planet? It is whirling along through
   space--bright, bright and glorious. Hearest thou the morning stars sing
   together, because this new sister of theirs is made? That is the earth;
   she is bright now. Stay! Didst remark that shadow sweep across her?
   What caused it? The palnet is dimned, and on her face there lies a
   sorrowful shadow. I am speaking, of course, metaphorically. See there
   the planet; she glides along in ten-fold night; scarce doth a speck of
   light irradiate her. Mark again, the day is not come, when that planet
   shall renew her glory, but it is hastening amain. As the serpent slips
   its slough, and leaves it behind it in the valley, so yon planet hath
   slopped its coulds, and shone forth bright as it was before. Do you ask
   who hath done it? Who hath cleared away the mist? Who hath taken away
   the darkness? Who hath removed the clouds? "I have done it," says
   Christ, the sun of righteousness; "I have scattered darkness, and made
   that world bright again." Lo, I see a new heaven and a new earth,
   wherein dwelleth righteousness. To explain myself, lest I should be
   mistaken, I mean this. This world is now covered with sin, ignorance,
   mistake, idolatry, and crime; the day is coming when the last drop of
   blood shall be drunk by the sword; it shall be no more intoxicated with
   blood; God shall make wars to cease unto the ends of the earth. The day
   is coming--oh that it were now!--when the feet of Christ shall tread
   this earth. Then down shall go idols from their thrones; down
   superstitions from their pinnacles; then slavery shall cease; then
   crime shall end; then peace shall spread its halcyon wings over all the
   world; and then shall you know that Christ hath died for the world, and
   that Christ hath won it. "The whole creation," says Paul, "groaneth and
   travaileth in pain together until now;" waiting for what? "waiting for
   the redemption;" and by the redemption, I understand what I have just
   explained to you, that this world shall be washed of all her sin; her
   curse shall be removed, her stains taken away and this world shall be
   as fair as when God first struck her from his mind; as when, like a
   glowing spark, smitten from the anvil by the eternal hammer she first
   flashed in her orbit. This Christ has redeemed; this, Christ shall, and
   most assuredly must have.

   II. And now, a word or two concerning the last thought--"PLENTEOUS
   REDEMPTION."

   It is plenteous enough, if you consider what I have already told you
   Christ has bought. Sure I should have made it no more plenteous, if I
   had lied against my conscience, and told you that he had bought every
   man; for of what avail is it that I am bought with blood, if I am lost?
   Of what use is it to me that Christ has died for me, if I yet sink in
   the flames of hell? How will that glorify Christ, that he hath redeemed
   me, and yet failed in his intentions? Surely it is more to his honour
   to believe, that according to his immutable, sovereign, and all-wise
   will, he laid the foundation as wide as he intended the structure to
   be, and then made it just according to his will. Nevertheless, it is
   "plenteous redemption." Very briefly, lend me your ears just a moment.

   It is "plenteous," when we consider the millions that have been
   redeemed. Think if ye can, how great that host who have already "washed
   their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb;" and then
   think how many now with weary feet are plodding their way to Paradise,
   all of them redeemed. They all shall sit down at the marriage supper of
   the Lamb. Is it not "plenteous redemption," when you reflect that it is
   a "multitude that no man can number" that will be gathered in? Let us
   close that by saying, "And why not you?" If so many are redeemed, why
   should not you be? Why should you not seek for mercy on the strength of
   that, knowing that all who seek will most assuredly receive, for they
   would not have sought unless it had been prepared for them?

   It is "plenteous," again, if we consider the sins of all who are
   redeemed. However great the sins of any redeemed soul, this redemption
   is enough to cover it all to wash it all away--

   "What though your numerous sins exceed

   The stars that spread the skies,

   And aiming at th' eternal throne,

   Like pointed mountains rise;"

   Yet this plenteous redemption can take all your sins away. They are no
   greater than Christ foresaw, and vowed to remove. Therefore, I beseech
   you, fly to Jesus, believing that however great your guilt, his
   atonement is great enough for all who come to him, and therefore you
   may safely come.

   Remember, again, that this "plenteous redemption" is plenteous, because
   it is enough for all the distresses of all the saints. Your wants are
   almost infinite; but this atonement is quite so. Your troubles are
   almost unutterable; but this atonement is quite unutterable. Your needs
   you can scarce tell; but this redemption I know you cannot tell.
   Believe, then, that it is "plenteous redemption." O believing sinner,
   what a sweet comfort it is for you, that there is "plenteous
   redemption," and that you have a lot in it. You will most certainly be
   brought safely home, by Jesu's grace. Are you seeking Christ? Or
   rather, do you know yourselves to be sinners? If you do, I have
   authority from God to say to every one who will confess his sins, that
   Christ has redeemed him. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
   acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of
   whom I am chief." Are you a sinner? I do not mean a sham sinner; there
   are lots of them about, but I have no gospel to preach to them just
   now. I do not mean one of those hypocritical sinners, who cry, "Yes, I
   am a sinner,"--who are sinners out of compliment, and do not mean it. I
   will preach another thing to you: I will preach against your
   self-righteousness another day; but I shall not preach anything to you
   just now about Christ, for he "came not to call the righteous, but
   sinners to repentance." But are you a sinner, in the bona fide sense of
   the word? Do you know yourself to be a lost, ruined, undone sinner?
   Then in God's name I urge you to believe this--that Christ has died to
   save you; for as sure as ever he has revealed to you your guilty by the
   Holy Ghost, he will not leave you till he has revealed to you your
   pardon by his only Son. If you know your lost estate, you shall soon
   know your glorious estate. Believe in Jesus now; then thou art saved,
   and thou mayest go away happy,--blest beyond what kings could dream.
   Believe that since thou art a sinner, Christ hath redeemed thee--that
   just because thou knowest thyself to be undone, guilty, lost and
   ruined, thou hast this night a right, a privilege, and a title, to
   bathe in the fountain filled with blood, "shed for many for the
   remission of sins." Believe that, and then thou shalt know the meaning
   of this text--"Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with
   God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom also we have received the
   atonement." God dismiss you with a blessing, for Jesus' sake!
     __________________________________________________________________

                               A Merry Christmas

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SABBATH MORNING, DECEMBER 23, 1860, BY THE REV.
   C. H. SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "And his sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day; and
   sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them.
   And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that
   Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and
   offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job
   said, It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their
   hearts. Thus did Job continually. Job 1:4,5.

   JOB was an exceedingly happy man before his great trial. He was as much
   blessed in the fruit of his body as in his basket, and in his store.
   Our text gives us a very pleasing picture of Job's family. He was a
   happy man to have had so many children all comfortably settled in life;
   for you will perceive that they all had houses; they had left his roof;
   they had all established themselves, and had so prospered in the world
   that there was not one of them who had not enough of the world's goods
   to entertain all the rest. So it seemed as if Job's prosperity in his
   business had attended his children in the different places where they
   had settled. To add to his comfort they were an undivided family--not
   like Abraham's household, where there was an Ishmael who mocked Isaac;
   nor like Isaac's household, where there was an Esau and a Jacob who
   sought to supplant him; nor like Jacob's household, where there was a
   Joseph, and all the rest of his brothers were envious and jealous of
   him; nor like David's household, where there was perpetual strife and
   bickering between the one and the other. Job's descendants were a large
   tribe; but they were all united and knit together in bonds of perfect
   happiness; and moreover they seem to have had a great desire to
   preserve their unity as a family. Perhaps Job and his family were the
   only ones who feared God in the neighborhood; they wished therefore to
   keep themselves together as a little flock of sheep in the midst of
   wolves, as a cluster of stars in the midst of the thick darkness; and
   what a brilliant constellation they were--all of them shining forth and
   proclaiming the Truth of God! I say it was their desire not only to
   enjoy pleasantness and peace, but to maintain it; for I think that
   these annual meetings at the different houses were intended to knit
   them together so that if any little strife had arisen, as soon as they
   met at the next brother's house, all might be settled, and the whole
   host might go on again, shoulder to shoulder, and foot to foot--as one
   phalanx of soldiers for God. I think Job must have been a right happy
   man. I do not know that he always went to their feasts; perhaps the
   soberness of age might have a little disqualified him for joining in
   their youthful enjoyments; but I am sure he commended their feasting; I
   am quite certain he did not condemn it. If he had condemned it, he
   would never have offered sacrifice to God, lest they should have
   sinned, but he would have told them at once it was a sinful thing, and
   that he could give no countenance to it. I think I see the happy group,
   so happy and holy that surely if David had been there, he would have
   said, "Behold how good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell
   together in unity."

   Job was a godly man and so godly that unlike Eli, he brought up his
   household in the fear of God, and he was not only quick to observe any
   known sin, but was exceedingly jealous over his children lest secretly
   and inadvertently in their hearts--while they were at their loaded
   tables--they might have said or thought anything which might be termed
   blaspheming God! He therefore, as soon as the feasting was over, called
   them all together and then as a preacher, told them of the danger to
   which they were exposed, and as a priest, (for every Patriarch before
   the Law, was a priest), he offered burnt sacrifices lest any sin should
   by any possibility remain upon his sons and daughters. So says the
   text. I pray that now we may have Divine Grace to listen to it; and may
   what we shall now hear abide with us during the coming week, when some
   of you shall meet together in your own houses! May God grant that our
   parents, or we, if we are parents, may be as Jobs, and when the
   feasting is over, may there come the sacrifice and the prayer, lest we
   should have sinned and blasphemed God in our hearts!

   I shall divide my sermon thus. First, the text, and that is festive, so
   we will ring in a merry bell Secondly, that which is in the text, and
   that is instructive, so we will ring the sermon bell And, thirdly, that
   which follows the text, and that is afflictive, so we will ring the
   funeral bell.

   I. First, then, the text itself, and that is festive--let us therefore,
   RING THE MERRY BELL. I think I hear distinctly three notes in its merry
   peal. First, the text gives a license; secondly, it suggests a caution;
   and thirdly, it provides a remedy.

   1. First, the text gives a license. Now, you souls who would deny to
   your fellow men all sorts of mirth, come and listen to the merry bell
   of this text while it gives a license especially to the righteous--a
   license that they meet together in their houses, and eat and drink and
   praise their God. In Cromwell's days, the Puritans thought it an
   ungodly thing for men to keep Christmas. They, therefore, tried to put
   it down, and the common crier went through the street announcing that
   Christmas was henceforth no more to be kept, it being a Popish, if not
   a heathen ceremony! Now, you do not suppose that after the crier had
   made the proclamation, any living Englishman took any notice of it! At
   least I can scarcely imagine that any did, except to laugh at it; for
   it is idle thus to strain at gnats and stagger under a feather! Albeit
   that we do not keep the feast as Papists--nor even as a commemorative
   festival--yet there is a something in old associations that makes us
   like the day in which a man may shake off the cares of business, and
   disport himself with his little ones. God forbid I should be such a
   Puritan as to proclaim the annihilation of any day of rest which falls
   to the lot of the laboring man! I wish there were a half-a-dozen
   holidays in the year. I wish there were more opportunities for the poor
   to rest. Though I would not have as many saint's days as there are in
   Roman Catholic countries--yet if we had but one or two more days in
   which the poor man's household, and the rich man's family might meet
   together--it might perhaps be better for us. However, I am quite
   certain that all the preaching in the world will not put Christmas
   down--you willmeet next Tuesday, and you will feast, and you will
   rejoice, and each of you, as God has given you substance, will endeavor
   to make your household glad!

   Now, instead of telling you that this is all wrong, I think the merry
   bell of my text gives you a license to do so. Let us think a minute.
   Feasting is not a wrong thing, or otherwise Job would have forbidden it
   to his children; he would have talked to them seriously, and admonished
   them that this was an ungodly and wicked custom to meet together in
   their houses. But, instead of this, Job only faredlest a wrong thing
   should be made out of a right thing, and offered sacrifices to remove
   their iniquity; but he did by no means condemn it. Would any of you ask
   a blessing upon your children's attendance at the theater? Could you
   say, when they had been in such a place, "It may be they have sinned?"
   No, you would only talk thus of a right thing. I think I can prove to
   you that this was a good thing, for first you will notice they met in
   good houses; they did not go to an ale house to feast; they had no need
   to enter the tavern; but they met in their own houses--houses where
   prayer and praise were made. How much better for the working man to
   spend his money on his family than upon liquor sellers! And then it was
   in good company. They did not scrape together all the ruffians of the
   place to feast with them; but they kept to their own kith and kin; and
   feasting is good when good men feast--especially when they spare for
   the poor--as no doubt Job's children did, or else they were quite
   unworthy of their generous ancestor. They feasted in good houses, and
   in good company. And they observed during their feasting, good
   behavior. Job never heard of a wrong expression they had used; no one
   ever told him that they had become riotous, or that they had uttered
   one wrong word, or else Job could not have said, "It may be," but he
   would have said, "It is so." He must be a good son of whom a father
   could say, "It may be he has erred." All that he had was a fear lest
   secretly they might have done wrong; but it appears that openly their
   feasting had been such that even the busy tongue of scandal could not
   find fault with them! And besides, their feasting was a good thing,
   because it had a good intent; it was for amity, for cheerfulness, and
   family union. It was that they might be bound together as a bundle of
   rods--strong and unbroken--that they might be as a strongly intertwined
   cord, interwoven by these their family greetings and meetings.

   Now, I say that if in their case the thing was not wrong--and I think I
   have proved in four respects that it was right--it was in good houses,
   in good company, with good behavior, and for a good purpose--the text
   gives a license for us to do the same, and to meet in our houses, in
   the company of our kith and kin, provided we feast after a good sort,
   and do it with the good intent of knitting our hearts, the one towards
   the other.

   But again--good men of old have feasted. Need I remind you of Abraham's
   making a great feast in his house when his child Isaac was weaned?
   Shall I tell you of Sampson and his feasts, or of David, or of
   Hezekiah, or of Josiah, and of the kings who gave to every man a loaf
   of bread, and a good piece of meat, and a flagon of wine, and they
   cheered their hearts and made merry before God?

   But let me remind you that feasting, so far from being evil, was even
   an essential part of Divine Worship under the old Law. Do you not read
   of the Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of the
   Passover, the Feast of the New Moons, and how many other feasts
   besides? Come they not over again and again? Now if the thing were
   wrong in itself, God would certainly never employ it as an emblem and
   token of the Divine, the pure, and the heavenly Doctrines of His Grace.
   It is impossible that God should have taken a wrong thing to be the
   type of a right thing! He might take a common good and make it the type
   of a special favor--but not an evil thing--it is far from us to suppose
   such a thing of our God!

   Besides, did not the Savior Himself countenance a feast, and help to
   provide the guests with the wherewithal that they might have good
   cheer? Do you think the Savior out of place when He went to the wedding
   feast? And do you suppose that He went there, and did not eat and
   drink? Was it not said of Him, "Behold a drunken Man and a wine bibber,
   a friend of publicans and sinners"? Not that He was either drunken, or
   a wine bibber, but that He "came eating and drinking," to dash to
   pieces the Phariseeism which says that that which goes into a man
   defiles a man--whereas Christ teaches "not that which goes into a man,
   but that which comes out of a man, that defiles a man." Jesus Christ, I
   say, was at the feast! And suppose you that He bore a sad countenance?
   Did He sour with the vinegar of a morose behavior, the wine with which
   He had filled the watering pots? I think not! I believe at that
   marriage feast He joined with the guests; and if He were, indeed, "a
   Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief," as He certainly was, yet did
   He not keep His griefs to Himself, for if He came to suffer, Himself,
   He came to make others glad, and I doubt not that at the feast He
   seemed the most glad of the guests! Most glad because He was really the
   Master of the feast, and because He saw in the wedding the type of His
   own marriage--His own Divine espousal with the Church--which is "the
   bride, the Lamb's wife."

   And let me add once more--God has certainly made in this world,
   provision for man's feasting. He had not given just dry bread enough
   for a man to eat, and keep body and soul together, for the harvests
   teem with plenty, and often are the barns filled to bursting. O Lord,
   You did not give simply dry bread and water for mankind, but You have
   filled the earth with plenty, and milk and honey have You given to us!
   And You have besides this laden the trees with fruit, and given
   dainties to men. You are not stingy, You do not dole out with miserable
   hands the lean and scanty charity which some men would give to the
   poor, but You give generously, and You upbraid not! And for what
   purpose is this given? To rot, to mold, to be trod on, to be spoiled?
   No, but that men may have more than enough! That they may have all they
   need, and may rejoice before their God, and may feed the hungry, for
   this indeed is one essential and necessary part of all true Christian
   feasting! My text, I say, rings a merry bell, and gives us license for
   sacred feasting!

   2. But now the same merry bell suggests a caution. Job said--"It may
   be." They were good sons. Good, godly young men, I am sure, or else Job
   would not have said, "It may be." But "it may be," he said, "it may be
   that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts." Or, as some
   translate it, "have blessed God too little in their hearts." They may
   not have been grateful enough for their prosperity, and for the
   enjoyments which God had given them. "It may be." Well, listen,
   Brothers and Sisters, "it may be," too, that you and I may sin, and
   blaspheme God in our hearts, and be as Job's sons may have been--too
   little thankful--if, though they were true men and true women, though
   they all had a Job for their father, and though their feasting was in
   their own houses, and after a right sort and a commendable sort, yet
   there was a "maybe" that there might be sin. Am I too careful when I
   say, Brothers and Sisters, "it may be"? It may be that in our happiest
   gathering of our family together, it may be that we shall sin? I think
   we could not prefer ourselves before the sons and daughters of
   Job--that were self-righteousness, indeed--we are surely not proud
   enough to think ourselves better than the sons of that "perfect and
   upright" man "who feared God and eschewed evil." I think I am not too
   severe and too strict, when I say, "It may be; "it" may be; look to
   it--take heed to yourselves--be careful, be on your watch tower. Let me
   give you some reasons and arguments why this caution is not
   unnecessary.

   And first, remember there is no placefree from sin! You may set bounds
   about this mount, but the beast will touch the mountain. You may
   endeavor as much as you will to keep out Satan, but wherever there were
   two met together, Satan was ever the third. There was never a company
   met, but the Evil One somewhere intruded! Does he not come into your
   business? Do you not find him entering into your very closet? Yes, and
   the very Table of the Lord--has not Satan sat there and tempted Judas?
   Yes, and tempted you, too? How, then, can you hope that when your
   family are met together, Satan shall not be there? Is it not written,
   "The sons of God came together and Satan came also among them"? I am
   sure they never invited him; but he does not stay away for all that.
   And you will find it so. Never invite him by anything ungodly or
   unChristian-like. But since there are temptations everywhere, however
   pure and upright your intentions may be, however excellent your
   company, think you hear my little bell ringing--"It may be, it may be,
   it may be;" and it may be a blessed check to you.

   Beside this, remember that there is many a special temptation where
   there is a loaded table. Old Quarles said, "Snares attend my board;"
   and certainly they do. More men have perished by fullness of bread than
   ever died by hunger. Hunger may break through stone walls, but I have
   known feasting leap over golden walls--the golden walls of Divine
   Grace. Some men cut their throats with their teeth, and many a man has
   swam to Hell down his own throat! More have been drowned in the bowl,
   'tis said, than ever were drowned in the sea. I trust I need not say
   anything of that to you. I hope not. If there is a man here who falls
   into drunkenness--in God's name let him tremble--for there is no
   admittance for the drunkard into the Kingdom of Heaven! I am speaking
   now to Christians--not to men and women who fall into these vices--and
   I say to them, where you use the most proper moderation in receiving
   the things which God gives you, where you even totally abstain from
   that which might be a temptation, yet even thereyour table may be a
   snare unto you. Therefore, take heed to yourself, Believer, lest Satan
   lie in ambush beneath the family table!

   Remember, also, that they who sit at the table are but men, and the
   best of men are but men at the best. Men have so little Grace, that if
   they are not on the watchtower, they may soon be overtaken, and they
   may say or do that which they will have to repent of afterwards. I have
   heard say that there are men who swallow mouthfuls of earth which they
   will have to digest in Hell, and I do not doubt it. There have been
   times when a happy company have gathered together and the conversation
   has become trifling, then full of levity; perhaps it has gone so far
   that afterwards, when they retired to their homes, they would have
   recalled their words, if it had been possible. Let this caution, then,
   sound in all our ears, "It may be--it may be--it may be!" And let us so
   act that if Christ were at the feast, we should not be ashamed to see
   Him. Let us so speak that if Christ sat at our table, we should not
   count it a hindrance to our joy--but rather that we should be the more
   free, joyous and glad--because of such thrice-blessed Company! Oh, tell
   me not that Christianity curbs our joy! My Brothers and Sisters, it
   shuts up one of its channels--that black and filthy kennel into which
   the sinner's joy must run; but it opens another channel, wider,
   broader, deeper, purer, and fills it to the very banks with joy, more
   lustrous and more full of glory! Think not that we who follow Christ,
   and seek to walk strictly in our integrity, are miserable! We tell you
   that our eyes sparkle as much as yours, and that we have not the
   redness of the eyes in the morning. We can say to the worldling that
   our heart, despite its sometimes heaviness, does rejoice in the Lord,
   and we have peace which is like a river, and a righteousness which is
   like the waves of the sea! O Christian Brothers and Sisters! Let not
   the world think of you that you are shut out here from anything like
   happiness; but so act and so live at all times, that you may teach men
   that it is possible to be happy without sin, and to be holy without
   being morose! This, then, is the caution which our merry bell rings out
   to us.

   But, then, in the third place, having given a license and suggested a
   caution, the merry bell provides a remedy. "It may be"--it may be we
   have done wrong. What then? Here is a remedy to be used by parents, and
   heads of families, and by ourselves.

   Job sent for his sons as a father; he sanctified them as a preacher; he
   sacrificed for them as a priest; by all which I understand, he first
   bade them come together, and then he sanctified them--that is, he first
   spoke to them--commended them for the excellent and admirable manner in
   which they had met together; told them how pleased he was to see their
   love, their union. But then he said, "It may be, my sons, you are like
   your father--there is some sin in you, and it may be you have sinned.
   Come, let us repent together." And so, being, as I believe, all godly
   persons, they sat down and thought over their ways. Then no doubt the
   good old man bade them kneel down while he prayed with them. And then
   he expressed his faith in the great coming Mediator and so, though one
   man's faith cannot prevail for another, yet the faith of the father
   helped to quicken the faith of the sons! The prayer of the father was
   the means of drawing forth the prayer of the sons, and so the family
   was sanctified. Then after that, he would say, "There is no putting
   away of sin, except by the shedding of blood. So they fetched the
   bullocks, a bullock for every son, and for every daughter; the old
   Patriarch slew the victims, and laid them on the altar, and as the
   smoke ascended--they all thought, if they had sinned against God, yet
   by His Grace, the bloodshed, and the victim offered could, as the type
   of Christ, take away their sin. I think I see the good old man after
   the sacrifice was all complete--"Now, my children," he says, "return to
   your homes. If you have sinned, your sin is put away; if you have
   transgressed, the Atonement made has cancelled your transgression; you
   may go to your habitations, and take a father's blessing with you."

   Call to your recollection that Job is said to have seen to his sacred
   work "early in the morning." It is evil lying in bed when we have sin
   on our conscience. He that has a sin unforgiven should never travel
   slowly to the Cross but run to it! So Job would sleep in the morning
   not an hour till he had seen his sons and his daughters sanctified, and
   the sacrifice made. Mark well, that "he offered according to the number
   of his sons." He did not leave out one! If he prayed for the eldest, he
   prayed for the youngest, too--and if he made supplication for the sons,
   he did not forget the daughters! Ah, parents, never forget any of your
   children--carry them allbefore God--let them all be consecrated to Him,
   and let your earnest prayers go up for them all--from your Reuben down
   to your Benjamin. Leave not one of them out, but pray God to grant that
   they may all be bound up together in the bundle of life.

   And notice once again, "So did Job continually." As often as they
   visited, so often was there the sacrifice. I suppose they had 10 feasts
   in the year; and it is supposed by the old commentators that they
   assembled on their birthdays. They were not always feasting--that were
   sinful. In fact, that was the sin of the old world, for which God
   drowned it. "They ate and they drank, they married and they were given
   in marriage," all which things are right enough in themselves. But if
   we are wholly immersed in them, always eating, always drinking, always
   feasting, then they become sins and, indeed, at all times they become
   sin, unless, like Job's feasts, they are sanctified by the Word of God
   and prayer. If our meetings are thus sanctified, we can in everything
   give thanks. Then "he that eats, eats to the Lord, and gives God
   thanks." And being accepted in our thankfulness, the eating is to God's
   Glory! I say, then, my dear Friends, that Job did this continually
   which teaches to the parent his duty of continually pleading for his
   sons and daughters.

   The aim of my remarks is just this--you will, most of you, meet
   together next Tuesday and keep the household feast. I beg you to
   imitate Job on Wednesday morning and make it your special and peculiar
   business to call your children together, and sanctify them by prayer,
   and by pleading the precious Sacrifice of Christ Jesus. So "it may be"
   there has been sin; but there will be no "may be" as to the putting
   away of the sin, for pleading with prayer, and laying hold on the
   sacrifice by faith, you shall stand accepted still--both you and your
   households!

   Now, some may think that what I have said upon this point is
   unnecessary, and that we ought not to speak about such common things as
   these. Do you suppose that the Christian pulpit was set up by God that
   we might always talk to you about the millennium, or the antediluvians,
   or the things that are to happen in Ethiopia or Palestine? I believe
   that the Christian ministry has to do with you in your daily life--and
   the more the preacher delivers that which is practically suggestive of
   profit to our souls--the more closely does he keep to the Master! I am
   sure if my Lord Jesus Christ were here, He would say somewhat in these
   words to you, "Go your way, and eat your bread with a joyous heart, for
   God has accepted you through My blood; but watch and be you as men and
   women who look for their Lord; still keep your lamps trimmed, and your
   lights burning, and your loins girt about. Be steadfast and watch unto
   prayer, that should I come in the morning, or at cock-crowing, I may
   find you ready for My appearing."

   As for you young men and women who will be separated on that day from
   your own parents--having no family circle in which to join--perform
   this pleasant privilege yourselves. Set apart a season the next morning
   in which by prayer and supplication you shall make confession of sin;
   and whenever the feast time comes round--whenever you are invited to a
   social meeting, or the like--look upon it as a necessary successor of
   the social gathering--that there is private supplication, private
   confession of sin, and a personal laying hold anew upon the great
   Sacrifice. If this is done, your meetings, instead of being
   unprofitable, shall be the beginning of better days to you, and you
   shall even grow in Grace through that prayer, that repentance, and that
   faith which have been suggested by your gatherings together.

   I think all this is most fairly in my text. And if I ought not to
   preach from such a passage, then the text ought not to be in the Bible.

   II. And now let us turn to the second head, or what is in the text, and
   that is instructive; we must, therefore, ring the SERMON BELL.

   Well, it will be a short sermon. My sermon shall not be like the bell
   and preacher of St. Anthony's Church which were said to be both
   alike--the bell was pulled a long while, and was exceedingly dreary in
   its tone, and the preacher was precisely the same. The sermon which is
   fairly in my text is this--if Job found it right with a holy jealousy
   to suspect lest his sons might have sinned, how much more do you think
   he suspected himself? Depend on it--he who was so anxious to keep his
   children clean, was himself more anxious that he might always fear his
   God and eschew evil! God said Job was a perfect and an upright man; and
   yet he was jealous! How much more, then, shall you and I be jealous of
   ourselves? Say not in your heart, Christian, "I may go here and there,
   and may not sin." You are never out of danger of sinning! This is a
   world of mire; it will be hard to pick your path so as not to soil your
   garments. This is a world of pitch; you will need to watch often, if in
   handling it, you are to keep your hands clean. There is a robber in
   every turn of the road to rob you of your jewels; there is a thief
   behind every bush--there is a temptation in every mercy; there is a
   snare in every joy. There is not a stone on which you tread under which
   there is not a viper's nest; and if you shall ever reach Heaven, it
   will be a miracle of Divine Grace! If you shall ever come safely home
   to your Father's house, it will be because your Father's power brought
   you there! If Job's sons were in danger at their own tables, how much
   more are some of you in danger, Christians, when you have to go among
   the ungodly? It may be that some of you are called to do business where
   you hear oaths and blasphemy; your way of life is such that you cannot
   help being exposed to many temptations. Be on your guard! It was said
   of a certain great man, that he was so afraid of losing his life. that
   he always wore armor under his clothes. Take care you always wear
   armor. When a man carries a bomb in his hand, he should mind that he
   does not go near a candle. And you, too must take care that you do not
   go near temptation. But if you are called to go through the temptation,
   how watchful, how anxious, how careful, how guarded should you be!
   Brothers and Sisters, I do not think that we are, any of us, watchful
   enough. I have heard of a good woman who would never do anything till
   she had sought the Lord in prayer about it. Is that our custom? If we
   do even a common thing without seeking the Lord's direction, we may
   have to repent it as long as we live! Even our common actions are sharp
   tools; we must mind how we handle them.

   There is nothing in this world that can foster a Christian's piety, but
   everything that can destroy it. How anxious should we be, then, to look
   up--to look up to God--that He may keep us! Let your prayer be, "Hold
   me up, and I shall be safe." Let your daily cry be, especially you
   young Christians, yes and you old Christians. too, "Lord, keep me! Keep
   my heart, I pray You, for out of it are the issues of my life." Do not
   expose yourselves unnecessarily, but if called to exposure; if you have
   to go where the darts are flying, never go abroad without your shield!
   For if once the devil catches you abroad, and your shield at home, then
   he will say, "Now is my time!" And he will send an arrow which may
   rattle between the joints of your harness, and you may fall down
   wounded, even though you cannot be slain. The Lord grant, then, that
   this sermon bell of my text may ring in your ears during the next week;
   and as long as ever you live, may you hear it saying to you, "Be
   careful; be watchful; be vigilant; danger may be in an hour when all
   seems secure to you." Inspect the vessel, see to her keel; look to the
   sails; look to the rudder bands; watch every part of the ship, for the
   storm may be coming though the calm rule at present, and the rocks may
   be ahead though the breakers roll not, and the quicksand may underlie
   your keel, though you think all is well. God help you then, Christian,
   to watch unto prayer! What we say unto you, we say unto all--WATCH!

   III. But now what follows the text--and that is afflictive--and here
   let us ring the FUNERAL BELL.

   What follows the text? Why hear this, "Your sons and your daughters
   were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house; and
   behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four
   corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men and they are dead,
   and I only am escaped alone to tell you." Between the table and the
   coffin there is but a step; between the feast and the funeral there may
   be but a day; and the very bell that rings the marriage peal tolls the
   funeral knell! Here is a death's head for you to put on your table. The
   old Egyptians set a corpse among the guests--that all might know that
   they must die. I set the bodies of Job's sons and daughters at your
   table--to make you think that you will die! Our very eating is the
   grave of God's mercies, and should remind us of our own graves. What do
   we do when we eat but patch the old tenement, put fresh plaster on the
   dilapidated and naked rafters? So, then, we should remember that the
   time will come when we can no more do this, but when the tenement
   itself shall be shaken and be blown down. Sinner! Let no joy cross your
   face till death and you are friends. Saint! Let no joy be in your heart
   either, till you can say, "Welcome, Death; I gladly go with you." Do
   nothing that you would not willingly die doing! Be found in no position
   in which you would be unwilling to stand forever. Be you today what you
   would wish to be in eternity; and so live and so act and so sit at the
   table that if the wind should come and smite the four corners of the
   house, and you should die, yet you fall asleep at one feast, to wake up
   at another feast where there would be no, "may be," about sin, but
   where you should eat bread in the Kingdom of God and drink the new wine
   of which Jesus Christ spoke when He rose from the supper and left His
   disciples!

   Ah, my spirit rises on wings of delight at the solemn tones of that
   funeral knell--for it has more music in it, after all--than my merry
   bell! There is a pleasing joy in sorrow, and mirth is akin to sadness.
   Hearken, Friends, the bell is speaking, "gone, gone, gone, gone." "Who
   is that for? Who is dead in this parish? "That is poor So-and-So." My
   God, when it shall be my turn, may my soul behold Your face with joy; O
   may my spirit, when it receives the last summons, cry with delight,
   "Blessed be God for that sound! It was the merriest sound my soul could
   have desired, for now I sit with Jesus, and eat at His table, and feast
   with angels! And I am satisfied and have the privilege of John--to lean
   my head upon my Savior's breast." Christian! I say never let the
   thought of dying plague you. Let it be a comfort to you, and stand you
   so ready that when the Master shall say, "Arise!" you will have nothing
   to do but to rise at His bidding, and march to Heaven--leading your
   captivity captive! But you, Sinner, when you are sitting at your table,
   remember my funeral bell tolling in your ears. And if you should step
   aside, and the rest should say, "What ails you?"--if you should be
   compelled to rise while they are laughing, and go upstairs to pray, I
   shall not mind. Though some may say I have made you melancholy and have
   marred your feast--Sinner it is no time for you to be feasting while
   God's sword is furbished and sharp, and ready to divide soul from body!
   There is a time to laugh, but it is not till sin is pardoned that there
   is time to dance; it is not till the heart stands with joy before the
   Ark, that there is time to make merry--it is not till sin is forgiven.
   Your time is a time to weep, and a time to tear your garments, and a
   time to sorrow and a time to repent. May God's Holy Spirit give you the
   Grace! The time is now. And the Grace being given, may you fall before
   the Cross and find pardon and mercy there, and then we may say, in the
   words of Solomon--"Go your way; eat your bread with joy and drink your
   wine with a merry heart; for God now accepts your works."
     __________________________________________________________________

                        A Sermon For The Week Of Prayer

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SABBATH MORNING, JANUARY 6, 1861, BY THE REV. C.
   H. SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving."
   Colossians 4:2.
   THOSE of you who constantly listen to my voice are aware that on the
   first Sabbath of the year I always receive of a venerable Clergyman--a
   veteran warrior in the Lord's hosts--a verse of Scripture which I
   accept as my New Year's text, and which after being printed becomes the
   motto of my congregation for the following year. It is somewhat amazing
   that my venerable friend should have sent me in the envelope about a
   month ago this text. He knew nothing of the proposition for a week of
   prayer. I do not know that it had been even determined upon at that
   date--certainly neither to his knowledge nor to mine--and I could not
   but help thinking when I opened my envelope, and saw what was to be my
   text, that he had been directly and specially guided of God, that my
   text might be in keeping with the engagements of the week. "Continue in
   prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving." How greatly do I
   rejoice that the Churches are awakened to prayer. My honored and
   venerable Brother will this morning stand up in his village Church,
   lift up holy hands, and bid his people join in the common supplication,
   and I feel but too happy as his younger Brother in Christ--as but a
   babe compared to so experienced a pastor--to follow his example in
   stirring you up that you, too, as a great host, may join with the
   general company of the faithful and besiege the Throne of Grace till
   you carry the gates of Heaven by storm, and obtain the mercy which both
   you and the world so much require!
   Without further preface, let me observe that there are three
   exhortations in the text connected with prayer. The first is continue;
   the second is watch; and the third is give thanks. "Continuance" sits
   like Moses on the top of the hill, while Watching and Thanksgiving,
   like Aaron and Hur, hold up its hands.
   I. And first, in regard to prayer, the Apostle says "continue."

   Be you not, O you intercessors with God for men--be you not as those
   whose goodness is as the morning cloud and as the early dew. Do not
   begin to pray, and then suddenly cease your supplications. That will
   prove an ignorance as to the value of the mercy which you seek, and a
   lack of earnestness as to your obtaining it. How many there are who,
   under a powerful sermon, or during a trying Providence, have bent their
   knees suddenly in hasty prayer! They have risen from their knees, and
   they have forgotten what manner of men they were. Take away the whip
   from them, and they have ceased to run; remove from them the tempest,
   and they have ceased to fly before it; they have ceased to pray when
   God has ceased to smite! O Church of God, imitate not these heathen men
   and publicans! Wake not yourself up to a sudden fit of prayer, and then
   return again to your sloth; stir not yourself a moment from your bed to
   throw your heavy head back again upon your pillow, but continue in
   supplication--cease not to pray!

   There is a great distinction between the prayer of the real convert and
   the merely convicted sinner. The merely convicted sinner, terrified by
   the Law, calls but once; the awakened heart, renewed of the Holy
   Spirit, never ceases to cry until the mercy comes! A few days ago, by
   the seaside, on the coast of the Isle of Wight, a woman thought she
   heard, in the midst of the howling tempest, the voice of a man. She
   listened. It was repeated. She strained her ears again, and she caught,
   amid the crack of the blast, and the thundering of the winds, another
   cry for help. She ran at once to the lifeguards who launched their
   boat, and some three poor mariners who were clinging to a mast were
   saved! Had that cry been but once and not again, either she might have
   doubted as to whether she had heard it at all, or else she would have
   drawn the melancholy conclusion that they had been swept into the
   watery waste, and that help would have come too late. So when a man
   prays but once, either we may think that he cries not at all, or else
   that his desires are swallowed up in the wild waste of his sins, and he
   himself is sucked down into the vortex of destruction. If the Church of
   God shall offer prayer this week, and then shall cease to be in
   earnest, we shall think her never to have meant her prayers! If she
   shall but now and then start up, and make her supplications, we shall
   write her down as a hypocrite intent for a moment upon keeping
   appearances, but afterwards relapsing into her lukewarm Laodicean
   condition! The exhortation of my text, I think, stands in contrast,
   then, to the transient prayer which is often offered by ungodly men.
   Continue in prayer; do not pray once, and have done with it, but
   continuein it.

   I think further, that the exhortation to continue may be put in
   opposition to the common dealings of many with God, who pray and pause,
   and pray and pause--are earnest and then cool, earnest and colder
   still. There is a sharp frost--a rapid thaw, and then a frost again.
   Their spiritual state is as variable as our own weather. A shower,
   sunshine, mist, shower, sunshine again! They are everything by turns,
   and nothing long. There are too many Churches which are just of this
   character. See them one week, you would believe they would carry all
   before them. and convert the town or village in which they are located;
   see them next week and they are, "As sound asleep as a church," which
   is a common Proverb, a church being too often the sleepiest thing in
   all the world! Sometimes they ran and they did run well--what did
   hinder them? But they stopped, they paused, they looked about them, and
   after a while they ran again--but they moved not swiftly enough to be
   able to make up the time lost when they were standing still!

   Now I am afraid our Churches have for a considerable period been just
   in this state--have been sometimes hot, and sometimes cold. Look at our
   revivals everywhere--the American revival, it is a great wave and then
   dry sand. Look at the Irish revival. I fear that in the end, it will
   come to the same amount. Almost everywhere there have been great
   stirrings, as if a holy fire had fallen, and was about to burn up all
   the stubble--all men stand in wonder at it, but it ceases and a few
   ashes remain! The fact is, the Church is not healthy; she has
   intermittent fits of health, she has starts of energy, she has
   paroxysms of agony; but she does not agonize for souls--she is not
   always earnest, she is not always busy. Well did Paul need to say to
   this age as to his own, "Continue in prayer." Not one week, but every
   week! Not for a season, but at all seasons! Be you always crying out
   unto the Lord your God!

   In the black country of England, you who have traveled will have
   observed fires which never in your recollection have been quenched. I
   believe there are some which have been kept burning for more than 50
   years, both night and day, every day in the year. They are never
   allowed to go out, because, we are informed, the manufacturers would
   find it amazingly expensive again to get the furnace to its needed red
   heat. Indeed, the blast furnace, I suppose would all but ruin the
   proprietor if it were allowed to go out once every week. He would
   probably never get it up to its right heat until the time came for
   letting the fire out again. Now, as with these tremendous furnaces
   which must burn every day or else they will be useless--they must be
   kept burning or else it will be hard to get them up to the proper
   heat--so ought it to be in all the Churches of God! They should be as
   flaming fires both night and day, caldron after caldron of the coal of
   earnestness should be put to the furnace, all the fuel of earnestness
   which can be gathered from the hearts of men should be cast upon the
   burning pile. The heavens should be always red with the glorious
   illumination, and then, then you might expect to see the Church
   prospering in her Divine business, and hard hearts melted before the
   fire of the Spirit!

   Continue, then, in prayer. Never let your fire go out. But why? Why
   should the Church always be in prayer? Understand we do not mean by
   this that men ought to leave their business, forsake their shops, and
   neglect their household, to be always supplicating. There were some
   fanatics in the early Church who gave up everything, that they might be
   always praying. We know what the Apostle would have said to them, for
   did he not say, "If any man will not work, neither let him eat"? There
   are some lazy people who like praying better than working--let them
   learn that the Lord accepts not this at their hands! Did not the
   Master, even when He was on earth, after He had preached a sermon in
   Simon Peter's boat--did He not as soon as ever He was done, say to
   Peter, "Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a
   draught"? He did this to show that work, hard work, the hardest of work
   is quite in keeping with the hearing and the preaching of the Word, and
   that no man has any right to forsake his calling to which God has
   appointed him in His Providence, under pretense of seeking the Lord.
   Never stain one duty with the blood of another. It is quite possible
   that you may continue in your labor, and yet continue in prayer. You
   may not always be in the exercise, but you may always be in the spirit
   of prayer! If there shall not always be iron in the furnace to melt,
   yet let there always be the fire to melt it. If not always shooting the
   arrow up to Heaven, yet always keep the bow well stringed, so shall you
   always be archers, though not always shooting! So shall you always be
   men of prayer, though not always in the exercise of praying.

   1. But why should the Church--to come to the question--why should the
   Church continue in prayer? For several reasons, and the first is, God
   will answer her It is not possible that God should refuse to hear
   prayer; it is possible for Him to bid the sun stand still, and the moon
   to stay her monthly march; it is possible for Him to bid the waves
   freeze in the sea--possible for Him to quench the light of the stars in
   eternal darkness--but it is not possible for Him to refuse to hear
   prayer which is based upon His promise and offered in faith! He can
   reverse Nature, but He cannot reverse His own Nature, and He must do
   this before He can forbear to hear and answer prayer! The prayers of
   God's Church are God's intentions--you will not misunderstand me--what
   God writes in the book of His decree, which no eye can see, that He in
   process of time writes in the book of Christian hearts where all can
   see and read! The book of the Believer's desire, if those desires are
   inspired of the Holy Spirit, is just an exact copy of the book of the
   Divine decree. And if the Church is determined today to lift up her
   heart in prayer for the conversion of men, it is because God determined
   from before all worlds that men should be converted! Your feeble prayer
   today, Brothers and Sisters, can fly to Heaven and awake the echoes of
   the slumbering decrees of God! Every time you speak to God, your voice
   resounds beyond the limits of time. The decrees of God speak to your
   prayer and cry, "All hail! Brother, all hail! You, too, are a decree!"

   Prayer is a decree escaped out of the prison of obscurity, and come to
   life and liberty among men. Pray, Brothers and Sisters, pray, for when
   God inspires you, your prayer is as potent as the decrees of God! As
   His decrees bind the universe with spells, and make the suns obedient
   to Him--as every letter of His decree is as a nail, pinning together
   the pillars of the universe, so are your prayers; they are the pivots
   on which earth rests; they are the wheels on which Providence revolves;
   your prayers are like God's decrees struggling to be born, and to
   become Incarnate like their Lord.

   God will, God must answer the prayers of His Church. I think I can see
   in vision in the clouds, God's register, His file in which He puts the
   prayers of His Church. One after another they have been deposited; He
   has cast none of them away, and consumed none of them in the fire, but
   He has put them in His file and smiled as the heap accumulated; and
   when it shall reach a certain mark which He has set and appointed in
   His good pleasure, and the last number of the prayers shall be
   completed and the blood of Christ shall have bedewed the whole, then
   will the Eternal speak, and it shall be done--He shall command and it
   shall stand fast! "Let there be light," He says, and there shall be
   light at once. "Let the Kingdom come," and the Kingdom shall come; he
   who tarries shall be put out of the way, he who hinders shall be cast
   down, and trod as the mire of the streets. Up, Church of God, in all
   the glory of your prayer, put on your vestments and begin to plead
   through Jesus Christ, your Great High Priest; enter within the veil
   today, for God hears you and He will surely answer you!

   2. There is a second reason why the Church should continue in prayer,
   namely, that by her prayers the world will most certainly be blessed.
   The other evening in visiting the sick, I saw at a distance, down a
   long street, the bright light of a fire. In a moment or so the flames
   seemed to yield, but again it sprang up and lit the heavens! Again it
   became dim and still dimmer. As we walked along, we said, "They have
   got the fire under control; the engines have been at work; how soon it
   is out!" I compare this to the Church's work upon the world. The world
   is, as it were, wrapped in flames of the fire of sin, and the Church of
   God must quench those flames. Whenever we meet together, and are more
   earnest in prayer, angels might well see in the distance the flames
   dimmed, and the fire giving way. Whenever we cease our exertions and
   become languid in our efforts, the flame gets the upper hand of us, and
   once more, spirits from the far-off world can see the fiery mantle
   surrounding our globe. Hand up your buckets, Sirs! Every man to the
   pumps! Now strip to it, everyone of you, work while you have life and
   strength! Now each man to his knees, for it is on our knees that we
   overcome! Each man to his station and to his work, and let us continue
   to pass from hand to hand the quenching water till every spark shall be
   put out, and there shall be a new Heaven and a new earth wherein dwells
   righteousness! To stop while but one part of the fabric is on fire
   would be to condemn the whole! To pause until the last spark shall be
   extinct, would be to give up the world to the devouring element!
   Continue, then, in prayer, till the world is wholly saved, and Christ
   is universal King!

   3. Thirdly, continue in prayer, because souls shall be saved as the
   result of your entreaties. Can you stand on the beach a moment--you can
   scarcely see, but yet you may discern by the lights of lanterns, some
   brave men launching the lifeboat. It is out--they have taken their
   seats; helmsman and rowers, all strong hearts, determined to save their
   fellows or to perish! They have gotten far away, now, into the midst of
   the billows, and we have lost sight of them. But in spirit we will take
   our stand in the midst of the boat. What a sea rolled in just then! If
   she were not built for such weather, she would surely have been
   overturned. Look at that tremendous wave and how the boat leaps like a
   sea bird over its crest! See now again--it has plunged into a dreary
   furrow, and the wind, like some great plow, turns up the water on
   either side as though it were clods of mold! Surely the boat will find
   her grave and be buried in the sheet of foam--but no--she comes out of
   it and the dripping men draw a long breath! But the mariners are
   discouraged; they have strained themselves bending to yonder oars, and
   they would turn back, for there is small hope of living in such a sea,
   and it is hardly possible that they will ever reach the wreck. But the
   brave captain cries out, "Now, my bold lads, for God's sake, send her
   on! A few more pulls of the oar, and we shall be alongside! The poor
   fellows will be able to hold on a minute or two longer; now pull as for
   dear life." See how the boat leaps! See how she springs as though she
   were a living thing, a messenger of mercy intent to save! Again, the
   captain says "Once more, once again and we will do it"--no, she has
   been dashed aside from the ship for a moment, that sea all but stove
   her in, but the helmsman turns her around and the captain cries, "Now,
   my boys, once more!" And every man pulls with lusty sinews, and the
   poor shipwrecked ones are saved!

   Yes, it is just so with us right now! Long have Christ's ministers,
   long has Christ's Church pulled with the Gospel lifeboat--let us pull
   again! Every prayer is a fresh stroke of the oar, and all of you are
   oarsmen! Yes, you feeble women confined to your beds, shut up in your
   chambers--you who can do nothing else but pray--you are all oarsmen in
   this great boat! Pull yet once more, and this week let us drive the
   boat ahead and it may be it will be the last tremendous struggle that
   shall be required, for sinners shall be saved, and the multitude of the
   redeemed shall be accomplished! Not we, but Divine Grace shall do the
   work, yet is it ours to be workers for God!

   4. But continue in prayer once more, because prayer is a great weapon
   of attack against the error and wickedness of the world. I see before
   me the strong bastions of the castle of Sin. I mark the host of men who
   have surrounded it. They have brought the battering ram, they have
   dashed it many times against the gate; it has fallen with tremendous
   force against it, and you would have supposed that the timbers would be
   split asunder the first time. But they are staunch and strong; he who
   made them was a cunning architect; he who depends upon them for his
   protection is one who knew how to make the gate exceedingly massive--is
   one who knew the struggle full well which he would have to
   endure--Prince of Darkness as he is! If he knew of his defeat, yet well
   he knew how to guard against it if it were possible. But I see this
   ponderous battering ram as it has been hurled with giant force again
   and again upon the gate, and has as often seemed to recoil before the
   massive bars. Many of the saints of God are ready to say, "Let us
   withdraw the instrument; let us take away the besieging armament; we
   shall never be able to storm this castle; we shall never effect an
   entrance." Oh, be not cowards, Sirs, be not cowards. The last time the
   battering ram thundered in its course, I saw the timbers shake! The
   very gate did reel and the posts did rock to and fro--see now, they
   have moved the earth around their sockets! Hell is howling from within
   because it knows how soon its end must come! Now, Christian warriors,
   use your battering rams once more, for the gates begin to shake and the
   walls are tottering. They will reel, they will fall before long--one
   more blow and yet another and another, and another, and as Israel went
   up over the walls of Jericho of old, so shall we soon go up over the
   fallen ruins of the walls of the castle of Sin and Satan! The Church
   does not know how near her victory is--we do not believe how much God
   is doing--but let the Holy Spirit for once give us a little more faith,
   and in confidence that we are nearing the victory--we shall continue in
   prayer! Turn not back when we have all but overcome, continue still,
   even till the end shall be, and the voice shall be heard, "Hallelujah,
   it is done! The kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdoms of our
   Lord and of His Christ."

   II. The second exhortation is WATCH.

   Watch, for you will soon be drowsy if you watch not Joshua fought the
   Amalekites, and I never read that his hands were weary, though the
   battle occupied a very long day. Moses was on the mountain in prayer,
   and his hands grew heavy because prayer is such spiritual work and we
   are so un-spiritual that the tendency of prayer upon our nature will be
   to make us drowsy unless we watch. It is ill-praying, when we are
   drowsy. It is ill for a Church that is not half-awake to be in
   supplication. All eyes must be opened! The judgment, the imagination,
   the hope, the memory--all must be in full vigor, or else we can
   scarcely hope that prayer shall be successful. I think I see the Church
   as I fear she is now. There she is upon her knees, with hands clasped.
   She mutters a few words. Her head droops, for she is weary. Again she
   pleads, and yet again her head is well nigh fallen on her bosom--she is
   a sleeping Church in prayer! Am I too severe in this picture? I believe
   it is true. I think there are some members of the Church thoroughly
   awake, but they are few. There are multitudes of professors who do not
   feel the value of souls. There are many who will meet in the room of
   this lower hall and meet in our own chapels, also, to pray who are
   nevertheless not awake, not awake to the world's necessities, not awake
   to Christ's Glory, not awake to the power of the Gospel--nor awake to
   their own responsibilities, so that they will pray-- but pray and
   sleep! Here, then, we see the value of the exhortation of the
   Apostle--"Continue in prayer and watch in the same."

   But watch for another reason--because as soon as ever you begin to
   pray, there will be enemies who will commence the attack. The Church
   never was earnest yet without sooner or later discovering that the
   devil was in earnest, too. The devil has had an easy time of it up till
   the last six or seven years, for the Church has been going on her
   old-fashioned way doing nothing at all! There was very little abuse of
   ministers--ministers were getting to be very respectable men, and very
   little abuse of any section of Christians--they were all getting to be
   very easy and loveable sort of people. But as sure as the Church, or
   any section of the Church, shall be in earnest, they will be abused!
   Never think you are good for anything till the world finds fault with
   you; never reckon that you have got a success unless many begin to cry
   you down! I always think that an article against you, if you have
   sought with an honest conscience to discharge your duty in the sight of
   God, is one of the highest compliments the press can pay you. Consider
   it as such! Never expect that the world will be friends with the
   Church. Indeed the world will be friendly enough with the Church if the
   Church will not do her duty. If there were a sentinel set to guard a
   post against surprise; if you knew him to be a very great friend of
   those who meant to make the attack, I think you would suspect very soon
   that he was in collusion with the enemy. No, Sirs, they who fight
   Christ's battles, must be men who think as well of the world as the
   world thinks of them--that is to say, who have no love to the world's
   esteem and the world no love to them! Martin Luther used to say, "The
   world gives me a very bad character, but there is no love lost between
   us; I can give to it as bad a character as ever it gives to me." The
   world says "quack, pretender, fanatic!" Be it so--be it so, O
   world--you have no power to honor Christ's ministers, except by
   upbraiding them. There is no power in the wicked to honor Christ's
   minister, except they are either trembling before him, or else laughing
   at him. Either way, we will gratefully accept the honor and write it
   down as being a proof of our success.

   But watch, O Church of Christ, watch; a struggle awaits you as sure as
   ever you are earnest in prayer. In riding along the south coast of
   England, you may have noticed the old Martello towers in constant
   succession very near to each other. They are the result of an old
   scheme of protecting our coast from our ancient enemies. It was
   supposed that as soon as ever a French ship was seen in the distance,
   the beacon would be fired at the Martello tower and then, across old
   England, wherever her sons dwelt, there would flash the fiery signal
   news that the enemy was at hand, and every man would seize the weapon
   that was next to him to dash the invader from the shore. Now we need
   that the Church of Christ should be guarded with Martello towers of
   sacred watchers who shall day and night look out for the attack of the
   enemy. For the enemy will come. If he comes not when we are prayerless,
   he will surely come when we are prayerful! He will show the cloven hoof
   as soon as ever we show the bended knee! If our motto is "Prayer," his
   watchword will be "Fierce attack." Watch, then, while you continue in
   prayer.

   But yet again--watch while you pray for propitious events which may
   help you in the answer to your prayer. I have known sea captains, when
   they have got their ships loaded with coal, and they have wished to
   come up to London with their cargo, have been unable to get down the
   Tyne and out to sea. If they could have got to sea, they could make
   their passage. And I have once or twice known a wary captain, being
   well upon the watch, manage to sail out of the river just while there
   was a little change of the wind; and when his fellows have awakened in
   the morning, they have missed him from his berth, and he has stolen a
   march upon them. He watched and they did not, and having lost the wind,
   they have had to lie in port till he has emptied out his cargo and
   returned! Now, the Church should watch while she prays to see if she
   cannot fulfill her own prayers, look out for opportunities of doing
   good, and see if she cannot steal a march upon her enemies. While she
   has one eye to Heaven for help, she must have the other eye on earth to
   look out for opportunities of doing good! God does not always send the
   Spirit to blow with the same force. We cannot make the wind blow, but
   we can spread the sails. So, if we cannot command the Spirit of God,
   when the Spirit of God does come, we can observe His coming and avail
   ourselves of the glorious opportunity! Watch, then, while you pray.

   Watch, too, for fresh arguments in prayer Heaven's gate is not to be
   stormed by one weapon but by many. Spare no arrows, Christian. Watch
   and see that none of the arms in your armory are rusty. Besiege the
   Throne of God with a hundred hands, and look at the promise with a
   hundred eyes. You have a great work on hand, for you have to move the
   arm that moves the world! Watch, then, for every means of moving that
   arm. See to it that you ply every promise; that you use every argument;
   that you wrestle with all your might! When you are wrestling with an
   antagonist, you must keep your eyes on him; you must look to see what
   he means to do next, or where you can get the next grip at him; see
   where you can get a hold, or plant your foot, so that you can throw him
   down. So wrestle with the Angel of Mercy! Watch while you pray. You
   cannot wrestle with your eyes shut, nor can you prevail with God unless
   your own soul is in a watchful state. O Spirit of God, awaken the
   Church and help her to watch while she prays!

   But one other remark-- watch for the answers to your prayers. When you
   post a letter to a friend, requesting a favor, you watch for an answer.
   When you pray to God for a favor, you do not expect Him to hear you,
   some of you. If the Lord were to hear some of your prayers, you would
   be surprised! I do believe that if God should send to you what you have
   asked for, you would be quite astonished! Sometimes when I have met
   with a special answer to prayer, and have told it, some have said--"is
   it not amazing!" Not at all, it would be amazing if it were notso! God
   says--"Ask and you shall receive." If I should ask and notreceive, it
   would be amazing. "Seek and you shall find." If you seek and do not
   find, it is not only amazing, but I think it is contradictory to God's
   Word! The Church has but to ask, and she shall receive. She has but to
   knock, and the door of mercy shall be opened. But we do not believe
   this! We fritter away God's promises and clip the edge of them, and
   then we go to God in prayer and we think that prayer is a very holy
   exercise--but we do not think that God really hears us! Too many
   professors believe it is their duty to pray, but really they are not so
   enthusiastic as to think that God actually listens and sends them what
   they ask for! A man who should say that he knew that God heard his
   prayers, is in some quarters looked upon as an enthusiast. And what is
   that but a proof that we do not believe this precious Book? For let the
   most unprejudiced man be a judge, if this Book does not teach that,
   "Whatever we ask in prayer, believing we shall receive," then it does
   not teach anything at all. And if it is not true that prayer is a power
   which prevails with God, then shut this Book; it is not worthy of any
   confidence, for it does plainly say that which you say it does not
   mean!

   The fact is, my Brothers and Sisters, the answers to our prayers are
   always on the way while we are asking! Sometimes they come while we are
   yet speaking! Sometimes they delay because we have not prayed as we
   should; God keeps the mercy back at times, and puts it out at compound
   interest because He means to pay it to us, interest and all--whereas if
   we had it at once, we would miss the interest, which sometimes doubles
   and trebles the principal! We are never losers by His delays, but
   always gainers! We ought never to say, even though Providence should
   tell us so, that God forgets or is unmindful--we never ought to believe
   that God has been deaf to our cries, or refused to answer our
   petitions. A true Believer pleading Christ's name and Sacrifice, and
   asking in faith, must and shall receive that which he asks of God! Now,
   during the next week, the Churches will meet together to ask for God's
   blessing, and if that blessing were to come, we should read the
   Missionary Heraldand it would begin, "There has been a most surprising
   awakening throughout all the Churches in such-and-such a country!" That
   word, "surprising," ought to be struck out! We should say, "God has
   been as good as His Word; we asked Him to bless the world, and He has
   done it! And if He does not do it, it will be because we have not asked
   aright, for as sure as ever we had asked aright, God would have heard
   us." I believe this to be as true as a mathematical proposition! If
   twice two is four, then it is just as true that God hears prayer! I
   would not look upon it as being a mere notion, a thought, a very fine
   imagining, or a pretty idea--it is a fact, Sirs--it is a fact! It is a
   fact which I could prove in my own experience by a hundred instances if
   this were the time and place to tell them. But I am sure that the
   people of God universally could prove that God does hear prayer. As
   certainly as ever when you write to a friend you get your answer--
   still more surely and certainly if you are pleading the name of Christ,
   God will hear you!

   But oh, open your eyes and look for the blessing! Watch for it. Be not
   so simple as to sow the seed and never look for the harvest. Do not be
   planting and never looking for fruit. Give up your prayers, or else
   expect them to be successful. When we were little children, we had a
   little plot of ground for a garden, and we put our seeds into it. I
   well recollect how the day after I had put in my seed, I went and
   scraped the soil away to see if it was not growing, as I expected it
   would have been after a day or so at the very longest, and I thought
   the time amazingly long before the seed would be able to make its
   appearance above the ground. "That is childish," you would say. I know
   it is, but I wish you were childish, too, with regard to your
   prayers--that you would--when you have put them in the ground, go and
   see if they have sprung up! And if not at once--be childish in refusing
   to wait till the appointed time comes--always go back and see if they
   have begun to sprout. If you believe in prayer at all, expect God to
   hear you! If you do not expect, you will not have it. God will not hear
   you unless you believe He will hear you! But if you believe He will, He
   will be as good as your faith.

   He will never allow you to think better of Him than He is; He will come
   up to the mark of your thoughts, and according to your faith, so shall
   it be done unto you.

   III. I have a third point, but my time is almost gone, therefore let me
   dwell on it very briefly. The third point is, GIVE THANKS.

   Prayer should be mingled with praise. I have heard that in New England
   after the Puritans had settled there a long while, they used to have
   very often a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer, till they had so
   many days of fasting, humiliation and prayer, at last a good senator
   proposed that they should change it for once, and have a day of
   thanksgiving. It is of little use to be always fasting. We ought
   sometimes to give thanks for mercies received. Now, during this week,
   there are to be days of prayer. Take care that they are days of praise,
   too! Why should we go to God as mournful beings, who plead piteously
   with a hard Master who loves not to give? When you give a penny to a
   beggar in the street, you like to see him smile at you--do you not? Is
   he a crossing-sweeper and you have given him a trifle? He looks
   extremely grateful and happy and you think within yourself, "What a
   small expense has made that man happy! I think I will buy another
   pennyworth ofjoy the next time I pass by." So you give him all the more
   because of his thankfulness to you. Now, go not before God with a
   rueful face, you people of God, as though He had never heard you
   before, and you were about to try a great experiment on One who was
   exceedingly deaf, and did not like to give you mercies! God is as
   pleased to give you His blessing as ever you are to receive it; it is
   as much to His honor as it is to your comfort; He takes more pleasure
   in your prayers than you do in His answers! Come therefore, boldly.
   Come with thankfulness in your heart and upon your lips, and join the
   hymn of praise with the cry of prayer. Be thankful for what God has
   done. Look at the past year. I commend it to your consideration when
   you meet for prayer. Has there been for the last 20 years such a year
   as the last? If any man had said seven years ago there would be
   preaching in St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, we should
   never have believed him! But it is has been, and it is to be again! If
   any friends had said that nearly all the theatres in London would be
   filled on the Sabbath, "Oh," you would have said, "it is ridiculous, it
   is an absurd notion!" But it is done, Sirs; it is done.

   If any had said to you seven years ago there would have been a
   congregation of many thousands who, without any drawback in numbers,
   would always assemble every Sabbath to listen to one minister, you
   would have said, "Ridiculous! There is no precedent for it. It is
   impossible! It is not at all possible that the Spirit of God can
   incline a people's heart so long to listen to one man'" It is done,
   Sirs; by God's Grace it is done! And what are we to do but to give God
   thanks for it? When we come before Him to ask Him for fresh mercies,
   let us not be so foolish as to forget the past. "Sing unto Him, sing
   unto Him, sing Psalms unto Him! Come into His Presence with
   thanksgivings, and show yourself glad in Him with Psalms--for the Lord
   is God, and a great King above all gods." So thank Him for the past,
   and pray to Him for the future. Thank Him, too, for the power to pray;
   thank Him for the privilege of taking the Church's needs before Him.
   And do still better--thank Him for the mercy which is to come. Great
   God, I thank You for Sinim, the land of China, which shall come unto
   You! I praise You for India, which shall receive You! I praise You for
   Ethiopia, which shall stretch out her arms unto You! Great God, today
   we bless You for what You will do; Your promise is, in the estimation
   of our faith, as good as the performance itself! We extol and glorify
   You, for Your right hand, O Lord! Your right hand, O Lord, has dashed
   in pieces the enemy. You have broken the bow and cut the spear in
   sunder. You have burned the chariot in the fire. Your right hand, O
   Lord, has gotten You the victory! Oh come, let us sing unto the Lord,
   for He has triumphed gloriously! Let us laud and extol Him, for He is
   King forever and ever! Say unto Zion, "Your God reigns." Behold, He
   comes. He comes to judge the world in righteousness, and the people
   with equity. Rejoice before Him, O you hills, clap your hands, O you
   cedars! Let the sea roar and the fullness thereof; the world and all
   that dwell therein! Praise Him, you heavens; and you Heaven of heavens;
   you spirits that stand before His Throne, for He is God and beside Him
   there is no God. The whole earth praises You, O God. and all Your
   creatures bless You forever and ever!

   Thus with the censor of prayer and praise, let us be this week like
   priests of God; and You, great High Priest, take our sacrifice and
   offer it before Your Father's face!

   I close my sermon. O that some here present may lay the subject of
   prayer to heart this week! Get alone, dear Friends, get alone this
   week! Pray for your children this week, and groan with God over your
   ungodly sons and daughters! Pray for your neighbors this week! Put God
   to the test! See if He does not open the windows of Heaven upon you. Be
   much in prayer and you shall be much blessed. And O poor Sinner! You
   who have never prayed before--the year of God's re- deemed is come!
   This is the acceptable day of the Lord; if you seek Him, He will be
   found of you. "Seek you the Lord while He may be found. Call you upon
   Him while He is near." Cry to Him now! Say--

   "O Sovereign Grace, my heart subdue.1" Trust Jesus with your soul, and
   unworthy though you are, your prayer shall he heard. and you shall be
   able to join with the company of the faithful in praying for others as
   well as for yourself. God bless you all, for Jesus' sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                              Portraits Of Christ

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 13, 1861, BY THE REV. C.
   H. SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to
   the image of His Son." Romans 8:29.

   IT is not so much predestination which will occupy our attention this
   morning, as the fact that Believers are predestinated to be conformed
   to thee image of God's dear Son.

   Perhaps nothing in the world is a surer sign of littleness than a
   slavish imitation of any man. Men lose that which is an honor to
   them--individuality--and then they lose that which is a power to
   them--originality--the moment they commence walking in another man's
   shoes. When one painter slavishly copies another, he is only known as
   the satellite of the greater luminary; he himself is neither
   respectable nor respected. But this is not the case when men select
   models which are confessed to be perfect. You never hear a man accused
   of a lack of originality because he studies the models in sculpture of
   Ancient Greece. It is not usual to hear the accusation of imitation
   brought against painters who have studiously examined the works of
   Michelangelo or of Raphael. These men are put at the head of their
   respective schools and the following of these masters of the art is
   voted to be no folly, but true wisdom. 'Tis even so with the imitation
   of Christ. To imitate other men is weakness; to copy Christ is
   strength. Christ is the perfect type of manhood. He who should imitate
   Him the most nearly, would be the most original man upon earth! It may
   seem a paradox, but it is one which nevertheless needs only to be tried
   to be proved; no man will be looked upon as so strange, so singular a
   being among his fellows, as the man who shall nearest approach to the
   image of the Lord Jesus! He imitates, we grant you; he copies, we
   confess it; but he is himself, despite his copying, an original to
   other men, and he stands out from the common herd as being a
   distinguished and celebrated individual--he will be "known and read of
   all men." If I should stand here this morning, my Hearers, to exhort
   you to imitate any one model in manhood except Christ, I would feel
   that I had a difficult task with sensible men. There is not in all the
   annals of our race, a single name which I could bid you love and
   reverence as much as to shut your eyes to the faults connected
   therewith. There is not a single biography truthfully written which I
   would have you read, and then say, "I will re-live this man's life
   precisely as he lived it." You would make shipwreck if you should
   blindly steer in the wake of the noblest of your brethren! You may take
   a virtue here, and a virtue there, and then in God's strength seek to
   imitate those men who excelled in those points--but to imitate an
   Abraham in all things, would not make you an Abraham--nor would it make
   you what you should be. To seek to follow a Job in all respects would
   not bring you to be perfect, even as your Father who is in Heaven is
   perfect. There remains but one model we can ever commend to you, and
   only one which a man of strong mind can accept as his copy in every jot
   and tittle. That I shall endeavor to present to you this morning, while
   I preach the great Doctrine that all Believers are predestinated to be
   conformed to the image of Christ Jesus.

   In what sense? Why? And is itpossible? Three points each interesting.

   I. IN WHAT SENSE IS A BELIEVER TO BE CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE OF CHRIST?

   There are some views which would be taken of this subject, which I
   think would be shallow and would not reach the full meaning of the Word
   of God. Some men conceive that they are to bear the image of Christ to
   warrant them as being His followers, although their works tell another
   tale! They are to be called Christians, and then under the garb and
   cover of Christianity, they are to make their vices appear like
   virtues, and their crimes are to be dignified as though they were of
   the highest morality. Now a Christian is not to bear the image of
   Christ as a penny bears the superscription of the Queen! That image is
   put there to make the coin current among men. but a penny is not the
   image of the Queen, it is only stamped with it. There are some
   Christians who think that they have the seal of the Spirit upon them,
   the stamp of Christ's warranty, and that they can claim to be accepted
   as Christians because they imagine they have the seal of the

   Spirit and the stamp of Christ's warranty upon them. Now, as the penny
   is not conformed after all to the image of the person whose face it
   bears, so such a man is not, by any pretended warranty he thinks he
   has, really conformed to the image of Christ. There is something more
   required of us, and something more will be bestowed upon us by the
   Spirit, than having in some dark corner the name of Jesus tattooed into
   the skin of our profession.

   Nor, again--neither have they attained to a conformity to the image of
   Christ who are content with a cold morality. You have seen a statue so
   exceedingly well chiseled that it is the very image of the statesman or
   the warrior whom it represents. You might dream that it looked from
   those stony eyes; you might imagine that it would step from its
   pedestal. Is it not put in the attitude of one who is about to lead the
   troops to battle? Could you not conceive it crying, "On, comrades, on!"
   But it stands there stiff and stolid, and its lips move not--it is dumb
   and blind, and motionless. I know some whose imitation of Christ is as
   if it were cut in marble--there is no life in it! Now this is not the
   conformity to Christ's image which the Spirit will give to us. We are
   not to be mere pictures of Christ, dead and lifeless; but the very
   lifeblood of Christ is to run in our veins. Our activity and our energy
   is to be consecrated and Christ-like. We are to be like He as living
   men. Not as cold frozen things, or mummies swathed in the bandages of
   the Law of God--but as living freemen we are to be conformed to the
   image of Christ Jesus!

   Some there are, too, who imagine that to be conformed to the image of
   Christ Jesus, it will be quite enough to act publicly as Christ would
   have acted. They are always talking about points of conscience--"Would
   Christ have done this," or "that?" And then they answer it according to
   their own fancies! They see some Christian who walks under "the perfect
   law of liberty," and is not bound by the, "touch not, taste not, handle
   not," of the old Mosaic spirit, and they cry over him, "Would Christ
   have done such a thing?" They see a Believer laugh, "Would Christ have
   done it?" If a Christian keeps a carriage, "Ah," they say, "did Christ
   ever ride in a carriage?" And so they think that by putting on a face
   that is more marred than that of any other man, they shall become the
   very image of Christ Jesus. You know that in the theatres men come
   forth as kings, "and strut their little hour." And for a while they are
   the very image of Julius Caesar, or of Richard III--and do you suppose
   that such is the intention of the Holy Spirit--that you and I should be
   so dressed that in outward appearance we should be the image of Christ,
   and yet not be like Christ really and truly? God forbid we should
   indulge so idle a dream! The fact is, Brothers and Sisters, while
   practically we must be like the Savior, yet the greatest conformity to
   His image must be within. It must be that unseen spirit, that essential
   holiness which dwells where only God can see it which shall constitute
   the main part of our likeness to Christ. Tomorrow you might put on a
   garment without seam, woven from the top throughout; you might put
   sandals on the soles of your feet; you might wear your beard uncut and
   so say, "In all this I seek to be like Christ." And you might even ride
   through the streets of Jerusalem upon "a colt, the foal of an ass," but
   you would be a great deal more the image of a fool, than you would be
   the image of Christ! This imitation is not to be in mere externals--it
   is to be in internals--in the very essence and spirit of your Christian
   character.

   1. In what, then, is this conformity to be found? I reply, in three
   things. First, the Believer is to be conformed to the image of Christ
   in character. Now, when we think of Christ, what thoughts arise at
   once? We think, in the first place, of an humble One, of One who,
   "though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor." We think of a Man
   who was meek and lowly in heart, who took no lordship over the sons of
   men, but was a Servant of servants, and washed His disciples' feet. If
   we would be like Christ, we must be humble; we must cast aside that
   self-conceit which is interwoven into our nature; we must strive
   against that pride, which is, alas, too natural to us all. When we
   think of Christ, we always bring up before our minds the idea of One
   who was diligent in His Father's business. We see before us not an idle
   sluggard, not One who sought His own rest, who slept upon the oar that
   He ought to tug, or reclined upon the sword with which He should fight.
   We find Him One who went about doing good, who knew no rest except that
   wondrous rest which His holy toil afforded to His spirit. "I have meat
   to eat," He said, "that you know not of." Now if we would be like
   Christ, we must conquer our constitutional sloth; we must spurn all the
   softness of ease; we must be good soldiers and bear hardness. We must
   spend and be spent if we would bear His image. When we think of Christ,
   again, we see One who was full of love-not that love which cants and
   whines, but the love which is true and honest, and which for love's
   sake dares not flatter. We see a love which dwelt not in words, but in
   very deeds--a love which gave its whole self up to the objectives which
   it had chosen. If we would be like Christ, we must be pillars of love.
   We must not be so loving that we yield up everything that is masculine
   in our nature; our love must be that faithful love which, in
   faithfulness, gives wounds even to a friend.

   And yet must it be so deep, so true, that we would prefer to be
   sacrificed and to be offered up in the most painful manner rather than
   the objects of our affection should be made to suffer.

   Oh, we have never come to be like Christ till love is legible upon our
   very face; till we have got rid of our crabbed and stern visage; till
   we have had cast out of us that seven-fold devil of intolerance and
   bigotry! We have never come to be like Christ till we have arms that
   would embrace a world; we have never come to be like He till we have a
   heart on which the name of the Church is written, and a breast which
   bears the names of all the redeemed as the High Priest bore the
   breastplate before the Mercy Seat.

   But yet, further--I think we always associate with the name of Christ
   not simply humility and service, and love, but devotion and
   prayerfulness. We know that when He had ceased to preach, He began to
   pray. When He had left the mountain side which had been His pulpit, He
   went to another mountain which became His silent oratory. The disciples
   might sleep, but not the Master; they might sleep for sorrow, but He
   sweats great drops of blood for agony--

   "Cold mountains and the midnight air Witnessed the fervor of His
   prayer." We can never be like the Master till not only in public, but
   in private we are God's own--never till we know the power of
   knee-work--till we know how to struggle with strong crying and tears;
   never till we could almost shed great drops of blood when we are
   pleading for the souls of men; never till our heart is ready to burst
   with a sacred agony when we are wrestling with God--never till then
   shall we be conformed to the image of God's dear Son! Ah, my Brothers
   and Sisters, I feel, in trying to describe what that image is, like one
   who handles the brush with a shaking, palsied hand--although he has the
   outlines of the most beauteous form sketched upon the canvas. Lo! I
   have daubed where I ought to have been skillful. I have but sought to
   paint one feature, but who among us can describe the whole? We can but
   gather up all thoughts and say, one man is admirable for his faith,
   another for his patience; one is distinguished for his courage, and
   another for his affection; but Christ is altogether lovely! Christ is
   not a mixture of many beauties, but He is allbeauty put together--

   "Nature, to make His beauties known, Must mingle colors not her own."

   We must exhaust all the eulogies which were ever poured upon the heads
   of the excellent; we must drain dry all the earnest strains of the
   enthusiastic songs that were ever cast at the feet of the heroes of
   this world--and when we have done all this--we have not begun to sing
   the praises which are due to our Beloved, our Perfect Exemplar, and
   Covenant Head! In moral virtues, then, the Christian is to be conformed
   to Christ.

   2. But further, there is one thing which is so linked to Christ that
   you cannot think of Him without it and that is, His Cross. You do not
   see all of Christ till you see His Cross. By four nails was He fastened
   to it; by more than four sure thoughts is He always linked in the minds
   of His people with His agony and His death. If we are ever conformed to
   Christ, we must bear His Cross. Do you see Him, Christian? He is
   despised, and rejected of men. Do you see Him passing through the midst
   of a crowd that is yelling and hooting at Him? Men whom He had blessed
   are cursing Him! Lame men whom He had healed are using the power which
   He gave that they may run to scorn Him! Lips that had been dumb if He
   had not given them speech, are venting blasphemies upon Him and He, the
   Lovely, the Forsaken of All, goes outside the camp bearing His
   reproach. Do you see Him, Believer? The world counts Him to be the
   ofscouring of all things. It cries, "Away with Him, away with Him! It
   is not fit that He should live." It awards Him a slave's death--He must
   not only die, but die as a menial dies. He must not simply so die, but
   die outside the camp, as a thing accursed and unclean! See there an
   image of yourself, if you are ever conformed to His likeness. You must
   bear the Cross of suffering; you must bear the shame and spitting of
   ungodly men; you, too, must become in your measure the song of the
   drunkard; you must go outside the camp--even His professed
   followers--you must be crucified to the flesh, and its affections and
   lusts! You must be dead to the world, and the world must be dead to
   you, or else you will never completely bear the image of Christ.

   And while I talk on this subject, I am smitten with grief, for, indeed,
   if I wanted a living illustration of this, must I not rather find it in
   contrast than in comparison? O, what multitudes of professors we have
   who have found out a new way to shun the Cross! We have ministers who
   could preach all the year round, and no man would ever find fault with
   them! We have some who can prophecy such smooth things, that none of
   their hearers gnash their teeth in anger against them! We have
   Christian merchants who find it not at all impossible to keep their
   profession, and yet to be dishonest in their trade! We find men who are
   first and foremost in all manner of worldliness; they are the world's
   men, and yet they are Christ's men too, they say. Where they shall
   stand in that Day when the secrets of all hearts shall be known, I will
   not say, but I leave that text to declare it in which it is written,
   "The love of this world is enmity against God." If any man professes to
   be a Christian, let him count the cost, first, if he means to be a
   thorough Christian, and let him put down among the first items, loss of
   reputation!And if he means to be decisive in his convictions, let him
   put down, loss of many friends, and let him think it no strange thing
   when the fiery trial shall come upon him! God grant you, my Brothers
   and Sisters, that you may have fellowship with Christ in His
   sufferings, and that in the bearing of the Cross, you may be conformed
   to His image.

   Once more only upon this first point. Today we think of Christ not
   merely as the bearer of the Cross, but as the wearer of the crown--

   "The head that once was crowned with thorns,
   Is crowned with glory now;
   A royal diadem adorns
   The mighty Victor's brow!
   No more the bloody spear,
   The Cross and nails no more,
   For Hell itself shakes at His name,
   And all the heavens adore."

   And--blessed thought!--the Believer is to be conformed to the image of
   the Crowned One as well as of the Crucified One! If we are
   Cross-bearers, we shall be crown-wearers! If the hands shall feel the
   nail, they shall grasp the palm! If the feet shall be tightly fastened
   to the wood, they shall one day be girt with the sandals of immortal
   bliss! Fear not, Believer! It is necessary that you should first bear
   the image of the Sorrowful, that you should afterwards bear the image
   of the Glorious. Christ Himself came not to His crown except by His
   Cross; He descended that He might ascend; He stooped to conquer; He
   went into the grave, that He might rise above all principalities and
   powers; as the Man-Mediator, He earned His dignity by His sufferings
   and you, too, must fight if you would reign! You, too, must endure if
   you would win; you must run the race if you would obtain the reward. O
   then, let your hearts be cheered! As you have borne "the image of the
   earthy," you shall also bear "the image of the heavenly." You shall be
   like He is when you shall see Him as He is. You shall be perfect,
   blessed, honored, magnified and glorified in Him! Does He sit at the
   right hand of God, even the Father? You, too, shall sit at His right
   hand! Does the Father say to Him, "Well done," and look on Him with
   inexpressible delight? He shall say, "Well done, good and faithful
   servant," even to you, and you shall enter into the joy of your Lord!
   Is He without a pain, without a fear? Is He without anything to mar the
   splendor of His magnificence? So shall you be! You are as He was in
   this world--you shall be in the world to come just what He is there!
   Come, Cross! I bend my willing shoulders to you, if I may afterward bow
   my head to receive that crown! Come, earth! Lay your heaviest cross
   upon me! Come, you adversaries of the Truth! Bring your hammer and your
   nails; come, you chief enemies; bring your sharpest spears! My soul
   shall bare her breast, and hold out hands and feet to receive the marks
   of the Lord Jesus, that in these she may afterwards arise to claim the
   crown, to claim the image of the Glorious, because she has borne the
   image of the Despised!

   Now all this, I take it, is contained in my text. We are predestinated
   to be conformed to the image of God's Son in character, in suffering,
   and afterwards, in Glory

   II. But, secondly and though it is a very extensive subject,
   hurriedly--WHY SHOULD WE BEAR THE IMAGE OF THE HEAVENLY? Why should we
   be transformed as unto the image of Christ?

   Very many answers spring up and each one of them claims the preference.
   But to begin, well may we desire to bear the image of Christ because it
   was that which we lost in Eden. We look back to Paradise with many a
   sigh, but well the spiritual mind sighs not for the spice groves, nor
   for the verdant walks, nor for the trees luxuriant with fruit. If Eden
   had been a Sahara, a howling desert, the truly spirituals mind'would
   still long to have it back again for only one reason-- namely that
   there man was in the image of his Maker. "Let us make man in Our own
   image," said God, "after Our own likeness." All the losses we sustained
   by Adam's ruin were very little compared with that great loss of the
   likeness and image of the Immortal and Immaculate Deity! Oh, if we had
   been spotless and undying, like the God whose image Adam bore, we might
   well have endured to have the earth sterile and barren; and all the
   pains and pangs which the Curse brought upon us would have been light
   and trivial--if we had still retained the image of our God!

   Now then, my Brothers and Sisters, it is this which Christ restores to
   us. He re-makes us, takes away the sinful, rebellious visage, which our
   father bore when he was expelled from the Garden, re-stamps God's own
   face on us, and makes us in the image of the Most High again! Oh, if
   Eden were a sorrowful loss, and if it were desirable to obtain its
   Paradise again, surely the image of God must be desirable first and
   foremost of all!

   But, then, ought not that to be the objective of all ambition, which is
   the ultimate end of God's decree God, it is true, has predestinated
   Believers to Heaven--but that is not all! I do not read in so many
   words that the saints are predestinated to Paradise, but I do read that
   they are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His dear Son.
   This is the end of the whole predestination of God--to make His elect
   like their Elder Brother, that He may be the first-born among many
   brethren! And that which God sees great enough to be the objective of
   all His acts in Providence, and all His deeds in Grace--that which He
   makes the ultimate end of His predestination--ought certainly never to
   be a trifle to you and to me! Rather, we ought to pant and long for it
   as the highest desire of our souls.

   But again--the image of Christ is the Spirit's latent work in us. In
   that day, when we are regenerated, the new man is put into us. Now, in
   what image is that new man? It is in the image of Him that created him!
   The new man, we are expressly told by Paul, is renewed in the image of
   Christ Jesus. The moment that a sinner believes there is put into him
   the first germ of a perfect Christ; it needs but that it should be
   nourished by the Spirit, and continually fed, and it will grow into the
   perfect stature of a man in Christ. Yet even now in a Believer, who was
   converted but yesterday, there is the image of Christ, though it has
   not come to the perfect stature--just as the new-born child is a man,
   and in a certain sense perfect and bears completely the image of
   manhood, yet it is true that that image is not fully developed. So in
   the newborn Believer there is Christ, the indwelling Christ, but it is
   the Christ of the manger, rather than the Christ of the wilderness.
   There is an Infant Christ in every Christian--that Christ is to grow
   and to expand--and then at last in death, shaking off the coils--the
   troublesome burden of the old man--this new man which has been growing
   these years by Divine Grace shall step out. And as the serpent casts
   off its old skin, and comes out fresh and young covered with azure
   hues, so shall the new man leave all corruptions behind! And we shall
   be discovered to be made in the perfect image of Christ Jesus our Lord
   and Master! Now, if this is the Spirit's work, certainly it ought to be
   our love, and we ought to be al3 seeking after it.

   But further, my dear Friends, I need not plead this case with you if
   you are Christians, for there is not a Believer alive who does not pant
   to be like Christ If I had but one prayer to pray, and might not pray
   another, it would be this, "Lord, make me like Christ," for that is to
   comprehend all our other prayers in one! Like Christ, free from all
   corruptions should I be--free from infirmity and passion--I might be
   tempted, but I could say, "The Prince of this world comes and has
   nothing in me." "Like Christ"--O if that prayer should involve the
   lion's den, or the furnace's fiery heat, never mind! We could take
   these encumbrances upon the blessed estate if we could but once have
   the fair hands. To be like Christ--oh, what trial would you not endure
   with it, even though you had the direst tribulations! Better to be like
   Christ in His poverty, in His wanting a place whereon to lay His
   head--better to be like He is as despised and rejected of men, than to
   be like a Caesar, or the richest man in the world's eye, the most happy
   of men! Better to be with Christ in His worst estate than to be with an
   evil man in his best! If, then, this is the universal prayer and cry of
   the Christian, shall not we, my Brothers and Sisters, as part of the
   same family, join in it and say, "Lord, make me to be conformed to the
   image of Christ, my Lord"?

   And after all, if we need anything to whet our appetites and to
   stimulate our desires once more--is not this our highest glory on
   earth, and is not this our crowning privilege above?. What more
   glorious for a man than to be like Christ? I do believe that if the
   spirit of envy could penetrate the hierarchy of angels, Gabriel would
   envy the poorest man on earth, because that man has a possibility of
   being like Christ--while the angel--though he may be like He is in some
   respects, can never grow into the perfect stature of a man in Christ! I
   do think, Brethren, that if it came to the point today, and the angelic
   spirits could have permission to exchange their robes of light for our
   livery of rags--if they could lay aside their harps to take up the
   tools of our toil--if they could relinquish their crowns to have their
   immortal brows moistened with our sweat. If they could give up the
   golden streets to tread earth's mire and dirt--they would think it a
   high honor and a matchless privilege to be allowed to make the
   exchange--with this proviso--that thereby they might be recognized as
   being in the likeness of the Son of God! Why, this will make Believers
   throughout eternity distinguished! Many a man has thought that a few
   hour's toil was but a mere trifle--a few minutes' exposure of his life
   was a little thing only to be snapped at if he might by that, win years
   of honor and esteem among the sons of men. But what must it be in
   comparison when these light afflictions which are but for a moment, and
   put us in the posture and give us the possibility of becoming conformed
   to the image of Christ? I tell you, Gabriel--if you can hear the voice
   of mortals-- that sinner though I am, and groaning beneath the load of
   my inbred sin; mixed though I am with the sons of men and often
   groaning in the tents of Kedar; yet I would not change places with you,
   for I have the hope, the hope to which you can not aspire, that after I
   have slept in death, I shall wake up in His likeness! And as I have
   borne "the image of the earthy," so shall I bear "the image of the
   heavenly." You will not scorn me, I know, bright spirit, because I bear
   the broken and disfigured image of the earthy. You, too, would be glad
   to try to bear it if you might afterwards, as the result thereof, bear
   the image of the heavenly! To see the glee of Christ is angels' joy. To
   wear that face is ours! To bow before it is their delight, but to be
   transformed into it is our privilege--a privilege, I dare say, which no
   other creature that God has ever made shall possess--the privilege of
   being like the Son of Man, and so, like the Son of God! III. But,
   thirdly and lastly, IS IT POSSIBLE? IS IT POSSIBLE?

   "I have tried," says one, "to make myself like Christ, and I cannot."
   Indeed, you cannot. Ah, there is a skill needed to make you like
   Christ! Why, Sirs, the most wondrous artists who have never failed
   before, always fail in the very portrait of Christ! They cannot paint
   the Chief among ten thousand, the Altogether Lovely; they fail entirely
   when they once come there. They may labor, they may strive, but He is
   fairer than the sons of men; and if so with the earthy image, what must
   it be with that within? Orators, before whose eloquence men have been
   swayed to and fro as the waves are tossed by the fourth wind, have
   confessed their utter inability, by many figures of speech, ever to
   reach the excellencies of Christ. Divine poets, whose hearts have been
   pregnant with celestial fire, have been compelled to lay down their
   harps and relinquish all hope to ever sing the Song of Songs concerning
   this fairest Solomon. And must it not be a vastly harder task for a man
   to be made like Christ? If we can neither paint Him, nor sing Him, nor
   preach Him, how can we live Him? How can we be like He? How can we bear
   His image, if we cannot even paint it? Indeed, if this were our work,
   it were impracticable and we might dissuade you from the task! But it
   is not your work, it is God'swork. 'Twas God who predestinated us to be
   conformed to the image of His Son; and God who "made the decree" will
   fulfill it Himself! And by His Omnipotence, the same power which
   created Christ in the virgin's womb shall create a Christ even in our
   sinful hearts, and cause our sins to die out before the indwelling of
   the living Christ!

   But wherein lies the hardness of our being made like Christ? I suppose
   it lies first, in the material to be worked upon. "Oh," says one,
   "there is never a possibility of making an image of Christ out of me.
   Sculptors choose polished marble. I, indeed, am but a rough unhewn
   stone of the quarry--unworkable! I know that the chisel will only blunt
   its edge upon me; I never can be made like Christ. What? Build a Temple
   for God out of bramble bushes? Make a crown for the King of kings out
   of common pebbles of the brook? No," we say, "it cannot be!" But, stop,
   Sir--what matters the materialwhen you know the great Creator? God is
   the great Artist who has predestinated and decreed that He will make
   you, who are today like a devil, one day to be like Christ! It is a
   daring task; it is like God! It is an impossible task; it is only fit
   for one hand and that One has undertaken it and will achieve it! For,
   sirs, when God decrees a thing, what is to stand in His way? He can
   make pathways through the flood--He who can take the fiery power out of
   the flame--He can take the drowning influence out of the waters. To Him
   all things are possible. Can He not, then, even in the morgue of your
   heart, put a Christ who shall bring a glorious resurrection, put a new
   life in you, and transmute even the base metal of your nature till you
   shall become like the golden nature of Him who is God Incarnate? Oh,
   when we have God to deal with--what matters the material? He can
   overthrow your depravity, can cast off your lust, and make you like
   your Lord!

   "Ah, but," says one, "there is another difficulty. Think what a world I
   live in. How can I be like Christ? It is very well preaching this, Sir,
   to us. If you had a number of hermits' cells for us all to live in, it
   might be done; if you would build a large monastery and let us all live
   as Christians together, it might be possible. But I tell you, Sir, you
   do not know my business! It cannot be done, Sir. I have to mix with men
   that curse and blaspheme; I cannot be like Christ. Besides, my business
   is so trying to the temper, so irritating, it cannot be done, Sir, I
   tell you! And then, you do not know we have so many tricks in trade,
   and our trade has so many temptations in it that it is very difficult
   for us to prevent ourselves being decoyed. Sir, it is not possible for
   us to be like Christ while we have to mix with this wicked world! We
   get one touch, as it were, put into the picture on a Sunday, and we
   think we shall be like Christ one day, but the devil puts six black
   touches in during the week and spoils the whole! It cannot be done.
   Sir, it is not possible we should ever be like Christ." But God says it
   shallbe done. God has predestinated you, if you are a Believer, to be
   conformed to the image of His dear Son. Of course Satan will do his
   best to stop God's decrees; but what shall become of anything that
   stands in the way of God's decree? As the car of Juggernaut rolls
   remorselessly on and crushes any man--be he king or whatever-- who
   dares to place himself in his way, so shall God's decree! On, on it
   goes and through blood and bones of your carnal nature, and natural
   depravity, that triumphant chariot of God shall grind! "A hideous
   figure," you say. Indeed, Sirs, you shall find that there is something
   hideous in your experience. You will have to suffer for it. If you are
   in this world you will have to be as Jesus was in this world; rest
   assured that though God will make you like Christ, yet inasmuch as you
   are in a world of sinners, it will necessitate your suffering like He s
   uffered! It will not take from you the power to bear His image, but it
   will bring about you, as a hornet's nest, all those who hated Christ
   before.

   I was standing one day at my window when living far from London, and I
   saw on a house opposite, a canary, which had by some means or other got
   loose from its cage. It had no sooner rested upon the roof than about
   20 sparrows came round it and began to pick and pull, and although the
   poor thing resisted and flew here and there, it stood but a very poor
   chance in the midst of so many enemies. I remembered that text--"My
   heritage is unto me as a speckled bird; the birds round about are
   against her." That will be your lot. Mark this! If you are to be like
   Christ, you will be a speckled bird, and if you are not pecked upon by
   others, you may question whether you are not one of their own kind, and
   therefore they let you alone and freely associate with you. But if you
   differ from them, and prove you have another nature than theirs, you
   will surely be opposed and maligned, even as your Master was!

   Once more and I have done. Many a Christian heart has said, "I think
   the difficulty about the material is not so great when I think of the
   Omnipotence of God; and the difficulty about the associations is not so
   very hard, for I can suffer and I am willing to suffer if I may but be
   like Christ. But the great and insurmountable obstacle is this--that
   image is so perfect I can never reach it! It is high as Heaven--what
   can I know? It surpasses my thoughts; I cannot even conceive the ideal;
   how then can I reach the fact? If it were to be like David, I might
   hope it. If it were to be made like Josiah, or some of the ancient
   saints, I might think it possible. But to be like Christ, who is
   without spot or blemish, and the Chief among ten thousand and
   Altogether Lovely, I cannot hope it. I look, Sir; I look and look, and
   look again, till I turn away, tears filling my eyes and I say, 'Oh, it
   were presumption for such a fallen worm as I to hope to be like
   Christ.'" And did you know it, that while you were thus speaking, you
   were really getting the thing you thought to be impossible? Or did you
   know that while you were gazing on Christ, you were using the only
   means which can be used to effect the Divine purpose? And when you
   bowed before that image overawed, do you know it was because you began
   to be made like it? When I come to love the image of Christ, it is
   because I have some measure of likeness to it! It was said of Cicero's
   works if any man could read them with admiration, he must be in a
   degree an orator himself. And if any man can read the life of Christ
   and really love it, I think there must be somewhat--however
   little--that is Christ-like within him. And if you as Believers will
   look much at Christ, you will grow like He! You shall be transformed
   from glory to glory as by the image of the Lord. I look at you, I do
   not grow like you. You look at me, you grow not like me. You look at
   Christ--Christ looks at you--He is photographed on you by His own power
   of light. Without need of any light beyond Himself, He photographs His
   image on the face of those who live much in fellowship with Him, and
   who contemplate much His Character.

   Now then Believer, it is true the image of Christ is sublime, but then
   it, by the Spirit, makes you into itself so that the difficulty
   supplies the means, and that which looks like the obstacle becomes
   really the means to the attainment thereof! Go again and look at
   Christ. Go and weep because you are not like He is. Go and bow before
   Him with adoration. Go and strain upwards to that great height. In
   doing so your very failures are successes; your fears are proofs that
   you are beginning to be like He is! Are you not beginning to sorrow as
   He sorrowed? Your very agony, because you cannot be as He is, is a
   beginning of the agony which He endured, because He would have had the
   cup pass from Him. I say, Brothers and Sisters, that the more you look
   at Him, though it may tend to dispirit you, that very dispiriting is a
   part of the Divine process! It is a chipping away from the block of
   marble an excrescence, which, if not removed, would have ruined the
   image entirely. God help you to live near to Christ and so shall you be
   more and more like He is every day!

   To conclude--one thing is certain and having mentioned that, I have
   done. You will either bear the image of Christ or the image of Satan!
   You will be developed, every one of you, Sirs. Either those eyes will
   develop till they are the very eyes of fiends and roll with the hellish
   leer of blasphemy; that mouth will be developed till it gnashes its
   teeth in diabolic scorn; that hand will be developed till it has itself
   as though it were iron and dares to defy the Eternal; that soul will be
   developed till it becomes a living Hell, a Hell as full of pains as
   Hell itself is full of demons; or else--and God grant that you may have
   this last alternative!--or else those eyes will shine till they become
   like the eyes of Christ, which are as flames of fire; that face will be
   transformed till it becomes like the face of Christ, as though it
   glowed with Heaven itself; and that heart will be developed till it
   becomes a Heaven as full of songs as Heaven itself is full of music! By
   faith in Christ, or unbelief, your destiny may be known! Do you believe
   in Christ? You are predestinated to be like He is! Are you an
   unbeliever? Then if you die so, you shall be transformed into the image
   of darkness! God save you! Christ help you! "Believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ and you shall be saved," for, "He who believes and is baptized
   shall be saved. But he who believes not, shall be damned."

   God add his blessing for Jesus' sake!
     __________________________________________________________________

                             Words Of Expostulation

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 20, 1861, BY THE REV. C.
   H. SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "And now what have you to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters
   of Sihor? Or what have you to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the
   waters of the river?'

   Jeremiah 2:18.

   THE Jews had been chosen by God to be a special people separated to
   Himself forever. By various miracles, by many mercies, by strange
   deliverances, He had proved Himself to be to them a God worthy of their
   trust. Yet, strange to say-- and yet not strange when we know that they
   were fallen men like ourselves--the Jews were constantly desirous to
   mix with the nations. They broke down the hedges with which God had
   enclosed them as a sacred garden; they desired to be laid like common
   lands, and to be joined with other peoples. No, more than this--they
   forsook their own true and loving God who had never deserted them, and
   they sometimes adopted the deities of Egypt, and at other times the
   false gods of Assyria! They seemed never to be content with even the
   gorgeous ceremonials of their own Temple; they must build altars after
   the fashion of Damascus; they must have Sitars on every high place,
   according to the custom of the accursed nations whom the Lord, their
   God, had driven out before them! And they seemed as if they had never
   reached the full desire of their hearts till they had mingled with the
   rites of God, all the filth and the abominations with which heathens
   adored their gods. Constantly did the Lord reprove them for this--for
   this infatuation of theirs which made them turn aside from Him, the
   Living Water, to hew out to themselves broken cisterns which could hold
   no water. They were "often reproved," but they often "hardened their
   necks;" often were they chastened, and they were smitten so often that
   "the whole head was sick, and the whole heart was faint;" they had been
   chastened so sorely that from the soles of their feet even to their
   head, they were full of wounds and bruises, and putrefying sores! Yet
   they still went after evil; they still turned aside from the righteous
   and true God.

   Our text contains one instance of God's expostulating with His people.
   He says to them, "What have you to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the
   waters of the muddy river!"--for so it may be translated--and of course
   that term is applied to the Nile by way of contempt. "Why need you go
   to drink of that muddy river? What have you to do with Assyria, to
   drink the water of Euphrates? Why do you turn aside and leave your own
   cool streams of Lebanon? Why do you forsake Jerusalem to turn aside to
   Noph and to Tahapanes? Why are you so strangely set on mischief, that
   you cannot be content with the good and healthful, but would even
   follow after that which is evil and deceitful?"

   Taking the text just as it stands, I intend, by God's help, to make a
   question of it to you. To myself and to you may God the Holy Spirit
   apply it, and may this be a time for all God's people, to every
   convinced soul, yes, and to the careless, too--a time of searching of
   heart. May God question us and may we be prepared to answer honestly.
   May the Holy Spirit push home the solemn enquiries, and may we with
   truthful hearts search and look and give earnest heed.

   I shall apply the text to three characters--first to the Christian;
   secondly, to the awakened conscience; and, thirdly, to the careless
   sinner. My sermon is not intended to instruct your minds, but to stir
   up your hearts.

   I. Addressing myself to the CHRISTIAN, I shall use the text in three
   senses while I expostulate with you in regard to sin, to worldly
   pleasure, and to carnal trust.

   1. And first, O true Believer, called by Grace and washed in the
   precious blood of Christ, "What have you to do in the way of Egypt, to
   drink the waters of the muddy river?" What have you to do with the sins
   which once delighted you, and which now find happy pastime for the
   world? What have you to do with your deceitful lusts, with the
   indulgence of your old passions? What have you to do to follow the
   multitude which do evil? Believer, answer these questions especially if
   you have lately fallen into sin, if you have backslidden in heart, and
   if you have been led to backslide in your ways. Answer me, what have
   you to do--what excuse have you for what you have done? Do you see
   yonder a gang of men, dragging, like so many beasts of burden, a
   tremendous load? Listen to the cracking of the whip of the overseer! Do
   you see how they pull and strain till it seems as if their every sinew
   would snap? Do you observe them as the hot sweat stands upon their
   brow? Look at them! Let the gang stay awhile, while we examine them. I
   can understand why all these are oppressed with sore labor, for I can
   see the brand of the slave owner upon their backs. Their flesh is
   scarred. But what does this mean? There is one among them who is not a
   slave--a man who is free! What does this mean? How is it that he does
   the slaves' work--that he bends his back to the task master's yoke,
   when he is a free man? Can you answer the question? Let me ask it in
   your own case. I see the sinner burdened in the ways of evil; I see him
   pulling iniquity as though it were with a cart rope, laying hold with
   both his hands on everything that is full of iniquity. But what have
   you to do there? The slaves of Satan are but acting out their
   condition; but what have you to do, to be his slave, since you have
   been redeemed with blood and set free by power? Why, Man, you are no
   slave now you are a son of God! You are an heir of all things! You are
   joint-heir with Christ! What have you to do, then, in the service of
   sin and of Satan? Why do you follow these menial tasks? You will become
   a man who is to wear a crown in Heaven and who, even now, can read his
   title to it! Answer, Christian, and be ashamed and be confounded,
   because you are demeaning yourself in thus sinning against your own
   soul!

   A vision flits before my eyes. The Lord God has made a great feast;
   armies have met together; terrible slaughter has been the consequence.
   Men's arms have been red up to the very elbow in blood; they have
   fought with each other and there they lay, strewn upon the
   plain--thousands of bleeding carcasses. The vultures sniff the prey
   from far-off desert wilds--they fly, keen of scent. God has made a
   great feast for the fowls of heaven, and for the ravenous beasts of the
   earth. Listen to the whirring of their wings as they come in
   multitudes, for where the body is, there shall the vultures be gathered
   together. But what is that I see? I see a dove flying with the same
   speed as the vulture towards the carrion! O dove, what has brought you
   there in dangerous connection with your fierce enemies? Where are you
   going? Is there anything in that bloody feast that can content you?
   Shall your meek eyes glare with the fires of anger? Shall your fair
   white plumage be stained with gore, and will you go back to your
   dove-cot with your pinions bloody red? I appeal to you, my Hearers! Can
   you answer the question? Can you explain the strange vision? How is it,
   then, that I see you, Christian, going with sinners after evil? Is it
   your food? If you are a child of God, sin is no more food for you than
   blood is for doves! If you have been "begotten again unto a lively hope
   by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead," your peaceful soul
   will be as much out of element as a dove upon a battlefield! And the
   sight--the sightof sin will be as horrible to you as the sight of
   slaughter to that timid dove which even now flies itself with rapid
   wings to the cleft of the rock. Christian, I say, if you do as the
   worldling does, you go against your nature--against your newborn
   nature! To him it is not strange--should not the swine eat husks? Is it
   not his proper food? Should not the sinner love to sin? Is it not his
   very element? But what have you to do? What have you to do, quickened
   of the Spirit, and renewed in the image of Christ-- what have you to
   do?

   You have seen in Scripture a dreadful picture of a madman, where
   Nebuchadnezzar the king runs with oxen and eats grass till his hair has
   grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws. Is he not
   the pitiful picture of a backslider. For what is a Christian when he
   plunges into sin, but as one who makes himself like the beasts that
   perish, and who herds with the common--yes--and the unclean beasts of
   the earth? O Believer! If it is a pitiful thing to see a man make
   himself a beast, how much more lamentable to see a Christian make
   himself a worldling! "Come you out from among them; touch not the
   unclean thing." Why should the soul of my turtle dove be given up to
   its enemies? Why should the lamb flock with the wolves? Come out, I
   pray you--leave this stygian filth and be clean, you vessel-bearer of
   the Lord! Come forth from the midst of that plague land, where you can
   get nothing but the ashy hue of leprosy, and be clean! Today the Lord
   invites you; refuse not His invitation, but return, you backsliding
   children of men!

   The question, then, cannot be answered--because when a Christian goes
   into sin, he commits an inconsistent act-- inconsistent with the
   freedom which Christ has bought for him, and inconsistent with the
   nature which the Holy Spirit has implanted in him.

   Let us press forward. Christian, what have you to do with sin? Has it
   not cost you enough already? What? Man, have you forgotten the times of
   your conviction? If you have, my Brother, I have not. At the very
   mention of that word, I think I hear my chains rattling anew. Was there
   ever a bond-slave who had more bitterness of soul than I? Five years a
   captive in the dungeons of the Law, till my youth seemed as if it would
   turn into premature old age, and all the buoyancy of my spirit had been
   removed! O God of the spirits of all men! Most of all ought Ito hate
   sin, for surely most of all have I smarted beneath the lash of Your
   Law! And as I look round, knowing the experience of some of you, I can
   recall to my mind the stories you have told me; how when you had first
   felt your need of a Savior, you could not endure yourselves. Ah, there
   are those among you, who when you were under strong convictions of sin
   were ready to commit self-destruction! You prayed, but found no answer;
   you sought, but obtained no mercy; there were not creatures out of Hell
   more wretched than you were then! What? And will you go back to the old
   curse? Burnt child, will you play with the fire? What? Man, when you
   have already been torn in pieces by the lion, will you step a second
   time into his den? Have you not had enough of the old serpent? Did he
   not poison all your veins once, and will you play upon the hole of the
   asp, and put your hand upon the cockatrice den? Have you not seen
   enough of the leopards, and of the dragons, and will you step a second
   time into their dens? Oh, be not so mad! Be not so foolish! Did sin
   ever give you pleasure? Did you ever find any solid satisfaction in it?
   If so, go back to your old drudgery; go back, I say, and wear the chain
   again if you delight in it. But inasmuch as I know, and you know, that
   sin did never give you what it promised to bestow--inasmuch as it did
   delude you with lies, and flatter you with promises which were all to
   be broken--I pray you be not beguiled a second time! Be not a second
   time led into captivity--be free and let the remembrance of your
   ancient bondage forbid you to wear the chain again!

   There is yet another light in which to put the sin of the Believer. Let
   me repeat the question once again--"What have you to do in the way of
   Egypt, to drink the waters of the muddy river?" There is a crowd
   yonder. They have evidently assembled for some riotous purpose. They
   are attacking one man. There are very many of them. Oh, how they
   howl!-- oh, how they scream! They give Him no space to take His breath,
   no time to rest. Let me press through the throng and look at the Man. I
   know Him at once! He has a visage more marred than that of any other
   man. 'Tis He! It is the Crucified One, it is none other than Jesus, the
   Son of Man, the Savior of the world! Listen to the blasphemies which
   are poured into His ears! See how they spit in His face, and put Him to
   an open shame. Onward they bring Him, and you hear them cry, "Crucify
   Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" They are doing it--they have nailed Him
   to the Cross--yonder is a man with the hammer in his hand who has just
   now driven in the nails. Look round upon the mob. I can well comprehend
   why yonder drunkard, why yonder swearer, why the whoremonger, and the
   like of infamous notoriety should have joined in this treacherous
   murder; but there is one man there--I think I know his face--yes, I
   have seen him at the sacramental table, eating the flesh and drinking
   the blood of Christ! I have seen him in the pulpit saying, "God forbid
   that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." I
   have seen him on his knees in prayer, pleading what he called, "The
   precious blood." What have you to do in this counsel of the ungodly,
   this scene of sin without a parallel? "What are you doing here,
   Elijah?" In the name of love's own self, and of every holy thing that
   can ever pertain to a human heart-- what are you doing here? Are you
   sickened at heart at such a spectacle--a Christian crucifying Christ?
   That spectacle is one in which you have had a share! You, too, when you
   have backslidden and have sinned--you have "Crucified the Lord afresh
   and put Him to an open shame." Is there any other picture needed to set
   my text in the very strongest light? "What have you to do, O Christian,
   in the way of Egypt, to drink the water of the muddy river?" Cry
   revenge against yourself, because you have murdered your Lord, and
   opened His wounds anew!

   Have patience with me a moment while I turn my question over and
   revolve it yet again. Believer, you have rebelled against your God! You
   have done despite unto His Spirit! How will you answer for this? What
   will you say to a scoffing world when the quick eyes of the sinner
   shall detect you? What will you say when he hisses out, "There's your
   religion"? How will you answer him? You may pretend to do so, but do
   you not feel that he will get the best of the argument? If he goes his
   way, and says the religion of Christ is a lie and an hypocrisy, what
   will you have to say? Surely you will have to hide your face in
   confusion, and bemoan yourself because by this act you have given the
   enemy cause to blaspheme! And what will you say to Christ's Church when
   the Church shall say to you, "What are you doing here?" How will you
   excuse yourself for dishonest acts in business, or for any lust into
   which you have fallen? Will you tell the Church it was your old nature?
   But how will you answer when the Church says, "They who are in Christ
   have crucified the flesh and its affections and lusts"? More than this,
   how will you answer your own conscience? Will you use some Antinomian
   quibble, and apply that as a plaster to your wounds? No! If you are a
   child of God, you will have to smart for it. The waters of the muddy
   river may be sweet to the Egyptians, but they will be bitter to you.
   You shall have, as it were, a cauldron in your heart, if you drink
   thereof. Christians can never sin cheaply--they pay a heavy price for
   all the pleasures that they ever find in evil.

   And what will you say to your Lord and Master next time you are at the
   sacramental table? How will you dare to eat that bread and drink that
   wine? And when you are alone on your knees, and seeking fellowship with
   Him, how will you dare to seek it, when you have just now been
   following His enemies and imitating them? Ah, well may He say to you,
   "I have withdrawn Myself, I have gone, for you have grieved My Spirit,
   and vexed My soul." Believer, if Jesus Christ were here, what would you
   say to make an excuse for your sin? Surely you would be speechless as
   the dumb, and silent as the grave! Your tears might make confession;
   your shudders should deepen your guilt; but your lips could not make an
   apology. What have you to do, O Christian, in the way of evil? What are
   you doing here, O God's Elijah?

   I do not know whether there are any Christians here who have fallen
   into any special sin during this last week. If there are, Brothers and
   Sisters, open your heart to this question. It may be, my Master has
   sent me to you to nip your sin in its bud--to bring you back before you
   have backslidden very much. Turn, my Brothers and Sisters! He has not
   forgotten His love to you! Turn! His Grace is still the same! With
   weeping and with bitter lamentation, come to His footstool, and you
   shall be once more received into His heart, and you shall be set upon a
   rock again, and your goings shall be established.

   2. To take a different view of the subject. The pleasures of this world
   sometimes entice the people of God, and they find some degree of mirth
   therein. To those Christians who can find pleasure in the common
   amusements of men, this question may be very pertinently put--"What
   have you to do to drink the water of that muddy river?"

   I may be speaking to some Believers who try if they can, to keep their
   conscience quiet while they frequent places of amusement--they lend
   their sanction to things which are not spiritual, and sometimes even
   not moral. Now, I put this question to them. Christian, you have tasted
   of better drink than the muddy river of this world's pleasures can give
   you. If your profession is not a lie, you have had fellowship with
   Christ; you have had that joy which only the blessed spirits above, and
   the chosen ones on earth can know--the joy of seeing Christ and leaning
   your head upon His bosom. And do the trifles, the songs, the music, the
   merriment of this earth content you after that? Have you eaten the
   bread of angels, and can you live on husks? Good Rutherford once said,
   "I have tasted of Christ's own manna, and it has put my mouth out of
   taste for the brown bread of this world's joys." I think it should be
   so with you. Again, Believer, have you not already learned the
   hollowness of all earth's mirth? Turn to your neighbor and ask him.
   Does he frequent the theater? Does he go from one party of pleasure to
   another? Does he indulge in the common pleasures of the world? Ask him
   whether they have ever satisfied him! If he is a worldling, and is
   honest, he will say, "No." He will tell you that his soul pants after
   something better than fashion and dissipation can afford him. He will
   tell you, too, that he has drained that cup, and it is not the wine
   which he thought it was; that it excites for the moment, but leaves him
   weak, and miserable afterwards. What? Shall the parings and offal of
   this world's joys, suit the heir of Heaven?--You who profess to be of
   nobler birth, and to be brother to the angels--no--next akin to the
   eternal Son of God Himself--are you to wallow in this mire, and think
   it a soft and downy couch fit for a royal resting place? Get up,
   Believer! You are not lost to every sense of shame! Betray not yourself
   in seeking satisfaction wherein worldlings confess they have never
   found it.

   But let me ask you--will these pleasures yield to you any helps in your
   growth in Grace? You say the world is crucified unto you--will these
   pleasures help to crucify it? You have prayed that you may be made like
   Christ--will these things help to conform you to His image? Often do
   you cry, "Oh Spirit of God, purge out the old leaven from me." Will
   these help to purge out the old leaven? Unless you will fling the lie
   into the face of all your prayers, I pray you, shun these things! Fly
   at higher game than this. Let the mere hawk fly at the sparrow, but the
   eagle needs something nobler to be the object of its chase. If you were
   of the world, it would be right for you to love her; if she were your
   mother, you might nurse--but even then should not be satisfied with the
   breasts of her consolation. But you confess that not thisworld, but the
   nextis the mother of your soul! I pray you then, be not content with
   what this earth yields, but lift up your eyes, and expect your manna to
   spring not from the earth, but from Heaven, and may it drop into your
   hands!

   I can never understand that Christianity which alternately goes out to
   find joy in worldly amusements, and returns home to have fellowship
   with Christ. In the life of Madame Guyon, who, though professedly a
   Papist, one must always receive as being a true child of God, I have
   read an anecdote something to this effect. She had been invited by some
   friends to spend a few days at the palace of St. Cloud. She knew it was
   a place full of pomp and fashion and, I must add, also of vice. But
   being persuaded by her friend and being especially tempted with the
   idea that perhaps her example might do good, she accepted the
   invitation. Her experience afterwards should be a warning to all
   Christians. For some years that holy woman had walked in constant
   fellowship with Christ--perhaps none ever saw the Savior's face and
   kissed His wounds more truly than she had done. But when she came home
   from St. Cloud, she found her usual joy was departed-- she had lost her
   power in prayer; she could not draw near to Christ as she should have
   done. She felt in going to the lover of her soul as if she had played
   the harlot against Him. She was afraid to hope that she could be
   received again to His pure and perfect love, and it took some months
   before the equilibrium of her peace could be restored, and her heart
   could yet again be wholly set upon her Lord. He that wears a white
   garment must mind where he walks when the world's streets are so filthy
   as they are. He that has a thousand enemies must take care how he
   exposes himself. He who has nothing on earth to assist him towards
   Heaven should take care that he goes not where the earth can help
   towards Hell! O Brothers and Sisters, shun, I pray you, fellowship with
   this world, for the love of this world is enmity against God! Now some
   will say that I am an ascetic and wish you to become Puritans. I wish
   we were Puritans, most certainly, but I am no ascetic. I believe the
   Christian ought to be the happiest man in the world, and I believe he
   is, too! But I know that this world does not make him happy--it is the
   next world. I say that the Believer has a more sure and certain right
   to be a happy and a cheerful person than any other, but if only in this
   world we had hope, we would be of all people the most miserable,
   because this world yields no joy to us.

   3. For one minute I shall now take my text with regard to the Christian
   in a third sense. We are all tried with the temptation to put our trust
   in things which are seen, instead of things which are not seen. The
   Lord has said it--"Cursed is he that trusts in man, and makes flesh his
   arm," but, "blessed is he that trusts in the Lord." Yet Christians
   often do trust in man, and then our text comes home--"What have you to
   do in the way of Egypt, to drink the water of that muddy river?" "Some
   trust in horses, and some in chariots, but we will stay ourselves upon
   the Lord God of Israel." Look at yonder Believer; he trusts in Christ,
   and only in Christ for his salvation, and yet he is fretted and worried
   even though this is the day of rest, about something in his business.
   Why are you troubled, Christian? "Because of this great care," he says.
   Care? Have you care? I thought it was written, "Cast your burden upon
   the Lord." "Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and
   supplication, make known your needs unto God." Can you not trust God
   for temporals? "Ah," says the Believer, "I wish I could." Believer, if
   you cannot trust God for temporals, how dare you trust Him for
   spirituals? Surely if He is worthy to be trusted with eternity, He must
   be fit to be relied upon in time. Can you trust Him for your soul's
   redemption, and yet not rely upon Him for a few paltry pounds? Then
   what are you trusting in? "Oh, I wish I had a good friend," says one.
   "I wish I had someone at my back to help me." Indeed, Sir, what have
   you to do to go in the way of Egypt, to want to drink of that water? Is
   not God enough? Do you want another eye beside that of Him who sees all
   things? Do you want another arm to help besides Him who--

   "Bears the earth's huge pillars up,
   Is His heart faint? Is His arm weary? Is His eye grown dim? If so, seek
   another God; but if He is Infinite, Omnipotent, faithful, true and
   All-Wise, why do you go abroad so muck to seek another confidence? Why
   do you rake the earth to find another foundation, when this is strong
   enough and broad enough and deep enough to bear all the weight which
   you can ever build thereon? Christian, be single in your faith! Have
   not two trusts, but one! Believer, rest only on your God, and let your
   expectation be from Him!
   God bless you, Believer. Let this question ring in your ears this week,
   and if you are tempted to sin, or to worldly pleasure, or to casual
   trust, think you see your minister, and that you hear him saying in
   your ears--"What have you to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the
   waters of the muddy river? Or what have you to do in the way of
   Assyria, to drink the waters of Euphrates?"

   II. I now come to the second part of my subject. Let not our friends
   grow dreary. I shall be brief on the matter that remains--that the Word
   may be felt.

   CONVICTED SINNER, I hope I have some such here. Some of those precious
   ones of God, whose eyes are bejeweled with the tears of penitence, and
   whose hearts are like the fragrant spices, which when broken, send out
   a sweet perfume. And so, my Friend, you feel your lost estate. God's
   Holy Spirit has kindly looked upon you, and begun a good work in your
   soul. And yet during the past week, you have fallen into your old sin.
   Ah, ah, smarting and yet sinning; wounded and yet rebelling! Pricked
   with the ox-goad, and yet kicking against the pricks! It is hard for
   you! It is hard for you! To sin with a steeled conscience is easy, but
   to sin when conscience is raw, is hard, indeed! You have a hard task;
   you have to go on in sin, and tread its thorny path, when your feet are
   tender, having just been burned in the fire! And what was the cause of
   your sin, after all? Was it worth sinning for--to grieve your
   conscience and vex the Holy Spirit? I have heard of a man who had just
   begun the Christian life, and he had some months of sorrow, owing to a
   hasty temper. His neighbor had let some of his cattle stray into the
   field; he asked him to fetch them out again, and mend the fence. His
   neighbor would not, and he flew into such a passion with him, that
   afterwards he sat down and cried! Said he, "Why, if all the cows in the
   field were sold, and I had lost the money, they were not worth the
   bother I made about them, nor worth one moment of the grief which I
   have to suffer." Oh, what fools we all are! Let us, however, write
   ourselves fools in capital letters if when conscience is tender, we yet
   go and do the very thing which we hate, and choose the very cup which
   was so bitter to our taste, so nauseous to us just now!

   And then, convicted Sinner, another question. You are under conviction
   of sin, and you have been lately--as it is a festive season--you have
   been frequenting the dance hall, or the theater. Now these are
   amusements for worldlings. Let them have them; I would not prevent them
   for a moment; let every man have his own amusement and his own joy. But
   what is this to you? What have you to do with it? Why, you know you
   thought the place would fall down while you were sitting there! What
   business had you there? Suppose the devil had come in to take one of
   his own away, and had taken you? He might have been forgiven for his
   mistake--for he found you on his grounds! You were trespassing, and
   therefore if the old Giant Grim had taken you away to Despair's Castle,
   who could have blamed him? Were you not for the time in his territory?
   Had he not, therefore, a right to do as he would with you? But you who
   have a tender conscience, how could you be merry there--listening to
   light music while you had a heavy heart? I never like to see a
   newly-made widow at a wedding, and I do not like to see a convicted
   sinner where others are making merry. When you have joy in your heart,
   you may join with the kindred sympathy of other men's joys; but while
   your soul is bleeding, what a mockery, what a farce it is for you to be
   pretending to find joy in the very thing which has given you the pain!
   You have heard the old and oft-repeated story of the celebrated clown
   who was under conviction of sin. He went to a certain doctor, and told
   him he was exceeding melancholy, and he wished that he could advise him
   something that would cheer his spirits. The doctor prescribed for him
   some remedies, but they failed. He went at last to a celebrated popular
   preacher--who ought not to have been a preacher, for he did not
   understand the Gospel at all--and he, fool that he was, said to the
   poor man, "Well, I do not know what will cheer you up, but I should say
   if you were to go and see the tricks and antics of such-and-such a
   person, the clown at such-and-such a theater, if anything would make
   you merry, that would." "Alas, Sir," said he, "I am that man myself!"
   So strange must have been his position, making others roar with
   laughter while he himself was roaring with terror! And yet this is just
   your position, convicted Sinner, if you can find merriment in the
   world! Let other men have it; it is not the place for you--stand aloof
   from it, and go not there.

   And then, again, take care, convicted Sinner, that you do not trust in
   yourself in any degree. What have you to do to go to Egypt to drink the
   waters of the muddy river? Your works have ruined you! How can they
   save you? Your works have damned you! How can they wipe out the
   sentence of damnation? Fly to Christ, fly to the flowing wounds, and to
   the open heart. There is hope for you there! But at the foot of Sinai
   there is thunder and fire and smoke; and if Moses did exceedingly fear
   and quake, how much more should you, when the mountain seems as though
   it would roll upon you and crush you, and bury your spirit in eternal
   destruction? God help you, convicted Sinner, never to go in that way of
   Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihon--for these things are not for you.

   III. Lastly, to any here present who are CARELESS. I have a hard task,
   and but a few moments for the attempt to bring a reasonable question to
   unreasonable men. You tell me, Sirs, that you love the vanities of this
   world, and that they content you. I look you in the face and remind you
   that there have been many madmen in this world besides yourselves! Yet
   as there is some spark of reason left, let me see if I can kindle a
   flame of thought therewith. Sinner, God is angry with the wicked every
   day. What have you to do with joy? You are already condemned because
   you believe not on the Son of God! What have you to do with peace--a
   condemned man dancing in his cell at Newgate with chains about his
   wrists? You're a dying man; you may drop down dead in this Hall! What
   have you to do with merriment? You! If you were sure you should live a
   week, you might spend six days if you would, in sin; but you are not
   sure you will live an hour! What have you to do with sin and its
   pleasures? God is furbishing His sword today; it is sharp and strong as
   the arm which shall wield it. That sword is meant for you unless you
   repent! What have you to do with taking your ease and eating and
   drinking and being happy? That man yonder, with his neck in the noose,
   and his feet upon the treacherous drop--is it fitting that he should
   sing songs and call himself a happy man? This is your position, Sir!
   Sinner, you are standing over the mouth of Hell upon a single plank,
   and that plank is rotten! Your hope is as the spider's web--your
   confidence is as a dream! Death follows you, not as the slow-paced
   footman, but on horseback, the skeleton rider on his pale horse is
   rattling after you with tremendous speed! And ah, Hell follows him!
   Hell follows Death--the sure and certain consequence of sin! And what
   have you to do with making merry? Have you made appointments for the
   next week? Keep them if you dare, if in the name of God you can make it
   consistent; if you can make it consistent with reason to be busy about
   the body, and neglect the soul, to fritter away that time on which
   eternity depends, then go and do it! If it is a wise thing for you to
   leap before you look; if it is a prudent thing to damn your soul
   eternally for the sake of a few hours of mirth--say so--go and do it
   like an honest man! But if it is unwise to forget forever and only
   think of today;if it is the strongest madness to lose your life to gain
   the mere apparel with which the body is to be covered; if it is madness
   to fling away jewels, and hoard up dust as you are doing, then I pray
   you, I beseech you, answer the question--"What have you to do in the
   way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor?" Turn, turn! "For why will
   you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him
   who dies, says the Lord God: therefore turn yourselves, and I will love
   you." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his
   thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon
   him. And to our God, for He will abundantly pardon."

   Lo, the Cross is lifted up before you! Jesus bleeds! His wounds are
   streaming with His life-blood! Yes and with yours, too! Believe,
   Sinner! Trust Him--with your whole heart trust Him! Come to Him, come
   to Him! With weeping and supplication I pray you come! Knowing the
   terrors of the Lord, I beseech you! As one who pleads for his own life,
   I plead with you! By Heaven, by Hell, by time flying so swiftly, by
   eternity approaching so silently, by death, by judgment, by the awful
   soul-reading eyes, by the rocks whose stony bowels shall refuse your
   prayer to fall upon you, by the trumpet, and the thunders of the
   Resurrection morning, by the pit of Hell and by the flame--I pray you
   think, and believe in Him who is the Lamb of God which takes away the
   sins of the world!

   God bless my words to you through His Spirit's energy, and He shall
   have the praise forever and ever! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                           The New Park Street Pulpit

   THE CHRIST OF PATMOS

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 27, 1861, BY THE REV. C.
   H. SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "Andl turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And being turned, I
   saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven
   candlesticks One like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down
   to the feet and girt about the chest with a golden band. His head and
   hair were white like wool, as white as snow; and His eyes were as a
   flame offre; His feet like unto fine brass, as if refined in a furnace;
   and His voice as the sound of many waters. And He had in His right hand
   seven stars: and out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and His
   countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. And when I saw
   Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me,
   saying unto me, Fear not; I am the First and the Last." Revelation
   1:12-17.

   THE Lord Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Having
   neither beginning of days, nor end of years, He is a priest forever
   after the order of Melchisedek. But the views which His people have of
   Him are extremely varied. According to our progress in Grace, will be
   the standpoint from which we view the Savior; and according to the
   position from which we look at Him, will be what we see of Him. Christ
   is the same, but Believers do not all see Him in the same clear light,
   nor do they all approach to the same nearness of fellowship. Some only
   know His offices; others only admire His Character; far fewer commune
   with His Person; but there are some who have advanced still
   further--who have come to feel the unity of all the Church with the
   Person of Christ Jesus their Lord. Under the Old Testament, the lesson
   to be taught was the same, but the capacity of the learners differed,
   and hence the mode of teaching the lesson differed also. A poor man,
   under the Jewish dispensation, was the type of an uninstructed
   Christian; the rich man was the picture of the well-taught Believer.
   Now, the poor Jew brought a turtle dove or two young pigeons (Lev
   1:4-11). The necks of these were wrung, and they were offered. The poor
   man in that was only taught this lesson--that it was only by death and
   blood that his sin could be put away. The richer Israelite who had it
   within his power, brought a bullock (Lev 1:3-9). This bullock was not
   only slain, but it had to be cut in pieces; the legs, the fat, the
   innards were washed in water, and all these were laid in special order
   upon the altar. This was to teach him even as Christ now teaches the
   intelligent and instructed Believer, that there is within the mere act
   of shedding blood an order and a fullness of wisdom which only advanced
   Believers can perceive. The scapegoat taught one truth, the paschal
   lamb another; the showbread set forth one lesson, the lighting of the
   lamps another. All the types were intended to teach the one great
   mystery of Christ manifest in the flesh and seen of angels. But they
   taught it in different ways, because men in those times, as now, had
   different capacities, and could only learn a little at a time. As it
   was under the Old Testament, it is under the New. All Christians know
   Christ, but they do not all know Him to the same degree and in the same
   way. There are some Believers who view Christ as Simeon did. Simeon saw
   Him as a Baby. He took Him up in his arms, and was so overjoyed, that
   he said, "Lord, now let Your servant depart in peace according to Your
   word."

   You know how, in the Church of England, that Song of Simeon is chanted
   every Sabbath, as if it were true that many of the worshippers had
   never gotten further than that--to know Christ as a baby--a Savior whom
   they could take up in their arms, whom they could apprehend by faith
   and call their own. There is an advance, however, upon that experience
   when not only can we take Christ up, but we can see Christ taking us
   up; when we can see not only how we apprehend Him by faith, but how He
   apprehended us of old in the Everlasting Covenant, and took up the seed
   of Abraham, and was made in their likeness, that He might redeem their
   souls. It is a great joy to know Christ, though it is but only the
   infant consolation of Israel. It is a happy privilege to be permitted
   with the Easterns to bring our gold, frankincense and myrrh, and
   worship Christ, the newborn King. This, however, is but a lesson for
   beginners;it is one of the first syl- lables of the schoolbook of
   Divine Grace. To take Christ up in our arms is the sure pledge of
   salvation, but at the same time it is but the dawn of heavenly light in
   experience.

   But, my dear Brothers and Sisters, the disciples of Jesus knew Christ
   in a higher degree than Simeon--for they regarded Him not simply as the
   Incarnate One--but as their Prophet and Teacher. They sat at His feet;
   they heard His words; they knew that never man spoke like that Man.
   Under His teaching they were led on to high degrees of knowledge. He
   gave to them the Divine texts from which, when the Spirit had
   descended, they drew sacred lessons which they taught the multitude.
   They knew more, I say, of Christ than Simeon--Simeon knew Him as One
   whom he could take hold of by faith, and who would make glad his eyes;
   but the disciples knew Him as One who taught them--not merely saved
   them--but instructed them. There are hundreds of Believers who have got
   as far as this. Christ is to them the great Teacher of Doctrine, He is
   the great Expositor of God's will and Law, and they look up to Him with
   reverence as the Rabbi of their faith. Yes, but there was one of the
   disciples at least who knew Jesus Christ even better than this! There
   was one chosen out of the twelve, as the 12 had been chosen out of the
   rest, who knew Christ as a dear Companion, and as a sweet Friend. There
   was one who knew His bosom as affording a pillow for his weary head,
   one who had felt His heart beat close to his cheek--one who had been
   with Him on the Mountain of Transfiguration and had enjoyed fellowship
   with the Father, through His Son Jesus Christ. Now I fear that those
   who advance as far as John did are not very many. They are doctrinal
   Christians, and thus they have made an advance upon those who are only
   trusting Christians, and not more. But John had taken a wonderful
   stride before his fellow men, when he could claim Christ as being dear
   to him, the Companion of his life, the Friend of his days. May the Lord
   teach each of us more and more how to walk with Jesus and to know His
   love!

   But, Brothers and Sisters, there was one who comprehended Christ Jesus
   fully as well as the beloved disciple. 'Twas Mary. She knew Him as One
   who had been born in her, and born of her. Blessed is that Christian
   who can say that Christ is formed in him, the hope of glory, and who
   has come to look not at Christ as only on the Cross, but as Christ in
   his own soul, who knows that he, himself, as truly bears the Savior
   within him as ever did his Virgin Mother--who feels that in him, too,
   by the Holy Spirit, Christ is conceived; that in him, the Nature of
   Christ, that Holy Thing which is born of the Holy Spirit, is ripening
   and maturing till it shall destroy the old man, and in perfect manhood
   shall be born into eternal life. This, I say, even eclipses John's
   knowledge, but it is not perhaps the highest of all! Further than this
   we will not venture this morning. At some other time, when our eyes are
   more enlightened, we may take a glimpse of a yet more excellent glory.

   Dear Friends, you who love the Savior, wish for nothing so much as to
   see more and more of Him! Your desire is that you may see Him as He is,
   yet I can well conceive, if you might indulge your wishes, you would
   wish that you had seen Him as He was transfigured. Do you not look back
   almost with envy upon those three favored ones who went up to the top
   of Tabor, and were there overshadowed when His garment became whiter
   than any fuller could make it, and there appeared unto Him, Moses and
   Elijah talking with Him? You need not envy, for you know how they were
   overpowered with the sight, and "were heavy with sleep." You, too,
   would sleep if you had but the same strength as they, and had to gaze
   upon the same surpassing Glory. I know, too, you have wished that you
   could have seen Him in the Garden ofGeth-semane. Oh, to have seen that
   agony, to have heard those groans, to have marked that bloody sweat as
   it fell in clots to the frozen ground! Well might you envy those who
   were chosen to keep the sacred vigil, and to have watched with Him one
   hour. But you will remember that they slept. "He found them sleeping
   for sorrow." With your powers of endurance--if you had no more than
   they--you, too, would sleep. As in the Transfiguration so in that agony
   and bloody sweat there was a sight which eyes can never see--because
   there was a Glory and a shame which man can never comprehend.

   But perhaps some of you have longed and wished that you had seen Him on
   the Cross. Oh, to have beheld Him there, to have seen those hands
   nailed "to fix the world's salvation fast," and those feet nailed to
   the wood as though He tarried to be gracious, though the world waited
   long in coming. Oh, to have seen that mangled naked body, and that
   pierced side! John, you who did see and bear witness, we might well
   envy you! But, oh, my Brothers and Sisters, why should we? Why should
   we? For have we not seen by faith all of Christ, without that horror
   which must have passed over the beholders, and which did pass over His
   mother when a sword also pierced through her own heart, because she saw
   her son bleeding on the tree? Oh, how delightful it must have been to
   have beheld the Savior on the morning of the Resurrection!--to have
   seen Him as He rose with new life from the chambers of the dead, to
   have beheld Him when He stood in the midst of the disciples, the doors
   being shut and said, "Peace be unto you!" How pleasant to have gone to
   the top of the mountain with Him, and to have seen Him as He ascended,
   blessing His disciples, a cloud receiving Him out of their sight!
   Surely we might well desire to spend an eternity in visions like these!
   But permit me to say that I think the picture of our text is preferable
   to any, and if you have desires after those I have already mentioned,
   you ought to have far more intense longings to see Christ as John did
   in this vision, for this is, perhaps, the most complete, the most
   wonderful, and at the same time, most important manifestation of
   Christ, that was ever seen by human eyes.

   There will be two things which will take our attention this morning.
   The first briefly, namely, the importance of this vision to us, and
   then, secondly, the meaning of the vision.

   I. THE VALUE OF THIS VISION TO US.

   Some may be inclined to say, "The preacher has selected a very curious
   passage of Scripture; one that may tickle our fancy, but that can be of
   no spiritual benefit to us." My Friends, you labor under a very great
   mistake, and I trust I may convince you of that in a minute or two.
   Remember that this representation, this symbolic picture of Christ, is
   a representation of the same Christ who suffered for our sins.
   Strangely diverse as it may seem to be, yet here we have the very same
   Christ. John calls Him the Son of Man, that sweet and humble name by
   which Jesus was so known to describe Himself. That He was the same
   identical Person is very clear, because John speaks of Him at once as
   being like unto the Son of Man, and I think he means that he perceived
   in His majesty, a likeness to Him whom he had known in His shame. There
   was not the crown of thorns, but he knew the brow. There was not the
   mark of the wounds; perhaps the seven stars had taken the position of
   the prints of the nails, but he knew the hands for all that. As in our
   new bodies, when we rise from the tomb, we shall no doubt know each
   other--though the body which shall rise will have but faint resemblance
   to that which is sown in the tomb, for it will be a miraculous and
   marvelous development in flower of the poor withered thing that is but
   the buried seed. But I doubt not that I shall be able to recognize your
   visage in Heaven because I knew your countenance on earth; so did John
   discover, despite the glories of Christ, the identical Person whom he
   had seen in abasement and woe. Christian, look with reverence there.
   There is your Lord, the Christ of the manger, the Christ of the
   wilderness, the Christ of Capernaum, and Bethsaida, the Christ of
   Gethsemane, the Christ of Golgotha is there, and it cannot be
   unimportant for you to turn aside to see this great sight!

   Further, this picture represents to us what Christ is now, and hence
   its extreme value. What He was when He was here on earth is
   all-important to me, but what He is now is quite as much a matter of
   vital consequence. Some set exceedingly great store by what He shall be
   when He comes to judge the earth in righteousness, and so do we. But we
   really think that Christ in the future is not to be preferred to a
   knowledge of Christ in the present; for we want to know today, in the
   midst of present strife, and present pain, and present conflict, what
   Jesus Christ is now. And this becomes all the more cheering because we
   know that what He is now we shall be--for we shall be like He is when
   we shall see Him as He is.

   And yet a third consideration lends importance to the topic of our
   text, namely, that Christ in the text is represented as what He is to
   the Churches. You will perceive He is portrayed as standing in the
   midst of the golden candlesticks, by which we understand the Churches.
   We love to know what He is to the nations; what He is to His peculiar
   people, the Jews; what He will be to His enemies; but it is best for
   us, as members of Christian Churches, to know what He is in the
   Churches, so that every deacon, elder and church member here should
   give earnest heed to this passage--for he has here pictured to him that
   Christ to whom the Church looks up as her great Lord and Hope--that
   Messiah whom every day she serves and adores!

   And I might add yet once more--I think the subject of our text is
   valuable when we consider what an effect it would have upon us if we
   really felt and understood it--we would fall at His feet as dead.
   Blessed position! Does the death alarm you? We are never so much alive
   as when we are dead at His feet. We are never so truly living as when
   the creature dies away in the Presence of the All-Glorious King. I know
   this, that the death of all that is sinful in me is my soul's highest
   ambition, yes, and the death of all that is carnal, and all that savors
   of the old Adam. Would that it would die. And where can it die but at
   the feet of Him who has the new life, and who, by manifesting Himself
   in all His Glory is to purge away our dross and sin? I only would that
   this morning I had enough of the Spirit's might so to set forth my Mas-
   ter, that I might contribute even in a humble measure to make you fall
   at His feet as dead, that He might be in us our All-in-All!

   II. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS VISION?

   "Take off your shoes, for the place whereon you stand is holy ground."
   If God manifest in a bush commands solemnity, what shall we say of God
   manifest in Christ, and manifest, too, after the most marvelous manner?
   The words of our text are symbols--they are not to be understood
   literally. Christ does not appear in Heaven under this literal form,
   but this is the appearance under which He was set forth to the
   intellect of John. John was not so benighted as to understand any of
   this literally; he knew that the candlesticks were not meant for
   candlesticks, but for the seven light-giving Churches. He knew that the
   stars were not stars, but ministers, and he understood right well that
   all the whole description through, it was the symboland the spirit of
   the vision he was to look to, and not to the literal words.

   But to begin--"And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, One like
   unto the Son of Man clothed with a garment down to the feet and girt
   about the chest with a golden band'" We have, first, in Christ as He is
   today, a picture of His official dignity, and of His royal honors.
   Clothed with a garment down to the feet. This was the robe constantly
   worn by kings--the garment which descended and left only the feet
   apparent. This was also the peculiar dress of the priest. A priest of
   the Jewish dispensation had the long flowing white robe which reached
   down to the ground and covered him entirely. Christ, then, in being
   thus clothed, asserts His Kingship and His eternal Priesthood. It may
   indicate the fact, too, that He has clothed Himself with righteousness.
   Though He was once naked, when He was the Substitute for naked sinners
   who had cast away the robe of their righteousness, He is naked no more;
   He wears that garment dipped in His own blood, woven from the top
   throughout by His own hands--He wears Himself that garment which He
   casts over the whole Church, which is His body. However, the main idea
   here is that of official dignity and position; and when you read of the
   golden band which was about the chest, it is a representation of how
   the high priest was girt. He was girt with a band or belt that had gold
   in it. The belts of the other priests were not of gold; that of the
   high priest's was mainly made of that precious metal, and it was girt
   about the chest--not at the waist--but across the breast as if to show
   that the love of Christ, or the place where His loving heart beat most,
   was just the spot where He bound firmly about Himself the garments of
   His official dignity; as if His love were the faithful belt of His
   loins; as if the affection of His heart always kept Him fast and firm
   to the carrying out of all the offices which He had undertaken for us.
   The picture is not difficult to imagine before your eyes; I only want
   the Christian mind to stop a minute and consider it. Come, Believer,
   you have a Lord to worship who is clothed today with supreme office!
   Come before Him, He can govern for you--He is King! He can plead for
   you--He is Priest! Come, worship HIM, HE is adored in Heaven! Come,
   trust Him--lo, at that golden band hang the keys of Heaven and death,
   and Hell. No more despised and rejected of men; no more naked to His
   shame; no more homeless, or friendless! His royal dignity ensures the
   obedience of angels, and His priestly merit wins the acceptance of His
   Father--

   "Give Him, my Soul, your cause to plead, Nor doubt the Father's Grace."

   Let His garment, and His robe compel your faith to trust your soul,
   yes, and your temporal affairs, too, wholly and entirely in His
   prevailing hands.

   You will perceive that there is no crown upon the head as yet--that
   crown is reserved for His Advent. He comes soon to reign, even now He
   is King--but He is a king rather with the band about His loins, than
   with the crown upon His head. Soon He shall come in the clouds of
   Heaven, and His people shall go forth to meet Him, and then shall we
   see Him "with the crown wherewith His mother crowned Him in the day of
   His espousals, and in the day of the gladness of His heart." Our soul
   longs and watches for the day when the many crowns shall be upon His
   head; yet even now, is He King of kings, and Lord of lords; even now is
   He the High Priest of our profession, and as such we adore and trust
   Him.

   "His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow." When the
   Church described Him in the Canticles, she said, "His locks are bushy
   and black as a raven's." How are we to understand this apparent
   discrepancy? My Brothers and Sisters, the Church in the Canticles
   looked forward--she looked forward to days and ages that were to
   come--and she perceived His perpetual youth; she pictured Him as One
   who would never grow old, whose hair would always have the blackness of
   youth. And do we not bless God that her view of Him was true? We can
   say of Jesus, "You have the dew of Your youth." But the Church of today
   looks backward to His work as complete; we see Him now as the Ancient
   of

   Eternal Days. We believe that He is not the Christ of merely 1800 years
   ago, but, before the daystar knew its place, He was One with the
   Eternal Father. When we see in the picture His head. and His hair white
   as snow, we understand the antiquity of His reign. "In the beginning
   was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." When
   all these things were not, when the old mountains had not lifted their
   hoary heads into the clouds, when the yet more hoary sea had never
   roared in tempest--before the lamps of Heaven had been lit, when God
   dwelt alone in His immensity, and the unnavigated waves of ether, if
   there were such, had never been fanned by the wings of the seraph, and
   the solemnity of silence had never been startled by the song of
   cherubim, Jesus was of old in eternity with God! We know how He was
   despised, and rejected of men, but we understand, too, what He meant
   when He said, "Before Abraham was, I AM." We know how He who died when
   but a little more than 30 years of age, was verily the Father of the
   everlasting ages, having neither beginning of days nor end of years.

   No doubt there is here coupled with the idea of antiquity, that of
   reverence. Men rise up before the hoary head and pay it homage; and do
   not angels, principalities, and powers bow before Him? Though He was
   made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, yet is
   He not crowned with Glory and honor? Do they not all delight to obey
   His behests, and lay their borrowed dignities at His feet? O Christian!
   Rejoice that you serve One so venerable, so worthy to be praised; let
   your soul join now in the song which rolls upward to His Throne, "Unto
   Him who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Alpha and the Omega,
   unto Him be glory, and honor, and dominion, and power, forever and
   ever. Amen."

   "His eyes like flames of fire" This represents Christ's oversight of
   His Church. As He is in the Church, the Ancient of Eternal Days, her
   Everlasting Father, and her Head to be reverenced, so is He in the
   Church, the Universal Overseer, the great Bishop and Shepherd of souls.
   And what eyes He has! How penetrating! "Like flames of fire." How
   discriminating! "Like flames of fire," which melt the dross and only
   leave the real metal. "Like flames of fire," He sees--not by light
   without--but His own eyes supply the light with which He sees! His
   knowledge of the Church is not derived from the prayers of the
   Churches, nor from her experience of her needs, nor from her verbal
   statements, He sees by no borrowed light of the sun, or of the
   moon--His eyes are lamps unto themselves. In the Church's thick
   darkness, when she is trampled down, when no light shines upon her, He
   sees her--for His eyes are "like flames of fire." Oh, what sweet
   consolation this must be to a child of God! If you cannot tell your
   Lord where you are, He can see you, and though you cannot tell what you
   really need, or how to pray, yet He cannot only see, but He can see
   with such discrimination, that He can tell precisely what your true
   needs are, and what are only fancies of an unsanctified desire. "His
   eyes like flames of fire." Why you are in darkness and you see no
   light--but He is the light that lights every man who comes into the
   world, and He sees by the light of His own Person all that goes on in
   you. I love that Doctrine of Christ's universal oversight of all His
   Church. You know there is an idea sometimes held out that the Church
   ought to have a visible head so that all matters may come by degrees
   through a hierarchy to some one man, that so one man knowing all
   things, may be able to guide the Church aright. An absurd because
   impossible idea! What man could possibly say, "I keep the Church. I
   water it, I watch it every moment." No, no, it must be this--"I the
   Lord do keep it. I will water it every moment lest any hurt it. I will
   keep it night and day." There is never a trial to the Church, there is
   never a pang she feels but those eyes of fire discern! Oh, think not
   you would rather view the eyes that once were fountains of tears; they
   wept for your sins, those sins are put away, it is better for you now
   that you should have One whose eyes are like flames of fire--not to
   perceive your sins-- but to burn them up; not merely to see your needs,
   but forever to fulfill your desires! Bow before Him, lay bare your
   heart, hope not to conceal anything. Think it not necessary that you
   should explain anything--He sees and He knows, for His eyes are like
   flames of fire.

   "And His feet were like fine brass, as if they were refined in a
   furnace." The head, you see, is reverent; the feet are blazing; the
   countenance is like the sun for glory; the feet like burning brass for
   trial. I think we may understand by this the Church of God on
   earth--those saints united to Christ who are the last of the body; the
   lower part who are in these times still treading the earth. Christ is
   in Heaven, His head is like "the sun that shines in its strength."
   Christ is on earth in the midst of His Church, and where His feet walk
   among the golden candlesticks, they walk in fire. They are like brass
   refined in a furnace. Now, we think that wherever Christ is, there will
   be the fire of trial to His Church. I would never believe that we were
   on the Lord's side if all men were on our side; if the words we speak
   were not constantly misrepresented, we could not imagine we spoke the
   Words of God; if we were always understood, we would think that we
   spoke not those things which the carnal mind cannot receive! No,
   Brethren, no--expect not ease! Expect not that you shall attain to the
   crown without suffering. The feet of Christ burn in the furnace, and
   you belong to His body--you do not belong to His head--for you are not
   in Heaven! You do not belong to His loins--for you wear not the golden
   band-- but you belong to His feet, and you must burn in the furnace!
   What a wondrous picture is this of Christ! Can you conceive it? You
   know that the robe came down even to His feet. Perhaps it covered them,
   but yet the glowing heat was such that through the robe might be seen
   the burning of the feet of brass. They were fine brass, too. They were
   metal that could not be consumed, a metal that would not yield to the
   heat. And so is Christ's Church! The old motto of the early Protestants
   was an anvil, because "the Church" they said, "is an anvil that has
   broken many hammers." The Evil One smites her--she does not reply
   except by suffering and in that--enduring with patience is her kingdom!
   In that suffering is her victory! In the patient possessing of her
   soul, in her glowing in the furnace, and not yielding to the fire, in
   her shining and being purified by its heat, and not giving way and
   being molten by its fury, in that is as greatly the triumph of Christ,
   as in that bright Countenance which is as "the sun shining in its
   strength." I rejoice in this part of my text. It comforts one's soul
   when cast down and deeply tried. "His feet were like fine brass, as if
   they were refined in a furnace." Let us say to our souls--

   "Must I be carried to the skies On flowery beds of ease; While others
   fought to win the prize, And sailed through bloody seas? No, I must
   fight if I would reign; Increase my courage, Lord! I'll bear the toil,
   endure the pain, Supported by Your Word."

   But I must pass on having no time this morning to dwell long on any one
   of these points. "Hs voice as the sound of many waters." And what is
   the voice of Christ? It is a voice which is heard in Heaven. You
   angels, bow before Him! They hear the command--"And at the name of
   Jesus every knee does bow of things in Heaven." It is a voice that is
   heard in Hell! You fiends, be still! "Vex not My anointed. Do My
   Prophets no harm." And there those Hell hounds tug at their chains,
   longing to escape from their imprisonment. It is a voice that is heard
   on earth, too; wherever Christ is preached, wherever His Cross is
   lifted up, there is there a voice that speaks better things than the
   blood of Abel! Sometimes we are apt to think that Christ's voice is not
   heard. We, His ministers, are such feeble creatures; if we have some
   few thousands to listen to our voice, yet how many forget! Amidst the
   storm of the battle cry, amidst political clamors, who can hope that
   the still small voice of the ministry should be heard? But it is heard!
   Across the Alleghenies, the voice of God's minister echoes; no evil
   thing shall in the end stand against the protests of God's servants;
   that which has made slavery tremble to its very soul, has been the
   constant protest of Christian ministers in England! And though the
   lying prophets of the Southern States have sought to undo the good, yet
   must they fall before the force of the Truth of God. There is not a
   humble village pastor standing in his pulpit to edify his feeble flock,
   who is not thereby exerting an influence on all generations yet to
   come. The minister of Christ stands in the midst of the telegraphic
   system of the universe, and works it according to Jehovah's will; all
   society is but a tremulous mass of jelly yielding to the influence of
   Christ's Gospel! I say not, Sirs, that there is any power in us;but
   there is power in Christ's Word when it peals through us in trumpet
   tones! There is power in Christ's Word to waken the dry bones that lie
   in many a valley. China shall hear! India must listen, the gods of,
   though they hear not, yet tremble! And feeble though we are in
   ourselves, yet does God make us mighty to the pulling down of
   strongholds, and He shall make us conquerors through His Divine Grace!

   If you could stand upon some exceedingly high mountain and could be
   gifted with enlarged ponders of vision, it would be a wonderful thing
   to be able to see the Atlantic and Pacific, the Indian ocean, and all
   the seas of the world at once. Suppose we are standing on the loftiest
   summit while a tremendous storm sweeps o'er the whole. The sea roars
   and the fullness thereof--yes, all the seas roar at once--the Atlantic
   echoes to the Pacific, the Pacific passes on the strain to the great
   Indian ocean, the Mediterranean cries to the Red Sea, the Red Sea
   shouts aloud to the Arctic, and the Arctic to the Antarctic! They clap
   their hands, and all at once there is a voice of many waters. Such is
   the voice of Christ's ministry on earth! It may seem to be feeble but
   it never is. There may be but a handful of men; they may be in the
   glens of Piedmont; they may be found upon the hills of Switzerland, and
   they may be dying for Christ--but their tramp is the tramp of
   heroes--their voice shakes the ages and eternity itself trembles before
   it! Oh, how consolatory to the heir of Heaven, and to the minister of
   Christ is the fact that His voice is as "the sound of many waters."

   "And He had in His right hand seven stars.." The Church should always
   see Christ as holding up her ministers. Ministers are very much in
   danger. Stars, or those things that seem to be stars, may be but
   shooting stars; they may be but meteors and flash awhile, right soon to
   melt away--but the ministers of Christ, though they are in danger, yet,
   if they are Christ's ministers, they are perfectly safe! He keeps the
   seven stars. The celestial Pleiades of the Gospel are always in
   Christ's hand. And who can pluck them from there? Church of God! Be it
   always your prayer that Christ would keep His ministers wherever they
   are--commend them to Him, and remember you have this as a kind of
   promise on which to ground your prayer. Brothers and Sisters, pray for
   us! We are but like twinkling stars at least, and He is as the sun that
   shines in its strength. Ask Him to give us light; ask Him to keep us
   always burning; ask Him that we may be as the pole-star guiding the
   slave to liberty; ask Him that we may be as the stars that make the
   southern cross--that when the mariner sees us, stars of Christ--he may
   see not each star individually but Christ manifested in beauteous form
   in the shining of all combined! This shall be my portion today. "The
   seven stars were in His right hand." How many would like to quench the
   light of God's ministers! Many criticize; some abuse, more still
   misrepresent. I can scarcely say a sentence in which I am not
   misconstrued, and I aver that I have often taken Cobbett's rule to
   speak not only so that I could be understood, but so that I thought I
   could not be misunderstood. And yet I am; but what does it matter? What
   does it mean? Still if the stars make not glad the eyes of men; if they
   are in the Lord's hand they ought to be satisfied. They should rest
   content and not trouble themselves. Loud let the waves roar, and let
   the envious sea send up her boisterous billows to quench the heavenly
   fires. Aha, O sea! Upon your tranquil couches sleep the stars. They
   look down upon your boisterous waves, and when you shall subside in
   calm, and the clouds that have risen from your vapor have passed away,
   be it the lone star or one of a constellation; it shall shine out yet
   again, and smile on your placid waters, till you, O ocean, shall mirror
   the image of that star, and you shall know that there is an
   influence--even in that envied spark which you have sought to
   quench--to lead your floods, and make them ebb, and make them flow so
   that you shall be servant to One whom you thought to put out forever!
   The seven stars are in Christ's right hand.

   I shall not detain you much longer, but we must finish this wonderful
   description. "Out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword." I have
   looked at one or two old pictures in which the artists of the olden
   times have tried to sketch this vision. I think it a most ridiculous
   thing to attempt! I conceive that this was never meant to be painted by
   any human being; nor can it be! But one old artist seems to have caught
   the very idea. He represents the breath of Christ in vapor, assuming
   the form of a two-edged sword very mighty and strong to cut in pieces
   His adversary. Now, as the Gospel of Christ must be heardbecause it is
   "the voice of many waters," so it must be felt, for it is "a two-edged
   sword;" and it is surprising how the Gospel really is felt, too! It is
   felt by those who hate it; they writhe under it; they cannot sleep
   after it; they feel indignant; they are horrified; they are disgusted
   and all that; but still there is a something within which does not let
   them remain quiet. That two-edged sword gets at the marrow of their
   bones. They wish they had never heard the Word though they can never
   heal themselves of the wound they have gotten by it. And to those who
   are blessed under the Word--what a two-edged sword it is to them! How
   it kills their self-righteousness! How it cuts the throat of their
   sins! How it lays their lusts dead at the feet of Jesus! How
   all-subduing is it in the Son! No sword of Gideon was ever so potent
   against a horde of Midianites as the sword that comes out of Jesus'
   lips against the hosts of our sins! When the Spirit of God comes in all
   His power into our souls, what death He works and yet what life--what
   death to sin, and yet what new life in righteousness! O holy sword! O
   breath of Christ! Enter into our hearts and kill our sins!

   It is delightful to see each day how the preaching of the Word is
   really the sword of God. I do sometimes retire from the pulpit
   sorrowing exceedingly, because I cannot preach as I would, and I think
   that surely the Master's message has had no effect among you. But it is
   perfectly marvelous how many here have been called by Divine Grace. I
   am each day more and more astonished when I see high and low, rich and
   poor, nobles and peasants, moral and immoral alike, subdued before this
   conquering sword of Christ! I must tell it to the Master's honor, to
   the Master's Glory, "His own right hand has gotten Him the victory."
   Here the slain of the Lord have been many! Here has He glorified
   Himself in the conversion of multitudes of souls!

   But to conclude. "Hs Countenance was as the sun that shines in its
   strength" How can I picture this? Go abroad and fix your eyes upon the
   sun if you can. Select the day of the year in which it is most in the
   zenith, and then fix your steady gaze upon it. Does it not blind you?
   Are you not overwhelmed? But mark--when you can gaze at that sun with
   undimmed eyes, you shall even then have no power to look upon the
   Countenance of Christ! What glory, what majesty, what light, what
   spotlessness, what strength!--"His Countenance was as the sun that
   shines in its strength." Well may the angels veil their faces with
   their wings; well may the elders offer vials full of sweet odors, that
   the smoke of their incense may be a medium through which they may see
   His face. And well may you and I feel and say--

   But, Jesus, turn Your face and look on us. It is midnight, but if You
   turn Your face, it must be noon, for Your face is as the sun! Thick
   darkness and long nights have overwhelmed our spirits, and we have
   said, "I am shut out from the Lord forever!" Jesus! Turn Your face and
   we are troubled no more! Sea of love where all our passions rest, You
   circle, where all our joys revolve! You center of our souls--shine and
   make us glad! This Sun, if we look at Him curiously to understand His
   Glory, may blind us--but if we look at Him humbly, that we may receive
   His Light, He will make our eyes stronger than they were, and shed
   sunlight into the thickest darkness of our despair!

   Oh, Church of God! What do you say to Him who is your Husband! Will you
   not forsake your own kindred and your father's house? Will you not long
   to know Him more and more, and shall it not be your cry today, "Mount
   Your chariot, Jesus! Mount Your chariot! Ride forth conquering and to
   conquer! Show Your face, and the darkness of superstition must melt
   before Your Countenance. Open Your mouth and let the two-edged sword of
   Your Spirit slay Your foes! Come forth, Jesus, bear the seven stars and
   let them shine where light was never been before! Speak, Jesus, speak!
   And men will hear You, for Your voice is as the sound of many waters.
   Come, Jesus come, even though You bring the burning heat with You, and
   we, as Your feet glow in the furnace! Come, look on us and burn up all
   our sins with those eyes of fire! Come, show Yourself and we will adore
   You, for Your head and Your hair are white like wool! Come, manifest
   Yourself, and we will trust You with Your garment, Your priestly
   garment. We will reverence You, and with Your golden band, we will
   adore You, King of kings and Lord of lords! Come then, that we may see
   You, that You may put the crown upon Your head, and the shout may be
   heard--Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The Lord God Omnipotent reigns!

   The humbler we must lie."
     __________________________________________________________________

                           The New Park Street Pulpit

   THE EARNEST OF HEAVEN

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 3, 1861, BY THE REV. C.
   H. SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "That Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance."
   Ephesians 1:13,14.
   SO then, Heaven, with all its glories, is an inheritance! Now, an
   inheritance is not a thing which is bought with money, earned by labor,
   or won by conquest; if any man has an inheritance, in the proper sense
   of that term, it came to him by birth; it was not because of any
   special merit in him, but simply because he was his father's son, that
   he received the property of which he is now possessed. So is it with
   Heaven. The man who shall receive this glorious heritage will not
   obtain it by the works of the Law, nor by the efforts of the flesh; it
   will be given to him as a matter of most gracious right, because he has
   been "begotten again unto a lively hope, by the Resurrection of Jesus
   Christ from the dead," and has thus become an heir of Heaven by blood
   and birth. They who come unto Glory are sons. Is it not written, "The
   captain of our salvation brings many sons unto Glory"? They come not
   there as servants; no servant has any right to the inheritance of his
   master; let him be ever so faithful, yet he is not his master's heir.
   But because you are sons--sons by God's adoption, sons by the Spirit's
   regeneration--because by supernatural energy you have been
   born-again--you become inheritors of eternal life, and you enter into
   the many mansions of our Father's house above! Let us always
   understand, then, when we think of Heaven, that it is a place which is
   to be ours, and a state which we are to enjoy as the result of
   birth--not as the result of work. "Except a man is born-again, he
   cannot see the Kingdom of God;" that Kingdom being an inheritance, but
   until he has the new birth, he can have no claim to enter it. But is it
   possible for us, provided that Heaven is our inheritance, and we are
   God's children--is it possible for us to know anything whatever of that
   land beyond the flood? Is there power in human intellect to fly into
   the land of the hereafter, and reach those islands of the happy where
   God's people rest eternally in the bosom of their God? We are met at
   the outset with a rebuff which staggers us--"Eye has not seen, nor ear
   heard, neither has entered into the heart of man, the things which God
   has prepared for them who love Him."

   If we paused here, we might give up all idea of beholding from our
   houses of clay that goodly land and Lebanon; but we do not pause, for
   like the Apostle, we go on with the text and we add, "But He has
   revealed it unto us by His Spirit." It is possible to look within the
   veil! God's Spirit can turn it aside for a moment, and bid us take a
   glimpse--though it is but a distant one--at that unutterable Glory!
   There are Pisgahs even now on the surface of the earth, from the top of
   which the celestial Canaan can be beheld; there are hallowed hours in
   which the mists and clouds are swept away, and the sun shines in its
   strength and our eyes, being freed from their natural dimness, behold
   something of that land which is very far off, and glimpse a little of
   the joy and blessedness which is reserved for the people of God
   hereafter! Our text tells us that the Holy Spirit is the earnestof the
   inheritance, by which I understand that He is not only the pledge, for
   a pledge is given for security, but when the thing pledged is given,
   then the pledge itself is restored--but He is an earnest, which is a
   pledge and something more. An earnest is a part of the thing itself--it
   is not only a pledge of the thing for security-- but it is a foretaste
   of it for present enjoyment. The word in the Greek has a stronger force
   than our word, "pledge." Again I repeat it--if I promise to pay a man
   something, I may give him land or property in pledge; but if I pay him
   a part of the sum which I have promised, that is more than a pledge--it
   is an earnest, because it is a part of the thing itself.

   So the Holy Spirit is a pledge to God's people. Inasmuch as God has
   given them the Graces of the Spirit, He will give them the Glory that
   results from there. But He is more--He is a foretaste--He is a sweet
   ante past of Heaven, so that they who possess the Spirit of God,
   possess the first tastes of Heaven; they have reaped the first fruits
   of the eternal harvest! The first drops of a shower of glory have
   fallen upon them; they have beheld the first beams of the rising sun of
   eternal bliss; they have not merely a pledge for security--they have an
   earnest--which is security and foretaste combined!

   Understand, then, for this is what I am about to speak of this morning;
   by the Holy Spirit there is given to the people of God even now,
   experiences, joys and feelings which prove that they shall be in
   Heaven--which do more, which bring Heaven down to them, and make them
   already able to guess in some measure what Heaven must be When I have
   enlarged upon that theme, I shall take the black side of the picture,
   and remark that it is possible for men on earth to have both a pledge
   and an earnest of those eternal pains which are reserved for the
   impenitent--a dark subject--but may God grant it may be for our profit
   and awakening.

   I. First, then, THERE ARE SOME WORKS OF THE SPIRIT WHICH ARE PECULIARLY
   AN EARNEST TO

   THE CHILD OF GOD, OF THE BLESSINGS OF HEAVEN.

   1. And first, Heaven is a state of rest. It may be because I am
   constitutionally idle, that I look upon Heaven in the aspect of rest
   with greater delight than under any other view of it, with but one
   exception. To let the head which is so continually exercised, for once
   lie still--to have no care, no trouble, no need to labor, to strain the
   intellect, or vex the limbs! I know that many of you, the sons of
   poverty and of toil, look forward to the Sabbath, because of the
   enjoyments of the sanctuary, and because of the rest which it affords
   you. You look for Heaven as Watts did in his song--

   "There shall I bathe my weary soul In seas of heavenly rest! And not a
   wave of trouble will roll Across my peaceful breast."

   "There remains therefore a rest to the people of God." 'Tis not a rest
   of sleep, but yet a rest as perfect as though they slept; it is a rest
   which puts from them all care, all remorse, all thoughts of tomorrow,
   all straining after a something which they have not as yet. They are
   runners no more--they have reached the goal! They are warriors no
   more--they have achieved the victory! They are laborers no more--they
   have reaped the harvest! "They rest," says the Spirit, "they rest from
   their labors and their works do follow them."

   My Beloved, did you ever enjoy on certain high days of your experience
   a state of perfect rest? You could say you had not a wish in all the
   world ungratified. You knew yourself to be pardoned, you felt yourself
   to be an heir of Heaven, Christ was precious to you. You knew that you
   walked in the light of your Father's Countenance; you had cast all your
   worldly care on Him, for He cared for you; you felt at that hour, that
   if death could take away your dearest friends, or if calamity should
   remove the most valuable part of your possessions on earth, yet you
   could say, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the
   name of the Lord." Your spirit floated along the stream of Divine Grace
   without a struggle; you were not as the swimmer, who breasts the
   billows, and tugs and toils for life; your soul was made to lie down in
   green pastures beside the still waters; you were passive in God's
   hands; you knew no will but His. Oh, that sweet day--

   "That heavenly calm within the breast, Was the sure pledge of glorious
   rest, Which for the Church of God remains, The end of cares, the end of
   pains."

   No, it was more than a pledge; it was a part of the rest itself. It was
   a morsel taken from the loaf of delights. It was a sip out of the wine
   vats of immortal joy! It was silver spray from the waves of Glory! So,
   then, whenever we are quiet and at peace--"For we who have believed do
   enter into rest," and have ceased from our own works, as God did from
   His-- when we can say, "O God, my heart is fixed, my heart is fixed; I
   will sing and give praise"--when our spirit is full of love within us,
   and our peace is like a river, and our righteousness like the wave of
   the sea--then we already know in some degree what Heaven is! We have
   but to make that peace deeper and yet more profound--lasting and more
   continual; we have but to multiply it eternally, and we have obtained a
   noble idea of the rest which remains for the people of God!

   2. But, secondly, there is a passage in the Book of Revelation which
   may sometimes puzzle the uninstructed reader, where it is said
   concerning the angels, that "They rest not day and night." As we are to
   be as the angels of God, it must undoubtedly be true in Heaven that in
   a certain sense, they rest not day nor night. They always rest, so far
   as ease and freedom from care is concerned; they never rest, in the
   sense of indolence or inactivity. In Heaven, spirits are always on the
   wing; their lips are always singing the eternal hallelujahs unto the
   great Jehovah that sits upon the Throne. Their fingers are never
   divorced from the strings of their golden Harps; their feet never cease
   to run in obedience to the eternal will--they rest, but they rest on
   the wing. As the poet pictured the angel as he flew--not needing to
   move his wings but resting, and yet darting swiftly through the ether,
   as though he were a flash shot from the eyes of God. So shall it be
   with the people of God eternally; always singing--never hoarse with
   music; always serving--never wearied with their service. "They rest not
   day and night." Have there ever been times with you, when you have had
   both the pledge and the earnest of this kind of Heaven? Yes, when we
   have preached once, and again, and again, and again in one day, and
   some have said to me, "But the constitution will be destroyed, the mind
   will be weakened; such toil as this will bring the man low." But we
   have been able to reply, "We do not feel it; for the more toil has been
   cast upon us, the more strength has been given." Have you ever known
   what it is to have the pastor's work in revival times, when he has to
   sit hour after hour, seeing convert after convert--when the time for
   one meal is past, and he has forgotten it? When the time for another
   meal has come and gone, and he has forgotten that--for he has been so
   busy, and so happy with his feast of ingatherings, that he has been
   like his Master, and has forgotten to eat bread and positively did not
   hunger and did not thirst--because the joy of the service had taken
   away all fatigue?

   Just at this hour, our missionaries are engaged throughout Jamaica in a
   sweltering sun, preaching the Word. Perhaps there has never been a more
   glorious revival than that which God has sent to that island--an island
   which has often been blessed, but which now seems to have received a
   sevenfold portion! One missionary, in writing home, says that he had
   not been in bed one night for a week, and he had been preaching all day
   and all night long. And I do not doubt but his testimony to you would
   be, that at least, during the first part of the labor it seemed not to
   be labor; he could sleep on the wing; he could rest while he worked!
   The joy of success took away from him the feeling of weariness; the
   blessed prospect of seeing so many added to the Church of God had made
   him forget even to eat bread! Well, then, at such a time as that, he
   had a foretaste of the rest and the service, too, which remains for the
   people of God! Oh, do not doubt, if you find comfort in serving
   God--and such comfort that you grow not weary in His service--do not
   doubt, I say, but that you shall soon join that hallowed throng, who
   "day without night circle His Throne rejoicing;" who rest not, but
   serve Him day and night in His temple! These feelings are foretastes,
   and they are pledges, too. They give some inklings of what Heaven must
   be, and they make your title to Heaven clear.

   3. But let us pass on. Heaven is a place of communion with all the
   people of God. I am sure that in Heaven they know each other. I could
   not perhaps just now prove it in so many words, but I feel that a
   Heaven of people who did not know each other, and had no fellowship,
   could not be Heaven! God has so constituted the human heart that it
   loves society, and especially the renewed heart is so made that it
   cannot help communing with all the people of God. I always say to my
   Strict Baptist Brothers and Sisters who think it a dreadful thing for
   baptized Believers to commune with the unbaptized, "But you cannot help
   it; if you are the people of God, you must commune with all saints,
   baptized or not! You may deny them the outward and visible sign, but
   you cannot keep from them the inward and spiritual Grace." If a man is
   a child of God, I do not care what I may think about him--if I am a
   child of God I do commune with him, and I must! We are all parts of the
   same body, all knit to Christ, and it is not possible that one part of
   Christ's body should ever be in any state but that of communion with
   all the rest of the body! Well, in Glory I feel I may say, we know we
   shall converse with each other. We shall talk of our trials on the way
   there--talk most of all of Him who by His faithful love and His potent
   arm has brought us safely through. We shall not sing solos, but in
   chorus shall we praise our King! We shall not look upon our fellows
   there like men in the iron mask, whose name and character we do not
   know--for there we shall know even as we are known! You shall talk with
   the Prophets; you shall have conversation with the martyrs; you shall
   sit again at the feet of the great Reformers and all your Brothers and
   Sisters in faith who have fallen before you, or who have rather entered
   into rest before you. These shall be your companions on the other side
   the grave! How sweet must that be! How blessed--that holy converse,
   that happy union, that general assembly, and Church of the first-born
   whose names are written in Heaven! Have we anything on earth like this?
   Yes, that we have in miniature; we have the pledge of this; for if we
   love the people of God, we may know that we shall surely be with them
   in Heaven! We have the earnest of it, for how often has it been our
   privilege to hold the highest and sweetest fellowship with our fellow
   Christians? Why, you and I have often said, "Did not our hearts burn
   within us while we talked together by the way, and Christ was with us
   both?" When we have been together, and the doors have been shut, has
   not the Master said, "Peace be unto you"? When love has gone from heart
   to heart, and we have all felt knit together as one man; when party
   names were all forgotten; when all jealousies and bickering were driven
   out of doors, and we felt that we were one family, and did all bear the
   same one name--having "one Lord, one faith and one baptism"? Then it
   was that we had the earnest, the foretaste, the first drink of that
   well of Bethlehem which is on the other side the pearly gate of the
   Celestial City!

   4. I have to be brief on each of these points, for there are so many to
   mention. Part of the bliss of Heaven will consist in joy over sinners
   saved. The angels look down from the battlements of the city which has
   foundations, and when they see prodigals return, they sing! Jesus calls
   together His friends and His neighbors, and He says unto then, "Rejoice
   with Me, for I have found the sheep which was lost." The angels begin
   the theme; the sacred fire runs through the host, and all the saints
   above take up the strain! Listen how they sing before the Throne, for
   it has just been whispered there of some Saul, "Behold, he prays."
   Listen how their songs get a new inspiration--how their eternal Sabbath
   seems to be Sabbatized afresh, and "the rest" becomes more joyous while
   they sing of new-born sons added to the family, and new names written
   in the register of the Church below! Part of the joy of Heaven, and no
   mean part of it, will be to watch the fight on earth, to see the
   Conqueror as He marches on, and to behold the trophies of His Grace and
   the spoils which His hands shall win. Is there anything like this on
   earth? Yes, there is when the Spirit of God gives to us joy over
   sinners saved!

   The other evening, when some of us sat in our Church Meeting, what joy
   was there, when one after another, those who had been plucked from the
   deepest Hell of sin made avowal of their faith in Christ! Some of us
   look back upon those Church Meetings as the best nights we ever spent;
   when first one, and then another has said, "I have been plucked as a
   brand from the burning," and the tale of Divine Grace has been told.
   And a third has stood up and said, "And I, too, was once a stranger
   wandering far from God, and Jesus sought me." Why, we have, some of us,
   gone home and felt that it was Heaven below to have been there! We have
   felt more joy over the conversion of others, we have sometimes thought,
   than even over our own! It has been such bliss while we have taken the
   hand of the convert, and the tears have been in both eyes--when the
   word of gratitude has been spoken, and Jesus Christ has been magnified
   by lips that once blasphemed Him! My Brothers and Sisters, though the
   whole world should censure me, I cannot help it, I must tell it to the
   praise of God's Free Grace and boundless love! There are hundreds here
   who are the most wonderful trophies of Grace that ever lived on earth!
   My heart has been gladdened, and your hearts have been gladdened, too.
   I must not keep it back! I will not! It was my Master's work! It is to
   His honor! It is to His praise! We will tell that on earth which we
   will sing in Heaven! They have washed their robes and made them white
   in the blood of the Lamb! And I do believe that the joy we felt when
   sinners have been converted, has been an earnest and a pledge that we
   shall be partakers of the same joy in Heaven!

   5. But to proceed. Here is another earnest of Heaven, which is rather a
   personal matter than one which is drawn from others. Did you ever get a
   knotty passage in Scripture which repeated itself in your mind so many
   times that you could not get rid of it? You borrowed some
   commentaries--you opened them, and you found that you might enquire
   within, but get no information whatever upon the particular subject you
   wished most to be informed about. Commentaries generally are books
   which are written to explain those parts of Scripture which everybody
   understands, and to make those that are dark more mysterious than they
   were before! At any rate, if that was the aim of the different authors,
   they have, most of them, admirably succeeded. I do not believe in great
   commentaries upon the whole Bible-- no one man can write such a book so
   that all of it shall be valuable. When a man gives his whole life to
   some one book, that one is worth reading; when a man has taken up, as
   some have done, the Epistle to the Romans, or the Book of Genesis, and
   gone on year after year toiling through it, then such a book has been a
   monument of labor, and has been valuable to the Christian student; but
   generally, large commentaries give little information where most it is
   needed.

   Well, disappointed, you have gone back to your Bible and have said, "I
   must not meddle with this text; it is above me." But it has repeated
   itself in your ears. You could not make it out. It has followed
   you--dogged your steps--it would not go away from you! At last you
   thought, "There was a message from God in that text." You prayed over
   it. While you were praying, some one word in the text seemed to lift
   itself right out of the connection, and shone upon you like a star! And
   in the light of that one word you could see the meaning of all the
   words that preceded and followed, and you rose up from your knees
   feeling that you knew the mind of the Spirit there, and had got a step
   forward in Scriptural knowledge. You remember the day, some of you,
   when you first learned the Doctrines of Grace. When we were first
   converted, we did not know much about them. We did not know whether God
   had converted us, or we had converted ourselves; but we heard a
   discourse one day in which some sentences were used, which gave us the
   clue to the whole system, and we began at once to see how God the
   Father planned, and God the Son carried out, and God the Holy Spirit
   applied! And we found ourselves, all of a sudden brought into the midst
   of a system of Truths which we might perhaps have believed before--but
   which we could not have clearly stated, and did not understand! The joy
   of that advance in knowledge, by God's Grace, was exceedingly great. I
   know it was to me. I can remember well the day and hour when first I
   received those Truths in my own soul--when they were burnt into me, as
   John Bunyan says--burnt as with a hot iron into my soul. And I can
   remember how I felt I had grown all of a sudden from a baby into a
   man--that I had made progress in Scriptural knowledge, from having got
   a hold, once and for all, of the clue to the Truth of God! Well, now,
   in that moment when God the Holy Spirit increased your knowledge, and
   opened the eyes of your understanding, you had the earnest that you
   shall one day see--not through a glass darkly--but face to face, and
   by-and-by you shall know the whole Truth, even as you are known!

   6. But further than this--to put two or three thoughts into one, for
   brevity's sake--whenever, Christian, you have achieved a victory over
   your lusts--whenever after hard struggling, you have had a temptation
   dead at your feet--you have had in that day and hour a foretaste of the
   joy that awaits you, when the Lord shall shortly tread Satan under your
   feet! That victory in the first skirmish, is the pledge and the earnest
   of the triumph in the last decisive battle. If you have overcome one
   foe, you shall overthrow them all; if the walls of Jericho have been
   dismantled, so shall every fort be carried, and you shall go up a
   conqueror over the ruins thereof. And when, Believer, you have known
   your security in Christ--when you have been able to say, "I know that
   my Redeemer lives, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that
   which I have committed to Him"--when you have felt sure that earth and
   Heaven might die, but His love could never pass away--when you have
   sung out the strong lines of Toplady--

   "My name from the Palms of His hands
   Eternity will not erase!
   Impressed on His heart it remains
   In marks of indelible Grace;"-- when you have put your foot upon the
   Rock and feel that you stood securely, knowing that you were safe in
   Him and because He lived, you must live also--in that hour you had the
   pledge and the foretaste of that glorious security which is yours, when
   you are beyond gunshot of the infernal fiend--beyond even the howling
   of the infernal dog! O Christian, there are many windows to Heaven
   through which God looks down on you; and there are some windows through
   which you may look up to Him. Let these past enjoyments be guarantees
   of your future bliss! Let them be to you as the grapes of Eshcol were
   to the Jews in the wilderness--they were the fruit of the land--and
   when they tasted them, they said, "It is a land that flows with milk
   and honey." These enjoyments are the products of Canaan; they are
   handfuls of heavenly flowers thrown over the wall; they are bunches of
   Heaven's spices, brought to you by angel hands across the stream.
   Heaven is full of joys like these. You have but a few of them; Heaven
   is full with them. There your golden joys are but as stones, and your
   most precious jewels are as common as the pebbles of the brook! Now you
   drink drops, and they are so sweet that your palate does not soon
   forget then; but there you shall put your lips to the cup and drink and
   never drain it dry. There you shall sit at the wellhead and drink as
   much as you can draw, and draw as much as you can desire. Now you see
   the glimmerings of Heaven as a star twinkling from leagues of distance;
   follow that glimmering, and you shall see Heaven no more as a star, but
   as the sun which shines in its strength!
   7. Permit me to remark yet once more, there is one foretaste of Heaven
   which the Spirit gives which it were very wrong for us to omit. And
   now, I shall seem, I dare say, to those who understand not spiritual
   mysteries, to be as one who dreams. There are moments when the child of
   God has real fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. You know what
   fellowship between man and man means. There is as real a fellowship
   between the Christian and Christ. Our eyes can look on Hm. I say not
   that these human optics can behold the very flesh of Christ, but I say
   that the eyes of the soul can here, on earth, more truly see Christ,
   after a spiritual sort, than ever eyes of man saw Him when He was in
   the flesh on earth! Today your head may lean upon the Savior's bosom;
   today He may be your sweet Companion, and with the spouse you may say,
   "Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth, for His love is better
   than wine." I pray you, think not that I rave! I speak what I know and
   testify what I have seen, and what many of you have seen and known,
   too. There are moments with the Believer, when, whether in the body or
   out of the body, he cannot tell--God knows--but this he knows--that
   Christ's left hand is under his head, and His right hand does embrace
   him. Christ has shown to him His hands and His side. He could say, with
   Thomas, "My Lord, and My God," but he could not say much more. The
   world recedes, it disappears; the things of time are covered with a
   pall of darkness. Christ only stands out before the Believer's view! I
   have known that some Believers, when they have been in this state,
   could say with the spouse, "Stay me with apples, comfort me with
   flagons, for I am love sick." Their love of Christ, and Christ's love
   to them, had overcome them. Their soul was something in the state of
   John, whom we described last Lord's-Day morning--"When I saw Him, I
   fell at His feet as dead." A sacred faintness overcomes my soul; I
   die--I die to prove the fullness of redeeming love, the love of Christ
   to me! Oh, these seasons! Talk not of feasts, you son of mirth! Tell us
   not of music, you who delight in melodious sound! Tell us not of wealth
   and rank, and honor, and the joys of victory. One hour with Christ is
   worth an eternity of all earth's joys! May I but see Him;may I but see
   His face; but behold His beauties--come winds, blow away all earthly
   joys I have--this joy shall well content my soul! Let the hot sun of
   tribulation dry up all the brooks; this fresh spring shall fill my cup
   full to the brim--yes, it shall make a river of delight, wherein my
   soul shall bathe! To be with Christ on earth is the best, the surest,
   the most ecstatic foretaste and earnest of the joys of Heaven! Do not
   forget this, Christian! If you have ever known Christ, Heaven is yours;
   and when you have enjoyed Christ, you have learned a little of what the
   bliss of futurity shall be!
   8. I do not doubt, also, that on dying beds men get foretastes of
   Heaven which they never had in health. When Death begins to pull down
   the old clay house, he knocks away much of the plaster, and then the
   Light of God shines through the chinks. When he comes to deal with our
   rough garment of clay, he pulls it to rags, first, and then it is we
   begin to get a better view of the robes of righteousness, the fair
   white linen of the saints with which we are always covered, though we
   know it not. The nearer to death, the nearer to Heaven, says the
   Believer! The more sick, the nearer he is to health; the darkest part
   of his night is, indeed, the dawning of the day--just when he shall
   think he dies--he shall begin to live! And when his flesh drops from
   him, then is he prepared to be clothed upon with his house which is
   from Heaven! Children of God in dying have said wonderful things which
   it were scarcely lawful for us to utter here. It needs the stillness of
   the robin--the solemn silence of the last hour--the failing eyes, the
   chinked utterances, the pale thin hands, to put a soul into their
   utterances. I remember when a Christian Brother, who had often preached
   the Gospel with me, was sorely sick and dying. He was suddenly smitten
   with blindness, which was a first monition of the approach of death,
   and he said to me--
   "And when you see my eye strings break, How sweet my moments roll; A
   mortal paleness on my cheek, But Glory in my soul."

   He said it with such emphasis, as a man who, but two or three minutes
   after, stood before his God, that I can never read those lines without
   feeling how well the poet must have foreseen a death like his! Yes,
   there are mystic syllables that have dropped from the lips of dying men
   that have been priceless pearls! There have been sights of Heaven seen
   in the midst of Jordan which these eyes cannot see until this breast
   shall be chilled in the dread and cold stream! All these things that we
   have mentioned are the fruits of "that Holy Spirit of promise, which is
   the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
   possession."

   II. A few minutes only--and, O God! Help us!--with all solemnity, I
   utter a few sentences upon THE BLACK REVERSE OF THE JOYOUS PICTURE I
   HAVE PRESENTED TO YOU.

   There is another world, for the wicked, as well as for the righteous.
   They who believe not in Christ are no more annihilated than those who
   do believe in Him. Immortality awaits us all. We die, but we die not.
   We live forever. And if we fear not God, that immortality is the most
   frightful curse that ever fell on creature--

   "To linger in eternal death, Yet death forever fly."

   Can we tell what that world of woe is? In vain do we talk to you about
   the pit of Hell that is bottomless, and the fire that never can be
   quenched, and the worm that dies not. These are but images, and images
   which are used so often that we fear they are almost threadbare in your
   estimation, and you will scarcely give an ear to them! Listen, then, if
   you are this day without God, and without Christ in the world. You have
   in yourself a few sparks of that eternal fire; you have already been
   singed by the vehement heat of that furnace which to some men has been
   so hot that even when they have passed it on earth, like
   Nebuchadnezzar's mighty men, they have fallen down, smitten by the heat
   thereof before they came within its flames! Ungodly, unconverted men
   have an uneasiness of spirit. They are never content; they need
   something. If they have that, they will need something more. They do
   not feel happy; they see through the amusements which the world
   presents to them; they are wise enough to see that they are hollow.
   They understand that the fair cheek is painted; they know that its
   beauty is but mere pretense. They are not befouled--God has awakened
   them! They are sensible enough to know that this world cannot fill a
   man's heart; they know that an immortal spirit is never to be satisfied
   with mortal joys. They are uneasy; they wish to kill time--it hangs
   heavy on their hands. They wish they could sleep 23 hours out of the
   four and twenty, or drink half the day. They try, if they cannot find
   some pleasure that may wake up their energies-- some new device, some
   novelty, even though it were novelty of sin--which might give a little
   excitement to a palate that has lost all power to be pleased.

   Now when a man gets into that uneasy state, he may make a guess of what
   Hell will be. It will be that uneasiness intensified, magnified to the
   extreme--to wander through dry places, seeking rest, and finding none,
   always thirsting, but never having a drop of water to cool that thirst.
   Hungering, but feeding upon wind and hungering still; longing,
   yearning, groaning sighing, conscious of misery, sensible of emptiness,
   feeling poverty but never getting anything whereby that poverty may be
   made rich, or that hunger may be stayed! Ah, you uneasy ones, may your
   uneasiness bring you to Christ! But unconverted men without Christ have
   another curse which is a sure foretaste to them of Hell. They are
   uneasy about death! I have my mind now upon a person who trembles like
   an aspen leaf during a thunderstorm; and I know another man who could
   bear a storm very well, but if there is the slightest thing the matter
   with him--if he has a cough, he fears his lungs are affected--if he
   feels a little hoarse, he is sure he will have bronchitis and die! And
   that thought of dying, he cannot bear; he will hear you talk about it
   and crack a joke over it merely for the sake of covering up his own
   dismay. He fancies you cannot see through him, but you can plainly
   discover that he is as afraid of dying as ever he can be. I know at
   this moment a family where the governess was instructed, when she took
   the job, to never mention the subject of death to the children, or else
   she would be instantly discharged. Oh, that fear of dying which haunts
   some men! Not when their blood boils, and they are excited--then they
   could rush to the cannon's mouth, but when they are cool and steady,
   and look at it--when it is not the sword's point, and Glory, but dying,
   mere dying-- then they shiver!

   Oh, how these strong men start and how they quail! Full many an infidel
   has recanted his infidelity then--given it all up when he has come to
   deal with the awful mysteries of death! But those already of death are
   but the foreshadows of that darker gloom which must gather round your
   spirit, unless you believe in Christ! With some men it has even gone
   further than this. When a man has long resisted the invitations of the
   Gospel, long gone from bad to worse, from sin to sin--a horror, an
   unspeakable horror--will seize hold upon him at times, especially if he
   is a man who is given to intoxication. Then a delirium will come upon
   him, mingled with a remorse, which will make his life intolerable! It
   has been my unhappy lot to see one or two such cases of persons who
   have been ill and have been vexed with fears--fears of a most hideous
   cast which I could not remove. You speak to them about Christ; they
   say, "What have I to do with Him? I have cursed Him hundreds of times."
   You speak to them about faith in Christ; "Faith in Christ," they say,
   "what is the use of that to me? I am past hope; I am given up and I do
   not care about it, either." And then they collapse--go back again into
   that dull despair which is the sure advance guard of damnation itself!
   With these men one may pray; they bid you pray forthem, and then they
   say. "Get up, Sir; it is of no use; God will never hear you for me."
   They will ask you to go home and pray; but assure you that it will be
   useless to do so. You read the Bible to them. "Don't read the
   Scriptures," they say, "every text cuts me to the quick, for I have
   neglected the Word of God. and all my time now is past." You tell them
   that--

   " While the lamp holds out to burn, The vilest sinner may return."

   No, no, they cannot! You may tell them that there is hope--that Jesus
   Christ calls many at the eleventh hour--you picture to them the thief
   on the cross. No, no--they put far from them all hope and choose their
   own delusions--and perish.

   Now such men give the gravest picture of what Hell must be in these
   forebodings of the wrath to come. I saw one man, now in eternity, and
   where he is, God knows. I could not describe to you what I saw that day
   of him. He said he would not die--and walked up and down as long as
   there was life in him, under the notion, as he said, that if he could
   walk about, he knew he should not die. He would not die, he said. He
   would live, he must l ive. "I cannot die," he said, "for I must be
   damned if I die. I feel I must." And that poor wretch, sometimes giving
   ear to your admonitions, then cursing you to your face, bidding you
   pray and then blaspheming--dying with Hell commenced, with all the
   horrors of perdition just beginning--a sort of infant perdition
   strangling to be born within him! Oh, may God deliver you from ever
   knowing this vilest premonition of destruction! And how shall you be
   delivered, but by this? "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you
   shall be saved, for he who believes and is baptized shall be saved"--so
   says the Scripture--"He who believes not shall be damned." Trust Christ
   and you are saved, be you whom you may! Come to the foot of the Cross
   and cast yourself where His blood is dropping, and you are saved! Give
   your heart to Him; believe in Him; repose your confidence in Him!

   May the Spirit of God enable you to do this! May He help you to repent
   of sin, and having repented, may He bring you to Christ, as the sin
   Propitiator! And may you go away this day, saying, "I do believe in
   Christ. My soul rests in Him!" And if you can say that, the joy and
   peace in believing, which must follow a simple faith in Christ, shall
   be to you the work of "the Holy Spirit of promise, and the earnest of
   our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession."
     __________________________________________________________________

                        The Tabernacle--Outside The Camp

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 10, 1861, BY THE REV. C.
   H. SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "And Moses took the Tabernacle and pitched it outside the camp, afar
   off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation.
   And it came to pass, that everyone which sought the LORRD went out unto
   the Tabernacle of the congregation, which was outside the camp." Exodus
   33:7.

   I HAVE been somewhat perplexed in studying this text, for according to
   the book of Exodus, the Tabernacle--the Tabernacle strictly so
   called--did not exist at the time to which it refers. In the succeeding
   Chapters of this very Book, we have an account of the gifts which were
   made by the people for the construction of that Tabernacle, wherein God
   dwelt while the children of Israel abode in the wilderness. It seems to
   me, after looking at the various authorities upon the point, and
   considering the opinions of those who have well studied it, that when
   the children of Israel came out of Egypt there may have been some large
   tent constantly pitched in the center of the camp which had no Ark of
   the Covenant in it and probably no altar. The vessels and implements
   for the service of the sanctuary had not then been made. Not even had
   the pattern been seen by Moses in the holy mountain. The people may be
   considered to have been at that time under the Patriarchal dispensation
   which reaches on, if I understand Scripture aright, until the time of
   the giving of the Law and 40 days beyond that, really--for it was 40
   days after the giving of the Law, before the ceremonials of Levitical
   worship were thoroughly established. Moses was 40 days in the mountain
   receiving instruction as to how the future worship of God should be
   ordered; that worship had not then begun in all its glorious
   splendor--Aaron had not even been ordained a priest. The service of the
   Levitical dispensation awaited as yet those statutes and ordinances by
   which its observances were solemnly imposed. Previous to this, as I
   take it, there was a large tent in the center of the camp set apart for
   that worship which was common to Patriarchal times--for prayer, praise
   and burnt sacrifices. Now, here God dwelt in the midst of this
   Tabernacle. He was in the center of His people; His cloud overshadowed
   them by day, and kept off from their heads the burning heat; that cloud
   was like a luminous atmosphere above them by night, so that probably
   they could see by night as well as by day. God was in the midst of
   them--this was their glory and their boast. They had no strange God.
   The LORD Himself had made their camp the place for His feet, and
   glorious, indeed, it was! But while Moses had ascended to the
   mountaintop, the people, who were an unspiritual race, needed something
   that they could see. They needed some visible personification of that
   spiritual God whom they were unable to worship unless they sawHim in
   type and figure. So they said unto Aaron, "Up, make us gods that shall
   go before us!" They broke off their earrings and they fashioned there a
   golden calf, and they said, "These be your gods, O Israel, that brought
   you up out of the land of Egypt." I do not think that they meant to
   worship the calf, but they intended to worship Jehovah under the
   representation of a calf, for it is expressly said in the Word, "Then
   they proclaimed a feast unto Jehovah," which shows that even their
   dancing around the calf was but a human invention whereby they hoped to
   honor and to glorify Jehovah. But they vexed the Holy One unto anger,
   and they grieved His Holy Spirit so that He went forth from the midst
   of them. He would not acknowledge the camp any more as being the place
   where He could dwell.

   A voice might have been heard in Heaven, "Let Us go from here." The
   holy God could not abide any longer in the central spot of a camp so
   defiled by sin! The pillar of cloud moved and Moses bade the proper
   officers lift up the sacred tent--they carried it up the side of the
   hill--Justice was about to take away from the people the Presence of
   God, but Mercy stopped its march! Mercy seemed to say, "Though God
   cannot abide in the midst of the people, yet He will not go very far
   from them." So He stayed upon the hillside, and there was the
   Tabernacle pitched, afar off from the people, but not so far that they
   could know that God was there; not so far but that they who "sought the
   Lord" might reach the

   Tabernacle at an easy distance. This, I say was intended to teach the
   people that God did not recognize their camp as being any longer His
   dwelling place, because human invention had stained His worship and
   laid His honor in the dust.

   What use are we to make of this very significant incident? Give heed,
   Brothers and Sisters, I beseech you. This is just the position, I take
   it, of God's Tabernacle at the present hour. They who seek the Lord
   must go out from the camp, and from the congregation, and if they would
   commune with the Most High, they cannot do it in the camps of even the
   religious and professing world. They must, like the Master, go forth
   outside the camp bearing His reproach. The day will come in which we
   shall be able to have fellowship with God in the camp; when the
   Tabernacle of the Lord shall be among men, and He shall dwell among
   them; but that time is not yet. Now His Tabernacle is out of the camp,
   and away from men. Those who would follow Him must be separate, must
   come out from the masses, must be distinct and set apart in order to be
   recognized as the sons and the daughters of the Lord God Almighty.

   There are three points upon which I shall enlarge this morning. The
   first will be that outside the camp is the place for true seekers of
   God. Secondly, that this going forth from the camp will involve some
   considerable inconvenience. And thirdly, I shall earnestly exhort you,
   as God shall help me, if you are seeking God, to take care that you go
   outside the camp, afar off from the camp according to His Word.

   I. First, then, they who seek the Lord must, at this day, as in the
   time of the narrative we have just read, GO OUTSIDE THE CAMP.

   It is scarcely necessary for me to say that no man can be a true seeker
   of God who has anything to do with the camp of the profane. We must
   take care that our garments are entirely clean from those lusts of the
   flesh, and those blasphemies of the ungodly. It will be impossible for
   you, O Seeker, ever to have communion with God while you have
   fellowship with Belial! You can not go to the synagogue of Satan, and
   to the synagogue of God at the same time; you will be an arrant fool if
   you shall attempt it; you will be mad if you shall persevere in the
   attempt; you will he something more than lost if you desire to be saved
   while you continue in so estranged a state! God will not allow us to do
   as the old Saxon king did who set up his old gods in one part of the
   church, and hung up the crucifix in another, hoping that by having two
   strings to his bow, he might make sure he was safe. Other religions may
   be tolerant, but the religion of Christ knows no tolerance with regard
   to error! Before God's Ark, Dagon must fall. Dagon may be content for
   God's Ark to stand, if he may stand, too--but the Ark of God knows of
   nothing but an absolute Supreme for itself, and a total destruction of
   all other gods. Either you must serve God or nothing; no compromise
   must be attempted--it will be considered as an audacious blasphemy of
   God! Come out, then, if you would be saved--come out from the herd of
   sinners; leave the godless and the Christless generation, for in that
   camp there will be no possibility of fellowship with God!

   Again--we must as much come out from the camp of the careless, as from
   the camp of the profane. The largest company in the world is not that
   of the profane, but of the thoughtless--not those who oppose, but those
   who neglect the great salvation. For every man who is openly an
   antagonist of Truth, there are probably a thousand men who care neither
   for Truth nor error! The Sadducees still remain a very numerous
   body--men who are content to live as they like, holding really and
   secretly within them, certain evil thoughts, but still willing to go
   with the crowd, and to be numbered with the followers of Christ. Ah, if
   you would see the face of God, my Hearer, them come out from among the
   giddy, thoughtless throng! It is not possible for you to worship Him
   who bore the Cross, while you shall be mingling in the amusements of
   the world, and toying with the charms of the flesh! Come out from among
   them--be not numbered with them--let your conduct and conversation
   distinguish you at once from them! Let it be seen that you, also, are
   with Jesus of Nazareth. Let none mistake you for a mere bystander, a
   simple looker-on, but let all know that you are one of His disciples
   because your speech betrays you! Oh, I do again repeat it--let none
   think that in the camp of the negligent, the thoughtless, those who
   count it enough to be moral before man, but who never think of God--let
   none think that salvation is to be found there!

   But we must go further than this--if a man would have fellowship with
   God, he must go even out of the camp of the merely steady, sedate, and
   thoughtful, for there are multitudes whose thoughts are not God's
   thoughts, and whose ways are not His ways, who are in every respect
   conformed outwardly to the Laws of God. They rigidly observe the
   customs of upright society--they think, and therefore abhor the trifles
   of the world--they sit down, and meditate, and therefore understand the
   hollowness of this present life, but who, notwithstanding, have never
   learned to set their affections on things above. Though they are not as
   foolish as to think that the shadows of this world are a substance, yet
   have they never sought eternal realities. You must come out from these,
   for unless your righteousness exceeds theirs, you shall not be saved!
   Unless there shall be something more in you than in the merely steady,
   respectable and outwardly moral, you shall never know the
   peace-speaking blood of Christ, nor enter into the "rest which remains
   for the people of God." Up! Get away from them! It is not enough to
   leave the Amalekites--you must leave even the hosts of Moab--brother
   though Moab may seem to be to the Israel of God!

   We must draw yet another line, more marked and distinct than this. He
   who would know anything of God aright must even come out of the camp of
   the merely religious. Look at them--how they go to their church. What
   for? Frequently to show their finery, and often to be seen of their
   friends. Look how many o to chapel. And what for? It is their custom;
   it is their habit! They sing as God's people sing; they appear to take
   a holy delight in the worship of the Most High; they bow as God's
   people bow when they pray--they do more--they sit at the Lord's Table,
   and appear to know somewhat of the joy which that ordinance affords!
   They come to Baptism; they pass through the stream, and yet in how many
   cases they have a name to live and are dead? Oh, it is one thing to
   attend to religion, but another thing to be in Christ Jesus! It is one
   thing to have the name upon the church rolls, but quite another thing
   to have it written in the Lamb's Book of Life! There is not a church
   under Heaven that is quite pure; with all our care, with all our
   industry, and watchfulness, we cannot prevent the sad fact! Hypocrites
   will mingle with the sincere, and the tares will be sown with the
   wheat--so I suppose it must be, till the reapers come and gather the
   tares in bundles to burn. I pray you let none of you think that you
   have taken out a patent for Heaven when you have made a profession of
   your faith in Christ! That profession may be a lie! The conduct which
   springs from it may be but the result of custom. Except a man be born
   of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God!
   "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." And only "that which is
   born of the Spirit is spirit." Do you believe that one-tenth of the
   religion you see about you is sincere? What do we say, then, to the
   fact that when investigation has been made as to articles sold at
   shops, there is scarcely a single article in any trade which is not
   found to be adulterated? Why is this? If it were only some men who did
   this, and they were notorious, we might flatter ourselves that
   Christians are surely clear. But what if it grows into a custom? When
   the fact comes out that in the most cases our articles of food are
   shamefully mixed, and that with poisonous ingredients in some
   instances, what are we to say? Can that religion which spreads over
   London--which seems to be adopted by almost everybody-- can that be
   sound while it allows this thing to go on under its cover? And have you
   not remarked the course of business? How often you must have noticed
   "astounding failures," and that, too, of men professedly religious! Do
   you not sometimes see the most shameful fraudulent bankruptcies, and
   these are perpetrated by men who have occupied your pews and listened
   to your ministry?

   What does this teach us but that there is more glitter than there is
   gold, and that there may be much varnish and much paint where there is
   but little of the sound material of Divine Grace? Oh, Sirs, if half the
   religion of England were true religion, we should not be such a people
   as we now are! Give us but one man out of three of those who profess to
   be followers of Christ, sincerelyHis and thoroughlyHis, and how changed
   would this empire become, and what a different face would all the
   commercial relations of life bear to the eyes even of outward
   observers! There is, it must be confessed, much delusion! I believe
   there is more sound godliness in England than ever there was since she
   was a nation--but yet as in the rolling of every chariot, there is a
   cloud of dust, so is there mixed up with the advance of the Savior's
   Kingdom, that rolling cloud of dust--hypocrisy and vain pretense. Let
   us take heed to ourselves, then, that we go forth outside the camp;
   that we are distinguished and separated, not merely from the
   irreligious, but from the religious, too--that we are as separate even
   from the nominal church, as we are from that people who profess not to
   know the Lord and are therefore cursed!

   Here I am stopped by the question, But in what respect is a Christian
   to come out from all these, and more especially to come out from the
   mere professors? I will tell you, Brothers and Sisters. There is
   occasion enough just now for the watchman to sound the notes of warning
   in your ears. The reasons why the nominal Church at the present time is
   not the place where the Tabernacle is pitched, is that the Church has
   adulterated the worship of God by the addition of human ceremonies. I
   shall not stay to indicate them, but I believe there is a great
   proportion of the worship of Christians in these days which is not
   warranted by the Word of God. We have made an advance beyond its plain
   letter, and have added to the pure Word of God, inventions of our own.
   Now, in coming out from the Church, we must leave all ceremonies behind
   us which are not absolutely taught in the Scriptures! We must shake our
   garments of every performance, however fair and admirable it may look,
   unless it has strictly the letter of Divine Inspiration to warrant it.
   Having done this in a Church capacity, we must then come out from all
   the doctrines of the church which are not strictly Scriptural. We must
   leave behind us the dogmas of our creeds, if the creeds are not
   consistent with the Word of God; we must dare to bear our testimony
   against all false teaching; we must take care that we share none of the
   blame of those men who keep back a part of God's Word, and therefore
   mar their ministry, and spoil its effect upon their hearers. We must
   come out from all the practices of the Church which are not in
   accordance with God's Word! We must never plead the precedent of godly
   men for any act or thought which God Himself has not enjoined. Come
   right out! You have nothing to do with what even a Christian might
   tolerate; you are to come straight out from the camp, and taking heed
   that you swerve not to the right hand or to the left, "follow the Lamb
   wherever He goes."

   Take care, too, that you are not actuated by the motives of the nominal
   Christian. Many nominal Christians have, as the motives of their lives,
   the maintaining of appearance--the keeping up of the respectable sham
   of godliness. Your conversation must be in Heaven; your motive must be
   derived from Heaven, and your life must be, not in profession, but in
   reality, "a life of faith upon the Son of God who loved you and gave
   Himself for you." In conclusion, if you would have true fellowship with
   Christ, you must come out from the camp and be devoted--your whole
   spirit, soul and body-- entirely in the Lord's strength, perpetually
   and continually to His service! You must say what many say with the
   lips, but what few can really feel in the heart, "For me to live is
   Christ, and to die is gain." Nothing short of this will be a true
   coming out of the camp! Nothing but this will give you that near and
   intimate relationship and communion with God after which every
   Believer's soul is panting, and without which it cannot find repose!

   II. Having thus tried briefly to describe the Truth that outside of the
   camp is the place for seekers of God, I shall now take the second
   point--THIS GOING OUT OF THE CAMP WILL INVOLVE MUCH INCONVENIENCE.

   Some try to get over the inconvenience in the way Joshua did. They
   think they will come out of the camp altogether and live in the
   Tabernacle, and then there will be no difficulty. You know there are
   many pious minds, a little overheated with imagination, who think that
   if they never mix with the world, they could be holy. No doubt they
   would like to have a building erected in which they could live and pray
   and sing all day and never go to work, nor have anything at all to do
   with buying and selling. Thus they think by going outside the camp,
   they would become the people of God. In this, however, they mistake the
   objective of the Christian religion--"I pray not that You should take
   them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the Evil
   One." That were an easy, lazy subterfuge for getting rid of the hard
   task of having to fight for Christ--to go out of the battle in order
   that you may win the victory is a strange method, indeed, of seeking to
   come off "more than conquerors!" No, no, we must be prepared like
   Moses, to go into the camp and to come outof it--always to come out of
   it when we seek fellowship with God--but still to be in it; to be mixed
   up with it; to be in the midst of it doing the common acts of man, and
   yet never being tainted by its infection; and never having the spirit
   troubled by that will and evil which is so rampant there. I counsel
   you, not that you should come out of the world, but that being in it,
   you should be so distinctly not of it that all men may see that you
   worship the Father outside the camp of their common association, and
   their carnal worship.

   This will involve many inconveniences. One stands on the outset. You
   will find that your diffidence and your modesty will sometimes shrink
   from the performance of duty's stern commands. If you follow Christ,
   you must confess Him. The Master desires to have no secret disciples;
   if Christ is worth anything, He is worth confessing boldly before the
   world, before angels and before devils! "Whoever therefore shall be
   ashamed of Me, and of My Words in this adulterous and pitiful
   generation; of Him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes
   in the glory of His Father with the holy angels." You must be able to
   say emphatically, "I am not ashamed to avow that my heart is given to
   Jesus the Crucified. As He espoused my cause publicly before a gazing
   world, so I espouse His. His Cross have I taken, all else to leave, if
   it is necessary that I may follow Him. He is my Lord, to Him I will
   submit; He is my Trust, on Him I lean; He is my Hope, for Him I look."
   Do not try the plan which some are attempting--of being Christians in
   the dark. Put on Christ. You know how the promise is made, "He who
   believes and is baptized shall be saved." Do not shrink from the second
   part of the command. If you have believed, profess your faith in
   Baptism; be not ashamed of your Lord and Master. Know you not that the
   Lord has said, "He who with his heart believes, and with his mouth
   confesses, shall be saved"? You must make a public confession! I know
   there is no merit in the confession, but still, is it not right?--is it
   not reasonable? How can you expect the blessing of God if you do not
   what Christ tells you, and do it not asChrist tells you? Come out; wear

   His badge; bear His name and say to the sons of men, "Let others do as
   they will, as for me and my house, we will, we must serve the Lord."

   When you have got over that difficulty--when your reserve has given
   place to a good confession, and you appear upon the stage of action,
   you will find that then your trouble really begins! Perhaps when you go
   outside the camp you will lose some of your best friends. Perhaps your
   mother may say she would not mind your serving Christ, but she wishes
   that you belonged to her denomination, while you feel that if you serve
   Christ at all, you must go just where He would have you go, and carry
   out to the letter all His will. Some of your dearest companions may
   say. "Well, if you turn religious, certainly our acquaintance must
   cease; we should never agree, and therefore we had better part." And
   some with whom you have to live, will day after day put you to a sort
   of martyrdom before a slow fire by giving you the trial of cruel
   ridicule; you will find that many a tie has to be cut when your soul is
   bound with cords to the horns of the altar. Can you do it? As Christ
   left His Father for you, can you leave all for Him? Do you know that
   text and is it terrible to you-- "If a man loves father and mother more
   than Me, he is not worthy of Me, and if a man loves son or daughter
   more than Me, he is not worthy of Me"? Are you ready to carry out your
   convictions, come what may? Should you turn back, would that be to rely
   upon the promise which David uttered--"When my father and mother
   forsake me, then the Lord shall take me up"? You are not fit to be a
   disciple of Christ if you cannot take the like of this into the cost of
   following your Savior, and estimate it as a light affliction compared
   with the eternal weight of Glory which shall be given to them who
   faithfully serve Him, and fully avow themselves His, when others would
   turn them aside!

   You will find, too, when you go outside the camp, you will have some
   even professedly godly people against you. It is one of the sorest
   trials that I know of in the Christian life to have godly men,
   themselves, censure you. "Ah," they will say, when you are filled with
   the Spirit, and are anxious to serve God as Caleb did, with all your
   heart--"Ah, young Man, that is fanaticism, and it will grow cool,
   by-and-bye." When you are called to some good work for your fellow men,
   they will tell you, "That is too bold a deed; too daring an act of
   enthusiasm." To say--"Whether any will follow me or not, here I go
   straight to battle and to victory"--this is the prowess of faith, and
   Christ requires it of every one of you! The godly will follow you,
   by-and-by, when you succeed, but you must be prepared to go without
   them sometimes. Look at young David. He knows that he is called to
   fight with Goliath, but his brothers say, "Because of your pride and
   the naughtiness of your heart to see the battle, have you come." But
   David cares not; he brings back the bloody head of the giant, and there
   is his refutation of their slander! You do the same. Be prepared to
   meet with cold-hearted Christians; you will have to stand alone and
   bear their sneer as well as the sneer of the world; you will have to
   endure their "judicious" remarks, and bear their sage cautions, and
   their serious suggestions against your being too bold and too hot. Let
   none of these things dismay you! Do your Master's will and do it
   thoroughly! Go the whole way with your Lord and Master, and you shall
   come to be had in reverence of them who sit at the table with you.

   There is another inconvenience to which you will most surely be
   exposed, namely, that you will be falsely charged. Some will say, "You
   make too much of non-essentials." That is a thing I frequently
   hear--non-essentials! There are certain things in Scripture, they tell
   us, that are non-essentials, and therefore they are not to be taken any
   notice of. Doctrinal views, and the Baptism of Believers, for
   instance--these are non-essential to salvation, and therefore, is the
   inference which follows according to the theory of some--we may be very
   careless about them! Do you know, Believer in Christ, that you are a
   servant? And what would you think if a servant should first wittingly
   neglect her duty, and then come to you and tell you that it is
   non-essential? If she should not light the fire tomorrow morning, and
   when you came down, she were to say, "Well, Sir, it is non-essential;
   you won't die though the fire is not lit"--or if, when she spread the
   breakfast, there was no provision there but a crust of bread, and
   nothing for you to drink; what if she should say, "Well, Sir, it is
   non-essential, you know? There is a glass of water for you and a piece
   of bread--the rest is non-essential." If you came home and found that
   the rooms had never been swept, and the dust was upon them, or that the
   bed had not been made, and that you could not take an easy night's
   rest, and the servant should say, "Oh, it is non-essential, Sir; it is
   quite nonessential." I think you would find it to be non-essential for
   you to keep her any longer, but extremely essential that you should
   discharge her! And what shall we say of those men who put aside the
   words of Christ, and say, "His precepts are quite non-essential"? Why,
   I think because they are non-essential, they therefore become the test
   of your obedience! If you could be saved by them, and if they were
   necessary to your salvation, your selfishness would lead you to observe
   them; but inasmuch as they are not necessary to your salvation, they
   become tests of your willingness to obey Christ!

   If the Lord had left a record in His Word--"He who believes and picks
   up a pebble stone shall be saved," I dare not neglect to pick up the
   pebble stone! And if I found that in Holy Scripture there were
   doctrines even of less value than the great points of our Christian
   religion, I should still think it were my duty to bow my judgment, and
   to turn my intellect to the reception of God's Truth just as God sent
   it forth! That idea about non-essentials is wicked and rebellious! Cast
   it from you! Go outside the camp; be particular in every point. To the
   tiniest jot and tittle, seek to obey your Master's will and seek His
   Grace that you may walk in the way of His Commandments with a perfect
   heart. But then, if you do walk according to this rule, others will
   say, "You are so bigoted." Thus reply to them--"I am very bigoted over
   myself, but I never claim any authority over you. To your own Master
   you stand or fall, and I do the same." If it is bigotry to hold
   decisive views about God's Truth, and to be obedient in every
   particular, as far as God the Spirit has taught me--if that is
   bigotry--all hail bigotry! Most hallowed thing! The thing called
   bigotry is that which inclines one man to bind another's conscience;
   the duty of all men is truly the same. But then I must not make my
   conscience the standard for another. It must be the standard for
   myself, and Iam not to violate it--"He who knows his Master's will and
   does it not, shall be beaten with many stripes." Take heed, therefore,
   that you do His will when you know it. But if another, not knowing His
   will, should reprove you, be ready to give an answer to him that speaks
   to you with meekness. But be not harsh with any man. You are not his
   master! Be not stern with those who differ from you, for you are not
   made the judge of mankind. You are not arbiter of right and wrong.
   Leave others to be as conscientious as yourself, and believe that a
   Christian, though he may differ from you, is as much sincere in his
   difference as you are in your dissent from him. Yet be careful that no
   unhallowed charity compel you to lay down the weapons of your warfare;
   be careful that Satan does not deceive you, and make you charitable to
   yourself. Be charitable towards every other man, but never to yourself!
   Forgive every other man the injuries that he does, but forgive not
   yourself! Weep, lament and sigh before God, and so may He always help
   you thus to go forth outside the camp.

   With one other remark I will leave this point about the inconveniences.
   If you follow Christ and come outside the camp, you must expect to be
   watched. I have frequently noticed that when a member of our Church
   does anything wrong, people will say, "There is your religion--a
   horrible thing!" If a person who scrupulously goes to church, but
   swears, nobody thinks anything of it; but if he is a Dissenter--"Oh, it
   is horrible!" Well, so it is, I admit. But it shows that people expect
   those who dissent to be better than those who do not! I only wish their
   expectation could always be fulfilled. If you profess to go outside the
   camp, others will look for something extra in you--mind that they are
   not disappointed. They oughtto expect it, and I am glad they do expect
   it. I have heard some say, "I do not want to join the church because
   then there would be so much expected of me." Just so, and that is the
   very reason why you should--because their expectation will be a sort of
   sacred clog to you when you are tempted and may help to give impetus to
   your character and carefulness to your walk--when you know that you are
   looked upon by the eyes of men. I wish to have the members of this
   Church carefully watched by the ungodly. If you catch them tripping,
   notice it. If you see them going into sin, let it be spoken of. God
   forbid we should wish to conceal it! Let it come out. If we are not
   what we profess to be, the sooner we are unmasked the better; only do
   judge us fairly; do judge the life of a professing Christian honestly.
   Do not expect perfection of him! He does not profess to be perfect, but
   he does desire to try to keep his Master's Law, and to do to others as
   he would they should do to him.

   We would not say to the world, "Shut your eyes." The eyes of the world
   are intended to be checks upon the Church. The world is the black dog
   that wakes up Christ's slumbering sheep--yes, and sometimes hunts them
   into the fold when otherwise they would be wandering upon the
   mountains! Expect to be watched, Christian! In the day when you say, "I
   will go outside the camp to follow Christ," expect to be
   misrepresented; expect that the dogs of this world will bark at you.
   They always bark at a stranger, and if you are a stranger and a
   foreigner, they will bark at you. Expect, too, that they will watch
   your little slips, so let that be a check to you and make you pray each
   moment, "Lord, hold me up and I shall be safe." I would that there
   could be trained in all our Churches and places of worship, a race of
   men and women who would be really distinct--as much distinct from the
   professing church at large, as that church is from the ungodly world
   itself.

   III. Now I come to use certain arguments by which I desire EARNESTLY TO
   PERSUADE EACH CHRISTIAN HERE TO GO OUTSIDE THE CAMP, TO BE EXACT IN HIS
   OBEDIENCE, AND TO BE PRECISE IN HIS FOLLOWING THE LAMB WHEREVER HE
   GOES.

   I use first a selfish argument--it is to do it for your own comfort's
   sake. If a Christian can be saved while he conforms to this world, at
   any rate he will be saved so as by fire. Would you like to go to Heaven
   in the dark, and enter there as a shipwrecked mariner climbs the rocks
   of his native country? Then be worldly; be mixed up with the people and
   remain in the camp. But would you have a Heaven below as well as a
   Heaven above? Would you comprehend with all saints what are the heights
   and depths, and know the love of Christ which passes knowledge? And
   would you have an abundant entrance into the joy of your Lord? Then
   come out from among them, and be separate, and touch not the unclean
   thing! There are many professors, and I trust they are true Christians,
   too, who are very unhappy--and generally it is because they are worldly
   Christians. Oh, we have some members of our Church, I trust they are
   saved, but you know they are as money-getting, and as money-keeping as
   any men whose portion is in this life! They seem to give as much of
   their whole force to the world as ever a worldling can, and then they
   wonder why they are not happy! Why, they have laid up much of their
   treasure on earth, and the moth has got at it and the rust has
   corrupted it, and what wonder? Had they put their treasure wholly in
   Heaven, no moth or rust would ever have consumed it. It is our
   unspiritualheart that makes our misery. If we were more Christ-like, we
   would have more of Christ's Presence, and more of that peace of God
   which passes understanding. For your own comfort's sake, if you are a
   Christian, be a Christian and be a marked and distinct one-- distinct
   even from the church at large itself!

   But I have a better reason than that, and it is for your own growth in
   Grace do it. If you would have much faith, you cannot have much faith
   while you are mixed with sinners. If you would have much love, your
   love cannot grow while you mingle with the ungodly. You may be a babe
   in Grace, but you never can be a perfect man or woman in Christ Jesus
   while you have anything to do with the worldly maxims, and business and
   cares of this life. I do not mean while you have to do with them in a
   right way, but while you mix yourself up with them, and are operated
   upon by them so as to turn aside from that straight line in which it is
   the Christian's duty to walk! Little stones in the shoe make a
   traveler's walk very uncomfortable, and some of these little practices
   and little sins, as some call them, will make your path to Heaven very
   unhappy! You will very seldom be able to run in God's ways--you will be
   a mere creeper! It will be a long while before you will bear the image
   of Him who created you; you will be a marred vessel--perhaps a vessel
   meant for honor--but marred upon the wheel--notwithstanding that by
   your mixing up with the customs of the world and going with the worldly
   church and with the multitude to do evil.

   But let me put it to you in another way. I beseech you Christian men
   and women, come right out and be your Master's soldiers wholly for the
   Church'ssake!It is the few men in the Church, and those who have been
   distinct from her, who have saved the Church in all times. Who saved
   the Church in the days of the Reformation? It was not the good men who
   were in the midst of the Church of Rome! There were very many humble
   curates in villages, and priests here and there, who were doing their
   best, I believe, to teach the Truth of God. But these men never saved
   the Church of Christ. She would have gone to ruin for all they did for
   her. It was Luther, and Calvin, and Zwingli who came right out and
   said, "No, we will have nothing to do with anti-Christ!" Who saved the
   Church a hundred years ago? Why, I dare to say, it was not those
   excellent men who in their own places of worship were pursuing their
   holy calling, but it was those who were first called
   Methodists--Whitefield and Wesley--the men who said, "This cold age
   will never do; in this absence of the Spirit of God, there can never be
   a time of blessing to the Church." It was men looked upon as fanatics,
   enthusiasts and heretics who ought to be excommunicated. They came
   right out as distinct men; as if they were the particular stars of the
   sky, and they alone cleft the darkness! So must it be with us. There
   must be some among us who care nothing for this world--who dash worldly
   laws and customs to the ground, and in the name of God and His
   Church--and in Truth are prepared--though we may be embarrassed and
   hindered by what is called public opinion--to defy public opinion and
   do the right and the true, come what may! And you, too, in your life
   must do what God's ministers must do both with tongue and life. If the
   Church is to be saved, it is not by men in her, but by the men who seem
   to go out even from her to bear Christ's reproach, and do Him service
   outside the camp.

   And for the world's sake, let me beg you to do thus. Let the Church
   become more and more adulterated with world-liness; let her Christians
   become more and more conformed to the world; let her lords be cowed
   down under the bondage and tyranny of worldliness, and what will the
   Church be worth, and what will the world do? Her salt will have lost
   its savor, and then the world must rot and putrefy! The Church itself
   can never be the salt of the world unless there are some particular men
   who are the salt of the Church! Do you then come out! Be singularly
   exact in your obedience to Christ; be scrupulously observant of all
   that He commands; be you distinct from the professing world, and so
   shall you bless the world through the Church!

   And now lastly, for your Master's sake. What have you and I to do in
   the camp when He was driven from it? What have we to do with hosannas
   when He was followed with hootings, "Crucify Him, crucify Him"? What
   have I to do in the tent while my Captain lies in the open battlefield?
   What have we to do to dwell in our ceiled houses, and to be peaceful,
   and to have the smile of men, while Jesus is hounded to His death and
   nailed to the accursed Cross? By the wounds of Christ, Christian, I
   beseech you, mortify the flesh with its affections and lusts; by Him
   who came unto His own, and His own received Him not, expect not to be
   received even by your own; by Him who was the Heir, and of whom they
   said "Let us kill Him," I pray you expect the same treatment from the
   same world! "Shall the servant be above his Master, or the disciple
   above his Lord?" If they call the Master of the house, Beelzebub, what
   should they say of the servant? Are you prepared for silken ease when
   your Master fought to win the crown? Did He die to save you, and will
   you not be willing to die to serve Him? Again I ask it--what have you
   to do with making love to that world which put Him to death? Dare you
   hold a parley with the enemy against whom you are sworn to fight? What?
   Will you be coward enough to ask for peace at the hands of the foe who
   has reddened himself with Jesus' blood? In the name of God and of His
   Son, cast down your gauntlet, draw your sword, and throw away its
   scabbard! The world was never friends with the man that was a friend to
   Christ! You cannot possibly have its friendship, and smile, and have
   the fellowship and smile of God, too! Make your choice, Christian! Make
   your choice now. Which shall it be--the world or Christ? It cannot be
   both! Which will you have? Will you be called a right good man, or will
   you be hissed and pointed at? Will you wear a fool's cap and a fool's
   coat, and go to Heaven, or wear a wise man's gown and go to Hell? Will
   you wear a thorny crown to be saved, or a golden crown and be lost?
   Make your choice, Christians, for one of these two things it must come
   to! God help us now to say, in the name of Him by whose merit and blood
   we have been saved--"I do this day take Christ to be my Lord, and come
   fair or foul--

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

   So be it! So be it, for Christ's sake--that while saved by faith in
   Jesus--we may prove our faith by never shrinking from the trial which
   that faith necessarily involves! The Lord bless you, for Jesus' sake.
     __________________________________________________________________

                           The New Park Street Pulpit

   ADOPTION

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING FEBRUARY 10, 1861, BY THE REV. C.
   H. SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ
   to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will." Ephesians 1:5.

   It is at once a Doctrine of Scripture and of common sense, that
   whatever God does in time He predestined to do in eternity. Some men
   find fault with Divine Predestination and challenge the justice of
   eternal decrees. Now if they remember that predestination is the
   counterfoil of history, as an architectural plan--the carrying out of
   which we read in the facts that happen--they may perhaps obtain a
   slight clue to the unreasonableness of their hostility. I never heard
   anyone among professors wantonly and willfully find fault with God's
   dealings, yet I have heard some who would even dare to call in question
   the equity of His counsels. If the thing itself is right, it must be
   right that God intended to do the thing. If you find no fault with
   facts, as you see them in Providence, you have no ground to complain of
   decrees, as you find them in predestination--for the decrees and the
   facts are just the counterparts, one of the other! Have you any reason
   to find fault with God, that He has been pleased to save you and save
   me? Then why should you find fault because Scripture says he
   predetermined that He would save us? I cannot see, if the fact itself
   is agreeable, why the decree should be objectionable! I can see no
   reason why you should find fault with God's foreordination if you do
   not find fault with what actually happens as the effect of it. Let a
   man but agree to acknowledge an act of Providence, and I need to know
   how he can, except he runs in the very teeth of Providence, find any
   fault with the predestination or intention that God made concerning
   that Providence. Will you blame me for preaching, this morning? Suppose
   you answer, No. Then can you blame me that I formed a resolution last
   night that I would preach? Will you blame me for preaching on this
   particular subject? Do, if you please, then, and find me guilty for
   intending to do so; but if you say I am perfectly right in selecting
   such a subject, how can you say I was not perfectly right in intending
   to preach upon it? Assuredly you cannot find fault with God's
   predestination if you do not find fault with the effects that
   immediately spring from it! Now we are taught in Scripture, I affirm
   again, that all things that God chose to do in time, were most
   certainly intended by Him to be done in eternity, and He predestined
   such things should be done. If I am called, I believe God intended
   before all worlds that I should be called; if in His mercy He has
   regenerated me, I believe that from all eternity He intended to
   regenerate me! And if in His loving kindness He shall at last perfect
   me and carry me to Heaven, I believe it always was His intention to do
   so. If you cannot find fault with the thing, itself, that God does, in
   the name of reason, common sense, and Scripture, how dare you find
   fault with God's intention to do it?

   But there are one or two acts of God which, while they certainly are
   decreed as much as other things, yet they bear such a special relation
   to God's Predestination, that it is rather difficult to say whether
   they were done in eternity or whether they were done in time. Election
   is one of those things which was done absolutely in eternity; all who
   were elect, were elect as much in eternity as they are in time. But you
   may say, Does the same affirmation apply to adoption or justification.
   My late eminent and now glorified predecessor, Dr. Gill, diligently
   studying these Doctrines, said that adoption was the act of God in
   eternity, and that as all Believers were elect in eternity, so beyond a
   doubt they were adopted in eternity. He went further than that to
   include the Doctrine of Justification, and he said that inasmuch as
   Jesus Christ was before all worlds justified by His Father, and
   accepted by Him as our Representative, therefore all the elect must
   have been justified in Christ from before all worlds! Now I believe
   there is a great deal of truth in what he said, though there was a
   considerable outcry raised against him at the time he first uttered it.
   However, that being a high and mysterious point, we would have you
   accept the Doctrine that all those who are saved, at last, were elect
   in eternity when the means as well as the end were determined. With
   regard to adoption, I believe we were predestined hereunto in eternity,
   but I think there are some points with regard to adoption which will
   not allow me to consider the act of adoption to have been completed in
   eternity. For instance, the positive translation of my soul from a
   state of nature into a state of Grace is a part of adoption, or at
   least it is an effect of it, and so close an effect that it really
   seems to be a part of adoption, itself--I believe that this was
   designed, and in fact that it was virtually carried out in God's
   Everlasting Covenant. I think that it was then actually brought to pass
   in all its fullness.

   So with regard to justification, I must hold that in the moment when
   Jesus Christ paid my debts, my debts were cancelled--in the hour when
   He worked out for me a perfect righteousness, it was imputed to me, and
   therefore I may, as a Believer say I was complete in Christ before I
   was born--accepted in Jesus, even as Levi was blessed in the loins of
   Abraham by Melchisedek. But I know likewise that justification is
   described in the Scriptures as passing upon me at the time I believe.
   "Being justified by faith," I am told, "I have peace with God, through
   Jesus Christ." I think, therefore, that adoption and justification,
   while they have a very great alliance with eternity, and were virtually
   done then, yet have both of them such a near relation to us in time,
   and such a bearing upon our own personal standing and character, that
   they have also a part and parcel of themselves actually carried out and
   performed in time in the heart of every Believer. I may be wrong in
   this exposition. It requires much more time to study this subject than
   I have been able yet to give to it seeing that my years are not yet
   many. I shall no doubt, by degrees, come to the knowledge more fully of
   such high and mysterious points of Gospel Doctrine. But nevertheless,
   while I find the majority of sound divines holding that the works
   ofjustification and adoption are due in our lives, I see, on the other
   hand, in Scripture much to lead me to believe that both of them were
   done in eternity. And I think the fairest view of the case is that
   while they were virtually done in eternity, yet both adoption and
   justification are actually passed upon us in our proper persons,
   consciences and experiences, in time--so that both the Westminster
   confession and the idea of Dr. Gill can be proved to be Scriptural. We
   may hold them both without any prejudice, the one to the other.

   Well now, Beloved, leaving then the predestination, let us come to as
   full a consideration as the hour shall enable us to give of the
   Doctrine of "the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself;
   according to the good pleasure of His will."

   First, then, adoption--the Grace of God displayed in it Secondly,
   adoption--the privileges which it brings. Thirdly, adoption--the duties
   which it necessarily places upon every adopted child.

   I. First, ADOPTION--THE GRACE OF IT.

   Adoption is that act of God whereby men who were by nature the children
   of wrath, even as others, and were of the lost and ruined family of
   Adam, are from no reason in themselves, but entirely of the pure Grace
   of God, translated out of the evil and black family of Satan, and
   brought actually and virtually into the family of God. They take His
   name, share the privileges of sorts, and they are to all intents and
   purposes the actual offspring and children of God!

   This is an act of pure Grace. No man can ever have a right, in himself,
   to become adopted. If I had, then I should receive the inheritance in
   my own right--but inasmuch as I have no right whatever to be a child of
   God, and can by no possibility claim so high a privilege in and of
   myself, adoption is the pure gratuitous effect of Divine Grace, and of
   that alone. I could suppose that justification might be by works under
   the Old Covenant, but I could not suppose adoption to be under the Old
   Covenant at all! I could imagine a man keeping the Law of God
   perfectly, and being justified by it, if Adam had not fallen. But even
   upon such a supposition, Adam himself would have had no right to
   adoption--he would still have been only a servant, and not a son. Above
   all contradiction and controversy that great and glorious act whereby
   God makes us of His family and unites us to Jesus Christ as our
   Covenant Head, so we may be His children--is an act of pure Grace! It
   would have been an act of Sovereign Grace if God had adopted someone
   out of the best of families, but in this case He has adopted one who
   was a child and a rebel! We are by nature the children of one who was
   convicted of high treason; we are all the heirs, and are born into the
   world the natural heirs of one who sinned against his Maker, who was a
   rebel against his Lord. Yet mark this-- notwithstanding the evil of our
   parentage, born of a thief, who stole the fruit from his Master's
   Garden--born of a proud traitor, who dared to rebel against his
   God--notwithstanding all this--God has put us into the family! We can
   well conceive that when God considered our vile original, He might have
   said within Himself, "How can I put you among the children?" With what
   gratitude should we remember that though we were of the very lowest
   original, Grace has put us into the number of the Savior's family! Let
   us give all thanks to the Free Grace which overlooked the hole of the
   pit from where we were dug, and which passed over the quarry from where
   we were hewn, and put us among the chosen people of the living God! If
   a king should adopt any into his family, it would likely be the son of
   one of his lords--at any rate some child of respectable parentage; he
   would not take the son of some common felon, or some gypsy child, to
   adopt him into his family. But God in this case has taken the very
   worst to be His children! The sons of God all confess that they are the
   last persons they would ever have dreamed He would have chosen. They
   say of themselves--

   " What was there in us that could merit esteem,
   Or give the Creator delight?
   'Twaas even so, Father,' we ever must sing,
   'Because it seemed good in Your sight.'"

   Again, let us think not only of our original lineage, but of our
   personal character. He who knows himself will never think that he had
   much to recommend him to God. In other cases of adoption, there usually
   is some recommendation. A man, when he adopts a child, sometimes is
   moved thereto by its extraordinary beauty, or at other times by its
   intelligent manners, and winning disposition. But, Beloved, when God
   passed by the field in which we were lying, He saw no tears in our eyes
   till He put them there Himself! He saw no contrition in us until He had
   given us repentance; there was no beauty in us that could induce Him to
   adopt us--on the contrary we were everything that was repulsive! And if
   He had said, when He passed by, "You are cursed, be lost forever," it
   would have been nothing but what we might have expected from a God who
   had been so long provoked and whose majesty had been so terribly
   insulted! But no, though He found a rebellious child, a filthy,
   frightful, ugly child, He took it to His bosom and said, "Black though
   you are, you are comely in My eyes through My Son, Jesus. Unworthy
   though you are, yet I cover you with His robe, and in your Brother's
   garments, I accept you." And taking us, all unholy and unclean, just as
   we were, He took us to be His--His children--His forever!

   I was passing lately by the seat of a nobleman, and someone in the
   railway carriage observed that he had no children and he would give any
   price in the world if he could find someone who would renounce all
   claim to any son he might have. The child was never to speak to his
   parents any more, nor to be acknowledged, and this lord would adopt him
   as his son and leave him the whole of his estates. But he had found
   great difficulty in procuring any parents who would forswear their
   relationship and entirely give up their child. Whether this was correct
   or not, I cannot tell, but certainly this was not the case with God.
   His only-Begotten and well-Beloved Son was quite enough for Him! And if
   He had needed a family, there were the angels and His own Omnipotence
   was adequate enough to have created a race of beings far superior to
   us! He stood in no need whatever of any to be His darlings. It was,
   then, an act of simple, pure, gratuitous Grace--and of nothing
   else--because He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and
   because He delights to show the marvelous Character of His
   condescension. Did you ever think what a high honor it is to be called
   a son of God? Suppose a judge of the land should have before him some
   traitor who was about to be condemned to die? Suppose that equity and
   law demanded that the wretch should shed his blood by some terrible
   punishment? But suppose it were possible for the judge to step from his
   throne and to say, "Rebel, you are guilty, but I have found out a way
   whereby I can forgive your rebellions--man, you are pardoned!" There is
   a flush of joy upon his cheeks. "Man, you are made rich; see, there is
   wealth!" Another smile passes over the countenance. "Man, you are made
   so strong that you shall be able to resist all your enemies!" He
   rejoices again. "Man," says the judge at last, "you are made a prince!
   You are adopted into the royal family, and you shall one day wear a
   crown! You are now as much the son of God as you are the son of your
   own father." You can conceive the poor creature fainting with joy at
   such a thought, that he whose neck was just ready for the halter,
   should have his head now ready for a crown--that he who expected to be
   clothed in the felon's garb and taken away to death, is now to be
   exalted and clothed in robes of honor! So, Christian, think what you
   did deserve--robes of shame and infamy--but you are to have those of
   Glory. Are you in God' s family now? Well said the poet--

   "It does not yet appear, How great we must be made."

   We do not know the greatness of adoption yet. Yes, I believe that even
   in eternity we shall scarcely be able to measure the infinite depth of
   the love of God in that one blessing of "adoption by Jesus Christ unto
   Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will."

   Still, I think there is someone here who says, "I believe, Sir, that
   men are adopted because God foresees that they will be holy, righteous
   and faithful, and therefore, doubtless, God adopted them on the
   foresight of that." That is an objection I often have to reply to.
   Suppose, my Friends, you and I should take a journey into the country
   one day, and should meet with a person and should say to him, "Sir, can
   you tell me why the sails of yonder windmill go round?" He would of
   course reply, "It is the wind." But, suppose you were to ask him, "What
   makes the wind?" and he were to reply, "the sails of the windmill,"
   would you not just think that he was an idiot? In the first place, he
   told you that the wind caused the revolution of the sails and then,
   afterwards, he tells you that the sails make the wind--that an effect
   can be the parent of that which is its own cause! Now, any man you like
   to ask will say that faith is the gift of God--that good works are
   God's workmanship. Well, then, what is the cause of good works in a
   Christian? "Why, Grace," they say! Then, how can good works be the
   cause of Grace? By all that is rational, where are your heads? It is
   too foolish a supposition for any man to reply to without making you
   laugh, and that I do not choose to do. And therefore, I leave it. I say
   again, Beloved, if the fruits upon a Christian are caused by the root,
   how can the fruit, in any degree, be the cause of the root? If the good
   works of any man are given him by Grace, how can they, by any pretense
   whatever, be argued as the reason why God gives him Grace? The fact is,
   we are by nature utterly lost and ruined, and there is not a saint in
   Heaven who would not have been damned--and who did not deserve to be
   damned in the common doom of sinners! The reason why God has made a
   distinction is a secret to Himself; He had a right to make that
   distinction if He pleased, and He has done it. He has chosen some unto
   eternal life, to the praise of His glorious Grace; He has left others
   to be punished for their sins, to the praise of His glorious Justice
   and in one, as in the other, He has acted quite rightly, for He has a
   right to do as He wills with His own creatures! Seeing they all
   deserved to be punished, He has a right to punish them all! So too, as
   He has reconciled Justice with Mercy or mated it with Judgment, He has
   a right to forgive and pardon some, and to leave the others to be
   unwashed, unforgiven and unsaved--willfully to follow the error of
   their ways, to reject Christ, despise His Gospel, and ruin their own
   souls. He that does not agree with that, agrees not with Scripture! I
   have not to prove it--I have only to preach it! He that quarrels with
   that, quarrels with God--let him fight his quarrel out himself!

   II. The second thing is, THE PRIVILEGES WHICH COME TO US THROUGH
   ADOPTION.

   For the convenience of my young people--members of the Church--I shall,
   just for a moment, give you a list of the privileges of adoption as
   they are to be found in our old Confession of Faith. I know many of you
   have this book, and I am sure most of you will study at home this
   afternoon if you have opportunity, looking up all the passages. It is
   the Twelfth Article, upon adoption, where we read--"All those who are
   justified, God vouchsafed, in and for the sake of His only Son, Jesus
   Christ, to make partakers of the Grace of adoption, by which they are
   taken into the number and enjoy the liberties and privileges of
   children of God, have His name put upon them, receive the spirit of
   adoption, have access to the Throne of Grace with boldness, are enabled
   to cry Abba, Father, are pitied, protected, provided for and chastened
   by Him as a Father, yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of
   redemption and inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation."

   I shall commence, then, with the privileges of adoption. There is one
   privilege not mentioned in the Confession which ought to be there. It
   is this--when a man is adopted into a family, and comes thereby under
   the regime of his new father, he has nothing whatever to do with the
   old family he has left behind, and he is released from subjection to
   those whom he has left. And so, the moment I am taken out of the family
   of Satan, the Prince of this world has nothing to do with me as my
   father and he is no more my father! I am not a son of Satan! I am not a
   child of wrath! The moment I am taken out of the legal family, I have
   nothing whatever to do with Hagar. If Hagar comes to meddle with me, I
   tell her, "Sarah is my mother, Abraham is my father and, Hagar, you are
   my servant, and I am not yours. You are a bondwoman and I shall not be
   your bond slave, for you are mine." When the Law comes to a Christian
   with all its terrible threats, and horrible denunciations, the
   Christian says, "Law! Why do you threaten me? I have nothing to do with
   you. I follow you as my rule, but I will not have you to be my ruler; I
   take you to be my pattern and mold, because I cannot find a better code
   of morality, and of life, but I am not under you as my condemning
   curse. Sit in your judgment seat, O Law, and condemn me; I smile on
   you, for you are not my judge, I am not under your jurisdiction! You
   have no right to condemn me." If, as the old divines say, the king of
   Spain were to condemn an inhabitant of Scotland, what would he say? He
   would say, "Very well, condemn me, if you like, but I am not under your
   jurisdiction." So, when the Law condemns a saint, the saint says, "If
   my Father condemns me, and chastens me, I bow to Him with filial
   submission, for I have offended Him, but, O Law, I am not under you any
   longer; I am delivered from you; I will not hear your sentence, nor
   care about your thunders! All you can do against me, go and do it upon
   Christ! Or, rather, you have done it. If you demand punishment for my
   sin, look, there stands my Substitute; you are not to seek it at my
   hands. You charge me with guilt. It is true, I am guilty, but it is
   equally true my guilt is put upon the Scapegoat' s head! I tell you, I
   am not of your family; I am not to be chastened by you; I will not have
   a legal chastisement, a legal punishment; I am under the Gospel
   dispensation, now, I am not under you. I am a child of God, not your
   servant. We have a commandment to obey the Father who we now have; but
   as to the family with which we were connected, we have nothing to do
   with it any longer." That is no small privilege--oh that we could
   rightly understand it and appreciate it, and walk in the liberty
   wherewith Christ has made us free!

   But now, as the Confession has it, one of the great blessings which God
   gives us is that we have His name put upon us. He will give unto us a
   new name, as is the promise in the Book of the Revelation. We are to be
   called after the name of God. Oh, remember, Brothers and Sisters, we
   are men and women, but we are now God' s men and women! We are no
   longer mere mortals; we are so in ourselves--but by Divine Grace we are
   chosen immortals--God's sons, God's daughters taken to Himself!
   Remember, Christian, you bear the name of God upon you!

   Mark another thing. We have the spirit of children as well as the name
   of children. Now, if one man adopts another child into his family, he
   cannot give it his own nature, as his own child would have had. And if
   that child who he shall adopt should have been a fool, it may still
   remain so--he cannot make it a child worthy of him. But our heavenly
   Father, when He comes to carry out adoption, gives us not only the name
   of children, but the nature of children, too! He gives us a nature like
   His well-Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. We had once a nature like our
   father, Adam, after he had sinned. God takes that away and gives us a
   nature like Himself, as it were, "in the image of God." He overcomes
   the old nature, and He puts in us the nature of children. "He sends
   forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, whereby we cry, Abba,
   Father." And He gives us the nature and the character of children, so
   that we are as much by Grace partakers of the spirit of children of God
   as we would have been if we had been His legitimately born children,
   and had not been adopted into His family! Brothers and Sisters,
   adoption secures to us regeneration; and regeneration secures to us the
   nature of children whereby we are not only made children, but are made
   partakers of the Grace of God--so that we are in ourselves, made unto
   God by our new nature as living children, actually and really like
   Himself!

   The next blessing is that being adopted we have access to the Throne.
   When we come to God's Throne, one thing we ought always to plead is our
   adoption. The angel that keeps the Mercy Seat might stop us on the road
   with saying, "What is your claim to come here? Do you come as a
   subject, or a servant? If you do, you have no right to come; but if you
   come as a son, come and welcome." Can you say you are a son in your
   prayers, Christian? Then never be afraid to pray! So long as you know
   your sonship you will be sure to get all you need, for you can say,
   "Father, I ask not as a servant. If I were a servant I would expect
   Your wages, and knowing that as a servant I have been rebellious, I
   would expect wages of eternal wrath. But I am Your son. Though as a
   servant I have often violated Your rules, and may expect Your rod, yet,
   O Father, sinner though I am, in and of myself, I am Your son by
   adoption and Grace. Spurn me not away; put me not from Your knee; I am
   Your own child; I plead it! The Spirit bears witness with my Spirit,
   that I am born of God. Father, will You deny Your son?" What? When you
   plead for your elder Brother's sake, by whom you are God's child, being
   made an heir with Christ of all things, will He drive away His son? No,
   Beloved, He will not! He will turn again; He will hear our prayer; He
   will have mercy upon us. If we are His children, we may have access
   with boldness to the Grace wherein we stand, and access with confidence
   unto the Throne of the heavenly Grace!

   Another blessing is that we are pitied by God. Think of that, children,
   in all your sufferings and sorrows. "Like as a father pities his
   children, so the Lord pities them who fear Him." Do you lie sick? The
   Lord stands by your bedside, pitying you. Are you tempted of Satan?
   Christ is looking down upon you, feeling in His heart your sighs, and
   your groans. Did you come here this morning with a heavy heart, a
   desponding spirit? Remember, the loving heart of God sympathizes with
   you! In His measure, Christ feels afresh what every member bears; He
   pities you, and that pity of God is one of the efforts that flows into
   your heart by your adoption.

   In the next place, He protects you. Just as a hen protects her brood
   under her feathers from birds of prey that seek their life, so the Lord
   makes His own loving arms encircle His children. No father will allow
   his son to die without making some attempt to resist the adversary who
   would slay him. God will never allow His children to perish while His
   Omnipotence is able to guard them. If once that everlasting arm can be
   palsied; if once that everlasting hand can become less than Almighty,
   then you may die; but while your Father lives, your Father's shield
   shall be your preserver, and His strong arm shall be your effectual
   protection.

   Once again, there is provision as well as protection. Every father will
   take care to the utmost of his ability to provide for his children. So
   will God. If you are adopted, being predestinated thereunto, most
   surely will He provide for you--

   "All necessary Grace will God bestow,
   And crown that Grace with glory, too;
   He gives us all things and withholds
   No real good from upright souls." Mercies temporal, mercies spiritual
   you shall have, and all because you are God's child, His redeemed
   child, made so by the blood of Jesus Christ.
   And then you shall likewise have education. God will educate all His
   children till He makes them perfect in Christ Jesus. He will teach you
   Doctrine after Doctrine. He will lead you into all His Truths until, at
   last, perfected in all heavenly wisdom, you shall be made fit to join
   with your fellow commoners in the great Heaven above.
   There is also one thing, perhaps, you sometimes forget which you are
   sure to have in the course of discipline if you are God's children, and
   that is God's rod. That is another fruit of adoption. Unless we have
   the rod, we may tremble, fearing that we are not the children of God.
   God is no foolish father--if He adopts a child, He adopts it that He
   may be a kind and wise Father. And though He does not afflict
   willingly, nor grieve the children of men for nothing--though when His
   strokes are felt, His strokes are fewer then our crimes and lighter
   than our guilt--yet at the same time He never spares the rod. He knows
   He would ruin His children if He did, and therefore He lays it on with
   no very sparing hand, and makes them cry out and groan while they think
   that He is turned to be their enemy.
   But as the Confession beautifully has it, exactly in keeping with
   Scripture, "Though chastened by God as by a father, yet never cast off,
   but sealed to the day of redemption, they inherit the promises, as
   heirs of salvation." It is one great Doctrine of Scripture that God
   cannot, as well as will not, cast off His children! I have often
   wondered how any persons can see any consistency in Scripture
   phraseology when they talk about God's people being children of God one
   day, and children of Satan the next. Now, it would startle me not a
   little if I should step into a lecture room, and hear the lecturer
   asserting that my children might be my children today and his children
   the next. I should look at him and say, "I don't see that. If they are
   really mine, they are mine. If they are not mine they are not mine, but
   I do not see how they can be mine, today, and yours tomorrow." The fact
   is that those who preach thus do believe in salvation by works--though
   they mask and cover it with specious qualifications as much as they
   may. There is as much need for a Luther to come out against them as
   there was for him to come out against the Romanists! Ah, Beloved, it is
   well to know that our standing is not of that character, but if we are
   children of God nothing can unchild us--though we are beaten and
   afflicted as children, we shall never be punished by being cast out of
   the family, and ceasing to be His children. God knows how to keep His
   own children from sin; He will never give them liberty to do as they
   please. He will say to them, "I will not kill you--that were an act I
   could not do--but this rod shall smite you; and you shall be made to
   groan and cry under the rod"--so that you will hate sin, and you will
   cleave to Him and walk in holiness even to the end. It is not a
   licentious Doctrine because there is the rod. If there were no rod of
   chastisement, then it were a daring thing to say that God's children
   shall go unpunished! They shall, so far as legal penalty is concerned.
   No judge shall condemn them; but as far as paternal chastisement is
   concerned, they shall not escape. "I have loved you above all the
   nations of the earth," says God, "and therefore I will punish you for
   your iniquities."

   Lastly, as sure as we are the children of God by adoption, we must
   inherit the promise that pertains to it. "If children, then heirs,
   heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ." "If we suffer with
   Him, we shall also be glorified together."

   III. And now the final point--THERE ARE SOME DUTIES WHICH ARE CONNECTED
   WITH ADOPTION.

   When the Believer is adopted into the Lord's family, there are many
   relationships which are broken off--the relationship with old Adam, and
   the Law ceases at once. But then he is under a new Law, the Law of
   Grace--under new rules and under a new Covenant. And now I beg to
   admonish you of duties, children of God! Because you are God's
   children, it has then become your duty to obey God. A servile spirit
   you have nothing to do with; you are a child. And inasmuch as you are a
   child, you are bound to obey your Father's faintest wish--the least
   intimation of His will. What does He say to you? Does He bid you
   fulfill such-and-such an ordinance? It is at your peril if you neglect
   it! Then you are disobeying your Father who tells you to do so! Does He
   command you to seek the image of Jesus? Seek it. Does He tell you, "Be
   you perfect, even as your Father who is in Heaven is perfect"? Then not
   because the Law says so, but because your Father says so, seek after
   it! Seek to be perfect in love and in holiness. Does He tell you to
   love one another? Love one another! Not because the Law says, "Love
   your God," but because Christ says, "If you love Me, keep My
   commandments. And this is the commandment that I give unto you, that
   you love one another." Are you told to distribute to the poor, and
   minister unto the necessity of saints? Do it not because you think you
   are bound by the Law to do it, but do it because Christ says
   so--because He is your Elder Brother--He is the Master of the
   household, and you think yourself most sweetly bound to obey. Does it
   say, "Love God with all your heart"? Look at the commandment and say,
   "Ah, commandment, I will seek to fulfill you. Christ has fulfilled you
   already--I have no need, therefore, to fulfill you for my salvation,
   but I will strive to do it because He is my Father, now, and He has a
   new claim upon me." Does He say, "Remember the Sabbath, to keep it
   holy"? I shall remember what Jesus said-- "The Sabbath was made for man
   and not man for the Sabbath," and therefore I shall not be the
   Sabbath's slave. But as inasmuch as my Father rested on the seventh
   day, so also will I from all my works, and I will have no works of
   legality to defile His Rest; I will do as many acts of mercy as ever I
   can; I will seek and strive to serve Him with filial homage. Because my
   Father rested, so will I in the finished work of Christ. And so with
   each of the Ten Commandments. Take them out of the Law; put them in the
   Gospel, and then obey them. Do not obey them simply as being the Law
   engraved on tablets of stone--obey them as Gospel written on fleshy
   tablets of the heart--"for you are not under the Law, but under Grace."

   There is another duty, Believer. It is this--if God is your Father, and
   you are His child, you are bound to trust Him. Oh, if He were only your
   Master, and you ever so poor a servant, you would be bound to trust
   Him! But when you know that He is your Father, will you ever doubt Him?
   I may doubt any man in this world, but I do not doubt my father. If he
   says a thing, if he promises a thing--I know if it is in his power, he
   will do it. And if he states a fact to me, I cannot doubt his word. And
   yet, O child of God, how often do you mistrust your heavenly Father? Do
   so no more! Let Him be true; let every man be a liar--still doubt not
   your Father. What? Could He tell you a lie? Would He cheat you? No,
   your Father, when He speaks, means what He says. Can you not trust His
   love? What? Will He let you sink while He is able to keep you afloat?
   Will He let you starve while His granaries are full? Will He let you
   die of thirst when His presses burst with new wine? Are the cattle upon
   a thousand hills His, and will He let you lack a meal? Is the earth the
   Lord's and the fullness thereof, and will He let you go away empty and
   poor, and miserable? Oh, surely not! Is all Grace His, and will He keep
   it back from you? No, He says to us today, "Son, you are always with
   Me, and all that I have is yours. Take what you will, it is all your
   own. But trust to your Father--

   Now go away, Heirs of Heaven, with light feet, and with joy in your
   countenances, saying you know that you are His children, and that He
   loves you and will not cast you away! Believe that to His bosom He now
   presses you--that His heart is full of love to you! Believe that He
   will provide for you, protect you, sustain you, and that He will at
   last bring you to a glad inheritance when you shall have perfected the
   years of your pilgrimage and shall be ripe for bliss! "As He has
   predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to
   Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will."

   I need not this morning delay you any longer in personally addressing
   unconverted persons. Their welfare I always seek. I have sought, while
   speaking to the saints this morning, so to speak that every sinner may
   learn at least this one fact--salvation is of God alone--and that he
   may be brought into this state of mind--to feel that if he is
   saved--God must save him, or else he cannot be saved at all! If any of
   you acknowledge that Truth, then in God's name I now bid you believe in
   Jesus, for as surely as ever you can feel that God has a right to save
   or to destroy you, Grace must have made you feel that, and therefore
   you now have a right to come and believe in Jesus! If you know that,
   you know all that will make you feel empty, and therefore you have
   enough to make you cast your entire hope upon that fullness which is in
   Jesus Christ.

   The Lord bless you and save you! Amen.
   To choose and to command.
   With wonder filled, you then shall own,
   How wise, how strong His hand."
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 None But Jesus

   A Sermon

   (No. 361)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, February 17th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At Exeter Hall, Strand

   "He that believeth on him is not condemned" --John 3:18

   THE way of salvation is stated in Scripture in the very plainest terms,
   and yet, perhaps, there is no truth about which more errors have been
   uttered, than concerning the faith which saves the soul. Well has it
   been proved by experience, that all doctrines of Christ are
   mysteries--mysteries, not so much in themselves, but because they are
   hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded
   their eyes. So plain is Scripture, that one would have said, "He that
   runs may read"; but so dim is man's eye, and so marred is his
   understanding, that the very simplest truth of Scripture he distorts
   and misrepresents. And indeed, my brethren, even those who know what
   faith is, personally and experimentally, do not always find it easy to
   give a good definition of it. They think they have hit the mark, and
   then afterwards they lament that they have failed. Straining themselves
   to describe some one part of faith, they find they have forgotten
   another, and in the excess of their earnestness to clear the poor
   sinner out of one mistake, they often lead him into a worse error. So
   that I think I may say that, while faith is the simplest thing in all
   the world, yet it is one of the most difficult upon which to preach,
   because from its very importance, our soul begins to tremble while
   speaking of it, and then we are not able to describe it so clearly as
   we would.

   I intend this morning, by God's help, to put together sundry thoughts
   upon faith, each of which I may have uttered in your hearing at
   different times, but which have not been collected into one sermon
   before, and which, I have no doubt, have been misunderstood from the
   want of their having been put together in their proper consecutive
   order. I shall speak a little on each of these points; first, the
   object of faith, to what it looks; next, the reason of faith, whence it
   comes; thirdly, the ground of faith, or what it wears when it comes;
   fourthly, the warrant of faith, or why it dares to come to Christ; and
   fifthly, the result of faith, or, how it speeds when it doth come to
   Christ.

   I. First, then, THE OBJECT OF FAITH, or to what faith looks.

   I am told in the Word of God to believe--What am I to believe? I am
   bidden to look--to what am I to look? What is to be the object of my
   hope, belief, and confidence? The reply is simple. The object of Faith
   to a sinner is Christ Jesus. How many make a mistake about this and
   think that they are to believe on God the Father! Now belief in God is
   an after-result of faith in Jesus. We come to believe in the eternal
   love of the Father as the result of trusting the precious blood of the
   Son. Many men say, "I would believe in Christ if I knew that I were
   elect." This is coming to the Father, and no man can come to the Father
   except by Christ. It is the Father's work to elect; you cannot come
   directly to him, therefore you cannot know your election until first
   you have believed on Christ the Redeemer, and then through redemption
   you can approach to the Father and know your election. Some, too, make
   the mistake of looking to the work of God the Holy Spirit. They look
   within to see if they have certain feelings, and if they find them
   their faith is strong, but if their feelings have departed from them,
   then their faith is weak, so that they look to the work of the Spirit
   which is not the object of a sinner's faith. Both the Father and the
   Spirit must be trusted in order to complete redemption, but for the
   particular mercy of justification and pardon the blood of the Mediator
   is the only plea. Christians have to trust the Spirit after conversion,
   but the sinner's business, if he would be saved, is not with trusting
   the Spirit nor with looking to the Spirit, but looking to Christ Jesus,
   and to him alone. I know your salvation depends on the whole Trinity,
   but yet the first and immediate object of a sinner's justifying faith
   is neither God the Father nor God the Holy Ghost, but God the Son,
   incarnate in human flesh, and offering atonement for sinners. Hast thou
   the eye of faith? Then, soul, look thou to Christ as God. If thou
   wouldst be saved, believe him to be God over all, blessed for ever. Bow
   before him, and accept him as being "Very God of very God," for if thou
   do not, thou hast no part in him. When thou hast this believed, believe
   in him as man. Believe the wondrous story of his incarnation; rely upon
   the testimony of the evangelists, who declare that the Infinite was
   robed in the infant, that the Eternal was concealed within the mortal;
   that he who was King of heaven became a servant of servants and the Son
   of man. Believe and admire the mystery of his incarnation, for unless
   thou believe this, thou canst not be saved thereby. Then, specially, if
   thou wouldst be saved, let thy faith behold Christ in his perfect
   righteousness. See him keeping the law without blemish, obeying his
   Father without error; preserving his integrity without flaw. All this
   thou are to consider as being done on thy behalf. Thou couldst not keep
   the law; he kept it for thee. Thou couldst not obey God perfectly--lo!
   his obedience standeth in the stead of thy obedience--by it, thou art
   saved. But take care that thy faith mainly fixes itself upon Christ as
   dying and as dead. View the Lamb of God as dumb before his shearers;
   view him as the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; go thou with
   him to Gethsemane, and behold him sweating drops of blood. Mark, thy
   faith has nothing to do with anything within thyself; the object of thy
   faith is nothing within thee, but a something without thee. Believe on
   him, then, who on yonder tree with nailed hands and feet pours out his
   life for sinners. There is the object of thy faith for justification;
   not in thyself, nor in anything which the Holy Spirit has done in thee,
   or anything he has promised to do for thee; but thou art to look to
   Christ and to Christ alone. Then let thy faith behold Christ as rising
   from the dead. See him--he has borne the curse, and now he receives the
   justification. He dies to pay the debt; he rises that he may nail the
   handwriting of that discharged debt to the cross. See him ascending up
   on high, and behold him this day pleading before the Father's throne.
   He is there pleading for his people, offering up to-day his
   authoritative petition for all that come to God by him. And he, as God,
   as man, as living, as dying, as rising, and as reigning above,--he, and
   he alone, is to be the object of thy faith for the pardon of sin.

   On nothing else must thou trust; he is to be the only prop and pillar
   of thy confidence; and all thou addest thereunto will be a wicked
   antichrist, a rebellion against the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus. But
   take care if your faith save you, that while you look to Christ in all
   these matters you view him as being a substitute. This doctrine of
   substitution is so essential to the whole plan of salvation that I must
   explain it here for the thousandth time. God is just, he must punish
   sin; God is merciful, he wills to pardon those who believe in Jesus.
   How is this to be done? How can he be just and exact the
   penalty,--merciful, and accept the sinner? He doeth it thus: he taketh
   the sins of his people and actually lifteth them up from off his people
   to Christ, so that they stand as innocent as though they had never
   sinned, and Christ is looked upon by God as though he had been all the
   sinners in the world rolled into one. The sin of his people was taken
   from their persons, and really and actually, not typically and
   metaphorically, but really and actually laid on Christ. Then God came
   forth with his fiery sword to meet the sinner and to punish him. He met
   Christ. Christ was not a sinner himself; but the sins of his people
   were all imputed to him. Justice, therefore, met Christ as though he
   had been the sinner--punished Christ for his people's sins--punished
   him as far as its rights could go,--exacted from him the last atom of
   the penalty, and left not a dreg in the cup. And now, he who can see
   Christ as being his substitute, and puts his trust in him, is thereby
   delivered from the curse of the law. Soul, when thou seest Christ
   obeying the law--thy faith is to say, "He obeys that for his people."
   When thou seest him dying, thou art to count the purple drops, and say,
   "Thus he took my sins away." When thou seest him rising from the dead,
   thou art to say--"He rises as the head and representative of all his
   elect"; and when thou seest him sitting at the right hand of God, thou
   art to view him there as the pledge that all for whom he died shall
   most surely sit at the Father's right hand. Learn to look on Christ as
   being in God's sight as though he were the sinner. "In him was no sin."
   He was "the just," but he suffered for the unjust. He was the
   righteous, but he stood in the place of the unrighteous; and all that
   the unrighteous ought to have endured, Christ has endured once for all,
   and put away their sins for ever by the sacrifice of himself. Now this
   is the great object of faith. I pray you, do not make any mistake about
   this, for a mistake here will be dangerous, if not fatal. View Christ,
   by your faith, as being in his life, and death, and sufferings, and
   resurrection, the substitute for all whom his Father gave him,--the
   vicarious sacrifice for the sins of all those who will trust him with
   their souls. Christ, then, thus set forth, is the object of justifying
   faith.

   Now let me further remark that there are some of you, no doubt,
   saying--"Oh, I should believe and I would be saved if"--If what? If
   Christ had died? "Oh no, sir, my doubt is nothing about Christ." I
   thought so. Then what is the doubt? "Why, I should believe if I felt
   this, or if I had done that." Just so; but I tell you, you could not
   believe in Jesus if you felt that, or if you had done that, for then
   you would believe in yourself, and not in Christ. That is the English
   of it. If you were so-and-so, or so-and-so, then you could have
   confidence. Confidence in what? Why, confidence in your feelings, and
   confidence in your doings, and that is just the clear contrary of
   confidence in Christ. Faith is not to infer from something good within
   me that I shall be saved, but to say in the teeth, and despite of the
   fact that I am guilty in the sight of God and deserve his wrath, yet I
   do nevertheless believe that the blood of Jesus Christ his Son
   cleanseth me from all sin; and though my present consciousness condemns
   me, yet my faith overpowers my consciousness, and I do believe that "he
   is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him." To
   come to Christ as a saint is very easy work; to trust to a doctor to
   cure you when you believe you are getting better, is very easy; but to
   trust your physician when you feel as if the sentence of death were in
   your body, to bear up when the disease is rising into the very skin,
   and when the ulcer is gathering its venom--to believe even then in the
   efficacy of the medicine--that is faith. And so, when sin gets the
   mastery of thee, when thou feelest that the law condemns thee, then,
   even then, as a sinner, to trust Christ, this is the most daring feat
   in all the world; and the faith which shook down the walls of Jericho,
   the faith which raised the dead, the faith which stopped the mouths of
   lions, was not greater than that of a poor sinner, when in the teeth of
   all his sins he dares to trust the blood and righteousness of Jesus
   Christ. Do this, soul, then thou are saved, whosoever thou mayest be.
   The object of faith, then, is Christ as the substitute for sinners. God
   in Christ, but not God apart from Christ, nor any work of the Spirit,
   but the work of Jesus only must be viewed by you as the foundation of
   your hope.

   II. And now, secondly, THE REASON OF FAITH, or why doth any man
   believe, and whence doth his faith come?

   "Faith cometh by hearing." Granted, but do not all men hear, and do not
   many still remain unbelieving? How, then, doth any man come by his
   faith? To his own experience his faith comes as the result of a sense
   of need. He feels himself needing a Saviour; he finds Christ to be just
   such a Saviour as he wants, and therefore because he cannot help
   himself, he believes in Jesus. Having nothing of his own, he feels he
   must take Christ or else perish, and therefore he doth it because he
   cannot help doing it. He is fairly driven up into a corner, and there
   is but this one way of escape, namely, by the righteousness of another;
   for he feels he cannot escape by any good deeds, or sufferings of his
   own, and he cometh to Christ and humbleth himself, because he cannot do
   without Christ, and must perish unless he lay hold of him. But to carry
   the question further back, where does that man get his sense of need?
   How is it that he, rather than others, feels his need of Christ? It is
   certain he has no more necessity for Christ than other men. How doth he
   come to know, then, that he is lost and ruined? How is it that he is
   driven by the sense of ruin to take hold on Christ the restorer? The
   reply is, this is the gift of God; this is the work of the Spirit. No
   man comes to Christ except the Spirit draw him, and the Spirit draws
   men to Christ by shutting them up under the law to a conviction that if
   they do not come to Christ they must perish. Then by sheer stress of
   weather, they tack about and run into this heavenly port. Salvation by
   Christ is so disagreeable to our carnal mind, so inconsistent with our
   love of human merit, that we never would take Christ to be our all in
   all, if the Spirit did not convince us that we were nothing at all, and
   did not so compel us to lay hold on Christ.

   But, then, the question goes further back still; how is it that the
   Spirit of God teaches some men their need, and not other men? Why is it
   that some of you were driven by your sense of need to Christ, while
   others go on in their self-righteousness and perish? There is no answer
   to be given but this, "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy
   sight." It comes to divine sovereignty at the last. The Lord hath
   "hidden those things from the wise and prudent, and hath revealed them
   unto babes." According to the way in which Christ put it--"My sheep,
   hear my voice"; "ye believe not because ye are not of my sheep, as I
   said unto you." Some divines would like to read that--"Ye are not my
   sheep, because ye do not believe." As if believing made us the sheep of
   Christ; but the text puts it--"Ye believe not, because ye are not of my
   sheep." "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me." If they come
   not, it is a clear proof that they were never given; for those who were
   given of old eternity to Christ, chosen of God the Father, and then
   redeemed by God the Son--these are led by the Spirit, through a sense
   of need to come and lay hold on Christ. No man yet ever did, or ever
   will believe in Christ, unless he feels his need of him. No man ever
   did, or will feel his need of Christ, unless the Spirit makes him feel,
   and the Spirit will make no man feel his need of Jesus savingly, unless
   it be so written in that eternal book, in which God hath surely
   engraved the names of his chosen. So, then, I think I am not to be
   misunderstood on this point, that the reason of faith, or why men
   believe, is God's electing love working through the Spirit by a sense
   of need, and so bringing them to Christ Jesus.

   III. But now I shall want your careful attention, while I come to
   another point, upon which you, perhaps, will think I contradict myself,
   and that is, THE GROUND OF THE SINNER'S FAITH, or on what ground he
   dares to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

   My dear friends, I have already said that no man will believe in Jesus,
   unless he feels his need of him. But you have often heard me say, and I
   repeat it again, that I do not come to Christ pleading that I feel my
   need of him; my reason for believing in Christ, is not that I feel my
   need of him, but that I have a need of him. The ground on which a man
   comes to Jesus, is not as a sensible sinner, but as a sinner, and
   nothing but a sinner. He will not come unless he is awakened; but when
   he comes, he does not say, "Lord, I come to thee because I am an
   awakened sinner, save me." But he says, "Lord, I am a sinner, save me."
   Not his awakening, but his sinnership is the method and plan upon which
   he dares to come. You will, perhaps, perceive what I mean, for I cannot
   exactly explain myself just now. If I refer to the preaching of a great
   many Calvinistic divines, they say to a sinner, "Now, if you feel your
   need of Christ, if you have repented so much, if you have been harrowed
   by the law to such-and-such a degree, then you may come to Christ on
   the ground that you are an awakened sinner." I say that is false. No
   man may come to Christ on the ground of his being an awakened sinner;
   he must come to him as a sinner. When I come to Jesus, I know I am not
   come unless I am awakened, but still, I do not come as an awakened
   sinner. I do not stand at the foot of his cross to be washed because I
   have repented; I bring nothing when I come but sin. A sense of need is
   a good feeling, but when I stand at the foot of the cross, I do not
   believe in Christ because I have got good feelings, but I believe in
   him whether I have good feelings or not.

   "Just as I am without one plea,

   But that thy blood was shed for me,

   And that thou bidst me come to thee,

   O Lamb of God I come."

   Mr. Roger, Mr. Sheppard, Mr. Flavel, and several excellent divines, in
   the Puritanic age, and especially Richard Baxter, used to give
   descriptions of what a man must feel before he may dare to come to
   Christ. Now, I say in the language of good Mr. Fenner, another of those
   divines, who said he was but a babe in grace when compared with
   them--"I dare to say it, that all this is not Scriptural. Sinners do
   feel these things before they come, but they do not come on the ground
   of having felt it; they come on the ground of being sinners, and on no
   other ground whatever." The gate of Mercy is opened, and over the door
   it is written, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all
   acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."
   Between that word "save" and the next word "sinners," there is no
   adjective. It does not say, "penitent sinners," "awakened sinners,"
   "sensible sinners," "grieving sinners," or "alarmed sinners." No, it
   only says, "sinners," and I know this, that when I come, I come to
   Christ to-day, for I feel it is as much a necessity of my life to come
   to the cross of Christ to-day as it was to come ten years ago,--when I
   come to him I dare not come as a conscious sinner or an awakened
   sinner, but I have to come still as a sinner with nothing in my hands.
   I saw an aged man this week in the vestry of a chapel in Yorkshire. I
   had been saying something to this effect: the old man had been a
   Christian for years, and he said, "I never saw it put exactly so, but
   still I know that is just the way I come; I say, Lord,

   'Nothing in my hands I bring,

   Simply to thy cross I cling;

   Naked, look to thee for dress;

   Helpless, come to thee for grace;

   Black'--

   ("Black enough," said the old man)

   'I to the fountain fly,

   Wash me, Saviour, or I die.'"

   Faith is getting right out of yourself and getting into Christ. I know
   that many hundreds of poor souls have been troubled because the
   minister has said, "if you feel your need, you may come to Christ."
   "But," say they, "I do not feel my need enough; I am sure I do not."
   Many a score letters have I received from poor troubled consciences who
   have said, "I would venture to believe in Christ to save me if I had a
   tender conscience; if I had a soft heart--but oh my heart is like a
   rock of ice which will not melt. I cannot feel as I would like to feel,
   and therefore I must not believe in Jesus." Oh! down with it, down with
   it! It is a wicked anti-Christ; it is flat Popery! It is not your soft
   heart that entitles you to believe. You are to believe in Christ to
   renew your hard heart, and come to him with nothing about you but sin.
   The ground on which a sinner comes to Christ is that he is black; that
   he is dead, and not that he knows he is dead; that he is lost, and not
   that he knows he is lost. I know he will not come unless he does know
   it, but that is not the ground on which he comes. It is the secret
   reason why, but it is not the public positive ground which he
   understands. Here was I, year after year, afraid to come to Christ
   because I thought I did not feel enough; and I used to read that hymn
   of Cowper's about being insensible as steel--

   "If aught is felt tis only pain

   To find I cannot feel."

   When I believed in Christ, I thought I did not feel at all. Now when I
   look back I find that I had been feeling all the while most acutely and
   intensely, and most of all because I thought I did not feel. Generally
   the people who repent the most, think they are impenitent, and people
   feel most their need when they think they do not feel at all, for we
   are no judges of our feelings, and hence the gospel invitation is not
   put upon the ground of anything of which we can be a judge; it is put
   on the ground of our being sinners and nothing but sinners. "Well,"
   says one, "but it says, Come unto me all ye that are weary and
   heavy-laden and I will give you rest'--then we must be weary and
   heavy-laden." Just so; so it is in the text, but then there is another.
   "Whosoever will let him come"; and that does not say anything about
   "weary and heavy-laden." Besides, while the invitation is given to the
   weary and heavy-laden, you will perceive that the promise is not made
   to them as weary and heavy-laden, but it is made to them as coming to
   Christ. They did not know that they were weary and heavy-laden when
   they came; they thought they were not. They really were, but part of
   their weariness was that they could not be as weary as they would like
   to be, and part of their load was that they did not feel their load
   enough. They came to Christ just as they were, and he saved them, not
   because there was any merit in their weariness, or any efficacy in
   their being heavy-laden, but he saved them as sinners and nothing but
   sinners, and so they were washed in his blood and made clean. My dear
   hearer, do let me put this truth home to thee. If thou wilt come to
   Christ this morning, as nothing but a sinner, he will not cast thee
   out.

   Old Tobias Crisp says in one of his sermons upon this very point, "I
   dare to say it, but if thou dost come to Christ, whosoever thou mayest
   be, if he does not receive thee, then he is not true to his word, for
   he says, Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.'" If thou
   comest, never mind qualification or preparation. He needeth no
   qualification of duties or of feelings either. Thou art to come just as
   thou art, and if thou art the biggest sinner out of hell, thou art as
   fit to come to Christ as if thou wert the most moral and most excellent
   of men. There is a bath: who is fit to be washed? A man's blackness is
   no reason why he should not be washed, but the clearer reason why he
   should be. When our City magistrates were giving relief to the poor,
   nobody said, "I am so poor, therefore I am not fit to have relief."
   Your poverty is your preparation, the black is the white here. Strange
   contradiction! The only thing you can bring to Christ is your sin and
   your wickedness. All he asks is, that you will come empty. If you have
   anything of your own, you must leave all before you come. If there be
   anything good in you, you cannot trust Christ, you must come with
   nothing in your hand. Take him as all in all, and that is the only
   ground upon which a poor soul can be saved--as a sinner, and nothing
   but a sinner.

   IV. But not to stay longer, my fourth point has to do with THE WARRANT
   OF FAITH, or why a man dares to trust in Christ.

   Is it not imprudent for any man to trust Christ to save him, and
   especially when he has no good thing whatever? Is it not an arrogant
   presumption for any man to trust Christ? No, sirs, it is not. It is a
   grand and noble work of God the Holy Spirit for a man to give the lie
   to all his sins, and still to believe and set to his seal that God is
   true, and believe in the virtue of the blood of Jesus. But why does any
   man dare to believe in Christ I will ask you now. "Well," saith one
   man, "I summoned faith to believe in Christ because I did feel there
   was a work of the Spirit in me." You do not believe in Christ at all.
   "Well," says another, "I thought that I had a right to believe in
   Christ, because I felt somewhat." You had not any right to believe in
   Christ at all on such a warranty as that. What is a man's warrant then
   for believing in Christ. Here it is. Christ tells him to do it, that is
   his warrant. Christ's word is the warrant of the sinner for believing
   in Christ--not what he feels nor what he is, nor what he is not, but
   that Christ has told him to do it. The Gospel runs thus: "Believe on
   the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. He that believeth not
   shall be damned." Faith in Christ then is a commanded duty as well as a
   blessed privilege, and what a mercy it is that it is a duty; because
   there never can be any question but that a man has a right to do his
   duty. Now on the ground that God commands me to believe, I have a right
   to believe, be I who I may. The gospel is sent to every creature. Well,
   I belong to that tribe; I am one of the every creatures, and that
   gospel commands me to believe and I do it. I cannot have done wrong in
   doing it for I was commanded to do so. I cannot be wrong in obeying a
   command of God. Now it is a command of God given to every creature that
   he should believe on Jesus Christ whom God hath sent. This is your
   warrant, sinner, and a blessed warrant it is, for it is one which hell
   cannot gainsay, and which heaven cannot withdraw. You need not be
   looking within to look for the misty warrants of your experience, you
   need not be looking to your works, and to your feelings, to get some
   dull and insufficient warrants for your confidence in Christ. You may
   believe Christ because he tells you to do so. That is a sure ground to
   stand on, and one which admits of no doubt. I will suppose that we are
   all starving; that the city has been besieged and shut up, and there
   has been a long, long famine, and we are ready to die of hunger. There
   comes out an invitation to us to repair at once to the palace of some
   great one there to eat and drink; but we have grown foolish, and will
   not accept the invitation. Suppose now that some hideous madness has
   got hold of us, and we prefer to die, and had rather starve than come.
   Suppose the king's herald should say, "Come and feast, poor hungry
   souls, and because I know you are unwilling to come, I add this threat,
   if you come not my warriors shall be upon you; they shall make you feel
   the sharpness of their swords." I think my dear friends, we should say,
   "We bless the great man for that threatening because now we need not
   say, I may not come,' while the fact is we may not stop away. Now I
   need not say I am not fit to come for I am commanded to come, and I am
   threatened if I do not come; and I will even go." That awful
   sentence--"He that believeth not shall be damned," was added not out of
   anger, but because the Lord knew our silly madness, and that we should
   refuse our own mercies unless he thundered at us to make us come to the
   feast, "Compel them to come in"; this was the Word of the Master of
   old, and that text is part of the carrying out of that exhortation,
   "Compel them to come in." Sinner, you cannot be lost by trusting
   Christ, but you will be lost if you do not trust him, ay, and lost for
   not trusting him. I put it boldly now--sinner, not only may you come,
   but oh! I pray you, do not defy the wrath of God by refusing to come.
   The gate of mercy stands wide open; why will you not come? Why will you
   not? Why so proud? Why will you still refuse his voice and perish in
   your sins? Mark, if you perish, any one of you, your blood lies not at
   God's door, nor Christ's door, but at your own. He can say of you, "Ye
   will not come unto me that ye might have life." Oh! poor trembler, if
   thou be willing to come, there is nothing in God's Word to keep thee
   from coming, but there are both threatenings to drive thee, and powers
   to draw thee. Still I hear you say, "I must not trust Christ." You may,
   I say, for every creature under heaven is commanded to do it, and what
   you are commanded to do, you may do. "Ah! well," saith one, "still I do
   not feel that I may." There you are again; you say you will not do what
   God tells you, because of some stupid feelings of your own. You are not
   told to trust Christ because you feel anything, but simply because you
   are a sinner. Now you know you are a sinner. "I am," says one, "and
   that is my sorrow." Why your sorrow? That is some sign that you do
   feel. "Ay," saith one, "but I do not feel enough, and that is why I
   sorrow. I do not feel as I should." Well, suppose you do feel, or
   suppose you do not, you are a sinner, and "this is a faithful saying
   and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to
   save sinners." "Oh, but I am such an old sinner; I have been sixty
   years in sin." Where is it written that after sixty you cannot be
   saved? Sir, Christ could save you at a hundred--ay, if you were a
   Methuselah in guilt. "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us
   from all sin." "Whosoever will let him come." "He is able to save to
   the uttermost them that come unto God by him." "Yes," says one, "but I
   have been a drunkard, a swearer, or lascivious, or profane." Then you
   are a sinner, you have not gone further than the uttermost, and he is
   able to save you still. "Ay," saith another, "but you do not know how
   my guilt has been aggravated." That only proves you to be a sinner, and
   that you are commanded to trust Christ and be saved. "Ay," cries yet
   another, "but you do not know how often I have rejected Christ." Yes,
   but that only makes you the more a sinner. "You do not know how hard my
   heart is." Just so, but that only proves you to be a sinner, and still
   proves you to be one whom Christ came to save. "Oh, but, sir, I have
   not any good thing. If I had, you know, I should have something to
   encourage me." The fact of your not having any good thing just proves
   to me that you are the man I am sent to preach to. Christ came to save
   that which was lost, and all you have said only proves that you are
   lost, and therefore he came to save you. Do trust him; do trust him.
   "But if I am saved," saith one, "I shall be the biggest sinner that
   ever was saved." Then the greater music in heaven when you get there;
   the more glory to Christ, for the bigger the sinner the more honour to
   Christ when at last he shall be brought home. "Ay, but my sin has
   abounded." His grace shall much more abound. "But my sin has reached
   even to heaven." Yes, but his mercy reaches above the heavens. "Oh! but
   my guilt is as broad as the world." Yes, but his righteousness is
   broader than a thousand worlds. "Ay, but my sin is scarlet." Yes, but
   his blood is more scarlet than your sins, and can wash the scarlet out
   by a richer scarlet. "Ay! but I deserve to be lost, and death and hell
   cry for my damnation." Yes, and so they may, but the blood of Jesus
   Christ can cry louder than either death or hell; and it cries to-day,
   "Father, let the sinner live." Oh! I wish I could get this thought out
   of my own mouth, and get it into your heads, that when God saves you,
   it is not because of anything in you, it is because of something in
   himself. God's love has no reason except in his own bowels; God's
   reason for pardoning a sinner is found in his own heart, and not in the
   sinner. And there is as much reason in you why you should be saved as
   why another should be saved, namely, no reason at all. There is no
   reason in you why he should have mercy on you, but there is no reason
   wanted, for the reason lies in God and in God alone.

   V. And now I come to the conclusion, and I trust you will have patience
   with me, for my last point is a very glorious one, and full of joy to
   those souls who as sinners dare to believe in Christ--THE RESULT OF
   FAITH, or how it speeds when it comes to Christ.

   The text says, "He that believeth is not condemned." There is a man
   there who has just this moment believed; he is not condemned. But he
   has been fifty years in sin, and has plunged into all manner of vice;
   his sins, which are many, are all forgiven him. He stands in the sight
   of God now as innocent as though he had never sinned. Such is the power
   of Jesus' blood, that "he that believeth is not condemned." Does this
   relate to what is to happen at the day of Judgment? I pray you look at
   the text, and you will find it does not say, "He that believeth shall
   not be condemned," but he is not; he is not now. And if he is not now,
   then it follows that he never shall be; for having believed in Christ
   that promise still stands, "He that believeth is not condemned." I
   believe to-day I am not condemned; in fifty years' time that promise
   will be just the same--"He that believeth is not condemned." So that
   the moment a man puts his trust in Christ, he is freed from all
   condemnation--past, present, and to come; and from that day he stands
   in God's sight as though he were without spot or wrinkle, or any such
   thing. "But he sins," you say. He does indeed, but his sins are not
   laid to his charge. They were laid to the charge of Christ of old, and
   God can never charge the offence on two--first on Christ, and then on
   the sinner. "Ay, but he often falls into sin." That may be possible;
   though if the Spirit of God be in him he sinneth not as he was wont to
   do. He sins by reason of infirmity, not by reason of his love to sin,
   for now he hateth it. But mark, you shall put it in your own way if you
   will, and I will answer, "Yes, but though he sin, yet is he no more
   guilty in the sight of God, for all his guilt has been taken from him,
   and put on Christ,--positively, literally, and actually lifted off from
   him, and put upon Jesus Christ." Do you see the Jewish host? There is a
   scapegoat brought out; the high priest confesses the sin of the people
   over the scapegoat's head. The sin is all gone from the people, and
   laid upon the scapegoat. Away goes the scapegoat into the wilderness.
   Is there any sin left on the people? If there be, then the scapegoat
   has not carried it away. Because it cannot be here and there too. It
   cannot be carried away and left behind too. "No," say you, "Scripture
   says the scapegoat carried away the sin; there was none left on the
   people when the scapegoat had taken away the sin. And so, when by faith
   we put our hand upon the head of Christ, does Christ take away our sin,
   or does he not? If he does not, then it is of no use our believing in
   him; but if he doth really take away our sin, then our sin cannot be on
   him and on us too; if it be on Christ, we are free, clear, accepted,
   justified, and this is the true doctrine of justification by faith. As
   soon as a man believeth in Christ Jesus, his sins are gone from him,
   and gone away for ever. They are blotted out now. What if a man owe a
   hundred pounds, yet if he has got a receipt for it, he is free; it is
   blotted out; there is an erasure made in the book, and the debt is
   gone. Though the man commit sin, yet the debt having been paid before
   even the debt was acquired, he is no more a debtor to the law of God.
   Doth not Scripture say, that God has cast his people's sins into the
   depths of the sea? Now, if they are in the depths of the sea, they
   cannot be on his people too. Blessed be his name, in the day when he
   casts our sins into the depth of the sea, he views us as pure in his
   sight, and we stand accepted in the beloved. Then he says, "As far as
   the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions
   from us." They cannot be removed and be here still. Then if thou
   believest in Christ, thou art no more in the sight of God a sinner;
   thou art accepted as though thou wert perfect, as though thou hadst
   kept the law,--for Christ has kept it, and his righteousness is thine.
   You have broken it, but your sin is his, and he has been punished for
   it. Mistake not yourselves any longer; you are no more what you were;
   when you believe, you stand in Christ's stead, even as Christ of old
   stood in your stead. The transformation is complete, the exchange is
   positive and eternal. They who believe in Jesus are as much accepted of
   God the Father as even his Eternal Son is accepted; and they that
   believe not, let them do what they will, they shall but go about to
   work out their own righteousness; but they abide under the law, and
   still shall they be under the curse. Now, ye that believe in Jesus,
   walk up and down the earth in the glory of this great truth. You are
   sinners in yourselves, but you are washed in the blood of Christ. David
   says, "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." You have lately seen
   the snow come down--how clear! how white! What could be whiter? Why,
   the Christian is whiter than that. You say, "He is black." I know he is
   as black as anyone--as black as hell--but the blooddrop falls on him,
   and he is as white--"whiter than snow." The next time you see the
   snow-white crystals falling from heaven, look on them and say, "Ah!
   though I must confess within myself that I am unworthy and unclean,
   yet, believing in Christ, he hath given me his righteousness so
   completely, that I am even whiter than the snow as it descends from the
   treasury of God." Oh! for faith to lay hold on this. Oh! for an
   overpowering faith that shall get the victory over doubts and fears,
   and make us enjoy the liberty wherewith Christ makes men free. Go home,
   ye that believe in Christ, and go to your beds this night, and say, "If
   I die in my bed I cannot be condemned." Should you wake the next
   morning, go into the world and say, "I am not condemned." When the
   devil howls at you, tell him, "Ah! you may accuse, but I am not
   condemned." And if sometimes your sins rise--say, "Ah, I know you, but
   you are all gone for ever; I am not condemned." And when your turn
   shall come to die shut your eyes in peace.

   "Bold shall you stand in that great day,

   For who aught to your charge can lay?"

   Fully absolved by grace you shall be found at last and all sin's
   tremendous curse and blame shall be taken away, not because of anything
   you have done. I pray you do all you can for Christ out of gratitude,
   but even when you have done all, do not rest there. Rest still in the
   substitution and the sacrifice. Be you what Christ was in his Father's
   sight, and when conscience awakens, you can tell it that Christ was for
   you all that you ought to have been, that he has suffered all your
   penalty; and now neither mercy nor justice can smite you, since justice
   has clasped hands with mercy in a firm decree to save that man whose
   faith is in the cross of Christ. The Lord bless these words for his
   sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          None But Jesus--Second Part

   A Sermon

   (No. 362)

   Delivered on Sunday Evening, February 17th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At New Park Street, Southwark.

   "He that believeth on him is not condemned" --John 3:18

   IN the morning sermon, our time was mainly taken up with the
   description of Faith--what it is. We had only a few minutes left at its
   close to describe what it leads to--the privilege of justification,
   which is a gift to the soul as the result of Faith. Let this high
   privilege, then, occupy our attention to-night. The text says, "He that
   believeth on him--[that is on Christ Jesus]--is not condemned."

   To take up the subject in order, we shall notice first, the
   satisfactory declaration here made; then, secondly, we shall endeavour
   to correct certain misapprehensions respecting it, by reason of which
   the Christian is often cast down; and we shall close with some
   reflections, positive and negative, as to what this text includes, and
   what it excludes.

   I. First of all, then, WHAT A SATISFACTORY DECLARATION!--"He that
   believeth on him is not condemned."

   You are aware that in our courts of law, a verdict of "not guilty,"
   amounts to an acquittal, and the prisoner is immediately discharged. So
   is it in the language of the gospel; a sentence of "not condemned,"
   implies the justification of the sinner. It means that the believer in
   Christ receives now a present justification. Faith does not produce its
   fruits by-and-by, but now. So far as justification is the result of
   faith, it is given to the soul in the moment when it closes with
   Christ, and accepts him as its all in all. Are they who stand before
   the throne of God justified to-night?--so are we, as truly and as
   clearly justified as they who walk in white and sing his praises above.
   The thief upon the cross was justified the moment that he turned the
   eye of faith to Jesus, who was just then, hanging by his side: and
   Paul, the aged, after years of service, was not more justified than was
   the thief with no service at all. We are to-day accepted in the
   Beloved, to-day absolved from sin, to-day innocent in the sight of God.
   Oh, ravishing, soul-transporting thought! There are some clusters of
   this vine which we shall not be able to gather till we go to heaven;
   but this is one of the first ripe clusters and may be plucked and eaten
   here. This is not as the corn of the land, which we can never eat till
   we cross the Jordan; but this is part of the manna in the wilderness,
   and part too of our daily raiment, with which God supplies us in our
   journeying to and fro. We are now--even now pardoned; even now are our
   sins put away; even now we stand in the sight of God as though we had
   never been guilty; innocent as father Adam when he stood in integrity,
   ere he had eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree; pure as though we
   had never received the taint of depravity in our veins. "There is,
   therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus."
   There is not a sin in the Book of God, even now, against one of his
   people. There is nothing laid to their charge. There is neither speck,
   nor spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing remaining upon any one
   believer in the matter of justification in the sight of the Judge of
   all the earth.

   But to pass on, the text evidently means not simply present, but
   continual justification. In the moment when you and I believed, it was
   said of us, "He is not condemned." Many days have passed since then,
   many changes we have seen; but it is as true of us to-night, "He is not
   condemned." The Lord alone knows how long our appointed day shall
   be--how long ere we shall fulfill the hireling's time, and like a
   shadow flee away. But this we know, since every word of God is assured,
   and the gifts of God are without repentance, though we should live
   another fifty years, yet would it still be written here, "He that
   believeth on him is not condemned." Nay, if by some mysterious dealing
   in providence our lives should be lengthened out to ten times the usual
   limit of man, and we should come to the eight or nine hundred years of
   Methuselah, still would it stand the same--"He that believeth on him is
   not condemned." "I give unto my sheep eternal life, and they shall
   never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand." "The just
   shall live by faith." "He that believeth on him shall never be
   confounded." All these promises go to show that the justification which
   Christ gives to our faith is a continual one, which will last as long
   as we shall live. And, remember, it will last in eternity as well as in
   time. We shall not in heaven wear any other dress but that which we
   wear here. To-day the righteous stand clothed in the righteousness of
   Christ. They shall wear this same wedding dress at the great wedding
   feast. But what if it should wear out? What if that righteousness
   should lose its virtue in the eternity to come? Oh beloved! we
   entertain no fear about that. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but
   this righteousness shall never wax old. No moth shall fret it; no thief
   shall steal it; no weeping hand of lamentation shall rend it in twain.
   It is, it must be eternal, even as Christ himself, Jehovah our
   righteousness. Because he is our righteousness, the self-existent, the
   everlasting, the immutable Jehovah, of whose years there is no end, and
   whose strength faileth not, therefore of our righteousness there is no
   end; and of its perfection, and of its beauty there shall never be any
   termination. The text, I think, very clearly teaches us, that he who
   believeth on Christ has received for ever a continual justification.

   Again, think for a moment; the justification which is spoken of here is
   complete. "He that believeth on him is not condemned,"--that is to say,
   not in any measure or in any degree. I know some think it is possible
   for us to be in such a state as to be half-condemned and half-accepted.
   So far as we are sinners so far condemned; and so far as we are
   righteous so far accepted. Oh beloved, there is nothing like that in
   Scripture. It is altogether apart from the doctrine of the gospel. If
   it be of works, it is no more of grace; and if it be of grace, it is no
   more of works. Works and grace cannot mix and mingle any more than fire
   and water; it is either one or the other, it cannot be both; the two
   can never be allied. There can be no admixture of the two, no dilution
   of one with the other. He that believeth is free from all iniquity,
   from all guilt, from all blame; and though the devil bring an
   accusation, yet it is a false one, for we are free even from
   accusation, since it is boldly challenged, "Who shall lay anything to
   the charge of God's elect?" It does not say, "Who shall prove it?" but
   "Who shall lay it to their charge?" They are so completely freed from
   condemnation, that not the shadow of a spot upon their soul is found;
   not even the slightest passing by of iniquity to cast its black shadow
   on them. They stand before God not only as half-innocent, but as
   perfectly so; not only as half-washed, but as whiter than snow. Their
   sins are not simply erased, they are blotted out; not simply put out of
   sight, but cast into the depths of the sea; not merely gone, and gone
   as far as the east is from the west, but gone for ever, once for all.
   You know, beloved, that the Jew in his ceremonial purification, never
   had his conscience free from sin. After one sacrifice he needed still
   another, for these offerings could never make the comers thereunto
   perfect. The next day's sins needed a new lamb, and the next year's
   iniquity needed a new victim for an atonement. "But this man, after he
   had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down at the right hand
   of God." No more burnt-offerings are needed, no more washing, no more
   blood, no more atonement, no more sacrifice. "It is finished!" hear the
   dying Saviour cry. Your sins have sustained their death-blow, the robe
   of your righteousness has received its last thread; it is done,
   complete, perfect. It needs no addition; it can never suffer any
   diminution. Oh, Christian, do lay hold of this precious thought; I may
   not be able to state it except in weak terms, but let not my weakness
   prevent your apprehending its glory and its preciousness. It is enough
   to make a man leap, though his legs were loaded with irons, and to make
   him sing though his mouth were gagged, to think that we are perfectly
   accepted in Christ, that our justification is not partial, it does not
   go to a limited extent, but goes the whole way. Our unrighteousness is
   covered; from condemnation we are entirely and irrevocably free.

   Once more. The non-condemnation is effectual. The royal privilege of
   justification shall never miscarry. It shall be brought home to every
   believer. In the reign of King George the Third, the son of a member of
   this church lay under sentence of death for forgery. My predecessor,
   Dr. Rippon, after incredible exertions, obtained a promise that his
   sentence should be remitted. By a singular occurrence the present
   senior deacon--then a young man--learned from the governor of the gaol
   that the reprieve had not been received; and the unhappy prisoner would
   have been executed the next morning, had not Dr. Rippon gone post-haste
   to Windsor, obtained an interview with the king in his bed-chamber, and
   received from the monarch's own hand a copy of that reprieve which had
   been negligently put aside by a thoughtless officer. "I charge you,
   Doctor," said his majesty, "to make good speed." "Trust me, Sire, for
   that," responded your old pastor, and he returned to London in time,
   just in time, and only just in time, for the prisoner was being marched
   with many others on to the scaffold. Ay, that pardon might have been
   given, and yet the man might have been executed if it had not been
   effectually carried out. But blessed be God our non-condemnation is an
   effectual thing. It is not a matter of letter, it is a matter of fact.
   Ah, poor souls, you know that condemnation is a matter of fact. When
   you and I suffered in our souls, and were brought under the heavy hand
   of the law, we felt that its curses were no mock thunders like the
   wrath of the Vatican, but they were real; we felt that the anger of God
   was indeed a thing to tremble at; a real substantial fact. Now, just as
   real as the condemnation which Justice brings, just so real is the
   justification which mercy bestows. You are not only nominally
   guiltless, but you are really so, if you believe in Christ; you are not
   only nominally put into the place of the innocent, but you are really
   put there the moment you believe in Jesus. Not only is it said that
   your sins are gone, but they are gone. Not only does God look on you as
   though you were accepted; you are accepted. It is a matter of fact to
   you, as much a matter of fact as that you sinned. You do not doubt that
   you have sinned, you cannot doubt that; do not doubt then that when you
   believe your sins are put away. For as certain as ever the black spot
   fell on you when you sinned, so certainly and so surely was it all
   washed out when you were bathed in that fountain filled with blood,
   which was drawn from Emmanuel's veins.

   Come, my soul, think thou of this. Thou art actually and effectually
   cleared from guilt. Thou art led out of thy prison. Thou art no more in
   fetters as a bond-slave. Thou art delivered now from the bondage of the
   Law. Thou art freed from sin and thou canst walk at large as a freeman.
   Thy Saviour's blood has procured thy full discharge. Come, my
   soul,--thou hast a right now to come to thy Father's feet. No flames of
   vengeance are there to scare thee now; no fiery sword; justice cannot
   smite the innocent. Come, my soul, thy disabilities are taken away.
   Thou wast unable once to see thy Father's face; thou canst see it now.
   Thou couldst not speak with him, nor he with thee; but now thou hast
   access with boldness to this grace wherein we stand. Once there was a
   fear of hell upon thee; there is no hell for thee now. How can there be
   punishment for the guiltless? He that believeth is guiltless, is not
   condemned, and cannot be punished. No frowns of an avenging God now. If
   God be viewed as a judge, how should he frown upon the guiltless? How
   should the Judge frown upon the absolved one? More than all the
   privileges thou mightest have enjoyed if thou hadst never sinned, are
   thine now that thou art justified. All the blessings which thou couldst
   have had if thou hadst kept the law and more, are thine to-night
   because Christ has kept it for thee. All the love and the acceptance
   which a perfectly obedient being could have obtained of God, belong to
   thee, because Christ was perfectly obedient on thy behalf, and hath
   imputed all his merits to thy account that thou mightest be exceeding
   rich, through him who for thy sake became exceeding poor.

   Oh that the Holy Spirit would but enlarge our hearts, that we might
   suck sweetness out of these thoughts! There is no condemnation.
   Moreover, there never shall be any condemnation. The forgiveness is not
   partial, but perfect; it is so effectual that it delivers us from all
   the penalties of the Law, gives to us all the privileges of obedience,
   and puts us actually high above where we should have been had we never
   sinned. It fixes our standing more secure than it was before we fell.
   We are not now where Adam was, for Adam might fall and perish. We are
   rather, where Adam would have been if we could suppose God had put him
   into the garden for seven years, and said, "If you are obedient for
   seven years, your time of probation shall be over, and I will reward
   you." The children of God in one sense may be said to be in a state of
   probation; in another sense there is no probation. There is no
   probation as to whether the child of God should be saved. He is saved
   already; his sins are washed away; his righteousness is complete: and
   if that righteousness could endure a million years' probation, it would
   never be defiled. In fact, it always stands the same in the sight of
   God, and must do so for ever and ever.

   II. Let me now endeavour to CORRECT SOME MISAPPREHENSIONS, BY REASON OF
   WHICH CHRISTIANS ARE OFTEN CAST DOWN.

   What simpletons we are! Whatever our natural age, how childish we are
   in spiritual things! What great simpletons we are when we first believe
   in Christ! We think that our being pardoned involves a great many
   things which we afterwards find have nothing whatever to do with our
   pardon. For instance, we think we shall never sin again; we fancy that
   the battle is all fought; that we have got into a fair field, with no
   more war to wage; that in fact we have got the victory, and have only
   just to stand up and wave the palm branch; that all is over, that God
   has only got to call us up to himself and we shall enter into heaven
   without having to fight any enemies upon earth. Now, all these are
   obvious mistakes. Though the text has a great meaning, it does not mean
   anything of this kind. Observe that although it does assert "He that
   believeth is not condemned"; yet it does not say that he that believeth
   shall not have his faith exercised. Your faith will be exercised. An
   untried faith will be no faith at all. God never gave men faith without
   intending to try it. Faith is received for the very purpose of
   endurance. Just as our Rifle Corps friends put up the target with the
   intention of shooting at it; so does God give faith with the intention
   of letting trials and troubles, and sin and Satan aim all their darts
   at it. When thou hast faith in Christ it is a great privilege; but
   recollect that it involves a great trial. You asked for great faith the
   other night; did you consider that you asked for great troubles too?
   You cannot have great faith to lay up and rust. Mr. Greatheart in John
   Bunyan's Pilgrim was a very strong man, but then what strong work he
   had to do. He had to go with all those women and children many scores
   of times up to the celestial city and back again; he had to fight all
   the giants, and drive back all the lions; to slay the giant Slaygood,
   and knock down the Castle of Despair. If you have a great measure of
   faith, you will have need to use it all. You will never have a single
   scrap to spare, you will be like the virgins in our Lord's parable,
   even though you be a wise virgin, you will have to say to others who
   might borrow of you, "Not so, lest there be not enough for us and for
   you." But when your faith is exercised with trials, do not think you
   are brought into judgment for your sins. Oh no, believer, there is
   plenty of exercise, but that is not condemnation; there are many
   trials, but still we are justified; we may often be buffeted, but we
   are never accursed; we may ofttimes be cast down, but the sword of the
   Lord never can and never will smite us to the heart. Yea, more; not
   only may our faith be exercised, but our faith may come to a very low
   ebb, and still we may not be condemned. When thy faith gets so small
   that thou canst not see it, even then still thou art not condemned. If
   thou hast ever believed in Jesus, thy faith may be like the sea when it
   goes out a very long way from the shore, and leaves a vast track of
   mud, and some might say the sea was gone or dried up. But you are not
   condemned when your faith is most dried up. Ay! and I dare to say
   it,--when your faith is at the flood-tide, you are not more accepted
   then, than when your faith is at the lowest ebb; for your acceptance
   does not depend upon the quantity of your faith, it only depends upon
   its reality. If you are really resting in Christ, though your faith may
   be but as a spark, and a thousand devils may try to quench that one
   spark, yet you are not condemned--you shall stand accepted in Christ.
   Though your comforts will necessarily decay as your faith declines, yet
   your acceptance does not decay. Though faith does rise and fall like
   the thermometer, though faith is like the mercury in the bulb, all
   weathers change it,--yet God's love is not affected by the weather of
   earth, or the changes of time. Until the perfect righteousness of
   Christ can be a mutable thing--a football to be kicked about by the
   feet of fiends--your acceptance with God can never change. You are, you
   must be, perfectly accepted in the Beloved.

   There is another thing which often tries the child of God. He at times
   loses the light of his Father's countenance. Now, remember, the text
   does not say, "He that believeth shall not lose the light of God's
   countenance"; he may do so, but he shall not be condemned for all that.
   You may walk, not only for days but for months in such a state that you
   have little fellowship with Christ, very little communion with God of a
   joyous sort. The promises may seem broken to you, the Bible may afford
   you but little comfort; and when you turn your eye to heaven you may
   only have to feel the more the smarting that is caused by your Father's
   rod; you may have vexed and grieved his Spirit, and he may have turned
   away his face from you. But you are not condemned for all that. Mark
   the testimony, "He that believeth is not condemned." Even when your
   Father smites you and leaves a wale at every stroke, and brings the
   blood at every blow, there is not a particle of condemnation in any one
   stroke. Not in his anger, but in his dear covenant love he smites you.
   There is as unmixed and unalloyed affection in every love-stroke of
   chastisement from your Father's hand as there is in the kisses of Jesus
   Christ's lips. Oh! believe this; it will tend to lift up thy heart, it
   will cheer thee when neither sun nor moon appear. It will honour thy
   God, it will show thee where thy acceptance really lies. When his face
   is turned away, believe him still, and say, "He abideth faithful though
   he hide his face from me." I will go a little further still. The child
   of God may be so assaulted by Satan, that he may be well nigh given up
   to despair, and yet he is not condemned. The devils may beat the great
   hell-drum in his ear, till he thinks himself to be on the very brink of
   perdition. He may read the Bible, and think that every threatening is
   against him, and that every promise shuts its mouth and will not cheer
   him; and he may at last despond, and despond, and despond, till he is
   ready to break the harp that has so long been hanging on the willow. He
   may say, "The Lord hath forsaken me quite, my God will be gracious no
   more"; but it is not true. Yea, he may be ready to swear a thousand
   times that God's mercy is clean gone for ever, and that his
   faithfulness will fail for evermore; but it is not true, it is not
   true. A thousand liars swearing to a falsehood could not make it true,
   and our doubts and fears are all of them liars. And if there were ten
   thousand of them, and they all professed the same, it is a falsehood
   that God ever did forsake his people, or that he ever cast from him an
   innocent man; and you are innocent, remember, when you believe in
   Jesus. "But," say you, "I am full of sin." "Ay," say I, "but that sin
   has been laid on Christ." "Oh," say you, "but I sin daily." "Ay," say
   I, "but that sin was laid on him before you committed it, years ago. It
   is not yours; Christ has taken it away once for all. You are a
   righteous man by faith, and God will not forsake the righteous, nor
   will he cast away the innocent." I say, then, the child of God may have
   his faith at a low ebb; he may lose the light of his Father's
   countenance, and he may even get into thorough despair; but yet all
   these cannot disprove my text--"He that believeth is not condemned."

   "But what," say you, "if the child of God should sin?" It is a deep and
   tender subject, yet must we touch it and be bold here. I would not
   mince God's truth lest any should make a bad use of it. I know there
   are some, not the people of God, who will say, "Let us sin, that grace
   may abound." Their condemnation is just. I cannot help the perversion
   of truth. There be always men who will take the best of food as though
   it were poison, and make the best of truth into a lie, and so be
   damning their own souls. You ask, "What if a child of God should fall
   into sin?" I answer, the child of God does fall into sin; every day he
   mourns and groans because when he would do good, evil is present with
   him. But though he falls into sins, he is not condemned for all
   that--not by one of them, or by all of them put together, because his
   acceptance does not depend upon himself, but upon the perfect
   righteousness of Christ; and that perfect righteousness is not
   invalidated by any sins of his. He is perfect in Christ; and until
   Christ is imperfect, the imperfections of the creature do not mar the
   justification of the believer in the sight of God. But oh! if he fall
   into some glaring sin,--O God, keep us from it!--if he fall into some
   glaring sin, he shall go with broken bones, but he shall reach heaven
   for all that. Though, in order to try him and let him see his vileness,
   he be suffered to go far astray, yet he that bought him will not lose
   him; he that chose him will not cast him away; he will say unto him,
   "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own
   sake, and will not remember thy sins." David may go never so far away,
   but David is not lost. He comes back and he cries, "Have mercy upon me,
   O God!" And so shall it be with every believing soul--Christ shall
   bring him back. Though he slip, he shall be kept, and all the chosen
   seed shall meet around the throne. If it were not for this last
   truth--though some may stick at it--what would become of some of God's
   people? They would be given up to despair. If I have been speaking to a
   backslider, I pray he will not make a bad use of what I have said. Let
   me say to him, "Poor backslider! thy Father's bowels yearn over thee;
   he has not erased thy name out of the registry. Come back, come back
   now to him and say, Receive me graciously, and love me freely'; and he
   will say, I will put you among the children.' He will pass by your
   backsliding and will heal your iniquities; and you shall yet stand once
   more in his favour, and know yourself to be still accepted in the
   Redeemer's righteousness and saved by his blood." This text does not
   mean that the child of God shall not be tried, or that he shall not
   even sometimes fall under the trial; but it does mean this, once for
   all: He that believeth on Christ is not condemned. At no time, by no
   means, is he under the sentence of condemnation, but is evermore
   justified in the sight of God.

   III. Now dear brethren, but little time remains for the closing points,
   therefore, in a hurried manner, let me notice WHAT THIS TEXT EVIDENTLY
   INCLUDES; and may God grant that these few words may nevertheless do
   good to our souls!

   "He that believeth on him is not condemned." If we are not condemned,
   then at no time does God ever look upon his children, when they believe
   in Christ, as being guilty. Are you surprised that I should put it so?
   I put it so again; from the moment when you believe in Christ, God
   ceases to look upon you as being guilty; for he never looks upon you
   apart from Christ. You often look upon yourself as guilty, and you fall
   upon your knees as you should do, and you weep and lament; but even
   then, while you are weeping over inbred and actual sin, he is still
   saying out of heaven, "So far as your justification is concerned, thou
   art all fair and lovely." You are black as the tents of Kedar--that is
   yourself by nature; you are fair as the curtains of Solomon--that is
   yourself in Christ. You are black--that is yourself in Adam; but
   comely, that is yourself in the second Adam. Oh, think of that!--that
   you are always in God's sight comely, always in God's sight lovely,
   always in God's sight as though you were perfect. For ye are complete
   in Christ Jesus, and perfect in Christ Jesus, as the apostle puts it in
   another place. Always do you stand completely washed and fully clothed
   in Christ. Remember this; for it is certainly included in my text.

   Another great thought included in my text is this; you are never liable
   as a believer to punishment for your sins. You will be chastised on
   account of them, as a father chastises his child; that is a part of the
   Gospel dispensation; but you will not be smitten for your sins as the
   lawgiver smites the criminal. Your Father may often punish you as he
   punisheth the wicked. But, never for the same reason. The ungodly stand
   on the ground of their own demerits; their sufferings are awarded as
   their due deserts. But your sorrows do not come to you as a matter of
   desert; they come to you as a matter of love. God knows that in one
   sense your sorrows are such a privilege that you may account of them as
   a boon you do not deserve. I have often thought of that when I have had
   a sore trouble. I know some people say, "You deserved the trouble."
   Yes, my dear brethren, but there is not enough merit in all the
   Christians put together, to deserve such a good thing as the loving
   rebuke of our heavenly Father. Perhaps you cannot see that; you cannot
   think that a trouble can come to you as a real blessing in the
   covenant. But I know that the rod of the covenant is as much the gift
   of grace as the blood of the covenant. It is not a matter of desert or
   merit; it is given to us because we need it. But I question whether we
   were ever so good as to deserve it. We were never able to get up to so
   high a standard as to deserve so rich, so gracious a providence as this
   covenant blessing--the rod of our chastening God. Never at any time in
   your life has a law-stroke fallen upon you. Since you believed in
   Christ you are out of the law's jurisdiction. The law of England cannot
   touch a Frenchman while he lives under the protection of his own
   Emperor. You are not under the law, but you are under grace. The law of
   Sinai cannot touch you, for you are out of its jurisdiction. You are
   not in Sinai or in Arabia. You are not the son of Hagar or the son of a
   handmaid, you are the son of Sarah, and are come to Jerusalem and are
   free. You are out of Arabia, and are come to God's own happy land. You
   are not under Hagar, but under Sarah; under God's covenant of grace.
   You are a child of promise, and you shall have God's own inheritance.
   Believe this, that never shall a law-stroke fall on you; never shall
   God's anger in a judicial sense drop on you. He may give you a
   chastising stroke, not as the result of sin, but rather as the result
   of his own rich grace, that would get the sin out of you, that you may
   be perfected in sanctification, even as you are now perfect and
   complete before him in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ.

   IV. I was about to go into a list of things which this text includes,
   but the time fails me; therefore I must spend the last minute or two in
   saying WHAT THIS TEXT EXCLUDES.

   What does it exclude! Well, I am sure it excludes boasting. "He that
   believeth is not condemned." Ah! if it said, "He that worketh is not
   condemned," then you and I might boast in any quantity. But when it
   says, "He that believeth,"--why, there is no room for us to say half a
   word for old self. No, Lord, if I am not condemned, it is thy free
   grace, for I have deserved to be condemned a thousand times since I
   have been in this pulpit to-night. When I am on my knees, and I am not
   condemned, I am sure it must be sovereign grace, for even when I am
   praying I deserve to be condemned. Even when we are repenting we are
   sinning, and adding to our sins while we are repenting of them. Every
   act we do, as the result of the flesh, is to sin again, and our best
   performances are so stained with sin, that it is hard to know whether
   they are good works or bad works. So far as they are our own, they are
   bad, and so far as they are the works of the Spirit they are good. But
   then the goodness is not ours, it is the Spirit's, and only the evil
   remains to us. Ah, then, we cannot boast! Begone, pride! begone! The
   Christian must be a humble man. If he lift up his head to say
   something, then he is nothing indeed. He does not know where he is, or
   where he stands, when he once begins to boast, as though his own right
   hand had gotten him the victory. Leave off boasting, Christian. Live
   humbly before thy God, and never let a word of self-congratulation
   escape thy lips. Sacrifice self, and let thy song be before the
   throne--"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name be glory forever."

   What next does the text exclude? Methinks it ought to exclude--now I am
   about to smite myself--it ought to exclude doubts and fears. "He that
   believeth is not condemned." How dare you and I draw such long faces,
   and go about as we do sometimes as though we had a world of cares upon
   our backs? What would I have given ten or eleven years ago if I could
   have known this text was sure to me, that I was not condemned. Why, I
   thought if I could feel I was once forgiven, and had to live on bread
   and water, and be locked up in a dungeon, and every day be flogged with
   a cat-o'-nine tails, I would gladly have accepted it, if I could have
   once felt my sins forgiven. Now you are a forgiven man, and yet you are
   cast down! Oh! shame on you. No condemnation! and yet miserable? Fie,
   Christian! Get thee up and wipe the tears from your eyes. Oh! if there
   be a person lying in gaol now, to be executed next week, if you could
   go to him and say, "You are pardoned," would he not spring up with
   delight from his seat; and although he might have lost his goods, and
   though it would be possible for him, after pardon, to have to suffer
   many things, yet, so long as life was spared, what would all this be to
   him? He would feel that it was less than nothing. Now, Christian, you
   are pardoned, your sins are all forgiven. Christ has said to you, "Thy
   sins, which are many, are all forgiven thee"--and art thou yet
   miserable? Well, if we must be so sometimes, let us make it as short as
   we can. If we must be sometimes cast down, let us ask the Lord to lift
   us up again. I am afraid some of us get into bad habits, and come to
   make it a matter of practice to be downcast. Mind, Christian, mind, it
   will grow upon you--that peevish spirit--if you do not come to God to
   turn these doubts and fears out of you, they will soon swarm upon you
   like flies in Egypt. When you are able to kill the first great doubt,
   you will perhaps kill a hundred; for one great doubt will breed a
   thousand, and to kill the mother is to kill the whole brood. Therefore,
   look with all thy eyes against the first doubt, lest thou shouldest
   become confirmed in thy despondency, and grow into sad despair. "He
   that believeth on him is not condemned." If this excludes boasting, it
   ought to exclude doubts too.

   Once more. "He that believeth on him is not condemned." This excludes
   sinning any more. My Lord, have I sinned against thee so many times,
   and yet hast thou freely forgiven me all? What stronger motive could I
   have for keeping me from sinning again? Ah, there are some who are
   saying this is licentious doctrine. A thousand devils rolled into one,
   must the man be who can find any licentiousness here. What! go and sin
   because I am forgiven? Go and live in iniquity because Jesus Christ
   took my guilt and suffered in my room and stead? Human nature is bad
   enough, but methinks this is the very worst state of human nature, when
   it tries to draw an argument for sin from the free grace of God. It is
   far harder to sin against the blood of Christ, and against a sense of
   pardon, than it is against the terrors of the law and the fear of hell
   itself. I know that when my soul is most alarmed by a dread of the
   wrath of God, I can sin with comfort compared with what I could when I
   have a sense of his love shed abroad in my heart. What more monstrous!
   to read your title clear, and sin? Oh, vile reprobate! you are on the
   borders of the deepest hell. But I am sure if you are a child of God,
   you will say when you have read your title clear, and feel yourself
   justified in Christ Jesus,

   "Now, for the love I bear his name,

   What was my gain, I count my loss;

   My former pride I call my shame,

   And nail my glory to his cross."

   Yes, and I must, and will esteem all things but loss for Jesus' sake. O
   may my soul be found in him, perfect in his righteousness! This will
   make you live near to him: this will make you like unto him. Do not
   think that this doctrine by dwelling on it will make you think lightly
   of sin. It will make you think of it as a hard and stern executioner to
   put Christ to death; as an awful load that could never be lifted from
   you except by the eternal arm of God; and then you will come to hate it
   with all your soul, because it is rebellion against a loving and
   gracious God, and you shall by this means, far better than by any
   Arminian doubts or any legal quibbles, be led to walk in the footsteps
   of your Lord Jesus, and to follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.

   I think this whole sermon, though I have been preaching to the children
   of God, is meant for sinners too. Sinner, I would that thou didst say
   so. If you know this, that he that believeth is not condemned, then,
   sinner if thou believest, thou wilt not be condemned; and may all I
   have said to-night help you to this belief in thy soul. Oh, but sayest
   thou, "May I trust Christ?" As I said this morning, it is not a
   question of whether you may or may not, you are commanded. The
   Scripture commands the gospel to be preached to every creature, and the
   gospel is--"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."
   I know you will be too proud to do it, unless God by his grace should
   humble you. But if ye feel to-night that you are nothing and have
   nothing of your own, I think you will be right glad to take Christ to
   be your all-in-all. If you can say with poor Jack the Huckster,--

   "I'm a poor sinner and nothing at all,"

   You may go on and say with him, this night,

   "But Jesus Christ is my all in all."

   God grant that it may be so, for his name's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                      The Glorious Right Hand Of The Lord

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 24, 1861, BY THE REV. C.
   H. SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "And the Lord said unto Moses, Is the Lord's hand waxed short? You
   shall now see whether My Word shall come to pass unto you or not."
   Numbers 11:23.

   GOD had made a positive promise to Moses that for the space of a whole
   month he would feed the vast host in the wilderness with flesh. Moses,
   being overtaken by a fit of unbelief, looks to the outward
   means--calculates his commissariat--and is at a loss to know how the
   promise can be fulfilled. Shall the flocks and the herds be slain? How,
   then, should they have cattle wherewith to stock the land upon which
   they hoped soon to enter? And if they should slaughter all their
   beasts, there would not be food enough for ravenous people for a month.
   Shall all the fish of the sea leave their watery element, and come to
   the tables of these clamorous hungry men? Even then, Moses thought
   there would be scarcely enough food to feed so vast a host for a month!
   You will see, my Brothers and Sisters, right readily the mistake which
   Moses made. He looked to the creature instead of the Creator. Does the
   Creator expect the creature to fulfill his promise? No; only He who
   makes, fulfills. If He speaks, it is done--done by Himself--His
   promises do not depend for their fulfillment upon the cooperation of
   the puny strength of man! God as a Sovereign gives an absolute promise;
   and He can do it without fear of mistake, because He has Omnipotence
   wherewith to fulfill His greatest word. It were an error, indeed, to
   look to the sea for fish, instead of waiting upon Heaven for the
   promise; to look to the flocks for food, instead of believing on Him to
   whom belongs the cattle on a thousand hills! Suppose, my Friends, this
   country should be threatened by an invasion of some foreign power, and
   you, in your wisdom and full of trembling, should say to those whose
   province it is to guard our happy island--"I fear this land can never
   be protected, for the Emperor of China has but very little power; the
   Presidents of the Republics of South America have but little
   influence"? You would be stared at! Men would ask, what has that to do
   with the question? The troops of Britain are to defend the land, not
   the troops of China, or Bolivia. What matters the weakness of those
   republics or kingdoms? They are not expected to defend our land! You
   would be absurd in looking for help where help was neither expected nor
   promised.

   And yet how commonly we do the same! Godhas promised to supply our
   needs, and we look to the creature to do what God has promised to do!
   And then, because we perceive the creature to be weak and feeble, we
   indulge in unbelief! Why do we look to that quarter at all? Will you
   look to the top of the Alps for summer heat? Will you journey to the
   north pole to gather fruits ripened in the sun? Or will you take your
   journey towards the equator, so that your body may be braced by cool
   invigorating breezes? Verily you would act no more foolishly if you did
   this than when you look to the weak for strength, or the creature to do
   the Creator's work! The great folly of Moses is the folly of most
   Believers. Let us, then, put the question aright. The ground of faith
   is not the sufficiency of the visible means for the performance of the
   promise, but the All-Sufficiency of the invisible God most surely to do
   as He has saidl And then, if after that we dare to indulge in
   mistrusts, the question of God comes home mightily to us--"Has the
   Lord's hand waxed short?" And may it happen, too, in His mercy, that
   with the question, there may come also that blessed promise, "You shall
   now see whether My Word shall come to pass unto you or not."

   It is an amazing thing that such a question as this should ever be
   asked at all--"Has the Lord's hand waxed short?" If we look anywhere
   and everywhere, apart from the conduct of man, there is nothing to
   suggest the suspicion. Look to God's Creation! Is there anything there
   which would make you say, "Is the Lord's hand waxed short?" What pillar
   of the heavens has begun to reel? What curtain of the sky has been torn
   or moth-eaten? Have the foundations of the Earth begun to start? Do
   they not abide as the Lord has settled them? Has the sun grown dim with
   age? Have the starry lamps flickered or gone out in darkness? Are there
   signs of decay, today, upon the face of God's Creation? Have not
   howling tempests, the yawning ocean, and death-bearing hurricanes
   asserted but yesterday their undiminished might? Say, is not the green
   earth as full of vitality, as ready to yield us harvests, now, as it
   ever has been? Do the showers fall less frequently? Has the sun ceased
   to warm? Are there any signs and tokens that God's Creation is
   tottering to its decay? No! Journey where you will, you will see God as
   potent upon the face of the earth, and in the very bowels of the globe,
   as He was when He first said, "Let there be light," and there was
   light. There is nothing which would tempt us to surmise or suspect that
   the Lord's hand has waxed short. And look you, too, in Providence--is
   there anything there that would suggest the question? Are not His
   prophecies still fulfilled? Does He not cause all things to work
   together for good? Do the cattle on a thousand hills low out to Him for
   hunger? Do you meet with the skeletons of birds that have fallen to the
   ground from famine? Does He neglect to give to the fish their food, or
   do the sea-monsters die? Does not God still open His hands and supply
   the needs of every living thing? Is He less bounteous, today, than He
   was in the time of Adam? Is not the cornucopia still as full? Does He
   not still scatter mercies with both His hands right lavishly? Are there
   any tokens in Providence, any more than in Nature, that God's arm has
   waxed short? And look, too, in the matter of Divine Grace--is there any
   token in the work of Grace that God's power is failing? Are not sinners
   still saved? Are not profligates still reclaimed? Are not drunks still
   uplifted from their sties to sit upon the Throne of God with princes?
   Are not harlots as truly reclaimed as were those in the days of Christ?
   Is not the Word of God still quick and powerful, sharper than any
   two-edged sword? Which of His arrows has been blunted? Where have you
   seen the sword of the Lord snapped in two? When has God assayed to melt
   a heart and failed in the attempt? Which of His people has found the
   riches of His Grace drained dry? Which of His children has had to mourn
   that the unsearchable riches of Christ had failed to supply his need?

   In Grace, as well as in Providence and Nature, the unanimous verdict is
   that God is still Almighty; that He does as He wills, and fulfills all
   His promises, and His counsels. How is it, then, that such a question
   as this ever came from the lips of God, Himself? Who suggested it?
   Whatsuggested it? What could there have been that should lead Him, or
   any of His creatures to say, "Is the Lord's hand waxed short?" We
   answer there is but one creature that God has made that ever doubts
   Him! The little sparrows doubt not--though they have no barn nor field,
   yet they sweetly sing at night as they go to their roosts, though they
   know not where tomorrow's meal shall be found. The very cattle trust
   Him, and even in days of drought, you have seen them when they pant for
   thirst, how they expect the water--how the very first token of it makes
   them show in their very animal frame, by some dumb language, that they
   felt that God would not leave them to perish! The angels never doubt
   Him, nor the devils either--devils believe and tremble! But it was left
   for man--the most favored of all creatures--to mistrust his God! This
   high, this black, this infamous sin of doubting the power and
   faithfulness of Jehovah was reserved for the fallen race of rebellions
   Adam! And we alone, out of all the beings that God has ever fashioned,
   dishonor Him by unbelief, and tarnish His honor by mistrust!

   I shall now try, as God shall help me, to mention some four or five
   cases in which men act as if they really believed that God's hand had
   waxed short, and I pray that in the most of these cases, this malady
   may be at once healed by the fact that God has said, "You shall now see
   whether My Word shall come to pass unto you or not."

   I. First of all, with regard to THE CHURCH AS A WHOLE, how often is it
   true that she so behaves herself as if she had a question in her mind
   as to whether the Lord's hand had waxed short? She believes that the
   Divine hand was once mighty enough to bring in 3,000 in one day by the
   simple preaching of Peter. She believes that her God was with her in
   olden times so mightily that her poor illiterate preachers were more
   than a match for the scholars of Socrates and Solon, and were able to
   overturn the gods of the heathen, though they had both poetry and
   philosophy to be their bulwarks. She still believes this and yet, how
   often does she act as though the Gospel had become effete and outworn,
   and the Spirit of God had been utterly withdrawn from her? In those
   early days she sent her missionaries to the ends of the earth! They
   were unprovided for, but they went forth without purse or script,
   believing that He who called them to go, would find them sustenance.
   They landed on islands that were unknown to man, and ventured among
   barbarous tribes who knew nothing of civilization! They ventured their
   lives even to the death--but they won for Christ the empire of the
   whole earth till there was not a spot known to men at that time where
   the name of Jesus had not been preached, and where the Gospel had not
   been proclaimed! But, now, we--the degenerate sons of glorious
   fathers--are afraid to trust God! There are some who would shut out the
   Gospel from India, because, indeed, it might disturb our pitiful empire
   over that people! There are others who think the Gospel is ill-adapted
   to some minds, and that civilization must go before the Cross, and not
   the Gospel in the vanguard of all true civilization among barbarous
   tribes! The mass of us--it is common to us all--the mass of us would be
   afraid to go out trusting in God to supply our needs! We would insist
   that everything should be prepared for us, and that the way should be
   paved! We are not ready to leap as champions upon the wall of the
   citadel, leading the forlorn hope, and planting the standard where it
   never stood before. No, we can only follow in the track of others! We
   have few Careys and few Knibbs, few men who can go first and foremost
   saying, "This is God's cause! Jehovah is the only God, and in the name
   of the Eternal, let the idols be abolished!"

   for more anointed ones to preach the Gospel, believing in its intrinsic
   might, assured that where it is preached faithfully, the Spirit of God
   is never absent! The doubts, the fears, the calculations, the policies,
   the judicious advisors of too many Christians prove my point, that
   often the Church acts as if she thought the Lord's hand were waxed
   short! O Zion! Get up! Get up! Count no more your hosts, for their
   strength is your weakness! Measure no longer your wealth, for your
   wealth has often been your poverty, and your poverty your wealth! Think
   not of the learning or the eloquence of your ministers and
   missionaries, for full often these things do but stand in the way of
   the Eternal God! Come forth in simple confidence in His promise, and
   you shall see whether He will not do according to His Word; you shall
   see a nation born at once; you shall behold the reign of Christ
   hastening on when you know how to deal with the world in the power of
   faith, believing in Christ, knowing that He shall have the beastly for
   His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His
   possession!

   1 ought to say, here, that while this is a common sin of the Church,
   yet there are very many missionaries who have gone out from England
   during the last few years unconnected with any Society. And that there
   are now hundreds throughout the whole earth who have no visible means
   of support but who, by faith and prayer, depending simply upon God,
   find themselves as well provided for as those who have a Society at
   their back! I happen to be acquainted with some few of these men who
   have been foolish enough to trust God; who have been silly enough to
   believe His promise; who have been weak enough to rely only upon Him!
   And I can say their testimony is, that in all things God has been as
   good to them as His Word, and I know they have been more useful as
   missionaries, and more successful in evangelization because they
   believed God! They have proved their faith by their acts, and God has
   honored their faith by giving them great success. I speak thus not of
   all--there are a few exceptions--but still, it is the general rule that
   as a Church, the Church does not believe God--she believes her
   subscribers, she does not believe the Lord! She believes the
   committee-- she does not trust in the Eternal. She trusts in the
   means--she does not rest on the bare arm of God. She wants to have her
   arm sleeved, girded about, and robed with the weavings of man!

   II. But I now pass on to a second point. WHEN BELIEVERS DOUBT THEIR GOD
   WITH REGARD TO PROVIDENCE, the question might well be asked of them,
   "Is the Lord's hand waxed short?"

   I do not doubt that I am speaking to some here, this morning, who have
   had many hisses and crosses in their business. Instead of getting
   forward, they are going back, and perhaps even bankruptcy stares them
   in the face. Or possibly, being hard working men, they may have been
   long out of employment, and nothing now seems to be before their eyes
   but the starvation of themselves, and their little ones. It is hard to
   bear this. This is an iron that enters into the very soul; the pangs of
   hunger are not very easily appeased, and to have need and destitution
   constantly before our eyes is enough to bring down the strong man, and
   make the mighty tremble. Little do some of us know how sharp and how
   acute must be these trials of famine and nakedness. But do you doubt, O
   Believer, do you doubt as to whether God will fulfill His promises
   wherein He said, "His place of defense shall be the munitions of rocks;
   bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure"? Would you question
   the advice of your Master--"Therefore take no thought, saying, What
   shall we eat? Or, What shall we drink? Or, How shall we be clothed? For
   after all these things do the Gentiles seek"? "Behold the fowls of the
   air; for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns. Yet
   your heavenly Father feeds them"? "Consider the lilies of the field,
   how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto
   you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
   these"? And so you think that your heavenly Father, though He knows
   that you have need of these things, will yet forget you? When not a
   sparrow falls to the ground without your Father, and the very hairs of
   your head are all numbered, yet you still mistrust and doubt Him?
   Perhaps your affliction will continue upon you till you dare to trust
   your God, and then it shall end. Full many there are who have been
   tried and sorely vexed till at last they have been driven in sheer
   desperation to exercise faith in God--and the moment of their faith has
   been the instant of their deliverance! They have seen whether God would
   keep His promise or not.

   And now, O true Believer, what say you to this picture? In the cold,
   cold winter, when the snows have fallen thick on every tree, and the
   ground is hard and crisp, you have sometimes seen the charitable man
   open wide the window of his house and scatter crumbs along the white
   snow; and you have seen the birds come from all the trees around, and
   there they ate and were satisfied. A slanderer who lives next door
   tells you that that man starves his children! Do you believe him? Feed
   the sparrows, and neglect the offspring of his loins? Give crumbs to
   birds, and not feed his sons and daughters? You feel instinctively that
   the kind heart which remembers the fowls of Heaven must yet more
   remember his own offspring! But what do you say to this picture
   concerning yourself? Your God hears the young ravens when they cry, and
   gives liberally to all the creatures that His hands have made, and will
   He forget His sons and His daughters? His people bought with blood, His
   own peculiar heritage? No. Dare to believe Him now. His hands have not
   waxed short. Dare to trust Him now. Please not Satan, and vex not
   yourself by indulging those hard thoughts of Him anymore! Say, "My
   Father, You will hear my cry. You will supply all my needs." And
   according to your faith, so shall it be done unto you. Look back, Sir,
   look back upon the past! How many deliverances have you had? You have
   been in as bad a plight as this, before--did He leave you then? He has
   been with you in six troubles, and are there not six arguments why He
   should not leave you in the seventh? You are growing gray-headed, and
   you have found Him faithful for 60 years! Ah, how few more you have to
   live! Suppose you live till seventy--there are but ten! He has been
   faithful to you in sixty, and can you not trust Him with ten? Surely
   you ought to say, and you must say, I think, if you are actuated by a
   right spirit, "O God, I leave all things in Your hands. I will have
   done with these cares. I will leave everything to You. I know that You
   love me and will not forsake Your own, but will surely deliver them out
   of all their temptations." You shall have my text fulfilled to you, I
   trust--"You shall see now whether My Word shall come to pass unto you
   or not.

   III. But to proceed--there is a third way by which this question might
   be very naturally suggested, and that is

   WHEN A MAN WHO HAS FAITH IN CHRIST IS EXERCISED WITH DOUBTS AND FEARS
   WITH REGARD TO

   HIS OWN FINAL PERSEVERANCE, OR HIS OWN PRESENT ACCEPTANCE IN CHRIST.

   I must confess here, with sorrow, that I have seasons of despondency
   and depression of spirit which I trust none of you are called to
   suffer. And at such times I have doubted my interest in Christ, my
   calling my election, my perseverance, my Savior's blood, and my
   Father's love. I am sorry I ever told you that, but having done so on
   one occasion, I make now my humble apology as before God for it. I met
   with a sharp rebuke this last week. A Brother who lives very near to
   God--I believe one of the holiest men living--told me he never had a
   doubt of his acceptance once he believed in Christ, and another
   Christian confirmed his testimony. I do not question the Truth of my
   Brothers, but I do envy them. 'Tis a wondrous position to stand in! I
   know how it is. They, both of them, live by simple faith upon the Son
   of God, and one of them said to me, "When I speak to some of the
   Friends, and tell them they should not doubt and fear, they say, 'Yes,
   but our minister has doubts and fears.'" When he said that, I felt how
   wrong I had been, because the pastor should be an example to the flock,
   and if I have sinned in this respect, as I must sorrowfully confess I
   have, at least there was no necessity that I should have said so, for
   now it gives cause to some of the weak of the flock to excuse
   themselves. My Brothers and Sisters, if I should stand here and say I
   occasionally steal my neighbor's goods, you would be shocked! But when
   I said that I sometimes doubt my God, you were not shocked! There is as
   much guilt in the one as in the other. There is the highest degree of
   criminality in connection with doubting God and I feel it so. I do not
   see that we ought to offer any excuse whatever for our doubting our
   God. He does not deserve it of us--He is a true and faithful God, and
   with so many instances of His love and of His kindness as I have
   received, and daily receive at His hands--I feel I have no excuse to
   offer either to Him or to you for having dared to doubt Him.

   'Twas a wicked sin; 'twas a great and grievous offense! But I pray you,
   do not use that sin on my part as a cloak for yourselves! I pray that I
   may be delivered from it entirely, and with an unstaggering faith, like
   Abraham, know that what He has promised, He is able also to perform.
   And then I trust I shall not have under my pastoral care a puny race of
   men who cannot trust their God, and who cannot, therefore, do
   anything--but a strong host of heroes who live by faith upon the Son of
   God--who loved them and gave Himself for them; who shall be a
   thundering legion; whose march to battle shall be but a march to
   victory, and the drawing of whose swords shall be but the prelude and
   prophecy of their triumph! Take not me as an example further than I
   follow my Lord, but pray for me that my faith may be increased. Doubt
   not, I pray you! Believe your God, and you shall prosper. The joy of
   the Lord is our strength, not the melancholy of our hearts. It does not
   say, "He who doubts shall be saved," but, "He who believes shall be
   saved." I know some ministers preach up doubts and fears so much that
   you would really think that doubting was the way to Heaven; and the
   more you could doubt and fear, the more proof there would be that you
   were a child of God! The fact is--the children of God do doubt and
   fear. I am sorry to say all of them, (no, not all of them--I question
   whether all of them do not, but still my Brother says he does not, and
   I believe him. I fear, however, he will doubt one of these days. I hope
   he never may; but when he does, it will be very wrong and very wicked
   of him, indeed, just as it has been with me, and as it has been with
   you), for when we doubt, it is sin. Oh cursed sin of unbelief--most
   damnable of sins, because it so stains God's honor, and so makes the
   enemy to blaspheme! "There," they say, "there is a man who cannot trust
   his God; a minister who cannot trust his God; a Christian who cannot
   repose upon the promise of the Almighty!" We cannot measure the guilt
   of sins--all sins are all base and vile--but there are crimes which we
   set down as being very heinous, which, I believe, are but little when
   compared with that which we think so trivial--the sin of doubting God
   and mistrusting His promise! If unbelief is like a thistle in the
   field, which proves that the soil is good, or it would not produce
   thistles--at any rate that is no reason why you and I should sow
   thistle seed! Let us cut the thistles up if there are any, and may the
   Holy Spirit plant the evergreen fir of hope, the towering pine of love,
   and the hardy boxwood of faith! Trust in the Lord! "Rejoice in the Lord
   always, and again I say, rejoice." Let your joy be full; be not cast
   down and troubled, but rejoice in Him evermore.

   IV. I shall now pass on to a fourth point very briefly--"is the Lord's
   hand waxed short?" This is a question which I may well ask of any here
   present who are CONVICTED OF SIN, BUT ARE AFRAID TO TRUST THEIR SOUL,
   NOW, AT THIS VERY HOUR, IN THE HANDS OF A LOVING SAVIOR.

   "Oh, He cannot save me, I am so guilty, so callous! Could I repent as I
   ought; could I but feel as I ought; then He could save me; but I am
   naked and poor, and miserable. How can He clothe, enrich, and bless me?
   I am cast out from His Presence; I have grieved away His Spirit; I have
   sinned against light and knowledge--against mercy--against constant
   Grace received. He cannot save me." "And the Lord said unto Moses, Is
   the Lord's hand waxed short? You shall now see whether My Word shall
   come to pass unto you or not." Did He not save the chief of sinners,
   Saul of Tarsus? Why, then, can He not save you? Is it not written, "The
   blood of Jesus Christ His Son, cleanses us from all sin"? Has that
   blood lost its efficacy? Have Christ's merits lost their savor? Are
   they no more an offering of a sweet smell before the Throne of God? Has
   His Sacrifice lost its plea, and the plea its authority? Is He no
   longer prevalent before the Father's face? Soul! Soul! Soul! Would you
   add to your sin? Then doubt Christ's power to save you! Would you seal
   your doom? Then through this mock humility, distrust Christ. But would
   you be saved? Then dare, I pray you, in the teeth of all your sins, to
   trust my Master--

   "He is able
   He is willing: doubt no more."

   He is able, for He is God! What can He not perform? He is willing, for
   He was the slaughtered Man; and He who died, and had His heart pierced
   for us, cannot be unwilling! Do you wish to stab Him in the most tender
   point, and vex Him? Then indulge that mean, ungenerous thought that He
   is unwilling to forgive! But would you wish to honor Him, and relieve
   yourself at the same time? Then step out of all appearances, all hopes
   and fears suggested by your own feelings! Come to the foot of His
   Cross, and looking up into those eyes, full of languid pity, and to
   those hands streaming with precious blood, say, "Jesus, I believe! Help
   You my unbelief," and so you shall see whether He will not keep His
   Word!

   If you should come to Him and He should refuse, then would He not have
   broken His promise? Did He not say, "Him who comes unto Me, I will in
   no wise cast out"? "But, O Sir, I am so black a sinner! I am one of
   Satan's castaways." But what if you are? Christ did not make any
   exception! He said, "Hm who comes," and that means any, "him," in all
   the world who comes! If with weeping, and with supplication, mourning
   for past sins, you will go to Him now, poor Sinner, you will find Him
   quite as good as His Word, and you shall wonder and be astonished to
   find your own hardness of heart suddenly taken away, and all your load
   of guilt removed! Oh, I would that I had words, that this heart had
   language, and needed not to employ dull flesh with which to utter its
   thoughts! Soul, Soul, my Lord is worthy of your faith! I trusted Him.
   This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him! I looked unto Him and was
   lightened, and my face was not ashamed, and--

   "Ever since by faith I saw the stream, His flowing wounds supply;
   Redeeming love has been my theme,
   And shall be till I die!"

   Oh, if you knew my Savior; if you knew Him, you would trust Him! Surely
   if you will but think of the tens of thousands who are around the
   Throne, today, singing the song of Divine Grace, each one of these
   would seem to say to you, "Sinner, trust Him. He was true to me." If
   God's people who are here this morning could stand up and speak, I know
   their testimony would be, "Soul, trust Him--He has been good and true
   to me." Ah, my Lord, why have You not cast some of us away long ago?
   When we think of our unbelief, and our repeated backsliding, the wonder
   is that You have not torn up the marriage-bond and said, "He shall
   go--he shall go--he has rebelled against Me. He is as a backsliding
   heifer and as a bull unaccustomed to the yoke." But no! The strong love
   of God which first laid hold of us has never let go its grip; He has
   kept us when we have forsaken Him; pardoned all our shortcomings, and
   blotted out all our trespasses! And here we are to bear witness that He
   is a God ready to forgive, passing by iniquity, transgression and sin!
   Sinner, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, I command you--believe on
   Christ and--"As though God did beseech you by me, I pray you, in
   Christ's place, be reconciled to God." Think not that He is hard
   towards you; Jehovah's heart yearns to clasp His Ephraims to His
   breast! Prodigal! Your Father sees you--come, He will meet you--He'll
   kiss you; He'll clothe you; He'll make a banquet for you. He will bring
   forth music and dancing; and His own heart will have the sweetest of
   the music in itself! Come, then, come, I pray you--trust Him and
   leaving all else behind, of good or bad which belongs to you--come
   empty to be filled! Come naked to be clothed!

   V. I have but now one other point and I shall not detain you, probably
   two moments, while I dwell upon it. The subject would not be complete
   without it. It has been said of some preachers of the Word, and
   especially of me, that we delight to preach damnation and the fires of
   Hell. I think that all who have heard me constantly know that a more
   unfounded libel was never uttered against any living man! I have
   preached terrible sermons; they have been few and far between; but I
   have never preached them with tearless eyes! It has ever been to me a
   far greater misery to preach, than it has been to any to hear; and this
   last sentence or two, with which I conclude, is wrung from my very
   soul.

   And you say, do you, that God will not avenge your sins upon you--that
   you may go on in your iniquities and yet meet with no punishment; that
   you may reject Christ and do it safely; trample on His blood, and yet
   God is so calm that His anger will never flame forth against you? Well
   Soul. Well Soul, "You shall see whether His Word shall come to pass or
   not." But let me tell you His hand is not waxed short! He is as strong
   to punish as when He bade the floods cover the earth; as powerful to
   avenge as when He rained hail out of Heaven upon the cities of the
   plain! He is today as mighty to overtake and punish His enemies as when
   He sent the angel through the midst of Egypt, or afterwards smote the
   hosts of Senacherib! You shall see whether He will keep His Word or
   not--go on in the neglect of His great salvation--go to your dying bed,
   and buoy yourself up with the false hope that there is no hereafter, no
   Hell to come! But, Sinner, you shall see. You shall see. This point in
   dispute shall not long be a matter of question to be laughed at on the
   one side, and to be taught with tears on the other. You shall see and
   we are willing enough, ourselves, to wait that time; only, Soul, when
   you shall see, it will be too late to escape! When the fire gets hold
   upon you; when the hail of God begins to dash you in pieces, and there
   shall be none to deliver, where will your infidelity be then? Where
   your hard sayings against God's earnest ministers, then? You will use
   another note, and sing another tune, and yell another cry! O God, grant
   that none among us may ever dare to doubt You, and think that You
   cannot and will not punish us! By Your Grace may we come to the Cross
   as sinners, and be saved, lest unhappily in the world to come when You
   say, "Depart you cursed," we shall see whether Your Word shall come to
   pass unto us or not! May God add His own blessing for Jesus' sake!--

   "From where, then, shall doubts and fears arise?
   Why trickling sorrows drown our eyes?
   Slowly, alas, our mind receives
   The comfort that our Maker gives.
   Oh for a strong, a lasting faith,
   To credit what the Almighty says!
   To embrace the message of His Son,
   And call the joys of Heaven our own!
   Then should the earth's old pillars shake,
   And all the wheels of Nature break,
   Our steady souls should fear no more
   Than solid rocks when billows roar!
   Our everlasting hopes arise
   Above the venerable skies,
   Where the eternal Builder reigns,
   And His own courts His power sustains."
     __________________________________________________________________

                         The Shulamite'S Choice Prayer

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 24, 1861, BY THE REV. C. H.
   SPURGEON, AT NEW PARK STREET, SOUTHWARK.

   "Set me as a seal upon Your heart, as a seal upon Your arm: for love is
   strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: its flames are flames
   of fire, a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench Your love,
   nor can the floods drown it." Song of Solomon 8:6,7.

   THIS is the prayer of one who has the present enjoyment of fellowship
   with Christ. But being apprehensive lest this communion should be
   interrupted, she avails herself of the opportunity now afforded her to
   plead for a something which shall be as the abiding token of a covenant
   between her and her Beloved when His visible Presence shall be
   withdrawn. You will notice that this is not the cry of a soul that is
   longing for fellowship, for that cry is--"Tell me O You whom my soul
   loves, where You feed." It is not even the cry of the soul that has
   some fellowship and needs more, for then it would say, "Oh that You
   were as my brother!" Nor is it the cry of a soul that has had
   fellowship but has lost it, for that is, "Saw You Him, whom my soul
   loves?" And she goes "about the streets and in the broad ways" saying,
   "I will seek Him." But this is the prayer of the spouse when she has
   been coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon His bosom. The thought
   strikes her, that He who has sustained her is about to go from her, to
   depart and leave her for a season, because it is expedient and more
   useful for her, and she prays that since He is no more on the earth,
   but has entered into the ivory palaces where her God dwells, that He
   would be pleased to make a covenant with her never to forget her, and
   that He would give her some sign and mark by which she might be assured
   that she is very near to His heart, and still written upon His arm. I
   take it to be the prayer of the Church at the present day, now that
   Christ is before the Father's Throne; the Bridegroom is not with us; He
   has left us; He has gone to prepare a place for us, and He is coming
   again. We are longing for His coming; we are saying in the language of
   the last verse of this Song of Songs, "Make haste, my Beloved and be
   You like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of spices." Yet
   before He went, it seemed as if His Church did pray to Him, "Set me as
   a seal upon Your heart, as a seal upon Your arm." And this is the cry
   of the Church tonight, and I trust your cry, too, that while He is not
   present but is absent from you, you may be near to Him, and have a
   sweet consciousness of that blessed fact!

   Now without further preface, let me first notice, the prayer, and
   secondly, the reasoning with which the spouse argues her suit The
   prayer is, "Set me as a seal upon Your heart, as a seal upon Your arm."
   The argument is four-fold. She pleads thus, "Love is strong as death."
   She waxes bolder--"Jealousy is cruel as the grave." She wrestles
   again--"The flames thereof are flames of fire, a most vehement flame."
   And once again she brings forth her choice words, "Set me as a seal
   upon Your heart, for many waters cannot quench Your love, neither can
   the floods drown it."

   I. THE PRAYER, you will notice, is two-fold, although it is so really
   and essentially one--"Set me as a seal upon Your heart, as a seal upon
   Your arm."

   Now I think I can perhaps explain this text best by a reference to the
   high priest of old. You know that when he put on his holy
   garments--those robes of glory and beauty--he wore the breastplate of
   cunning work in which four rows of precious stones were set. If you
   will turn to Exodus, the 39th Chapter and 14th verse, you will read,
   "And the stones were according to the names of the children of Israel,
   twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a signet,
   everyone with his name, according to the twelve tribes." How suggestive
   of this prayer!--"Set me as a seal or as an engraved signet, as a
   precious stone that has been carved--set my name upon Your breast." Let
   it be always glittering there. But beside this breastplate, there was
   the ephod, and we are told that, "they made shoulder pieces for it, to
   couple it together; by the two edges was it coupled together." Then in
   the sixth verse we read, "And they set onyx stones enclosed in settings
   of gold; they were engraved, as signets are engraved, with the names of
   the children of Israel. And he put them on the shoulders of the ephod,
   that they should be stones for a memorial to the children of Israel. As
   the Lord commanded Moses." So that it was set as a signet upon his
   shoulder, or upon his arm, as well as upon his heart. I think these
   were to indicate that the high priest loved the people, for he bore
   them on his heart; and that he served the people as a consequence of
   that love, therefore he bore them upon his shoulders. And I think the
   prayer of the spouse is just this--she would know once and for all that
   Christ's heart is entirely hers; that He loves her with the intensity,
   and the very vitality of His Being; that His inmost heart, the
   life-spring of His soul, belongs to her. And she would also know that
   that love moves His arm. She longs to see herself as supported,
   sustained, strengthened, defended, preserved and kept by that same
   strong arm which put Orion in its place in the sky, and holds the
   Pleiades that they should give their light forevermore. She longs that
   she may know the love of His heart, and that she may experience the
   power of His arm. Can we not, each of us, join the spouse in this
   prayer tonight? Oh, Lord, let me know that my name is engraved on Your
   heart not only let it be there, but let me knowit. Write my name not
   only in Your heart, but may it be as a signet on Your heart that I may
   see it.

   Doubtless there are the names of very many written upon Christ's heart
   who have not yet been able to see their names there--they are there,
   but not written as on a signet. Christ has loved them from all
   eternity; His heart has been set on them from everlasting, but as yet
   they have never seen the signet. They have never had the seal of the
   Spirit to witness within that they are born of God! While their names
   may be in His heart, they have not seen them there as a seal upon His
   heart; and no doubt there are multitudes for whom Christ has fought and
   conquered, and whom He daily keeps and preserves, who have never seen
   their names written as a seal upon His arm. Their prayer is that they
   may see Christ's love visibly, that they may discover it in their
   experience, that it may be beyond a question, and no more a matter of
   doubt--that His hand and His heart are engaged for their eternal
   salvation! I repeat it, you can all join in this prayer, you people of
   God--it is a cry that you can put up now, and continue to put up till
   it is fully answered. Oh, let me know, my Lord, that I am Yours, bound
   to Your heart, and let me know that I am Yours, protected and preserved
   by Your arm! This is the prayer. I shall not say more upon it because I
   wish to speak more at length upon the arguments with which it is here
   pleaded.

   II. The spouse argues with her Lord thus. It is to my advantage that
   you should thus write my name upon Your hand and heart, for I know this
   concerning Your love, that it is strong; that it is firm; that it has a
   wondrous intensity, and that it is sure and unquenchable. With these
   four pleas she backs up her suit.

   1. She pleads that He would show her His love, because of the strength
   of it. "Your love is strong as death." Some expositors think that this
   means the Church's love. Others say, "No, it means the love of Christ
   to His Church." I will not try to determine which it means, for they
   are extremely like each other. Christ's love to His Church is the
   magnificent image--the affection which His people bear to Him is the
   beautiful miniature. They are not alike in degree and measure, for the
   Church never loves Christ so much as Christ loves her, but they are as
   much alike as the father, in his strength, is to the baby in its
   weakness. There is the same image and superscription. The love of the
   Church to Christ is the child of Christ's love to the Church, and
   consequently, there is something of the same attribute in both. And
   while it is true that Christ's love to us is so strong that He did defy
   and endure death for us, it is also true that the love of the Church to
   Him is as strong as death. Her chosen sons and daughters have endured
   the pangs of the rack, and the pains of the sword, and have gone
   through a thousand deaths sooner than be turned aside from their chaste
   fidelity to their Lord! I shall, however, keep to the first idea that
   this is the love of Christ, and shall use it thus as being the plea of
   His Church that because His love is strong, she desires to be certified
   of her interest in it, and to see most visibly the signet and seal of
   her being really in His heart. "Love as strong as death." What a
   well-chosen emblem this is! What besides love is as strong as death?
   With steadfast foot, Death marches over the world; no mountains can
   restrain the invasion of this all-conquering king! There is no chalet
   on the mountain Alp so high that his foot cannot climb to hunt the
   inhabitant; there is no valley so fair that he does not intrude and
   stalk--a grim skeleton across the plain. Everywhere and in every place
   beneath the moon have you sway, O Death! The lordly lion bows his neck
   to you; Leviathan yields up his corpse which floats many a crucifix
   upon the briny waves. You are the great fisher; you have put your hook
   into his jaw, and dragged him from the sea. Master of all are you! You
   have dominion given unto you; you wear an iron crown, and you dash in
   pieces as though they were but potter's vessels, the strongest of the
   sons of men!

   None among the sons of Adam can withstand Death's insidious advances!
   When his hour is come, none can bid him delay. The most clamorous
   prayers cannot move the flinty heart of Death. Insatiable and not to be
   appeased, he devours and devours forever! That scythe is never blunted,
   that hourglass never ceases to flow. Mightiest among the mighty are
   you, O Death! But Christ's love is strong as death. It too can climb
   the mountain, and lay hold upon the mountaineer far removed from the
   sound of the ministration of the Gospel. It too can march into the
   valley. And though Popery with all its clouds of darkness should cover
   it, yet the love of Christ can win its glorious way! What can stand
   against the love of Christ? The stoutest must yield to it, and
   adamantine hearts are dashed to shivers by one blow of its golden
   hammer! As the sun dissolves the chains of frost, and bids the wind
   rush on in freedom--though once bound as if it were stone--so does this
   love of Christ, wherever it comes, give life and joy and liberty, snap
   the bonds, and win its way, never being retarded, never being hindered,
   because it is written, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,
   and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." Who can
   measure the strength of Christ's love? Men have defied it, but their
   defiance has been overcome! They have long resisted, but they have been
   compelled to throw down their weapons; they have crossed it, but they
   have found it hard to kick against the pricks; they have gone on caring
   for none of these things, but thus the eternal Counsel has decreed
   it--Christ must--He shall have that redeemed man, and He has had him!
   Jesus Christ's love is strong as death! Sooner might a man live, after
   God's will had decreed that he should die, than a sinner remain
   impenitent one hour after God's love had decreed to melt his heart!
   Sooner might you defy the grave and hurl back upon his haunches, the
   pale horse of Death, than turn back the Holy Spirit when He comes in
   His Divine Omnipotence to lay hold upon the heart and soul of man! As
   all the owls and bats with all their hoots could not scare back the sun
   when once its hour to rise has come--so all the sins and fears, and
   troubles of man cannot turn back the light of love when God decrees
   that it should shine upon the heart! Stronger than death, His love is
   found! Death is but weakness itself when compared with the love of
   Christ! What a sweet reason why I should have a share in it! What a
   blessed argument for me to use before the Throne of God! Lord, if Your
   love is so strong, and my heart is so hard, and myself so powerless to
   break it, oh, let me know Your love, that it may overcome me, that it
   may enchain me with its sure but soft fetters, and that I may be Your
   willing captive forevermore!

   But let us notice here that when the spouse says that Christ's love is
   strong as death, you must remember that she may in faith have foreseen
   that it would one day be tried which was the stronger. You know, do you
   not, that these two once entered into the lists to try their strength?
   And it was a struggle upon which angels gazed. Jesus--I mean Incarnate
   Love--at the first seemed to shrink before Death. "He sweat, as it
   were, great drops of blood falling to the ground." You cannot see the
   brow of His antagonist, but could you have perceived it, Death--the
   invader--was trembling more than Christ--the Invaded! Christ had the
   prophecy of victory, but Death--the fates were against it. Do you
   remember that story of how the Savior's back was plowed, His hands
   pierced, and His side opened? Death--I think I see the flush that
   crossed his pale face as he thought that he had gained the victory--but
   Jesus triumphed--Love reigned while Death lays prostrate at His feet!
   Strong as Death, indeed, was Jesus' love, for Jesus swallowed up Death
   in victory! Not merely overcame it, but seemed to devour it; to make
   nothing of it. and put it away once and for all. "O Death," said Love,
   "I will be your plague! O grave, I will be your destruction!" And Love
   has kept its word, and proved itself to be "strong as Death."

   Well, Beloved, we may add to these few remarks this word. Rest assured
   that as Death will not give up its prey, so neither will Love. How hard
   and firm does Death hold its captives! Till that Resurrection trumpet
   shall make him loose their bonds, none shall go free! Their ashes he
   preserves as carefully as a king keeps the jewels of his crown; he will
   not allow one of them to escape, as did Israel out of the land of
   Pharaoh. In the house of bondage, there they must lie. And is not
   Christ's love as strong as this? He shall keep His own. Those who are
   His, He never will let go. No, when the archangel's trumpet shall
   dissolve the grasp of Death, then shall be heard the cry, "Father, I
   will that they, also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am."
   And when Death itself is dead, Love shall prove its eternal strength by
   taking its captives home. Love, then, is strong as Death. Lord Jesus,
   let me feel that love! Let me see Your arm nerved with it, and Your
   heart affected by this strong love which all my enemies cannot defeat;
   which all my sins cannot overturn; which all my weakness cannot deny. I
   think this is a most sweet and powerful argument to lead you to pray
   the prayer, and one which you will use when you are pleading before
   God.

   2. Let us now turn to the second plea--"Jealousy is cruel as the
   grave." Krummacher, in a sermon upon this passage, following the
   translation of Luther, quotes it as though it ran thus--"Jealousy is
   firm as Hell." And I believe that such is the proper translation, at
   least quite as correct as the present one. "Jealousy is firm as Hell."
   Those of you who have Bibles with the margins in them, (and the margins
   are generally like fine gold), will perceive the words in the corner,
   "Hebrew, hard"--"Jealousy is hardas the grave," which is just the idea
   of firmness, it is as firm as the grave. Sheol, I believe the word is
   here for grave, otherwise we translate it, "Hades"--or as Luther
   translates it--"Hell." "Jealousy is hard as Hell." The idea is just
   this--that the love of Christ in the form ofjealousy is as hard and as
   sternly relentless as is the grave and Hell. Now Hell never looses one
   of its bond-slaves. Once let the iron gate be shut upon the soul, and
   there is no escape. When the ring of fire has once girdled the immortal
   spirit, none can dash through the flaming battlements. The dungeon is
   locked; the key is dashed into the abyss of destiny, and never can be
   found--

   "Fixedis their everlasting state, could they repent, 'tis now too
   late." "Escape for your life, look not behind you," is a cry which may
   be uttered on earth, but which can never be heard in Hell! They who are
   once there, are there forever and forever. That modern doctrine of the
   restoration of damned souls has no foundation in the Word of God; it is
   a dream, and they shall find it so who once go into that place! "Where
   their worm dies not, and where their fire is not quenched"--a more
   perfect picture of an unrelenting seizure could not be found anywhere!
   The firmness and hardness of the grave and Hell are without abatement;
   when once they have got their hands upon their prey, they hold it with
   a tenacity which defies resistance.

   Well, but such is the love of Christ! If just now we had to speak of
   its strength, we have now to speak of its tenacity, its hardness, its
   attachment to those whom it has chosen. You may sooner unlock Hades,
   and let loose the spirits that are in prison there, than you could ever
   snatch one from the right hand of Christ! You may sooner rob Death of
   its prey, than Jesus of His purchased ones; you may spoil the lion's
   den, but shall the lion of the tribe of Judah be spoiled? Shall the
   prey be taken from the mighty, and the lawful captive delivered? Before
   one child of God shall be lost, you shall go first and make Death relax
   his grasp, and then next you shall make Hell with all its fury give up
   its prey! As soon as ever it can be proved that one child of God
   perishes, it can be proved that the fires of Hell can be put out--but
   until then there shall never be a shadow of a fear of that. As
   certainly as lost souls are lost, so certainly believing souls are
   saved! Oh, little do they know the love of Christ who think that He
   loves today and hates tomorrow! He is no such Lover as that--even
   earthly worms would despise such affection! Is Christ's affection a
   play of fast and loose? Does He choose and then refuse? Does He justify
   and then condemn? Does He press to His bosom, and afterwards reject
   with distaste? It is not so. Some mighty imagination might conceive
   Niagara Falls staying in its course, and made to ascend and climb the
   hills, instead of leaping downwards in its strength; but even then, no
   imagination can conceive the love of Christ retracing its eternal
   pathway! The Divine fury which is in it, drives it on, and on it must
   go as it has begun; the love of Christ is like an arrow which had been
   shot from the bow of destiny; it flies, it flies, and Heaven itself
   cannot change its course! Christ has decreed it--such men shall be His,
   and His they shall be! Nor will He turn away one of them, or make a new
   election, or plan a new redemption, or bring those to Heaven whom He
   never intended to bring, or lose those whom He ordained to save! He has
   said, and He will do it. He has commanded His Covenant forever, and it
   shall stand fast. He will have compassion on whom He will have
   compassion, and He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy! You have
   then, here, another reason why you should pray that your name may be
   upon Christ and upon His arm--once there, it is there forever! It is so
   surely there, so jealously there, so strongly there, so fixedly there,
   that it can never be removed, come what may! Christ is jealous of His
   people; He will not let another have His spouse; He will not sit still
   and see the Prince of Darkness walking off with her whom He espoused
   unto Himself in the eternal ages. The supposition is absurd! That cruel
   jealousy of His would make Him start up from His heavenly repose to
   snatch His chosen spouse from him who would seek to lead her to the
   hellish altar! She shall not be divorced from Him; she must not be
   married to another--

   "Stronger His love than death or Hell,
   Its riches are unsearchable!
   The first-born sons of Light
   Desire in vain its depths to see;
   They cannot reach the mystery,
   The length, the breadth, the height." 3. If the love of Christ is
   strong as death; it is such that it can never be moved from its
   objective, yet the question still arises, "May not the love itself die
   out? Even should it abide the same in its purpose, yet may not its
   intensity be diminished?" "No," says the Shulamite, "it is an attribute
   of Christ's love that the flames thereof are flames of fire which have
   a most vehement flame." More forcible is the language of the
   original--"The coals thereof are the coals of God"--a
   Hebrew idiom to express the most glowing of all flames--"the coals of
   God"! As though it were no earthly flame, but something far superior to
   the most vehement affection among men! Some who look carefully at it
   think there is an allusion in this sentence to the fire which always
   burnt at the altar, and which never went out. You remember there were
   coals of fire which were always kept burning under the Levitical
   dispensation. The flame was originally kindled by fire from Heaven, and
   it was the business of the priest to perpetually feed it with the
   sacred fuel. You will remember, too, that one of the cherubim flew and
   took a live coal from off this very altar and said to Isaiah, "Lo, this
   has touched your lips." Now, the love of Christ is like the coals upon
   the altar which never went out. But the spouse has brought out a fuller
   idea than this. She seems to say, "Its vehemence never decreases; it is
   always burning to its utmost intensity." Nebuchadnezzar's furnace was
   heated seven times hotter, but no doubt it grew cool. Christ's love is
   like the furnace, but it is always at the seven-fold heat, and it
   always has within itself its own fuel! It is not merely like fire, but
   like coals of fire, always having that within itself which supports it!
   Why did Christ love the spouse? What first lit the fire? He kindled it
   Himself! There was no reason whatever why Christ should love any of us,
   except the love of His own heart. And what is the fuel that feeds the
   fire? Your works and mine? No, Brothers and Sisters, no, no, a thousand
   times no! All the fuel comes from the same place--it is all from His
   heart! Now, if the flame of Christ's love depended upon anything we
   did--if it were fed with ourfuel--it would either die out, or else it
   would sometimes dwindle as the smoking flax--and then, again, it might
   kindle to a vehement heat. But since it depends on itself, and has the
   pure attributes of Divinity, it is a self-existent love, absolute and
   independent of the creature. Well, then, may we understand that it
   never shall grow less, but always be as a vehement flame!
   Now, I do not want to preach about this, but I wish you would think of
   it a little. Christian, turn it over in your mind--Christ loves you;
   not a little; not a little as a man may love his friend; not even as a
   mother may love her child, for she may forget the infant of her womb.
   He loves you with the highest degree of love that is possible! And what
   more can I say, except I add, He loves you with a degree of love that
   is utterly impossible to man; no finite mind could, if it should seek
   to measure it, get any idea whatever of the love of Christ towards us!
   You know, when we come to measure a drop with an ocean, there is a
   comparison. A comparison, I say, there is, though we should hardly be
   able to get at it! But when you attempt to measure our love with
   Christ's--the finite with the Infinite--there is no comparison at all!
   Though we loved Christ ten thousand times as much as we do, there would
   even then be no comparison between our love to Him, and His love to us!
   Can you now believe this--"Jesus loves me"? Why, to be loved by others
   here often brings the tear to one's eyes. It is sweet to have the
   affection of one's fellow; but to be loved of God, and to be loved at
   an intense degree--so loved that you have to leave it as a mystery the
   soul cannot fathom--you cannot tell how much! Be silent, O my Soul and
   be you silent, too, before your God, and lift up your soul in prayer
   thus--"Jesus, take me into this sea of love, and let me be ravished by
   a sweet and heavenly contentment in a sure confidence that You have
   loved me and given Yourself for me."

   4. We shall now turn to the last argument of this choice prayer, which
   is equally precious. It is the unquenchable eternity of this love.
   There is that in its very essence which defies any opposite quality to
   extinguish it. The argument seems to me to run thus--"Yes, but if
   Christ's love does not die out of itself--if it has such intensity that
   it never would of itself fail, yet may not you and I put it out?" No,
   says the text, "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods
   drown it." Christ has endured many waters already--the waters of bodily
   affliction, the waters of soul travail, the waters of spiritual
   desertion. Christ was in this world like Noah's Ark--the depths that
   came up from beneath Hell troubled Him; the great floods came from
   above; it pleased the Father to bruise Him. The cataracts leaped on Him
   from either side; He was betrayed by His friends; He was hunted by His
   foes. But the many waters could no more destroy His love than it could
   drown the Ark of gopher wood! Just as that Ark mounted higher and
   higher, and higher, the more the floods prevailed--so then that love of
   Christ seemed to rise higher and higher, and higher--just in proportion
   to the floods of agony which sought to put it out! Fixed and resolved
   to bring His ransomed people home, the Captain of our salvation becomes
   perfect through suffering, plunges into the thick of the battle, and
   comes out of it more than Conqueror! And oh, since then, my Beloved,
   what floods has Christ's love endured! There have been the floods of
   our sins; the many waters of our blasphemy and ungodliness. Since
   conversion there have been the many waters of our backslidings, and the
   floods of our unbelief. What crime on crime--what transgression on
   transgression have we been guilty of! Yet He has never failed us up to
   this moment.

   "By the grace of God we are what we are. And we are persuaded that
   neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
   angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 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." What if we should be tried in
   circumstances? "Neither famine, nor persecution, nor nakedness, nor
   peril, nor sword shall separate from the love of Christ." What if we
   backslide, and wander from His ways? "Though we believe not, He abides
   faithful." And what if in the last black hour we should have bitter
   sufferings on the dying bed? Still He shall be with us in the last
   moment, for it is written, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is
   Death." So you see, Death is to be destroyed, and we are to be victors
   over him! Gather up, then, all the thoughts of how we have tried, and
   how we shall try the Master, and let us set to our seal tonight our own
   solemn, "Yes and Amen" to this most precious declaration of the
   Shulamite--"Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods
   drown it." Then, Lord, write my name on Your heart, engrave my name as
   a signet on Your arm that I may have a share in this unfailing and
   undying affection and be Yours now and forever!

   Poor Sinner! I know you have been saying while I have been preaching
   thus--"I wish I had a share in that love." Well, thisprayer you may
   pray tonight--"Set me, Lord--set me as a seal upon Your heart, as a
   seal upon Your arm. Love me, Lord. Help me, Lord. Let Your heart move
   towards me; let Your arm move for me, too. Think of me, Lord; set me on
   Your heart. Lord, set me on Your arm; Lord, I long to have Your love,
   for I hear it is strong as death, and You know I am chained by Satan,
   and I am his bond-slave. Come and deliver me--You are more than a match
   for my cruel tyrant; come with Your strong love and set me free. "I
   hear that Your love is firm, too, as Hell itself. Lord, that is such a
   love as I need; though I know I shall vex You, and wander from You,
   come and love me with a love that is firm and everlasting! O Lord, I
   feel there is nothing in me that can make You love me; come and love
   me, then, with that love which finds its own fuel! Love me with those
   coals of fire which have a vehement flame; and since many waters cannot
   quench Your love, prove that in me. Lord there are many waters of sin
   in me; but Lord, help me to believe that Your love is not quenched by
   them. There are many corruptions in me; but Lord, love me with that
   love which my corruptions cannot quench. Here, Lord, I give myself
   away--take me! Make me what You would have me to be, and keep and
   preserve me even to the end."

   May the Lord help you to pray that prayer, and then may He answer it
   for His mercy's sake.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Humility

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 17, 1861. BY THE REV. C. H.
   SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "Serving the Lord with all humility of mind." Acts 20:19.
   IT is not often that a man may safely speak about his own humility.
   Humble men are mostly conscious of great pride, while those who are
   boastful of humility have nothing but false pretense, and really lack
   and need it. I question whether any of us are at all judges as to our
   pride or humility; for verily, pride so often assumes the shape of
   lowliness when it has its own end to serve, and lowliness on the other
   hand is so perfectly compatible with a heavenly dignity of decision,
   that it is not easy at all times to discover which is the counterfeit
   and which is the precious and genuine coin. You will remember that in
   the case in our text, Paul speaks by Inspiration. If it were not for
   this fact, I would not have believed even Paul, himself, when he spoke
   of his own humility. So distrustful do I feel of our judgment upon this
   point, that if he had not spoken under the Infallible witness and
   guidance of the Holy Spirit, I would have said that the text was not
   true. When a man says he serves God with humbleness of mind, speaking
   merely from his own judgment, there is clear proof before you that he
   is a proud man! But Paul speaks not to his own commendation, but with
   the sole motive of clearing his hands of the blood of all men. Led, no
   doubt, by the Holy Spirit thus to speak--that he might be an example to
   all coming ages--he becomes the mirror to all the ministers of Christ
   that we, too, each of us in our degree serving the Lord, may without
   degree be filled with humility, taking the lowest seat, not esteeming
   ourselves beyond what we ought to think, but submitting ourselves to
   men of low estate--emptying out ourselves as He did who emptied Himself
   of all His Glory, when He came to save our souls.
   I shall take the text this morning, and shall speak of it as the Lord
   shall please to help me in my weakness. First, I shall speak of the
   comprehensiveness of humility. You notice the text says, "Serving the
   Lord with allhumility." Secondly, I shall speak upon the trials to
   which our humility will be subjected; and thirdly, upon the arguments
   by which we ought to support it, t o generate it, and to sustain it in
   our souls. And then, fourthly, I shall show forth some practical
   effects of humility, and urge you to show them forth with me in our
   daily lives.
   I. First then, the COMPREHENSIVENESS OF HUMILITY.
   It is a somewhat striking expression; it is not merely serving the Lord
   with humility, but serving the Lord with all humility. There are many
   sorts of pride. Perhaps while I am running over the list, you will be
   able, by looking at the contrast, to see that there must also be many
   kinds of humility.
   There is the pride of the heretic who will utter false doctrines
   because he thinks his own judgment to be better than the Word of God;
   never content to sit like a child to believe what he is told, he is a
   disputant but not a disciple. He will insist upon it that his own
   reason is to be the well-spring of his own beliefs, and he will receive
   nothing beyond his own reach. Now Paul never had the heretic's pride.
   He could say, "God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our
   Lord Jesus Christ." No, so willing was he to sit at the feet of Jesus,
   that he counted all the learning which he had received before he sat at
   the feet of Jesus to be of no value! He spoke not with the wisdom of
   words, nor with human learning, but with the demonstration of the
   Spirit and with power.
   There is next the pride of the Roman Catholic, who attaches merit to
   his own works, and hopes to win Heaven as the reward of his own doings.
   From this Paul was totally free. He had humility which is the very
   contrast of it. Often did he say, when speaking of himself, "yet not I,
   but Christ." He learned to count his righteousness as filthy rags, and
   all his former doings were to him but dross and dung that he might win
   Christ and be found in Him.
   Next there is the pride of the curious. The man who is not content with
   simplicities, but must pry into mysteries. He would, if he could, climb
   to the Eternal Throne, and read between those folded leaves, and break
   the seven seals of the mysterious book of destiny. You know well our
   Apostle has many things in his writings which are hard to be
   understood, yet he uttered them because of the Spirit; you never meet
   with any attempt in the Apostle's writing--as you do in the preaching
   of some ministers, and as you do in the conversation of some
   professors--to reconcile predestination with free will. He was quite
   content to preach to men as free agents, and exhort them to repent;
   quite willing to speak of God as working in us to will and do of His
   good pleasure, while we also work out our own salvation with fear and
   trembling. Paul was never curious to find out where the lines of Truth
   met; he was perfectly content to take his Doctrine from his Master's
   Spirit, and leave the old wives' fables, and endless genealogies and
   disputes, and questionings, to those who had no better guests to
   entertain.
   Again--there is the pride of the persecutor; the man who is not content
   with his own notions, but would hunt to death another; the pride which
   suggests that I am infallible, and that if any man should differ from
   me--the stake and the rack would be the due deserts of so great a sin
   against so great a person as myself! Now, the Apostle acted towards
   those who differed with him with the greatest wisdom and kindness, and
   though full often he was beaten with rods, or subjected to false
   brethren, and hauled before the magistrates, I think he had none of the
   spirit of Elijah that would bring down fire from Heaven upon any man.
   He was kind, and had that charity which suffers long and hopes all
   things, and endures all things, and believes all things. In this, too,
   you have an instance of allhumility. He had the humility of a man of
   generous spirit.
   And there is the pride of the impenitent man who will not yield to God.
   He says, "I am free; I was never under dominion to any; my neck has
   never felt the rein, my jaw has never felt the bit." Not so our
   Apostle. He was always humble, teachable, and filled even to
   sorrowfulness with a sense of his own unworthiness. "Oh, wretched man
   that I am," he said, "who shall deliver me from the body of this
   death?" Far enough was he from rebellion against the Most High God; for
   he would sit at the feet of Christ and learn, yes, and he would lie at
   the foot of the Throne in dust and ashes, and confess himself to be the
   very chief of sinners, and less than the least of all the saints! I
   think you will very soon learn from the contrast I have presented to
   you, what the Apostle meant when he said, "in allhumility." There are
   many sorts of pride. There are many sorts of humility, too. The Apostle
   had them all, or rather they were blended together in a sweet mixture
   in his daily preaching and conversation. I hope this morning to give
   you a clearer view of the comprehensiveness of humility, and so I will
   put it to you in another shape.
   Some of the old writers, who like to use terms to sound very much
   alike, say, There is a proposedhumility, or humility before the service
   of God; there is an opposed humility, or humility during the service of
   God which continues under trial; and there is, thirdly, an imposed
   humility, when the soul, conscious of sin during the act, imposes upon
   itself the task of bending before God, and offering repentance for its
   sin. Not caring much for these terms, because I think that old writers
   went out of their way to make them, I will be content with the
   substance. There is humility before serving God. When a man lacks this,
   he proposes to himself his own honor, and his own esteem in serving
   God. How easy is it for us to preach a sermon, having our eyes upon our
   hearers, hoping that they will be satisfied with us, and will say, "He
   spoke right well--the man is an orator: he is eloquent." Yes, and how
   easy it is to propose to please yourself so that you may be able to say
   as you come down from the rostrum, "I have not failed today in my own
   judgment, and I am satisfied with myself." This is pride before
   service, and it will mar everything! If we do not come to God's altar
   humbly, we cannot come acceptably. Whether we preach or pray, or give
   alms, or whatever we do, it is necessary that we bend exceedingly low
   before we enter upon the work; for if not, self-seeking and
   self-glorifying will lie at the bottom of all, and God neither can nor
   will accept us.
   Look at too many Christians! How little of that humility before service
   they have. They will pick that position in the Church which will give
   them the most honor; and if there is work to do which will confer no
   position upon them, they leave that to others. If you require a man to
   occupy an honorable position in the Church, you can find scores; but if
   you need one who shall be a menial in the House of God--who shall be
   the least in God's heritage--how difficult to find one! We are so
   pleased with the glitter of publicity, and the glory of man's esteem,
   that I doubt not that in us all there is time of choosing our position
   for the honor's sake, rather than for God's sake! But it was never so
   with the Apostle Paul. I think I see him now, working long past
   midnight making his tents, taking stitch after stitch with his needle
   through the hard canvas, working away to provide for his own individual
   needs, because an ungracious people held back the laborer's reward.
   Then I see that tent maker going into the pulpit with his hands all
   blistered with his hard work, as rough as a laborer's hands. You would
   say of him at once, in getting up to speak, that man never proposes to
   himself the praises of his hearers! He is not like the Grecian orator
   who will go anywhere to get applause, turn aside to tell any tale, or
   to preach anything if he can but excite his audience to say, "He is an
   orator! Let us write him down among the great names; let us put the
   crown upon his head, and celebrate him through the midst of Greece as
   being the golden-mouthed man who can speak right mightily, as if the
   bees of Hybla had hived their honey upon his lips!" Never could you see
   that in Paul; you could discover at once that his solitary aim was to
   win souls, and so to glorify Christ. Let us labor after this as a part
   of allhumility.
   But again--there is in the next place humility during the act. When a
   man finds that God is with him, he may be base enough to glorify
   himself. He may have been very humble, indeed, when he began the
   battle, but there is one enemy there at his feet, and another has just
   been dashed down by a blow from his right hand. The Evil One whispers
   in his ear, "You have done well; you are doing well." And then pride
   comes in and spoils all! That is a splendid Psalm which begins, "Not
   unto us." David thought it necessary to say it twice. "Not unto us, O
   Lord! Not unto us." Then he deals the deathblow with the other
   sentence, "but unto Your name be all the Glory." To sing that song when
   you are trampling on your foes; to sing that song when you are reaping
   the great harvest; to sing that song when God's people are fed under
   your ministry; to sing that when you are going on from strength to
   strength, conquering and to conquer, will prove a healthy state of
   heart! Nothing but the most extraordinary Grace can keep us in our
   right position while we are serving God and God is honoring us. We are
   so inclined to steal His jewels from the crown, to put them on our own
   breasts; if we would not steal the diadem itself, yet we look with
   longing eyes upon it as if we would like to wear it if but a single
   moment. I have thought, sometimes, how many Christians are like the son
   of Henry the Fourth, who when his father lies asleep, puts the crown on
   his head. You and I have done the same; we have forgotten God; He was
   to us as One who sleeps, and we began to put the crown on our own head.
   Oh, fools that we were! Our time for crown-wearing has not come. We do
   but anger our Father, and bring grief into our spirits when we think of
   crowning ourselves, instead of crowning Him; worshipping our own image
   instead of bending before the Lord God Jehovah.
   Christian men and women and especially you, O my own Soul, let us take
   heed that while serving God, we serve Him as the angels do who cover
   their faces, and cover their feet while they fly upon His errands!
   Then there is another kind of humility to make up all
   humility--humility after the service is done. In looking back upon
   success achieved, upon heights attained, upon efforts which have been
   blest, it is so easy to say, "My right hand and my mighty arm have
   gotten me the victory." Men generally allow their fellow creatures some
   little congratulation. Can a man congratulate you without admitting
   that you may congratulate yourself? Now there is respect and honor to
   be given to the man of God who has served his race and his Master. By
   all manner of means, let the names of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli be
   held in honor. Has not God Himself said it?--"The righteous shall be
   had in everlasting remembrance." It were wrong in us if we did not
   honor God's servants, for it would seem as if we dishonored the Master.
   But it will never do for the servant of God to honor himself! After his
   work is done he must lay his head upon his death pillow, saying, "I am
   not worthy of the least of all Your mercies! What am I, and what is my
   father's house, that You have brought me here? I am, having done all,
   but an unprofitable servant; I have not even done as much as it was my
   duty to have done." Sunday school teachers, tract distributors,
   visitors of the sick, you that feed the hungry and clothe the
   naked--especially you deacons and elders, ministers of the church--see
   to it that you never, when your work is done, speak of yourselves or of
   your work. No; your brethren, even if you speak in apparently humble
   terms, will soon find, when you talk much of what you do, that you are
   proud of it. You may think that you have misled them, but you certainly
   have not; much less have you deceived your God! Take care that you put
   your finger on your own beauty. When you are painting another man,
   imitate Apelles, who drew Alexander with his finger upon the scar; but
   when you are painting yourself, put your finger over your choice
   beauty, for depend upon it that the hiding finger of your modesty will
   be more beautiful than the beauty you conceal! Labor, then, for God's
   sake, for the Church's sake, for your own sake, to serve the Lord with
   all humility--humility before the act, humility duringthe service, and
   humility when all is done--"Serving the Lord with all humility of
   mind."

   II. But, secondly, the TRIALS OF HUMILITY, or the dangers through which
   humility has to pass.

   And first and foremost, one of the trials to which humility will be
   exposed is the possession of great ability. When a man has seven
   talents, he must remember that he has seven burdens, and he who has
   ten, if he has more than others, should feel that he has ten times any
   other man's burden of responsibility; and therefore he should be bowed
   down. Let a man feel that he possesses more power than another, more
   eloquence, more mental acumen, more learning, more imagination, and he
   is so apt to sit down and say, "I am something; I am somebody in the
   Church." Yes, one may indeed speak with solemnity here. It is so
   ridiculous for us to ever boast of any talents which God has given us.
   It is as though the debtor in the jail should say, "I am a better man
   than you, for I am in debt 10,000 pounds, and you only a hundred." The
   more we have, the more we owe, and how can there be any ground for
   boasting there? A man might as well be proud because he is six feet
   high, while another is only five feet, six inches, as be proud that he
   has 10 talents, while another has only five. We are what God has made
   us, as far as gifts are concerned. If the Lord said to Moses, "Who has
   made man's mouth?" because Moses said he was of stammering speech, you
   may say that to yourselves if you can speak well. Or if you act well,
   "Who has made man's arm?" Or if you think well, "Who has made man's
   brain?" The honor never can be to the thingitself, but to that Mighty
   One who made it what it is! Great talents make it hard for a man to
   maintain humility. Shall I surprise you when I say that little talents
   have precisely the same effect?

   I have seen in my short time, some of the biggest men I ever set my
   eyes upon who were the smallest insects that were ever subjected to the
   microscope; some great men in the pulpit, too--stately, dignified,
   magnificent, majestic--men of whom a fortune could have been made
   outright if you could but have bought them at their proper value and
   sold them at what, in their opinion, they were worth; men who were only
   fit to be bishops--they never could have been the inferior clergy--a
   curate's place would have been utterly insignificant! To have been a
   tent-maker, or an ordinary preacher like Paul would have been far
   beneath their level. They always have the idea that they were born on a
   very fortunate day, and that the world owes them the utmost
   consideration and respect merely for their doing human beings the honor
   of living in the midst of them, though there is nothing very much they
   have ever done! Now little talents often make a man proud. "There," he
   says, "I have but a trifle in the world, I must make a flare with it. I
   have but one ring, and I will always put the finger that wears that,
   outwards, so that it may be seen." It is a very common habit of all
   people who wear rings to keep the fingers on which they wear them
   always exposed to view, especially if they have only one ring! If a man
   has no gold in his pocket, he is sure to put on gold cuff links; and if
   a man has scarcely any wealth at all, he is sure to put it on his back,
   because he must keep up a position, and that position, never having
   been his rightful position, he is obliged to maintain at great cost.
   Now, if you have little talents, and feel you have, do not swell and
   burst with envy. The frog was never contemptible as a frog, but when he
   tried to blow himself out to the size of the bull in the meadow, then
   he was contemptible, indeed! I have frequently had this observation
   made to me in the most pompous manner by some little minister, "Oh,
   Sir, I feel the danger of your position, and I always make it a matter
   of prayer to God that you may be kept humble." I am exceedingly obliged
   to the gentleman, but I am sure I could make it a matter of prayer for
   him, that he might be made humble, once in his life, by way of a
   change--for he has never yet known what humility is so far as he was
   personally concerned. Now you know very well that it is just as easy
   for a man to be proud in his rags, as my Lord Mayor in his gold chain.
   There is many a proud one riding in his little cart quite as vain as my
   lord who rides in a gilded coach. Indeed, I dare say he, the last one,
   feels very little pride, but very great shame at having to make himself
   so ridiculous! You may be a king and yet be humble; you may be a beggar
   and yet be proud; you may be great and yet little in your own esteem;
   you may be little and yet you may be greater in your estimation than
   those who are the greatest! See to it, then, that your low estate does
   not make you proud any more than your high estate.

   Again, success often has a very sorry influence upon humility. The man
   was humble before his God, till God had given him the great victory
   over the Moabites, but then his heart was lifted up within him, and the
   Lord forsook him. When he was little in Israel, he bowed before the
   Most High; when he became great, he exalted himself. Great success is
   like a full cup, it is hard to hold it with a steady hand. It is
   swimming in deep waters, and there is always a fear of being drowned.
   It is standing on the top of the pinnacle of the Temple, and Satan
   often says, "Cast yourself down." But on the other hand, lack of
   success has just the same tendency. Have you not seen the man who could
   not get a congregation, and who insisted that it was because he was a
   better preacher than the man who did? I sometimes read a magazine, the
   message of which is this--if you want to be a good preacher, you must
   preach according to the outlines which are given you in this magazine!
   There are some who do this, but still find their chapels empty; then
   says the magazine with all complacency--"The men who get the
   congregations are always the weakest men; they are always the men who
   have the least mental power, while we who have but a few, a mere
   handful--we are the intellectual people." "The mob always will," they
   say, "run after the foolish men." So that the Brother who gets no
   success, comforts himself with this thought--that Providence is quite
   wrong, and that the Christian public are quite mistaken that he ought
   to be, if things had been right, the most popular man living, and that
   it is quite a mistake he is not. Now, lack of success has a very great
   influence on some men to make them feel, "Well, if I cannot succeed in
   getting other people to think me somebody, I will think everybody else,
   nobody, and I will elevate myself above them all in my own opinion."
   Now, I am speaking some home-truths. I have received a deal of advice,
   myself, and I think I may sometimes take the liberty of giving it to
   others. I hope that those who are always thinking of success as
   certainly involving pride, may also take to themselves the comfortable
   reflection that their non-success, suggesting as it may very bitter
   thoughts about their Brothers, may also be pride, only in another
   direction!

   But then, again; long enjoyment of the Master's Presence has a tendency
   to make us proud. To walk all day in the sunlight brings us in danger
   of a sunstroke. Better not sit too near the fire, or one may get
   scorched. If we have nothing but full assurance, we may come to be
   presumptuous. There is nothing like the heat of summer to breed
   putrefaction. When you have long-continued joys, fear and tremble for
   all the goodness of God. But on the other hand, long- continued doubts
   will breed pride. When a man has long been doubting his God, and
   mistrusting His promise, what is that but pride? He needs to be
   somebody and something. He is not willing to believe his God in the
   dark--he thinks, in fact, that God deals harshly with him, in allowing
   him to be in despondency at all! He thinks he always ought to have joy
   and satisfaction, and so it comes to pass that his doubts and fears are
   as ready parents of pride, as assurance could have been. In fact, to
   cut short a very long story, for I might go on with these two sides of
   the question all morning, there is not a position in the world where a
   man cannot be humble if he has Divine Grace; there is not a station
   under Heaven where a man will not be proud if left to himselfI pray
   you, never think that leaving one station and getting into another will
   be any help to your humility. 'Tis true the peasant boy in the Valley
   of Humiliation sang--

   "He who is down need fear no fall
   He who is low no pride,
   He who is humble ever shall
   Have God to be his Guide."

   But I dare say that very same boy was sometimes singing in that very
   valley, songs of despondency, Psalms of pride and wicked rebellion
   against his God. It is not the place, it is the heart It is not the
   position, but the Grace. That man is as safe on a pinnacle as on level
   ground, if God holds him up; and he is as much in danger in the valley
   as he is upon the high place if God is not with him. If the Lord
   forsakes him, he will fall in either place! If the Lord is with him, he
   will stand in every position! I have thus hinted at some of the dangers
   to which humility is exposed.

   III. And now, thirdly, SOME OF THE ARGUMENTS BY WHICH WE OUGHT TO BE
   PROVOKED TO HUMILITY OF SPIRIT.

   1. First, let us draw some arguments from ourselves. What am I, that I
   should be proud? I am a man, that is to say, a worm; a thing that is
   and is not. An angel--how much he surpasses me, and yet the Lord
   charged His angels with folly, and the heavens were not pure in His
   sight. How much less, then, should the son of man, a creature full of
   sin, lift himself up and exalt himself as though he were something?
   Verily, man at his best estate is altogether vanity; his life a dream,
   an empty show. Oh, vain man, why should you be proud? Think of our
   mortality. In a few more years we shall be worm's meat. Caesar's dust
   shall be eaten, eaten by the most base of creatures! Take up the skull
   of some departed one in your hand and say, "What had this man to be
   proud of?" Go to some morgue and mark the corruption; look on some body
   which has been buried but a little while--what a heap of loathsomeness!
   And yet you and I carry about with us the elements of all that
   putridity--the food of all that rottenness! How, then, dare webe proud?
   I have at home a picture which is so admirably managed that when you
   look closely at it, you see two little children in the bloom of youth
   at play, enjoying each other's company. If you go some distance from
   the picture, the outlines get more and more indistinct and standing
   some few yards away from it, it turns into death's head, with vacant,
   empty eyes, and the bones of the skull and the jaws--a perfect death's
   head. Now, this is just ourselves! When we are looking with our poor
   short-sight of time, we look like fair beings that are full of life;
   but stand at a Scriptural distance, and view these things, and you soon
   perceive that we are nothing, after all, but death's heads! What right,
   then, have we to be proud? Begin not to be proud, Man, till your life
   is secure--and you know that will never be! You bubble, boast not of
   the many colors you have--you shall directly burst. You glorious
   rainbow, exalt not yourself because of your varied hues--when the sun
   withdraws its light, or the cloud moves, you are gone! Oh, you fleecy
   cloud that is so soon to burst on the earth, and be dissipated
   forever-- think not of yourself and your fleecy glories--for you shall
   soon depart and be gone! Every time your humility gives way, and your
   pride lifts up its head, remember that you are mortal, and the skeleton
   may teach you humility.

   But there is yet a stronger argument than this. What are you but
   depraved creatures? When the child of God is at his best, he is no
   better than a sinner at his worst, except as far as God has made him to
   differ! "There goes John Bradford-- but for the Grace of God." No,
   there goes Paul to curse--if notfor the Grace of God. There goes Peter
   to be a Judas-- unless Christ shall pray for him, that his faith fail
   not. A sinner saved by Grace and yet proud? Out on such impudence! God
   pardon us, and deliver us from that evil!

   But, then, let us remember we are not only depraved so that we are
   inclined to sin, but we have sinned, and how can we then be proud?
   Sinners whose highest deservings are the wrath of God, and the hot
   flames of Hell--how can we venture for a single moment to stand as
   those who had done anything meritorious or could claim anything of our
   God? Verily, you and I may stand up today and say, "What is man that
   You should be mindful of him, or the son of man that You visit him?"
   The more we think of ourselves, if guided by God's Spirit, the more
   reasons we shall find for "Serving God with all humility."

   2. But there are not only reasons in ourselves, there are reasons in
   Christ Our Master was never exalted above measure. You never detect in
   Him one proud or scornful glance upon the meanest of the mean or the
   vilest of the vile. He condescended to men of low estate, but it did
   not look like condescension in Him. He did it in such a way that there
   was not the appearance of stooping. He was always on their level in His
   heart. He ate and drank and sat with publicans and sinners, and all in
   such an easy, happy spirit, that no man said of Him, "Look how He
   stoops." Everyone felt that stooping was His natural attitude; that He
   could not stand up and be proud; it would be unbecoming in Him. "And
   shall the servant be above his Master, or the disciple above his Lord?"
   You who are purse-proud, or talent-proud, or beauty-proud, I beseech
   you, think how unlike you are to the Master. There was nothing in Him
   that would keep man back from Him, but everything that would draw them
   to Him. "He made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the
   form of a Servant, and being in fashion as a man, He became obedient
   unto death, even to the death of the Cross." Look at that strange
   sight, and never be proud again. There is the God of Heaven, and with
   the basin in His hands and the towel on His arms--He is washing His
   disciple's feet; and here are you and I, instead of washing other men's
   feet, we want them to anoint our heads, and pour on the balmy cordial
   of a flattering unction, that we may say of ourselves, "I am rich and
   increased in goods," whereas by that very desire, we prove ourselves to
   be naked, and poor, and miserable! By the love of Christ, then, let us
   seek to be humble.

   3. There is yet one other source for arguments, though, of course,
   there are so many that I could not mention them all, and that is God's
   goodness towards us, which should make us exceedingly humble. You
   remember that text which says, "Put on, therefore, as the elect of God,
   hearts of compassion and humbleness of mind"? Now, I have known some
   who believing that they were the elect of God, have put on haughtiness
   of looks! You know the school I allude to; certain gentlemen who are
   the elect, and nobody can ever come near to them; all other Christian
   people, if saved, which is a great question with them, will at least be
   saved so as by fire. Verily they appear to read the text thus--"Put on,
   as the elect of God, pride and self-conceit." Like another text which
   says, "See that you love one another with a pure heart fervently,"
   which I think some people read the wrong way, upwards, and they make it
   out, "See that you hate one another with a pure heart fervently." And
   oh, how fervently they have done it! How fervently they have hated one
   another! Now the mercy of God in having elected us--the mercy of God in
   having bought us with the precious blood of Jesus Christ-- should tend
   to keep us very low in the dust of self-abasement.--

   " What was there in you that could merit esteem,
   Or give the Creator delight?"

   What was there in you that Christ should buy you with His precious
   blood? What in you that you should be made the temple of the Holy
   Spirit? What is there in you that you should be brought to Heaven; that
   you should be made to sit down with Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob at the
   right hand of God? What if you have been grafted into the good olive
   tree? Remember, you were once branches of the wild olive, and you are
   now nothing but grafts. What if your branch hangs down with the weight
   of its produce? There was a time when it brought forth nothing but the
   apples of Sodom, and the grapes of Gomorrah! Bless God and thank Him
   that the root bears you, but you bear not the root. What have you that
   you have not received? Who made you to differ? Your very gifts are
   given you by electing love; God gave them not because you deserved
   them, but because He chose to do so. He has made you a vessel unto
   honor, chastened you and made you in a fair and goodly mold; made you a
   fair vase, showing forth the skill of the Master. But who made you; who
   made you? Look back to that clay pit; look back to the potter's house,
   to the fashioning fingers, and the revolving wheel, and surely you will
   say, "My God, unto You be the praise for what I am, but of myself, I am
   less than nothing; I am worthless and useless; unto You be all the
   Glory."

   IV. I shall now come to my last point, upon which, with excessive
   brevity, I would speak to myself. Indeed, I have been all the morning
   speaking to myself as much as to you.

   I have now a story suggested to me. There was an excellent lady who
   accosted me one day, and told me that she had always prayed that I
   might be kept humble. Of course I was excessively grateful to her,
   although it was a very usual thing, so I said to her, "But do you not
   need to pray the same prayer for yourself?" "Oh, no," she said, "there
   is no need; I do not think there is any tendency in me to be proud."
   Well, I assured the good lady that I thought it was necessary for her
   to always pray, for as sure as ever she thought she had no tendency to
   be proud, that proved at once that she was proud already! We are never,
   never so much in danger of being proud as when we think we are humble!

   Well, now, let us turn to practical account what I have said. You and I
   have a great work before us. I speak now especially to my Church and
   congregation. We are about to enter into a large edifice, having large
   designs in our hearts, and hoping that God will give us large success.
   Let us have humble motives in all this. I hope we have not built that
   house, that we may say with Nebuchadnezzar, "Behold this great Babylon
   which I have built." We must not go to our pulpit, and to our pews with
   this soft note ringing in our ears. "Here will I make unto myself my
   nest, and gain a great name." Or, "Here will be members of the largest
   Baptist Church to receive a part of the honor which is bestowed upon
   the success of the ministry." No; let us go into that house wondering
   at what God has done for us; marveling that God should give such Grace
   to such a Church, and that it should have such innumerable conversions
   in its midst. Then, when we have settled upon our work, when we see
   that God is blessing us, let us still keep very low before Him. If we
   want to lose God's Presence, it can soon be done--pride can shut the
   door in the face of Christ. Only let us take out our tablets and write
   down, "God is for me, therefore let me be proud"--only let us say with
   Jehu--"Come, and I will show you my zeal for the Lord of Hosts," and
   God's Presence will soon depart from us and Ichabod will be written on
   the front of the habitation. And let me say to those of you who have
   already done much for Christ as Evangelists, ministers, teachers, or
   what not--do not sit down and congratulate yourselves! Let us go home
   and think of all the mistakes we have made, all the errors we have
   committed, and all the follies into which we have been betrayed, and I
   think instead of self-congratulations, we shall say, "I have heard of
   You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes sees You, therefore do I
   abhor myself in dust and ashes." Let us humble ourselves before God!
   You know there is a deal of difference between being humble and being
   humbled. He who will not be humble, shall be humbled! Humble
   yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, and He shall lift
   you up, lest He leave you because you hold your head so high. And
   should I be addressing any here this morning who are very much exalted
   by the nobility of rank, who have what the poet calls--

   "The pride of heraldry,
   The pomp of power,"

   be humble, I pray you! If any man would have friends, let him be
   humble. Humility never did any man any hurt. If you stoop down when you
   pass through a doorway, if it should be a high one, you will not be
   hurt by stooping; you might have knocked your head if you had held it
   up. He who is willing to be nothing, will soon find someone who will
   make him something, but if he will be something, he shall be nothing,
   and all men will try to make him less than nothing! Go then, I pray
   you, as Christian men and women, and speak with the poor and needy. Be
   kind and affectionate towards all men. Let your Christian life suggest
   Christian courtesy and Christian charity.

   As for you who have never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is
   useless to recommend you to humility, for how can you get the flower
   till you have the root? Begin, I pray you, with the root. This is the
   root of every Christian Grace-- faith in Christ! Come to Jesus, today,
   just as you are. Trust Him with your poor, guilty soul. Believe Him to
   be both willing and able to save you. Repose your confidence in Him
   alone. You will then be saved, and being saved with such a salvation,
   you will bring forth humility as one of the sweet fruits of the Spirit
   of God, and your end shall be everlasting life, by the Grace of God.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               The Silver Trumpet

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 24, 1861, BY THE REV. C. H.
   SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins
   are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are
   redlike crimson, they shall be as wool"

   Isaiah 1:18.

   THE chiefs of sinners are objects of the choicest mercy. Christ is a
   great Savior to meet the great transgressions of great rebels. The vast
   machinery of Redemption was never undertaken for a mean or little
   purpose. There must be a great end in so great a plan, carried out at
   so great an expense, guaranteed with such great promises, and intended
   to bring such great Glory to God! The plan of salvation has in it all
   the wisdom of God; the purchase of salvation has in it the fullness of
   the Grace of God; the application of salvation is an exhibition of the
   exceeding greatness of the power of God; and all these three attributes
   in their greatness could not have conspired together for any but a
   great and marvelous purpose! At the very outset of our discourse this
   morning, I think we might draw a safe conclusion that Christ
   contemplated saving great sinners with a great salvation. To make the
   whole affair great there must be a great sinner--to be, as it were, the
   raw material upon whom the great wisdom, the great Grace, and the great
   power may be exerted to make him into a great saint! I think both
   saints and sinners have a very confined and limited idea of the
   goodness of God. We measure Him by our own standing. Oh that we knew
   the meaning of that text, where God says, "I will not execute the
   fierceness of My anger; I will not return to destroy Ephraim; for I am
   God and not man" (Hosea 11:9.) He acts in everything, not as a king
   gives to a king, or as some right royal heart acts towards the needy,
   but as a God! There is none who can come near to Him; as He is
   surpassing in His Glory so that mortal eyes cannot behold it, so He is
   excelling in His love and Grace, so that mortal comprehension can never
   grasp, comprehend, or fathom the infinity of His mercy! Keeping mercy
   with thousands, showing pity to multitudes--who is a God like He,
   passing by transgression, iniquity and sin?

   My text shall at once introduce itself. It is a great text,
   indeed--specially meant for sinners of the deepest dye. I pray that the
   energy and power of the Spirit may now open the door of all our hearts,
   that God's mercy may enter in. Four things we will attempt to do this
   morning. First, we will remark that the text is addressed to sinners of
   the deepest dye. Secondly, it contains in it an invitation to reason of
   the most prevailing power. Thirdly, it promises pardons of the fullest
   force. And, fourthly, it presents to us a time of the most solemn
   significance.

   I. First, then, our text is addressed to SINNERS OF THE DEEPEST DYE.
   Some of my Brothers are greatly scandalized by the general invitations
   which I am in the habit of giving to sinners, as sinners. Some of them
   go the length of asserting that there are no universal invitations in
   the Word of God. Their assertion, however, its not so forcible an
   argument as a fact, and we have one here. Here is most plainly an
   invitation addressed to sinners who had not even the qualification of
   sensibility! They did not feel their need of a Savior; they had been
   scourged and flogged till the whole body was a mass of sores, and yet
   they would not turn to the hand that smote them, but went on sinning! A
   more accurate description of careless, worthless, ungodly, abandoned
   souls never was given anywhere! We have in the context, one of the most
   graphic descriptions of human nature in its utterly lost and godless
   estate. There is not a single gleam of light in the midst of the thick
   darkness. The man is bad--bad--bad from the beginning to the end! No,
   he is all worst, and the worst is come to its worst. There is not a ray
   of promise in their nature, not a glimmer of anything good in the
   description of the persons to whom this text is addressed.

   I call your attention, again, to the Chapter which I have read. In the
   first verse you will perceive that the text was addressed to senseless
   sinners--so senseless that God Himself would not address them in
   expostulation, but called upon the heavens and the earth to hear His
   complaint. He spoke to the firmament, to the stars, to the sun and to
   the moon, and He bade them hear. Men had grown so deaf to God's
   admonitions, so utterly dead to His appeals, that He refuses to address
   them any more in notes of warning. "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O
   earth!" What a fine poetical setting forth of the thought--that God
   appealed to dead, inanimate creatures, for man had become more brutish
   than the stones of the field; and yet to such is the invitation given,
   "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord."

   You will readily see in the next place, that the text is given to
   ungrateful sinners. "I have nourished and brought up children, and they
   have rebelled against Me." Oh, how many of us come under this
   description! God was good to us in our early childhood; we were dandled
   on the knees of piety; we were laid to sleep on the couch of holiness.
   God provided for our needs; we were not born slaves, or in a tottering
   shed, but the dawn of our days was the rising of His merciful care. But
   how we have sinned in childhood, and since we have come to manhood, how
   have we violated all the admonitions of His love, done despite even to
   the blood of Christ, and to the Spirit of God! We have forgotten His
   mercies; we have kicked against the pricks; we have made the blessings
   of His Providence the assistants to our sin, and the gifts of His Grace
   the excuses for our iniquities! Oh, we may, many of us, stand here
   coldly and plead that we have been ungrateful to a good, a patient, and
   a bountiful God! And yet to such is the text addressed, "Come now, let
   us reason together."

   By reading in the third verse, you will perceive, again, that the text
   is addressed to men who are worse than beast,. We often slander the
   brute creation. We speak of a man being as drunk as a beast. I do not
   know that beasts are ever drunk! Sometimes, when a man has gone into
   very low vice, we say he has committed a very beastly sin. I question
   whether the word is at all accurate! How do beasts sin? Do they not bow
   their necks, and wear the yoke of man, who is as a God to them? Do they
   quarrel with the Law in which God has said, "I have given you dominion
   over the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the
   sea"? If we were half as obedient to God as the beasts are to man,
   there would be very little sin in us. But men must feel in their
   consciences that they have been worse than the brutes; they have not
   served God as an ox has served the master; they have not recognized Him
   even so much as the stupid ass has recognized its crib! None of us
   would keep a horse for 20 years if it never worked, but only sought to
   injure us; and yet there are men here whom God has kept these 40 and 50
   years, put the breath into their nostrils, the bread into their mouths,
   and the clothes upon their backs, and they have done nothing but curse
   Him, speak ill of His service, and do despite to His Laws! He is,
   indeed, a long-suffering God when He speaks to such as these, and says,
   "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord." One may be
   astonished that there is such a text as this in the Bible, but the
   astonishment is far greater when you see to whom it is addressed--to
   menwho are beneath the level of the brute creation! Oh, my dear
   Friends, you who fear God, never think there are any men too bad to be
   saved! Go to the reprobates, to the harlots, to the drunks, to the
   abandoned; if God invites men who are worse than the ox and the ass,
   you may go and invite them, too, in the hope that the invitation shall
   be accepted, and they may be saved! How many there are who have gone
   from the dunghills of sin up to the Throne of God, and how few, on the
   other hand, have ever come out of the Pharisee's chair to mount up to
   the starry skies!

   Look again at the Chapter before us, and the description of those to
   whom this text is addressed will become yet more full and clear. It
   appears from the 14th verse, that they were a people laden with
   iniquity. When a man is loaded and pressed down, he can make no headway
   whatever; these people were loaded with such a weight of iniquity that
   they could not stir. Their sin had become a part of their nature. Like
   ingrained colors, the sin could not be got out; if they sought to go to
   Christ, their sin was like a chain on their feet; if they had some
   thoughts of goodness, the old habits of vice soon slew those infants in
   the very birth! They were laden with iniquity. They could say, "How can
   I be better? How can I be different? Sin has become a hamper and clog
   to me, and I cannot move. I cannot escape from it." Yet even God says,
   "Come now, let us reason together." It is a dreadful thing when sin
   becomes not only nature, but a second nature--when the use of sin
   breeds the habit of sin, and the man gets entangled in the meshes of an
   iron net from which he has no power to escape. Yet, to him, even to
   him, bond-slave of many lusts--chained hand and foot, and straightly
   shut up against the power of God--even to him is the Word of the Gospel
   sent! "Let us reason together, says the Lord." Furthermore, they were a
   people not only loaded with sin, but they were teachers in
   transgressions, "Children who are corrupters." As old Charnock says,
   "They corrupted one another by their society and example, as rotten
   apples putrefy the sound ones that lie near them." Why, I know some men
   who, wherever they go, carry plagues and death about them. I have
   noticed that in almost every village, and in every knot of society in a
   large town or city, there is some one man who seems to be the incarnate
   devil of the parish--he is the man who teaches the young to drink, to
   swear, to commit licentiousness. He is a man whom Satan seems to have
   sought out to take care of his black flock in that particular
   district--who is a kind of shepherd with a crook in his hand to lead
   the young into dangerous pastures, and make them lie down beside the
   poisonous streams. Yet, even to such an one, and there may be such an
   one here--a wicked old wretch who has taken his degrees in Satan's
   college, has become a Master of Belial, a prince, and chief of sinners,
   a Goliath amongst the Philistines--yet, to such a man is this word sent
   today! Your hands are bloody with the souls of the young; you have kept
   a Hell-house; you have grit up public entertainments which have
   debauched and depraved the young; today you have gold in your pocket
   which you have earned by the blood of souls; you have the fool's penny,
   and the drunkard's shillings which have really come into your hands
   from the hearts of poor women! You have heard the cries of the starving
   children, and you have tempted their husbands to take the drink, and
   ruined their bodies and their souls; you have kept a place where the
   entertainment was so low, so groveling, that you awoke the slumbering
   passions of evil in the minds of either young or old, and so you shall
   sink to Hell with the blood of others on your head as well as your own
   damnation--not with one millstone about your neck but with many!
   "Carried away," as John Bunyan put it, "not by one devil, but by seven
   devils who shall drag you down amidst the curses of the multitude whom
   you have deceived." Ah, and you, Sir, infidel lecturer, who stand up
   and defy the Deity, knowing in your own soul that you tremble at Him,
   and are awfully afraid--even to you, the worst of the worst, the vilest
   of the vile, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, rotten, putrid,
   corrupt--even to you does God speak today, "Come now, let us reason
   together, says the Lord; though your sins are as scarlet, they shall
   are as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be
   as wool."

   Can I go any further than this? I think not; still, we must read the
   Chapter through. The blessed text we have on hand is addressed to men
   upon whom all manner of gifts had been lost and thrown away. It is a
   great aggravation of our sin when we sin under the rod; if a child
   disobeys its parent the moment it has been punished, it is
   disobedience, indeed; but oh, how some here have been chastised, and
   how little have they been profited by it! Will you, Sir, allow me to
   remind you of the cholera, and how you escaped from the jaws of death?
   Do you remember that fever, and how you were laid very low, and you
   said then, "Please God, in Your mercy to raise me up, and I will be a
   different man"? And you were a different man, for you were worse than
   you were before, and far more hardened! Oh, there are some of you who
   have, perhaps, escaped from shipwreck or from fire, plucked from
   between the very teeth of the dragon! Some of you have met with
   accidents of the most serious kind, one upon another--you have a bone
   that is scarcely set even yet--an old fracture which should jolt your
   memory and remind you of the goodness and mercy of God--but all this
   has been lost! Ah, Sir, take heed, take heed! God's justice is like the
   axe of the Romans; it is bound up in a bundle of rods, and when the
   rods are worn out, then is the axe to be used! Take care--if the rod
   does not bring you to repentance, the axe shall bring you to damnation!
   If you will leap over hedge and ditch to be damned, you will come to
   the end of this awful steeplechase--sooner than you think--and you will
   find it a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God! But
   to you, even to you, though years of sorrow have been lost upon you--to
   you this day is the message of the Gospel sent--"Come now, and let us
   reason together, says the Lord, though your sins are like scarlet they
   shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall
   be as wool."

   Furthermore, I think that in giving this description, I shall be better
   preaching the Gospel than during the other parts of the sermon. Let me
   assure you that the invitation of the text is sent to men who appeared
   to have been totally depraved from the sole of the foot even to the
   head! There was no soundness in them--there could not be found a single
   spot where there was not either a bleeding gash, or a blue bruise, or a
   swelling ulcer deep beneath the skin; they were all "wounds and bruises
   and putrefying sores." Are you such in your own esteem today? Are you a
   sinner so vile that you wonder how you dared to come where God's people
   meet? Do you feel as if your wounds are so corrupt and noisome, that
   you marvel how a godly man can stand by your side, or how your pious
   mother can mention your name in prayer, as she still does? Have you
   gone so far in sin that you cannot go any further? Have you become as
   damnable as a man can be in this mortal life? Yet to you--vilest, most
   lost, most depraved--is the word of this salvation today sent, "Come
   now, let us reason together." To crown all, this message was once sent
   to the very worst of men, for it was sent to some whom God calls,
   "Sodom and Gomorrah." How awful were the crimes of Sodom--we would not
   mention it--how dreadful was the lust of Gomorrah! The ear of modesty
   could not hear, even if the shameless tongue could dare to
   speak--"Their sin went up to Heaven." It was corrupt upon the earth; it
   was a stench to Heaven itself! And yet to such is the invitation of the
   Gospel this day sent--"Hear, oh you rulers of Sodom, and you
   inhabitants of Gomorrah! Come now, and let us reason together." They
   were men whose very religion was hateful to God; men whose Psalms and
   songs and burnt offerings were as sins before the Most High; they had
   made their holy things unholy, and their good things vile. Their gold
   was dross, and their wine mixed with water; their very holiness was
   unacceptable to God! Yes, and how many there are of this sort to be
   found in our streets who, when they sing a hymn in chapel or church,
   may well wonder how God bears with their impudence in daring to sing!
   Who, when they stand up to pray, might fear that they should drop down
   dead for their hypocrisy, for they never pray at home! You have
   multitudes who would go, now and then, to church, who would keep up
   superstitious ceremonies, and are afraid lest their children should die
   without being sprinkled, and yet not afraid of dying and being lost
   themselves! Superstitions they will attend to, but the real religion of
   God, they are careless of. Next Good Friday, what a many will go to
   church who never go on the Sabbath! Good Friday is an ordinance of man,
   and man will attend to that; but the Divine Sabbath they will neglect.

   There are many too, among the Papists, who would not eat meat on a
   Friday, but they would steal the meat on a Thursday--there are persons
   who would not venture for a moment to go against the rubrics of their
   particular prayer book, but they will violate the Laws of God, and
   think nothing of doing everything which God commands them not to do,
   and leaving undone everything which He commands them to do! Yet to
   such, to such men whose religion is a lie, whose profession is a
   pretense, whose very seeking after holiness is but a subterfuge to hunt
   after gain--even to such is the Gospel sent--"Come now, and let us
   reason together." I have a big net this morning--O that we might all be
   caught in its meshes! There is not one of us today who can be exempt
   from this invitation; not even that poor soul yonder who shivers in his
   shoes because he fears that he has committed the unpardonable sin --

   "None are excluded hence, but those
   Who do themselves exclude!
   Welcome the learned and polite,
   The ignorant and rude!"

   "Repent and be baptized every one of you," said Peter. As John Bunyan
   put it, one man might have stood in the crowd and said, "But I helped
   to hound Him to the Cross!" "Repent and be baptized every one of you."
   "But I drove the nails into His hands!" says one. "Every one of you,"
   says Peter. "But I pierced His side!" says another. "Every one of you,"
   says Peter. "But I put my tongue into my cheek, and stared at His
   nakedness, and said, 'If He is the Son of God, let Him come down from
   the Cross!" "Every one of you," says Peter. "Repent and be baptized
   every one of you."

   I do feel so grieved at many of our Calvinistic Brothers and
   Sisters--they know nothing about Calvinism, I am sorry to say--for
   never was any man more caricatured by his professed followers than John
   Calvin. Many of them are afraid to preach from Peter's text, "Repent
   and be baptized every one of you." When I do it, they say, "He is
   unsound." Well, if I am unsound on this point, I have all the Puritans
   with me--the whole of them almost without a single exception! John
   Bunyan first and foremost preaches to Jerusalem sinners, and Charnock,
   you know, has written a book, " The Chief of Sinners, Objects of the
   Choicest Mercy'" But I do not care for that. I know the Lord has
   blessed my appeals to all sorts of sinners, and none shall stop me in
   giving free invitations as long as I find them in this Book! And I do
   cry with Peter, this morning, to this vast assembly, "Repent and be
   baptized every one of you, in the name of the Lord Jesus, for the
   promise is unto you and to your children, even to as many as the Lord
   our God shall call."

   I have thus directed the letter, and tried to find out the persons to
   whom the invitation is sent.

   II. Secondly, the text presents us with REASONING OF THE MOST PREVALENT
   POWER.

   O that God would reason with you this morning; and that you who are
   unconverted would be willing to reason with Him! My poor lips cannot
   reason with you as God can; I can but humbly and feebly be the
   representative of the Lord Jesus for a moment to poor trembling souls.
   "Come now, and let us reason together." You say, "I am too great a
   sinner to be saved." I reply to you this--What passage in God's Word
   forbids you to seek for mercy? Here is the Book; turn it over from
   beginning to end, and see if you can find any passage in it which says,
   "Such-and-such a man may not knock at the mercy gate, and may not seek
   a Savior." You know there are many verses which say in spirit, "Whoever
   will, let him come." Why, this is a wooing Book! It is always inviting
   you! It cries to you; no, it does more! I hope that by God's Grace it
   will compel you to come. I cannot find any passage that is a door to
   shut you out, but hundreds that invite you to come! Still you say, "I
   know I am too vile to be saved." Has the Lord ever refused you? Have
   you been to Him, and sought His Grace through Christ, and has He said
   to you, "Get you gone, you are too vile"? Why, then, will you limit the
   Holy One of Israel before you have tried Him? Or have you prayed? Have
   you? He has not promised to answer you consciously the first time? God
   always hears a sinner's prayer, but He does not always let the sinner
   know that He has heard it! Mercy comes quickly, but a sense of mercy
   may be some time delayed. Oh, Soul, I do assure you there was never yet
   a sinner who sought God, and God refused him, if he sought through
   Christ. I would ask you yet again--Are there any, you think, of the
   damned in Hell who went there because Christ' s blood could not save
   them? Ask them! Why Sirs, if any of them could say in Hell, "It was
   God's fault that I came here," it would take the sting out of their
   torment! There is not a soul in Hell who ever repented of sin; there is
   not a soul there who ever sought mercy through Christ, and if you could
   perish seeking a Savior, you would be the first--but that can never be!
   Well, Soul, since there is no text which denies you--come! Since the
   Lord has never yet refused you--COME! Since none have been lost for
   lack of power in Him to save--COME! COME, I pray you!

   But if these reasons do not suffice you because you will put yourself
   out of the pale of hope, and say, "I am not worthy, I am not worthy,"
   let me suggest a few thoughts to you. Why was it that our Lord and
   Master, when He came into the world, chose to be born of sinful women?
   It is remarkable that those women whose names are mentioned as the
   ances- tors of Christ, are perhaps, with one exception, of the vilest
   character! There is Tamar, who commits incest with her father-in-law;
   there is Rahab the harlot; there is Bathsheba the adulteress; and yet
   Christ sprung out of their loins! Why this black stream to mingle in
   with the current from which Christ should come? Why, Soul, surely it
   was to show you that He was a Savior for sinners'Surely if He had not
   meant to lay hold on the vilest of the vile, this never would have
   occurred. But look again--what did Jesus do when He was here on earth?
   Where was He taken to when a Child? Why, to Egypt, where they
   worshipped leeks and garlic, and onions, and such like trash, that it
   might be said, "Out of Egypt have I called My Son." Where did He begin
   to preach? Why, by the coast where the people that sat in darkness saw
   a great Light! What was His general society? He was once in the house
   of a Pharisee, but how often was He the friend of publicans and
   sinners? And of those who followed Him, what a strange sort they were.
   Pick out anyone you please, and there is little to be said about his
   previous character. These are the fishermen from the lake of Galilee,
   rough and uncouth; there is Peter who denies Him; there is Magdalene,
   out of whom was cast seven devils; there is that other woman who had
   been a sinner. Who was the man whom He converted after He had gone to
   Heaven? There is only one case in the Bible where a man was converted
   personallyby Christ after He had ascended--and that is the bloody Saul
   of Tarsuswho was exceedingly mad against God's people, and was going to
   Damascus, that he might hunt after the disciples! The chief of sinners
   hears the cry--"Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?" What did Jesus do
   when He was dying? Did He not save a thief--a vile thief--one of the
   scum and parings of the world--and did He not say, "Today shall you be
   with Me in Paradise"? Ah, Souls, my Master always went where He was
   most needed--among the chief of sinners!

   And you know His preaching. It was a preaching that was meant for the
   worst of men! Look at that parable of the feast, "Go you into the
   highways and hedges." Go and catch the hedge birds--the men who are
   looking after the linen drying on the hedges! Go after those who have
   not where to lay their heads--those who are filthy, ragged, and
   something worse--go and tell them to come in! Not the princes' sons,
   nor the great, nor the good--but bring here the blind, the halt, and
   the lame, and whomever you shall meet, and bid them to the wedding.
   Why? He came to give Light to the dark, to give bliss to the miserable,
   to give life to the dead, to give salvation to the lost! Now what have
   you to say to this? I think such reasoning should bring you to this
   conclusion--

   "I'll to the gracious king approach,
   Whose scepter mercy 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.?'

   But I have not finished my reasoning yet--for there may still be some
   desponding soul who says--"Yes, God may do great wonders, but I should
   be the greatest wonder of all." Look here, Sinner! One of God's ends in
   salvation is to honor Himself--"that it may be unto the Lord for a
   name, for an everlasting sign, which shall not be cut off." How does a
   physician get a great name? Not by curing pin scratches; or by setting
   to rights, little cuts upon men's fingers. Any old woman can do that!
   It is by bad diseases, by things that are reckoned to be incurable, and
   then, as soon as the man has cured what was given up by others, he is
   sure to advertise in the newspapers his splendid success. "So-and-So
   was turned out of all the hospitals, and had taken all manner of
   medicine--at last I healed him." Why, my dear Friend, if you are
   such-an-one spiritually, you are the most fitted to be the means, in
   God's hand, of honoring His Grace. See what great engineers will do!
   When a man makes a railway across a good, hard, gravelly soil where all
   is perfect, you say, "Why any person can do that." But when Stephenson
   constructed the railway across Chatmoss--a moss which sucked in any
   quantity of materials that was put there, and all was lost, yet, when
   the railway was at last formed across that bog, everybody said--"What a
   marvel!" Then look at the great wonders of Mr. Brunei. He always liked
   to undertake impossibilities and carry them out. Things which staggered
   everyone's conception, he would attempt and perform. We might find
   fault, perhaps, with the expense, but in this case we have a God whose
   bank has no bottom, who has an unlimited treasury, and He loves to take
   hold on those black impossibilities, and go to work with them and show
   both to men and angels what wonders He can do! Ah, poor Sinner, if you
   are the vilest of the vile, I think you would show forth God's Grace
   the better.

   I cannot help quoting John Bunyan again. In his, "Jerusalem Sinner
   Saved," he says--"There are some of us who are God's people whose love
   is getting very low, and whose zeal is flagging, and we are not the men
   we should be. Oh, but," he adds, "if the Lord would but convert some of
   these jailbirds; if he would but call by His Grace some of those
   whoremongers and adulterers, and thieves, and drunkards, what spirit
   they would put into the Christian Church; what new life would be poured
   into us, for they are always the most earnest men when converted! And
   so," he says, "I pray that some of these big sinners may get saved,
   that the Church may have a new increase of zeal and love from men who
   love much, because much has been forgiven." If I cannot persuade, if I
   cannot reason with you, for my lips are poor, poor, things as
   substitute for God's own voice--yet let me quote His own Words, and
   those Words are a solemn oath. Now when a man takes an oath, you do not
   think of doubting him, I hope. Now God puts His hand upon His own
   Self-Existence, and He says, "As I live, says the Lord, I have no
   pleasure in the death of him who dies, but had rather that he should
   turn unto Me and live." He does not wish your damnation; it is not His
   pleasure that you should be lost; He gets glory, it is true, to His
   justice, but He gets no satisfaction to His love if you perish! As a
   father would sooner kiss his child than use the rod, so would the Lord
   sooner see you at His feet in prayer than under His feet in
   destruction! He is a loving God; He is not hard to be dealt with. Since
   Christ became the Substitute for men, God has showed to us that He has
   a heart of compassion. Come back, Prodigal, come back! My Father sends
   me to you; come back, I pray you; He will not reject you! Oh, Spirit of
   the living God, melt the heart that will not move; for surely the love
   of God, and the riches of His Grace might melt the adamant, and make
   the solid granite move! "Turn you, turn you; why will you die, O house
   of Israel? Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his
   thoughts, and let him turn unto God, and He will have mercy upon him,
   and to our God for He will abundantly pardon." I leave, then, the
   reasoning--only adding this, as an old Divine once said, and his saying
   was the means of the conversion of one at least--"He who believes, has
   set to his seal that God is true; he who believes not, makes God a
   liar." Says he, "Sinner, which will you do, today; will you believe and
   so set to your seal that He is true, or will you disbelieve, and go on
   doubting, and so making God a liar?" Oh, do not this evil thing, but
   believe in Jesus, and you shall be saved!

   III. I must now briefly turn to my third point. The words of this
   blessed text contain a PROMISE OF PARDON OF THE FULLEST FORCE.

   "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
   though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Now these
   colors are selected because of their exceeding brilliance. Scarlet and
   crimson are colors which at once attract the eyes. There are some
   colors which a man might wear and pass unmolested, but when a man is
   clothed in bright colors, he can be perceived at a far greater
   distance. Now, some sins are striking, glaring sins; you cannot help
   seeing them; and the sinner himself is compelled to confess them. But
   the Hebrew word, most of you know, conveys the idea of doubly
   dyed--what we call ingrained colors--when the wool has lain so long in
   the dye that it cannot be washed out, though you wash or wear it as
   long as you please--you must destroy the fabric before you can destroy
   the color. Many sins are of this class. Our own natural depravity, in
   fact, is just like this--it is ingrained. As well might the Ethiopian
   wash himself white, or the leopard take away his spots--sinners who
   have learned to do evil, learn to do it well! Yet here is the promise
   of full pardon for glaring and for ingrained lusts! And note how the
   pardon is put--"they shall be as snow"--pure white, virgin, snow! But
   snow soon loses its whiteness, and therefore it is compared to the
   whiteness of the wool washed and prepared by the busy housewife for her
   fair white linen. You shall be so cleansed that not the shadow of a
   spot, nor the sign of a sin, shall be left upon you! When a man
   believes in Christ, he is in that moment, in God's sight, as though he
   had never sinned in all his life! No, I will go further--he is that day
   in a better position than though he had never sinned, for if he had
   never sinned, he would have had the perfect righteousness of man--but
   by believing, he is made the righteousness of God in Christ!

   We had once a cloak, that is taken away; when we believe, Christ gives
   us a robe; but it is an infinitely better one. We lost but a common
   garment, but He arrays us royally. Strangely indeed is that man clothed
   who believes in Jesus! Yon thief who is hanging on the Cross is black
   as Hell--he believes and he is as white as Heaven's own purity! Faith
   takes away all sin through the precious blood of Jesus! When a man has
   once gone down into that sacred laver which is filled with Jesus'
   blood, there "is no spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," left upon
   him! His sin has ceased to be! His iniquity is covered; his
   transgressions have been carried into the wilderness, and are gone!
   This is the most wonderful thing about the Gospel. This does not take
   away part of our sin, but the whole of it; it does not remove it
   partially, but entirely--not for a little time, but forever! "He who
   believes on Him is not condemned." And though today you should have
   committed every crime in the world, yet the moment you believe in
   Jesus, you are saved--the Spirit of God shall dwell in you to keep you
   from sin in the future--and the blood of Christ shall plead for you
   that sin shall never be laid to your charge! Some years ago there was a
   man who had committed murder. He had been, indeed, a most dreadful
   character, but through the teaching of a minister of Christ, he was
   converted to God. He had one anxiety, namely, that having believed in
   Jesus, he might be baptized before he suffered the sentence of the law.
   It could not be effected according to the law of the country in which
   he then lived, except he be baptized in chains. And so he was baptized
   in chains; but what did it matter? He was baptized in joy; he knew that
   He who can save to the uttermost, could save even him, and though in
   chains, he was free; though guilty before man, pardoned in the sight of
   God; though punished by human law, saved from the Curse by the precious
   blood of Jesus. And of course, do not misunderstand me, he was not
   saved by the baptism--he was saved by the blood. There is no knowing
   how long God's arm is; these is no telling how precious Christ's blood
   is-- until you have felt the power of it yourself! And then you will
   wonder as long as you live, even through eternity, and you will be
   astonished to think that the blood of Christ could save such a wretch
   as you are, and make you the monument of His mercy!

   IV. I now come to notice, in the last place, the TIME which is
   mentioned in the text, which is of the MOST SOLEMN SIGNIFICANCE.

   "Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord." "Come now." You
   have sinned long enough; why should you harden your hearts by longer
   delay? Come now, no season can be better! If you tardy till you're
   better, you will never come at all. Come now. You may never have
   another warning; the heart may never be as tender as it is today. Come
   now. No other eyes may ever weep over you; no other heart may ever
   agonize for your salvation. Come NOW, NOW, NOW--for tomorrow you may
   never know in this world--Death may have sealed your fate, and the once
   filthy may remain filthy, still. Come now; for tomorrow your heart may
   become harder than stone, and God may give you up. Come now;it is God's
   time. Tomorrow is the devil's time. "Today if you will hear His voice,
   harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, when your fathers
   tempted Me, and proved Me in the wilderness, and saw My works." Come
   now. Why delay to be happy? Would you put off your wedding day? Will
   you postpone the hour when you are pardoned, and delivered? Come now;
   the heart of Jehovah yearns for you; the eyes of your Father see you
   afar off, and He runs to meet you. Come now; the Church is praying for
   you. These are revival times--ministers are more in earnest--God's
   people are more anxious. Come now--

   "Lest slighted once, the season lost Should never return again!"

   Come now. Mortal man, mortal man, so near your end--thus says the
   Lord--"Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live; and
   because I will do this, consider your ways." Come now; oh, that I had
   power to send home this invitation! But it must be left in the Master's
   hands. Yet, if an anxious heart could do it, how would I plead with
   you! Sinner, is Hell so pleasant that you must endure it? Is Heaven a
   trifle, that you must lose it? What? Is the wrath of God which abides
   on you no reason why you should labor to escape? What? Is not a perfect
   pardon worth the having? Is the precious blood of Christ worthless? Is
   it nothing to you that the Savior should die? Man, are you a fool? Are
   you mad? If you must play the fool, go and sport with your gold and
   silver, but not with your soul! Dress yourself like a madman, wear a
   mask, paint your cheeks, walk in shame, and make a mockery of yourself,
   if you must play the fool--but why cast your soul into Hell for a joke?
   Why lose your eternal interests for a little ease? Be wise, Man! Oh,
   Spirit of God, make this sinner wise! We may preach, but it is Yours to
   apply. Lord apply it! Come forth great Spirit! Come from the four
   winds, O Breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live! In
   the name of Jesus of Nazareth, O Spirit of God come forth! By the voice
   which once bade the winds cease from roaring, and the waves lie still,
   come Spirit of the living God! In the name of Jesus who was crucified,
   Sinners, believe and live! I preach not now in my own name, or in my
   own strength, but in the name of Him who gave Himself for sinners on
   the Cross. "Repent and be baptized every one of you." "Believe on the
   Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved"--

   "But if your ears refuse
   The language of His Grace,
   And hearts grow hard like stubborn Jews,
   That unbelieving race.
   The Lord in vengeance dressed
   Shall lift His hand and swear
   'You that despise My promised rest, Shall have no portion there.'"

   Let me dismiss you with the words of blessing. May the Grace of our
   Lord Jesus, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit,
   be with all who believe in Christ now and forever. Amen and Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               The Great Supreme

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SABBATH MORNING, SEPTEMBER 28, 1856, BY THE REV.
   C. H. SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "Ascribe you greatness to our God." Deuteronomy 32:3.
   OUR God is one God. He is none other than the Infinite Jehovah who of
   old spoke unto His people, and revealed Himself by that marvelous
   incommunicable name--the name Jehovah! And yet though He is one God, we
   are taught in Scripture that He is one God in three most glorious
   Persons. While we rightly believe in the unity of the Godhead, and are
   so far Unitarians, we believe there are three Persons in one God, and
   thus we are Trinitarian Unitarians. We believe that the Father is God,
   and we ascribe unto Him greatness, for we believe that He made the
   world, and settled the pillars thereof. We believe that He fashioned
   the universe, and that He moves the starry orbs through space. We look
   up to the wondrous depths of a shoreless night, and we see the starry
   fleet sailing alone, and we believe that God is their Captain. We look
   still further and as by the aid of science we discover the void
   illimitable, we believe that God dwells there, and is the Infinite
   Creator and Preserver of all things that exist and subsist. We ascribe
   greatness unto Him, the Creator and the Protector of the world. We
   equally believe that Jesus Christ, who is God Incarnate in the flesh,
   is very God of very God. We conceive the work of our Redemption to be
   as Divine a work as that of Creation. We consider that the miracles He
   did partly furnish us with, the abundant proofs that He must have been
   none other than God. We behold Him rising by His own might from the
   tomb. We see Him standing at the right hand of God, making intercession
   for us. We expect with joy His Second Coming. We look forward to the
   Day of Judgment, wherein He shall hold the great Assize of nations. And
   for these reasons, believing Him to be God, we ascribe greatness unto
   Jesus Christ, the Surety of the better Covenant. And as for the Holy
   Spirit, believing that the work of Conversion is as great as even that
   of Redemption, or creation, we believe Him to be the Everlasting God.
   We see Him so described in Scripture, that we dare not speak of Him as
   an influence, as a new emanationfrom the Deity; but we conceive Him to
   be a Person as very God of very God, as is the Father, so is the Son.
   We solemnly subscribe to the creed of St. Athanasius, that though there
   are not three Gods, but one God, yet there are three Persons in the
   glorious Trinity in unity of the everlasting Jehovah, unto whom belong
   the shouts of the universe, the songs of angels, and the ascription of
   our united praise. Our God, then, is to be understood as Father, Son,
   Holy Spirit! One God whom we adore--and the words of Moses apply to the
   God of Christians as well as to the God of Jews--"Ascribe you greatness
   to our God."

   I shall use the text, first, as a caution; secondly, as a command. I
   shall be but brief upon each particular, for my strength I feel may
   speedily fail me, but I trust in God to make some impressions on our
   hearts.

   I. First, then, I shall use it as A CAUTION.

   Inasmuch as Moses has said, "Ascribe you greatness to our God," we
   believe that he intended thereby to hint to us that we ought to ascribe
   greatness to none else. If greatness is to be ascribed to God, then
   none of God's creatures may in the least share the honor of that mighty
   attribute of greatness! Now as there are many who violate this Truth of
   God, and need this caution, they must allow me, if any of them are
   here, to caution them.

   First, then, the man who trusts his salvation in the least degree to
   priests or pope, or any dignitary of any church, violates this great
   command--"Ascribe you greatness to our God." If I bow my knee before a
   saint; if I worship a created being; if I seek the intercession of any
   save the one Person who is ordained to be the Mediator between God and
   man, the Man, Christ Jesus, I do in that degree derogate from the
   greatness of God! Some think not. They suppose that by using some
   influence with the Virgin Mary, or with the saints, these may also be
   induced to plead with God. No, they consider it to be honorable to
   employ some ambassador, seeing they conceive themselves to be unworthy
   to go to God with their own suit, and do not think Christ to be an
   all-sufficient Mediator to go for them! We reply that however humble
   they may think it on their part; however they may really and honestly
   suppose that they are magnifying God Himself; it be- comes them to know
   this--that they are not doing homage to His greatness in supposing that
   a saint is more merciful than God/In imagining that a saint shall have
   more influence with God than His own Son, I suppose that His heart is
   not tender enough to be open to my cry without the use of
   influence--which is to say the very least of it--throwing some slur on
   the Infinity of His mercy, and detracting in no small degree from the
   benignity of His Grace. God has one Mediator because man needed it! He
   has no more mediators because neither God nor man requires any! Christ
   is All-Sufficient. You do need a Mediator between yourselves and God,
   but you need none between yourselves and Christ. You may go to Christ
   just as you are, with all your filthiness, with all your sins, for He
   came to save you from what you now are, and to make you a people for
   Himself who should show forth His praise. Detract not, then, from the
   Glory of His Grace by bowing down before others, and asking them to
   intercede for you!

   I remember a singular anecdote which sets out very clearly the
   absurdity of the intercession of the saints. Some of you may have heard
   it before, but as many of you may not, I will tell it again. A good
   English farmer had a landlord who resided in Ireland. On a sudden the
   bailiff raised his rent so tremendously that the poor farmer could by
   no means pay his way, and was getting entirely ruined. He therefore
   applied to the bailiff to have the rent taken down to a fair average.
   After applying scores of times, he got no answer, and he was very near
   destruction. He applied to other persons whom he supposed to have
   influence with his landlord; but he made no way at all, and was as
   ill-treated as before. So doing what he had quite a right to do, he
   just went over to Ireland and called to see his lordship of whom he had
   taken the farm. He was shown in to him, and explained that he had taken
   the farm at a rent which he held to be fair to himself and to his
   landlord, and that then he had made a living, but that on a sudden the
   bailiff unaccountably raised the rent, so that he was nearly ruined.
   "My good friend," said the landlord, "why did you not come before? I
   don't wish that any man should be ruined through me. Let the rent be
   taken down to anything you think fair." "But," said the man, "I spoke
   to your bailiff; I did not dare to come to speak to a gentleman like
   you." "Oh," he said, "farmer, you are very welcome." But before the
   farmer left, he took him to see a chapel where there were all sorts of
   pictures. The farmer was rather startled, and asked to know what they
   meant. "Why," said the landlord, "these are the priests, and these are
   the saints. I put up my prayers to them, and then they intercede with
   Jesus Christ on my behalf." The farmer laughed. The landlord asked him
   why, and he said, "I was thinking it could be a pretty bit of business;
   it would be doing very much the same as I did. I went round to your
   bailiff, and to your friends, and I never got any redress till I came
   to yourself, Sir. So you may go round to all these very fine ladies and
   gentlemen you call saints, and I believe you will never get much from
   them, till you go to the Lord, Himself, and present your petition
   direct to Him. And if you do, I believe you will have a very good
   chance of success." This is a singular British-like mode of
   illustration, but it is sufficient, I think, to put aside the idea of
   going to saints in order to intercede with God! The fact of worshipping
   saints, of trusting my salvation in the hands of men, and thinking that
   any persons can forgive my sins, is to my soul, abhorrent beyond
   abhorrence, and hideous beyond horror! We should "ascribe greatness to
   our God"--to Him and Him alone!

   Very possibly, however, what I have said of that matter will be agreed
   to by all of you, and the arrow will fly into other breasts than yours.
   Allow me, therefore, to make the remark that in Protestant countries
   there is still a very strong tendency to priest-craft. Though we do not
   bow down and worship images, and do not professedly put our souls into
   the hands of priests, yet, I am sorry to say it, there is scarcely a
   congregation that is free from that error of ascribing greatness to
   their minister! If souls are converted, how very prone we are to think
   there is something marvelous in the man! And if saints are fed and
   satisfied with marrow and fatness, how prone we are to suppose that the
   preacherhas something about him by which these wondrous things are
   done! And if a revival takes place in any part of the vineyard, it
   matters not in what denomination, there is an aptness in the human mind
   to ascribe some part of the glory and the praise to the mere human
   agency! Oh, Beloved, I am sure every right-minded minister will scorn
   the thought! We are but your servants for Christ's sake; we speak to
   you, by God's Grace, what we believe to be God's Truth--but ascribe not
   to us any honor or any glory! If by anything a soul is saved, God from
   first to last has done it! If your souls are fed, thank the Master! Be
   respectful and grateful to the servant as you can be, but most of all
   thank Him who puts the Word into the mouths of His servants, and who
   applies it to your heart. "Oh, down with priest-craft!" Even I, myself,
   must down with it! Down with it!" If I, like Samson, fall beneath its
   roof, let me fall myself and be crushed, well content in having pulled
   down or contributed to remove one solitary brick in that colossal house
   of Satan! Take care, Friends, that you put no honor upon any man that
   you ought to have ascribed unto your God. "Ascribe you greatness to our
   God."

   There is, too, in our land of freedom, somewhat of a tendency to
   ascribe greatness to kings and mighty men. We are, most of us,
   professedly democrats. We generally talk democratically when we get
   together. But there is not an Englishman who is much of a democrat
   after all. When we get by a noble lord, how we do look up to him, as if
   he were some angel come down from on high! How we defer to the man who
   bears a title, and whatever he might state, we should have scarcely the
   honesty to tell him the truth, because he added, "Duke," or, "Lord," to
   his name! Why, my Friends, in this world we seldom judge men as to
   character; we judge them as to rank The poor and honest man goes
   through the streets--will you crowd to see him? A man wears a crown who
   is a perjurer--and will you not rush out and clap your hands at him?
   You judge according to rank, and not according to character! Would God
   we all knew how to judge men not according to the sight of our eyes, or
   the hearing of our ears, but according to the rightness of their
   characters! Oh, honor the Queen; God has said so in his Word. Pay
   deference unto authorities as you should do; but if in anything they
   swerve, remember your knee must bow to God, and to God alone. If in
   anything there is anything wrong, though it should have a sovereign's
   name attached to it, remember, only one is your Master, one is your
   King, "King of kings and Lord of lords." Ascribe not greatness unto
   emperors and monarchs--"Ascribe you greatness unto our God," and unto
   our God alone!

   In the case of those who are in the employ of masters, it is but just
   and right that they should render unto their masters that which is
   their due. But when the master commands that which is wrong, allow me
   solemnly to caution you against giving to him anything which you are
   not bound to do. Your master tells you, you must break the Sabbath. You
   do it because he is your master. You have violated this command, for it
   is said, "Ascribe you greatness unto God" You are tempted in your
   employment to commit a fault; you are commanded to do it. You are
   irresolute; you waver for a moment--you say, shall I obey God or man?
   At last, you say, "My master said so, I must obey him, or I shall lose
   my job." Remember you have not ascribed greatness unto God when you say
   that! Rather say this--"In all things that are right, I am the servant
   of all men; but in things that are wrong, I will not yield. I will
   stand up steadfast for God's right and for God's commands. Men may be
   my masters when they tell me to do the thing that is honest, and the
   thing that is just, but if in anything they swerve from that, I will
   not break my heavenly Master's command! He is more my Master than
   they--I will stand firm and fast by Him." How many young men are
   tempted from the path they ought to pursue by those who exercise
   influence upon them? How many a young woman has been turned aside from
   rectitude by some command which has been given her by a person who had
   influence over her? Take care that you allow no man to get dominion
   over your conscience! Remember, you will have no excuse at the Day of
   Judgment; it will be no palliation of your guilt to say that you were
   commanded by man to do wrong, for God will reply to you--"I told you to
   ascribe greatness to Me, and to Me only, and inasmuch as you obeyed man
   rather than God, you have violated My command." "Ascribe you greatness
   to our God." Take that caution--believe it--and receive it in your
   daily life, and in your dealing with great and small.

   This text has a bearing upon certain philosophic creeds which I will
   just hint at here. Some men, instead of ascribing greatness to God,
   ascribe greatness to the laws of Nature, and to certain powers and
   forces which they believe govern the universe. They look up on high;
   their eyes sees the marvelous orbs walking in their mystery along the
   sky; they take the telescope and peer into the distance, and they see
   yet more marvelous orbs, some of them of fire, and others of a
   structure they cannot understand. And they say, "What stupendous laws
   are those which govern the universe!" And you will see in their
   writings, that they ascribe everything to law, and nothing to God. Now,
   all this is wrong! Law without God is nothing! God puts force into law,
   and if God acts by laws in the government of the material universe, it
   is still the force of God which moves the worlds along, and keeps them
   in their places! Law without God is nullity. Reject every philosophy
   that does not ascribe greatness to God, for there is a worm at the root
   of it; there is some cancer at its heart, and it yet shall be
   destroyed! That and that alone shall stand which ascribes "greatness
   unto our God."

   II. So far by way of caution. Now by way of COMMAND. "Ascribe you
   greatness to our God."

   This command comes to the sinner when he first begins seriously to
   consider his position before God. My Friend, you have never thought of
   Heaven or of Hell until this moment, except it is a casual thought
   which is offensive to you. You are now in God's House, and perhaps you
   are inclined to think of your own position. You remember that you are
   standing upon a narrow neck of land between two unbounded seas--

   "A point of time, a moment's space
   May land you in yon heavenly place. Or shut you up in Hell."

   I hope you are asking yourself, "How can I be saved?" I beseech you in
   the very outset of that question take this for your guide--"Ascribe
   greatness to our God." By this I mean when you look at your sins,
   ascribe greatness to God's Justice. Do not do as some who say, "It is
   true, I have rebelled against God, but then very likely He will not
   punish me." Be not as some who suppose that God's Justice is such a
   thing of willow, that it can easily bend to justify without
   satisfaction, and pardon without Atonement. Remember this as undoubted
   Truth of God, that our God is very great in justice. Solemnly I assure
   you from God's holy Word that He is Just, that He will by no means
   clear the guilty unless they are cleared by Jesus Christ. If you have
   sinned but one sin, God will punish you for it! If you have sinned but
   one hour, that one hour will damn your soul despite all your repentance
   and all your good works--unless the blood of Jesus Christ shall take
   the sins away! Remember, God cannot pass by sin without expressing His
   displeasure, and either on your shoulders, or else on those of Christ,
   the lash must fall--for fall somewhere it must! God must punish every
   sin; He must punish every crime; and unless you have confidence that
   Christ suffered for you--remember He is very great--the whole of His
   wrath, every drop of the shower of His anger must fall on your poor
   helpless head, and every word of His awful curse must sink deep into
   your inmost heart! He is a very great God! He is not like the little
   kings of earth who sometimes pass by sin without punishment; but He is
   severely Just, and strict towards all offenders. He says, "I wilpunish
   you for your sin." "The soul that sins, it shall die." Start with that,
   then, when you begin to think of being saved.

   Next to this, addressing the sinner who is already convicted of this
   sad and solemn thought, let me say, "Ascribe greatness unto our
   God"--that is, to His Mercy. My Friend, you are sensible that you are
   guilty; conscience has had its work with your soul; you are certain
   that if God is Just, He must punish you. You are well aware He cannot
   pass by your iniquities without exhibiting His wrath concerning them.
   Maybe under a sense of guilt you will cry, "My sins are too great to be
   pardoned." Stop! Stop! Put Jesus Christ's blood upon them, and my life
   for yours, my soul for yours, they are not too great! Instead of
   ascribing greatness to your sin, ascribe greatness to our God!
   Remember, if in coming to God as a penitent, you think that His Mercy
   is little, you dishonor Him; if you suppose that the blood of Christ is
   not capable of washing out your blackest crime, you dishonor the
   glorious Atonement of Christ! Whenever you doubt, you defraud God of
   His honor, for remember He has said it, "Him that comes unto Me, I will
   in no wise cast out." Come, poor Sinner, and ascribe greatness to God's
   Mercy! Believe that His arms are wide--believe that His love is deep;
   believe that His grace is broad--believe that He is All-Powerful to
   take away your vilest sin, and wash you of your crimson guilt. "Ascribe
   greatness to our God." Be convinced of His great Mercy, you seeking
   souls who want Christ, and know not where to find

   Him.

   Further let me appeal to the Christian. "Ascribe greatness to our God."
   You are in trouble, dear fellow-laborers; you are wearied with the
   hardness of your journey; your poverty has got hold of you; your
   troubles are multiplied and increased. It is a dark night with you just
   now; you see not your sins; you have no sweet promise to light upon--no
   cheering Word to reassure your poor desponding heart. Come, here is a
   text for you--"Ascribe you greatness to our God." Great as your
   troubles are, remember He is greater! If the darkness is very thick,
   remember the mountain stands as firm at night as in the day! And when
   clouds girdle His Throne, yet they never shake its basement--

   "Firm as the earth His promise stands,
   And He can well secure
   What you commit into His hands,
   Till the decisive hour."

   Never think your trials are too huge for Him. Take them to Him; cast
   them on the Lord; trust Him with them all; His everlasting shoulders,
   that, like Atlas, bear the world, did never totter yet, nor shall they!
   Cast the whole roll of your troubles at His door--He will relieve you!
   Take the whole bundle of your sorrows, cast them at His feet--He can
   take them all away! And when the devil tempts you to believe that God
   cannot help you, tell him that you think better of Him than that; you
   ascribe greatness to the Almighty, and you believe He is great enough
   to deliver you from all your sorrows. Perhaps just now you are engaged
   in prayer; you have been for weeks and months agonizing at the Throne;
   you have had but little success there. Well, as you go to the Mercy
   Seat, take this with you "Ascribe you greatness to our God." We often
   get but little from God because we think Him a little God; we ask very
   little of God at times, and there- fore we get little. He who in prayer
   believes God to be great, and asks of God as if He were great, shall be
   certain to get many mercies from Him! Little-Faith gets little answers,
   but Great-Faith believes God's greatness and says--

   "I am coming to a King,
   Large petitions I will bring!
   For His Grace and power are such,
   None can ever ask too much!' Thus in prayerascribe greatness unto God!
   Do you ask a hundred? Ask a thousand! Have you asked a thousand? Ask
   ten thousand! Oh, I beseech you never stint for faith, nor stint for
   desire. God has said, "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it."
   Remember the king of Israel. The Prophet came to him and gave him the
   bow and arrows. He said, "Shoot with the bow and arrows." And he shot
   once or twice, and then he stayed his hand. And the Prophet said, "You
   should have shot again and again, and then you would have smitten all
   the Assyrians until you had destroyed them." Even so does God! When He
   gives us faith, He puts the bow and arrows into our hands. Oh, do not
   smite once or twice! Smite many times, and you shall smite your sins
   until you have destroyed them! Draw the long bow of prayer--shoot your
   arrow as far as ever you can; ask for nothing small--in small
   petitions, you suppose Him to be a small Giver. Ask greatly, and He
   will give greatly! "Ascribe you greatness to our God." But I hope you
   are today engaged in duty. You have the duty thrust upon you by
   Providence which you do not flee from. Like Jonah you are half a mind
   to go to Tarshish instead of going to Nineveh, for you are afraid your
   strength will never bear you up in so huge a labor as that which has
   fallen to your share. Stop! Pay not your fare to Tarshish, else winds
   shall pursue you. Believe this--
   "Weak as you are,
   Yet through His might,
   All things you can perform!"

   And believing, go forward; go forward and stop at nothing! If God
   should call me to break the Alps in sunder, let it please Him to give
   me faith. I believe He would give me strength to do it. If God were to
   call you, as He did Joshua, to stop the sun in its course, and seize
   his golden bridle, and bid his coursers stay their hasty race, you
   would have strength enough to do it! "Ascribe you greatness to our
   God." If like Luther, you had to brave the Vatican, and breast the
   storm, if God intended you for the work, He would give you Grace to
   stand in it! And if your trial should be one of persecution, if you are
   called to the stake, you need not fear to march boldly to it, and
   embrace it--for He who called you to die, will give you dyingGrace,
   will give you burningGrace--so that you shall endure in the midst of
   hideous torments, and terrific pains! "Ascribe you greatness to our
   God." Yes, greatness made more great in the midst of creature weakness

   And now, to close, there is one point I wish to urge upon your
   attention tonight. Wherever I go, it is the almost universal complaint
   that the former times were better than now. Everywhere it is the solemn
   conviction of Christians that the Church is in a very wrong position;
   go where you please, you will hear one confession, one doleful,
   lamentable groan, that the Church is cold and lifeless! Not dead, but
   Laodicean--and I believe that Laodicea is the most correct picture of
   the Church at the present moment. We are neither hot nor cold, and
   Christ is angry with us. Where is the zeal--the zeal of Whitefield? Ah,
   where are the men who weep for perishing sinners? Where are the
   ministers who weep for souls as if they were full of life or death?
   Where are the Baxters, now, whose knees shake when they climb their
   pulpit stairs because they feel how solemn is their position, and whose
   cheeks are glittered with tears because they know the doom of perishing
   sinners, and long to snatch them from the fire? Where are your Rowland
   Hills, now, who descend to common language to reach the common people?
   Yes, and where are your praying men, and praying women? There are many
   of them--but where are those who pray with all their hearts as if they
   meant it? Ah, Heaven knows, the Church is just now where it ought not
   to be! But, oh, Christians, sit not down in despair! Think not that God
   has given us over. "Ascribe you greatness to our God." In the very
   worst of times, God can bring us out again! In the times of Arius, when
   the world was gone aside to disbelieve the Divinity of Christ, God
   provided an Athanasius who in bold, stern language put to flight the
   Ari-ans and stood up for God! When the world had gone aside to
   Pelagianism, He found an Augustine who uttered the words of Grace, and
   delivered the world from that mesh of errors. When the Church had gone
   into foul delusions, there was the monk found who shook the world--the
   Luther to proclaim the Truth of God! And when the Doctrines needed
   purity, there was the Calvin to cast salt into the troubled craters,
   and make them calm and limpid, so that man could see to the very
   bottom!

   And when in later times, the Church ofEngland, and the Church in
   England had sunken very low, all men said God had given up His Church;
   there were found six young men in the college of Oxford. God only knows
   how they got there, and how they were converted. Those six--Wesley and
   Whitefield being of the number--awakened the world again from its dark
   and long slumber! And when we had relapsed again, God found the
   successors of Whitefield--the Romains, the Topladys, the John Newtons,
   the Rowland Hills--men like Christmas Evans, like John Berridge! These
   came to bear the standard of the Lord, and to support His Truth. And
   mark you, now, God has got the man somewhere! Yes, the MEN somewhere,
   and they will yet come out. There will be a shaking one of these days;
   the men shall yet come to move the Church once more; we shall not
   forever sleep; we shall not forever lie still; there will be a revival
   throughout this land, I do believe, such as our fathers never saw! The
   times shall come when the heavens shall give ear and shall hear the
   call, and shall send down rain, when the earth shall blossom with
   righteousness, and the heavens shall drop with dew. For that time we
   all heartily pray, for the time we earnestly wait. "Ascribe you
   greatness to our God."

   To my own Church and people, only one word and then farewell. My
   Friends, we also are about to engage in an enterprise for which I fear
   we are not quite competent. But remember God will provide for us. Often
   on my bed do I toss restlessly by night to know what is to become of
   all these people. Where is my Church to be housed, and where my
   congregation to be gathered? And but last night in unbelief I thought
   it never could be that such a place could be built. But ah, always
   "ascribe you greatness to God." Let us attempt great things, and we
   shall do great things. Let us try at them and, God being with us, we
   shall do them yet! If I had cared to preach in fine and gaudy language,
   I might, perhaps, have done it; but I have cared only to speak just as
   common people do. I often tell tales that shock propriety--I shall do
   it again! I often do things that others condemn me for--I shall do
   still worse, God helping me! If I can but win souls by them, I am not
   to be daunted by any opinion whatever; if heirs of Heaven are snatched
   from Hell, I shall rejoice to have done it by any means in the world!
   Well, then, if I am ever to have the poor around me, then will I trust
   in God, in His poor, and in His Church, that they will yet raise a
   tabernacle where His name is to be honored! Lay it to your hearts and
   if you think it is God's work, go about it with faith and with vigor.
   "Ascribe you greatness to our God."

   Oh, you who hate my God; you who despise Him, the day is
   coming--perhaps tomorrow shall be the day when you shall "ascribe
   greatness to my God;" for you shall feel His great foot upon your
   loins, and His great sword shall cut you in two; His great wrath shall
   utterly devour you, and His great Hell shall be your doleful home
   forever!

   May God grant it may not be so, and may He save us all, for Jesus'
   sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                   The March!

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 31, 1861, BY THE REV. C. H.
   SPURGEON, AT EXETER HALL, STRAND.

   "And it came to pass, when the ark set out, that Moses said, Rise up, O
   Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee
   before You." Numbers 10:35.

   THE people of God in the wilderness were led instrumentally by the
   wisdom of Moses and his father-in-law Hobab; but really their guiding
   star was the visible Presence of God in the pillar of cloud by day, and
   pillar of fire by night. I suppose that the possession of this pillar
   as a guide did not remove from them the duty and the necessity of using
   the judgment of Moses and Hobab as to the place where they should
   encamp. You will remember that Moses expressly said to his relative,
   "You know how to encamp in the wilderness, and you shall be unto us
   instead of eyes." They had the guidance of God, yet they were not to
   neglect the wisdom which God had given to His servants, and the
   judgment with which He had endowed them. We ought to learn from this, I
   think, that while we ever seek the guidance of God in Providence, yet
   we may frequently find direction and guidance in the use of our own
   common sense, our own discretion with which the Lord has endowed us. As
   long as the pillar of cloud tarried, the people always waited. However
   inconvenient the spot might be, if it rested one day, or 20 days, or a
   month, or a whole year, they stood still. But the moment that the cloud
   moved, whether the fiery column marched through the darkness of the
   night, or the cloudy pillar mellowed the brightness of the sun and
   screened them from its torrid heat, they removed at once. However
   excellent might be their quarters, they never dared to delay when once
   the Presence of God moved from above them. It was His to lead--it was
   theirs to follow. Yet, before they began the march, before the standard
   of Judah was uplifted, and that tribe began to take up its tents to
   lead the van, the silver trumpet was always blown in the front. It was
   heard through the entire encampment-- the silver trumpet, which seemed
   to say, "Arise! Depart!--This is not your rest. Your God has removed,
   and you must follow." Then Moses himself came forward, and stretching
   out his hands, he cried, "Arise, O Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered,
   and let those who hate You flee before You." When this was done, on
   marched the mighty host, and when they came to their halting place,
   again, and the trumpet sounded for the rest of eventide, up came the
   king in Jeshurun, the Prophet of Horeb, and lifting up his hands, again
   he cried, "Return unto Your rest and unto the many thousands of
   Israel," and the pillar rested over the top of the great encampment,
   and gave them a bright and flaming light by night, even as it gave them
   a glorious covering and protection by day.

   To what use are we to put this prayer of Moses; for no passage of
   Scripture is of private interpretation. No single text in the Word
   relates simply to the occasion on which it is spoken; but whatever
   things were written aforetime were written for our learning. The Word
   of God is a living Word--not a Word that had life in it in the day of
   Moses, and is now dead--but a Word which is as living to us at this
   hour as when it first came from the Prophetic lips of the great
   Lawgiver! I think I shall be warranted in using the text, "Rise up, O
   Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee
   before You" in three ways this morning. We shall use it, first, as the
   watchword of God's Israel in every age. Secondly, we are warranted by
   the 68th Psalm in referring this text, typically and mystically, to the
   Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I think, also, the guidance
   of God's Spirit will warrant us, in the third place, in using this text
   personally, for ourselves as individuals, and as a Church; and we would
   offer this prayer now that the Ark of God in our midst is about to be
   removed, "Rise up, O Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered, and let those
   who hate You flee before You."

   I. First, then, THIS HAS BEEN THE WATCHWORD OF THE CHURCH OF GOD IN ALL
   AGES. The people of God in the wilderness were the picture of God's
   Church upon earth. We are strangers and foreigners upon the earth; we
   are pilgrims and sojourners as all our fathers were. I was struck last
   evening, on reading for my own instruction the 33rd Chapter of the Book
   of Numbers, with the constant occurrence of verses concerning the
   removal of the people. "And they removed from Ethan, and turned again
   unto Pihahiroth." "And they journeyed in the wilderness of Ethan, and
   pitched in Marah. And they removed from Marah and came unto Elim." They
   went from the place of bitterness to the place of feasting. "And in
   Elim were twelve fountains of water, and threescore and ten palm trees;
   and they pitched there. And they removed from Elim, and encamped by the
   Red Sea. And they removed from the Red Sea, and encamped in the
   wilderness of Sin. And they took their journey out of the wilderness of
   Sin, and encamped in Dophkah. And they departed from Dophkah and
   encamped in Alush. And they removed from Alush, and encamped at
   Rephidim." And so the whole Chapter is a succession of removing and
   encamping, till at last they ceased to dwell in tents, and came to live
   in their own walled cities in the land of Canaan! Just such has been
   the history of the Church--it has always been removing from its place,
   and such has been the condition of each individual. Here we have no
   abiding city. "We seek a city which has foundations whose Builder and
   Maker is God." Here we have but an earthly house of our tabernacle
   which is soon to be dissolved, and we are continually men of the weary
   foot who rest not but journey onward to the place of rest.

   Albeit that they had no habitation except their tents, yet it is true
   of Israel in the wilderness, that they always had an habitation. Do you
   not remember the song of Moses--"Lord, You have been our dwelling place
   in all generations." Wherever they were, God was their dwelling place!
   As I have said before, by day they were covered with His cloud, and
   they dwelt under the vast canopy like princes in a pavilion. By night
   they were covered with its fiery luster, and they rested under it with
   a light that never made glad the earth by night save only to their
   eyes. God's wings were always over them! He carried them all the days
   of old, and they did really rest and dwell in Him. Today, in our
   Father's house, there are many mansions, and it was true of them
   yesterday that in their Father's house were many tents; in those tents
   they dwelt; but all of them dwelt in their Father's house. This, too,
   is true of the entire Church--always wandering, yet never far from
   home--unhoused, yet always in palaces--sometimes destitute, afflicted,
   tormented, and yet always clothed, always rich, always feasting to the
   full; deserted, yet not alone; forsaken, yet multiplied; left, yet
   still abiding with Him who fills all in all!

   We might carry the parallel out still further, but it is enough for us
   to remark this morning that in another point, the people of God in the
   wilderness were the picture of the Church of Christ. Wherever they
   marched, when God went before them, they marched to victory! Lo, the
   Red Sea rolls in their way; the pillar of cloud moves; they follow; the
   frightened sea divides, and the Red Sea, itself, is astonished! What
   ails you, O Sea, that you were driven back, and your waters stood
   upright as a heap? It was before the Lord, before the Presence of the
   mighty God of Jacob! They march onward; the Amalekites attack
   them--they fall upon the Israelites all of a sudden when they are
   unaware--but God fights for them, Moses' hands are upheld until the
   going down of the sun, and Joshua smites the Amalekites and Jehovah
   Nissi is all glorious! Then Sihon, king of the Amorites, came out
   against them, and Og, king of Bashan, and the Moabites attack them, but
   the Lord is in the front of them, and they suffer no harm. Their
   enemies melt before them as the fat of rams; into smoke they are
   consumed, yes into smoke they disappear. Even so has it been with the
   Church of God in all ages! Her march has been that of one who is fair
   as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.
   Let but her silvery trumpet sound, and the echo shakes the vaults of
   Hell; let but her warriors unsheathe their swords, and their enemies
   fly before them like thin clouds before a Biscay gale! Her path is the
   pathway of a conqueror--her march has been a procession of triumph.
   Wherever she has put her foot, the Lord has given her that land to be
   her heritage forever and ever, and as it was in the beginning, it is
   now and ever shall be till this world shall end. Amen.

   Now, having just touched upon the parallel, let me show how this war
   cry has really been heard of God, and has been fulfilled to all His
   people. Turn to this Book, this Book of the wars of the Lord. Wherever
   His Church has gone, and He has risen up, have not His enemies been
   scattered? Though they were the hundred Kings of Canaan, were they not
   hanged upon trees, or speedily put to death with the edge of the sword?
   Though it were Agag, king of the Amalekites, was he not hewn in pieces?
   Though it should be the mighty princes of the Philistines--did not
   their champions lose their heads, and their princes fly apace? Though
   it should be the embattled ranks of Syria--did not God smite them in
   the valleys, and chase them on the hills? Though it were
   Sennacherib--did not God rise up, and did not His enemies at once die
   before His Presence? Did they not fall like the leaves of the forest
   "when autumn has blown"? Though it were the hosts of Egypt in later
   times, or the mighty ranks of Babylon, or Media, or Persia--can we not
   say concerning them all--"Your right hand, O Lord, Your right hand, O
   Lord, has dashed in pieces the enemy. Your right hand, O Lord, has done
   wonderful things, this is known of all the earth"? But when we have
   read the Bible story through, the Book of God's triumph has only begun!
   Look to the later battles of the Church. You remember the story of
   Oliver Cromwell and his men at the battle of Dunbar--when before the
   battle they, all of them, knelt on the heather and asked the Lord their
   God to be with them, and then springing up they chanted this old
   Psalm--

   "Let God arise, and scattered let all His enemies be,
   And let all those who hate Him, before His Presence flee.
   As the smoke is driven, so drive You them. As fire melts wax away,
   Before God's face let wicked men, so perish and decay." And then, home
   went their swords, and their enemies fled down the hill, and a speedy
   victory was given.
   I quote not this except as a picture and illustration of the history of
   the entire Church. I think, in a spiritual sense, when Luther first
   bowed his knee, the Church began to chant, "Rise up, O Lord! Let Your
   enemies be scattered." When Knox in Scotland upheld the Glory of Jesus'
   name, was it not, once again, "O God arise! Let those who hate You,
   flee before You"? When Whitefield and Wesley, seraphic Evangelists of
   Jesus Christ, went through this land, was not this the very song of
   Israel, "Rise up, O Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered"? And shall it
   not be ours today? Let God but go forth with our arms; let Him but
   speak through our ministers; let Him but dwell in our elders; let Him
   but make the bodies of our Church members His temples, and His enemies
   will be scattered, and they will consume away! I can well conceive, my
   Brothers and Sisters, that such a prayer as this would well befit the
   tongue of a minister who lands as the first herald of the Cross in some
   barbarian land! My Brother, a solitary missionary in some populous city
   in China, might bow his knee, when first he attempts to preach, and
   say, "Rise up, O Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who
   hate You flee before You." A Williams landing upon Erromanga might say,
   even though his blood stained the wave, "Rise up, O Lord, and let Your
   enemies be scattered." Livingstone and Moffat, toiling in the midst of
   the thick dense ignorance of central Africa, might frequently say from
   their innermost souls, "Rise up, O Lord, and let Your enemies be
   scattered." Those brave men who risk all for Christ, not counting their
   lives dear unto them, that they might finish their course with joy--I
   think when they, as pioneers for Christ, bear the Ark in the midst of
   the wilderness, they could not breath a better prayer for themselves,
   and you and I cannot do better than put it up for them now, "Rise up, O
   Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee
   before You."

   Brothers and Sisters, this ought to be our prayer today, in
   anticipation of the Millennial splendor. When it is to come, I do not
   know. Dr. Cumming may; but I am not as wise as he. This I know,
   Scripture says He is to come, but I thinkit says, "He shall come in
   such an hour as you think not"--He comes as a thief in the night.
   Whether He shall come in the year 1866, I do not know. I hope He may,
   but I had rather that He should come in the year 1861. I should not
   like to postpone my watchfulness till 1866, but be always looking for
   Him. Whether He shall come in the morning or at cockcrow, in mid-day or
   midnight, blessed is that servant who when his Lord comes shall be
   found watching! Cast your eyes mentally over the world, and look at
   what a state it is in today. What wonderful changes have taken place,
   and yet how firm are the roots of evil! How tightly bound around the
   very granite of earth's nature are the roots of the great upas tree of
   iniquity! Who can hope to tear it up by the roots, or cut down this
   towering cedar? See in one land where liberty was blustered, the lash
   still dripping with gouts of gore; see in another land where there is
   much advancement in many things, the people priest-ridden, and borne
   down beneath the yoke! Look at the myriads who have never seen the
   great Light of God--who sit in darkness, and in the Valley of the
   Shadow of Death. Where is the arm, where is the arm that can put back
   the world upon its proper pivot? Where is the almighty power that can
   turn once again the pole so that earth shall stand no more oblique, but
   in uprightness roll before the Throne of God? Where is the arm that can
   roll up the clouds as a mantle, and the mists as rags? There is but
   one! And our business is to cry today, "Rise up, O Lord! Let Your
   enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee before You." Come
   quickly, come quickly--come, Lord Jesus! Then shall the world be rid of
   her tyrants; then shall slavery cease to be; then shall Your
   unsuffering Kingdom come! Then the Great Shepherd shall reign, and
   everywhere shall He be extolled--"to Him shall be given of the gold of
   Sheba; prayer also shall be made for Him continually, and daily shall
   He be praised."

   Before I pass from this head, quietly, for the edification of each
   individual Christian, let me remark that this prayer will suit your
   personal difficulties. Have you been in conflict lately? Has old
   Apollyon put you to your wits end? Has he thrown his fiery darts at you
   thick as hailstones when they fell on Egypt? Have you been crushed
   beneath his foot? Can you not deliver yourself? Pray, "Rise up, O Lord,
   and let Your enemies be scattered." Do your doubts prevail? Has your
   faith suffered an eclipse? Has a darkness that might be felt brooded
   over you? Say, "Rise up, O Lord." All that is needed in the darkest
   night to clear it away is for the sun to rise. Battle not with your
   doubts yourself; wrestle not with your own fears. Pray, "Rise up, O
   Lord; these doubts of mine are enemies to Your honor--enemies to Your
   promise-- enemies to Your Truth! Rise up, O Lord, and let them flee
   before You." You shall soon find peace and quietness, and in assurance
   and confidence, your souls shall rest. Are you beset today by men who
   hate you? As a child of God have you acted with such simplicity and
   integrity that men, not understanding you, have imputed to you wrong
   motives? Have you been slandered and abused? "Avenge not yourself, but
   rather give place unto wrath. Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the
   Lord." Let your prayer be, "Rise up, O Lord, and let Your enemies be
   scattered." Are you serving God in some particular work where many are
   seeking to undo all that you can accomplish? Are you a City Missionary,
   and do you labor in the midst of a den of iniquity? Does it seem that
   what you do in one day is undone in one hour by others? Take it to the
   Throne of Grace! Say, "Rise up, O Lord, and let Your enemies be
   scattered." Have you a great purpose conceived within your soul and
   does Providence seem to stand in the way of its accomplishment? Has the
   Lord commanded you to some special work, and do friends discourage, and
   enemies abuse? This prayer may suit you--"Rise up, O Lord!" It needs
   but that God should make bare His arm--His rising up is enough! As
   Luther said when opposing the Church of Rome--"They are not strong; God
   can overthrow them with His little finger." And so say you! All the
   foes of the Church with all their battlements behind which they are
   entrenched, are nothing. They but seem to be. They are shadows,
   emptiness, nothing! Do you in confidence cry to your God--"Lord, do but
   rise; do but stand up; do but manifest Your power in any way whatever,
   and Your enemies are scattered at once, and those who hate You must
   flee before You forev-ermore"--

   "When He makes bare His arm, what shall withstand His work? When He,
   His people's cause defends, who, who shall stay His hand? Let us, in
   life and death, boldly Your Truth declare And publish, with our last
   breath, Your love and guardian care."

   II. We shall now take the text IN ITS REFERENCE--TO CHRIST. Scripture
   is the best defender of Scripture. The diamond is not to be cut except
   with a diamond. We shall not understand one passage in the Word without
   another to explain it. That Book has keys in its own self for all its
   own locks. The 68th Psalm informs us that the moving of the Ark from
   the lower place of the City of David was typical of the ascending of
   Christ into Heaven. Ah, I think, my dear Brothers and Sisters, the
   sorrowing Church, when they beheld their Lord dragged by cruel men to
   judgment, when they heard Him accused and slandered, when they saw Him
   mocked and spit upon, must have considered the battle to be a defeat.
   The tears must have stood in their eyes when they saw that He who was
   to be the Deliverer of Israel could not deliver Himself! How dense must
   have been the gloom over the fearing hearts of the Church when they saw
   their King, their Head, dragged away and nailed ignominiously to the
   Cross! And how dead must all their hopes have been when at last He
   bowed His head and gave up the ghost, and the sword pierced Him to the
   heart, and out there came the blood and water! Was it not the day of
   Hell's triumph, the hour of earth's despair, the moment of Heaven's
   defeat? No. It was the reverse of all this! That moment when Christ
   died, He gave the deathblow to all His enemies! That hour when they
   thought they were treading on Him, He was crushing them and bruising
   the serpent's head! Even when the Master was laid in the tomb, and had
   to sleep there His three days, as Jonah in the whale's belly--if the
   Church had had faith, they might have come early on the dawn of the
   first day of the week, and standing outside the tomb, they might have
   begun to sing, "Rise up, O Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered, and let
   those who hate You flee before You."

   I think it will be no fantastic imagination if we conceive that the
   angels did in that hallowed day come down from Heaven before the sun
   had risen, knowing the appointed time, and while one of them rolled
   away the stone, the rest stood waiting on the wing and chanted, "Rise
   up, O Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You
   flee before You." I think I see the Champion awake! He unbinds the
   napkin from His head, He sees again the light--He rolls off the
   cerements of the tomb, rolls them up and places them by themselves. He
   has risen! The stone has been rolled away. He comes forth into mid air.
   O Hell, how did you shake! O Death, how were you plagued! O Earth, your
   Sun had indeed risen that day! Heaven, surely you did rejoice, and the
   song rolled mightily along your streets! He rises and in that mo- ment
   sin dies! The resurrection of Christ was God's acceptance of Christ's
   Sacrifices. It was all that was needed. The handwriting of ordinances
   had once been nailed to the Cross--they are now forever blotted out!
   Once had He borne the burden, but now the burden is removed from His
   neck. God accepts Christ as being justified, and therefore He rises
   from the dead, and by that act all His people are justified! "He rose
   again for our justification." The last hope of sin was crushed--its
   last pretense to any claim upon the people of God was hushed
   forever--its last arrogant claim to any right to their souls, or to
   their bodies, was quashed in Heaven's High Court when Christ, the
   Risen, came forth in pure white robes to demand the spotlessness of His
   people in Him because of His Resurrection f?rthem!

   Nor was sin alone that day scattered. Did not all the hosts of Hell
   fall before Him? How glad they had been! All the demons had exalted
   themselves with the hope that their reign would now begin; loosed would
   be the iron chain; broken would be the bolts at the Pit's mouth! Now
   might they come forth and revel, for the King who was to destroy them
   had been destroyed Himself! But when He rose, blank despair sat on the
   face of every fiend. How could they hope to kill His people? "Because
   He lives, they shall live also." How could they hope to condemn His
   people? "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is
   Christ who died, yes rather, that is risen again." Their hopes were
   gone! They were scattered, indeed! As the wax melts before the fire, so
   did their hopes melt away. Where was that day the boast of death? Had
   Christ remained in the jaws of death--had the Holy One seen
   corruption?--then had the redeemed remained the bond slaves of death,
   too. But He lives! He has broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars
   of iron in sunder. Blessed are they who sleep, for they shall rise,
   too; He has led the way; the Breaker has gone up before them; the King
   at the head of them. He has cleared the gap! They have but to follow
   and enter into the Resurrection and the Life. That day I think all the
   gods of the heathen fell down! It is a tradition that at that hour when
   the veil of the Temple was torn in two, all the gods tottered on their
   thrones--they did so spiritually--if they did not literally. That day
   slavery began to relax its grasp of its whip; that day the tyrant's
   throne began to shake; that day Heaven shone with greater splendor, and
   Hell was more murky and dull than it had been before; that day Evil
   heard its own death knell sound in the air, while Good heard the
   marriage-peal of rejoicing saints, while angels shouted over a rising
   Savior!

   Nor was that all. After Christ had thus risen, you will remember that
   He rose again. He rose from the grave to earth--He next rose from earth
   to Heaven. I think we may again conjecture that the angelic spirits
   came to meet the Master, and they said, "Rise up, O Lord! Let Your
   enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee before You." Up
   He went, dragging sin, death and Hell at His chariot wheels,
   scattering, as He rode along, those gifts which He had received for
   men. He went up with sound of trumpet, and with shouts of archangels!
   They near the gates--they sing, "Lift up your heads, O you gates, and
   be you lift up, you everlasting door, that the King of Glory may come
   in." The angelic spirits on the other side chant, "Who is the King of
   Glory?" And once again, in waves of melody, they dash open the pearly
   gate singing again, "Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be you lift
   up, you everlasting doors, that the King of Glory may come in." On, on
   He rides; having scattered forever all His enemies--having put all
   things under His feet, and being crowned King of kings and Lord of
   lords; The Wonderful; The Counselor; The Mighty God; The Everlasting
   Father; The Prince of Peace! Glory be unto Your name, Jesus; my soul
   warms with Your fire! Glory be unto You! These hands would put the
   crown upon Your head--this voice would sing instead of preach Your
   praise! Blessed be You, God over all, blessed forever! You have
   ascended up on high; You have led captivity captive; You have received
   gifts for men. Rise up, Lord--rise up from the Throne of Your majesty!
   Come and take the purchased possession! Come to claim Your own, and
   these hands shall welcome You with joyful applause, and this tongue
   shall welcome You with joyous songs. Yes, even these very feet shall
   dance like David before the Ark, if You will but arise, for Your
   enemies shall be scattered and they who hate You shall flee before You!

   III. But thirdly, WHAT MESSAGE HAS THIS TEXT FOR US, AND HOW MAY WE USE
   IT?

   In the Providence of God we, as a Church and people, have often had to
   wander. This is our third sojourn within these walls. It is now about
   to close. We have had at all times and seasons a compulsion for moving;
   sometimes a compulsion of conscience; at other times a compulsion of
   pleasure as on this occasion. I am sure that when we first went to the
   Surrey Music Hall, God went with us. Satan went too. That frightful
   calamity, the impression of which can never be erased from my mind,
   turned out, in the Providence of God, to be one of the most wonderful
   means of turning public attention to special services. And I do not
   doubt that it--fearful catastrophe though it was--has been the mother
   of multitudes of blessings! The Christian world noted the example; they
   saw its success; they followed it and to this day, in the theater and
   in the cathedral, the Word of God is preached where it was never
   preached before! Never could it be more manifestly seen than in that
   place, that the Word of God, when preached simply and earnestly, is the
   power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes! In each of our
   relocations, we have had reason to see the hand of God, and here
   particularly, for there are very many residents in the West end who
   have in this place come to listen to the Word, who probably might not
   have taken a journey beyond the river; and here God's Grace has broken
   the hard heart; here have souls been renewed, and wanderers been
   reclaimed! Give unto the Lord, O you mighty; give unto the Lord glory
   and strength; give unto the Lord the glory that is due unto His name!
   And now we journey to the house which God has in so special a manner
   given to us! I stand before you now as Moses stood before the people of
   Israel, and with faith like his, though not with such power and might
   as belonged to that honored servant of God, I would pray, "Rise up, O
   Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee
   before You."

   "But what enemies do we have?" you ask. We have multitudes. We shall
   have to do battle in our new Tabernacle more nearly with that old enemy
   of the Church, the Scarlet Beast--Rome has built one of its batteries
   hard by our place, and there is one who styles himself, "Archbishop of
   Southwark." Well, we shall have to do battle against him, and woe to
   you, Babylon! Woe to you, Babylon! Let but Christ be preached, and
   where is Anti-Christ? Let the Cross be lifted up, and away with your
   crucifixes! Let the Truth of God be declared, and where are your lies?
   This one Book, as the old Reformers used to say--this Book against all
   the popes and cardinals and priests and all the devils in Hell! You
   have seen the picture, I dare say, of a pair of scales, in one of which
   there is a Bible, very heavy, touching the very ground; and in the
   other, there is a pope with his tiara on, and a cardinal with his
   scarlet cap, and a whole host of priests and Virgin Marys and idols all
   piled up! There is another learned doctor just hooking on to the
   chains, and trying to pull down, if he can--but all their combined
   weight cannot reach anything like the weight of this one blessed Book!
   Why, a farthing candle of Divine Truth can set on fire a whole prairie
   of popish error! It needs no great power in the preacher--he needs but
   to preach Christ's Truth as he finds it in the Word of God, and he
   shall find it to be a blast from the nostrils of God to wither up the
   beauty of this towering cedar! What matters it to me whether it is a
   cedar or a fir? In the name of God, I feel my axe this morning! It is
   sharp and keen, and shall be laid to the roots of this tree, and if we
   cannot avail, yet other hands and other arms should wield that same axe
   so sharp and keen, and you, towering cedar, whose top is in the stars,
   but whose roots are in Hell--you shall yet come down and the nations of
   the earth shall rejoice because of your fall!

   Then we shall have another enemy. We have hard by us, almost as a
   next-door neighbor, Infidelity. There has been one of its special
   places for display. Well, well, Infidelity is but a very puny adversary
   comparatively; it is not half so cunning as Popery, and has nothing
   like its might. There is something in Romanism that can seize the human
   mind, but Infidelity is bare, bald, naked, filthy. There are very few
   who will be overturned by that in an age when men are compelled to come
   more and more closely to God in the discoveries of Nature and the
   wondrous findings out of science. We are not afraid of you, O
   Infidelity! Come forth Goliath--it is but David who meets you--the
   ministers of Christ are but little compared with your stalking
   greatness and gigantic might; but the sling and stone of Christ,
   preached simply and preached affectionately, shall reach the forehead
   of your wisdom, and find you out and bring you down!

   But we have worse enemies than this! We shall have to deal with the
   indifference of the masses round about us, and with their carelessness
   concerning Gospel Truth; we shall have to deal with prevailing sin and
   corruption--sin which at nightfall, from the very steps of that
   edifice, may be seen in all the colors of its harlotry. And how will we
   deal with it? Will we bring in some Socialist system? Shall we preach
   up some new method of political economy? No! The Cross, the old Cross
   is enough! This is the true Jerusalem blade, like that razor of old,
   with which the Tarquin cut the whetstone. We will but preach Christ as
   the sinner's Savior, the Spirit of God as applying Christ's Truth to
   the soul, and God the Father in His Infinite Sovereignty saving whom He
   will, and in the bounty of His mercy willing to receive the vilest of
   the vile! And there is no indifference so callous, no ignorance so
   blind, no iniquity so base--there is no conscience so seared as not to
   be made to yield when God wills it before the might of Hsstrength!
   "Rise up, O Lord! Rise up, O Lord! Let these Your enemies be scattered,
   and let those who hate You flee before You."

   But what is to be our prayer? Does it say, "Rise up, O preacher--occupy
   your pulpit"? True we may say, "Awake, Barak, awake and lead your
   captivity captive, you son of Abinoam." But that is after the battle is
   fought, not before! "Rise up, O Lord! O God the Father, rise up! Pluck
   Your right hand out of Your bosom, and let Your purposes be
   accomplished! O God the Son, rise up! Show Your wounds and plead before
   Your Father's face, and let Your blood- bought ones be saved! Rise up,
   O God the Holy Spirit!With solemn awe, we do invoke You! Let those who
   have resisted You give way! Come, melt the ice! Dissolve the granite!
   Let the hardest heart give way. Rise up, Lord, Father, Son and Spirit,
   we can do nothing without You!But if You arise, Your enemies shall be
   scattered, and they who hate You shall flee before You."

   Will you and I go home and pray this prayer by ourselves, fervently
   laying hold upon the horns of God's altar? I charge you, my Brothers
   and Sisters in Christ, do not neglect this private duty! Go, each one
   of you, to your chambers. Shut your doors and cry to Him who hears in
   secret, and let this be the burden of your cry--"Rise up, O Lord! Let
   Your enemies be scattered." And at your altars tonight, when your
   families are gathered together, still let the same cry ring up to
   Heaven! And then tomorrow and all the days of the week, and as often as
   we shall meet together to hear His Word and to break bread, cry, "Rise
   up, O Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You
   flee before You." Pray for your children, your neighbors, your families
   and your friends, and let your prayer be--"Rise up, O Lord. Rise up, O
   Lord." Pray for this neighborhood. Pray for the dense darkness of
   Southwark and Walworth, and Lambeth. And oh, if you cannot pray for
   others because your own needs come so strongly before your mind,
   remember, Sinner, all you need is but faith to look to Christ, and then
   you may say, "Rise up, O Lord! Scatter my doubts--kill my
   unbelief--drown my sins in Your blood. Let these, Your enemies, be
   scattered; let those who hate You flee before You." Amen. Amen!
     __________________________________________________________________

                       The First Sermon in the Tabernacle

   A Sermon

   (No. 369)

   Delivered on Monday Afternoon, March 25th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   "And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach
   and preach Jesus Christ."--Acts 5:42.

   I DO not know whether there are any persons here present who can
   contrive to put themselves into my present position, and to feel my
   present feelings. If they can effect that, they will give me credit for
   meaning what I say, when I declare that I feel totally unable to
   preach. And, indeed, I think I shall scarcely attempt a sermon, but
   rather give a sort of declaration of the truths from which future
   sermons shall be made. I will give you bullion rather than coin; the
   block from the quarry, and not the statue from the chisel. It appears
   that the one subject upon which men preached in the apostolic age was
   Jesus Christ. The tendency of man, if left alone, is continually to go
   further and further from God, and the Church of God itself is no
   exception to the general rule. For the first few years, during and
   after the apostolic era, Christ Jesus was preached, but gradually the
   Church departed from the central point, and began rather to preach
   ceremonials and church offices than the person of their Lord. So has it
   been in these modern times: we also have fallen into the same error, at
   least to a degree, and have gone from preaching Christ to preaching
   doctrines about Christ, inferences which may be drawn from his life, or
   definitions which may be gathered from his discourses. We are not
   content to stand like angels in the sun; our fancies disturb our rest
   and must needs fly on the sunbeams, further and further from the
   glorious source of light. In the days of Paul it was not difficult at
   once, in one word, to give the sum and substance of the current
   theology. It was Christ Jesus. Had you asked anyone of those disciples
   what he believed, he would have replied, "I believe Christ." If you had
   requested him to show you his Body of Divinity, he would have pointed
   upward, reminding you that divinity never had but one body, the
   suffering and crucified human frame of Jesus Christ, who ascended up on
   high. To them, Christ was not a notion refined, but unsubstantial; not
   an historical personage who had left only the savour of his character
   behind, but whose person was dead; to them he was not a set of ideas,
   not a creed, nor an incarnation of an abstract theory; but he was a
   person, one whom some of them had seen, whose hands they had handled,
   nay, one of whose flesh they had all been made to eat, and of whose
   blood they had spiritually been made to drink. Christ was substance to
   them, I fear he is too often but shadow to us. He was a reality to
   their minds; to us--though, perhaps, we would scarcely allow it in so
   many words--rather a myth than a man; rather a person who was, than he
   who was, and is, and is to come--the Almighty.

   I would propose (and O may the Lord grant us grace to carry out that
   proposition, from which no Christian can dissent), I would propose that
   the subject of the ministry of this house, as long as this platform
   shall stand, and as long as this house shall be frequented by
   worshippers, shall be the person of Jesus Christ. I am never ashamed to
   avow myself a Calvinist, although I claim to be rather a Calvinist
   according to Calvin, than after the modern debased fashion. I do not
   hesitate to take the name of Baptist. You have there (pointing to the
   baptistery) substantial evidence that I am not ashamed of that
   ordinance of our Lord Jesus Christ; but if I am asked to say what is my
   creed, I think I must reply: "It is Jesus Christ." My venerable
   predecessor, Dr. Gill, has left a body of divinity admirable and
   excellent in its way; but the body of divinity to which I would pin and
   bind myself for ever, God helping me, is not his system of divinity or
   any other human treatise, but Christ Jesus, who is the sum and
   substance of the gospel; who is in himself all theology, the
   incarnation of every precious truth, the all-glorious personal
   embodiment of the way, the truth, and the life.

   This afternoon I will try to describe the subject, Christ Jesus; then,
   secondly, to speak for a little while upon its comprehensiveness; then
   to enlarge upon sundry of its excellencies; and conclude by testing its
   power.

   I. First, then, the SUBJECT.

   They continued both to teach and preach Jesus Christ. To preach Jesus
   Christ aright we must preach him in his infinite and indisputable
   Godhead. We may be attacked by philosophers, who will either make him
   no God at all, or one constituted temporarily and, I must add, absurdly
   a God for a season. We shall have at once upon us those who view Christ
   as a prophet, as a great man, as an admirable exemplar; we shall be
   assailed on all sides by those who choose rather to draw their divinity
   from their own addled brains than from the simplicity of Holy Writ; but
   what mattereth this? We must reiterate again and again the absolute and
   proper deity of Christ; for without this we are in the position of
   those described by the prophet:--"Their tacklings are loosed, they
   could not well strengthen their mast" and soon will our enemies prevail
   against us, and the prey of a great spoil shall be taken. Take away the
   divinity of Christ from the gospel, and you have nothing whatever left
   upon which the anxious soul can rest. Remove the Word who was in the
   beginning with God, and who was God, and the Jachin and Boaz of the
   temple are overturned. Without a divine Saviour, your gospel is a rope
   of sand; a bubble; a something less substantial than a dream. If Christ
   were not God, he was the basest of impostors. He was either one of two
   things, very God of very God, or else an arch-deceiver of the souls of
   men, for he made many of them believe he was God, and brought upon
   himself the consequences of what they called blasphemy; so that if he
   were not God, he was the greatest deceiver that ever lived. But God he
   is; and here, in this house, we must and will adore him. With the
   multitude of his redeemed we will sing:

   "Jesus is worthy to receive,

   Honour and power divine,

   And blessings more, than we can give

   Be Lord for ever thine."

   To preach Christ, however, we must also preach his true humanity. We
   must never make him to be less manlike because he was perfectly divine.
   I love that hymn of Hart which begins--

   "A man there was--a real man,

   Who once on Calvary died."

   "Real man!" I think we do not often realize that manhood of Christ; we
   do not see that he was bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh;
   feeling, thinking, acting, suffering, doing, just like ourselves--one
   of our fellows, and only above us because he is "exalted with the oil
   of gladness above his fellows." We must have a human Christ, and we
   must have one of real flesh and blood too; not of shadows or filmy
   fancies. We must have one to whom we can talk, one with whom we can
   walk, one

   "Who in his measure feels afresh

   What every member bears;"

   who is so intimately connected with us in ties of blood, that he is as
   with us one, the head of the family, first-born among many brethren. I
   am never more glad than when I am preaching a personal Christ. A
   doctrinal Christ, a practical Christ, or an experimental Christ, as
   some good men make him to be according to the temper of their minds, I
   do not feel to be sufficient for the people of God. We want a personal
   Christ. This has been a power to the Romish church--a power which they
   have used for ill, but always a power; they have had a personal Christ,
   but then it has either been a baby Christ in his mother's arms, or else
   a dead Christ upon the cross. They never reached the force of a real
   full-grown Christ, one who not only lived and suffered, but who died
   and rose again, and sits at the right hand of God, the Head of the
   Church, the one ruler of men. Oh! we must bring out more and more
   clearly each day the real personality of the Redeemer in his complex
   person. Whatever we fail to preach, we must preach him. If we are wrong
   in many points, if we be but right here, this will save our ministry
   from the flames; but if we be wrong here, however orthodox we may
   pretend to be, we cannot be right in the rest unless we think rightly
   of him.

   But, further, to preach Christ Jesus, it is absolutely necessary we
   should preach him as the only mediator between God and man. Admitting
   the efficacy of the intercession of living saints for sinners, never
   for a moment denying that every man is bound to make supplication for
   all ranks and conditions of men, yet must we have it that the only
   mediator in the heavens, and the only direct intercessor with God, is
   the man Christ Jesus. Nay, we must not be content with making him the
   only mediator; we must set aside all approach to God in any way
   whatever, except by him. We must not only have him for the priest, but
   we must have him for the altar, the victim, and the offerer too. We
   must learn in full the meaning of that precious text--"Christ is all."
   We must not see a part of the types here and a part there, but all
   gathered up in him, the one door of heaven, the one crimson way by
   which our souls approach to God. We must not allow that approaches can
   be made in human strength, by human learning, or by human effort; but
   in him and through him, and by him, and in dependence upon him, must
   all be done between God and man. We have no wings, my brethren, with
   which to fly to heaven; our journey thither must be on the rounds
   [rungs] of Jacob's ladder. We cannot approach God by anything we have,
   or know, or do. Christ crucified, and he alone, must lift us up to God.

   And more, we must preach Christ in the solitariness of his redemption
   work. We must not permit for a moment the fair white linen of his
   righteousness to be stained by the patch-work of our filthy rags. We
   must not submit that the precious blood of his veins should be diluted
   by any offering of ours co-acting therewith, for our salvation. He
   hath, by one sacrifice, for ever put away sin. We shall never preach
   Christ unless we have a real atonement. There be certain people
   nowadays who are making the atonement, first a sort of compromise, and
   the next step is to make the atonement a display of what ought to have
   been, instead of the thing which should have been. Then, next, there
   are some who make it to be a mere picture, an exhibition, a shadow--a
   shadow, the substance of which they have not seen. And the day will
   come, and there are sundry traces of it here and there, in which in
   some churches the atonement shall be utterly denied, and yet men shall
   call themselves Christians, while they have broken themselves against
   the corner-stone of the entire system. I have no kith nor kin, nor
   friendship, nor Christian amity, with any man whatever who claims to be
   a Christian and yet denies the atonement. There is a limit to the
   charity of Christians, and there can be none whatever entertained to
   the man who is dishonest enough to occupy a Christian pulpit and to
   deny Christ. It is only in the Christian church that such a thing can
   be tolerated. I appeal to you. Was there ever known a Buddhist
   acknowledged in the temple of Buddha who denied the basis doctrine of
   the sect? Was there ever known a Mahomadan Imaum who was sanctioned in
   the mosque while he cried down the Prophet? It remains for Christian
   churches only to have in their midst men who can bear the name of
   Christian, who can even venture to be Christian teachers, while they
   slander the Deity of him who is the Christian's God, and speak lightly
   of the efficacy of his blood who is the Christian's atonement. May this
   deadly cancer be cut out root and branch; and whatever tearing of the
   flesh there may be, better cut it out with a jagged knife than suffer
   to exist because no lancet is to be found to do it daintily. We must
   have, then, Christ in the efficacy of his precious blood as the only
   Redeemer of the souls of men, and as the only mediator, who, without
   assistance of ours, has brought us to God and made reconciliation
   through his blood.

   Our ministry will scarcely be complete unless we preach Christ as the
   only lawgiver and Rabbi of the Church. When you put it down as a canon
   of your faith that the church has right and power to decree rites and
   ceremonies, you have robbed Christ at once of his proper position as
   the only teacher of the church. Or when you claim the office of
   controlling other men's consciences by the decree of the church, or the
   vote of a synod, apart from the authority of Christ, you have taken
   away from Christ that chair which he occupies in the Christian church,
   as the teacher in the great Christian school, as the Rabbi, and the
   only Rabbi, of our faith. God forbid that we should hold a single truth
   except on his authority. Let not our faith stand in the wisdom of man,
   but in the power of God. You refer me to the writings of Doctor this
   and Doctor the other: what are these? The words of Christ, these are
   truth, and these are wisdom. You bring me authority from the practice
   of a church three or four centuries removed from the crucifixion as the
   proof of the existence of a certain ceremony and the righteousness of
   certain ecclesiastical offices. What is your proof worth? If Christ
   hath not specially ordained it, and if he hath not commanded his people
   to obey it, of what value is any rite whatever? We acknowledge Christ
   as ordaining all things for his church, and presenting that church with
   a finished code of laws, from which any deviation is a sin, and to
   which any addition is a high crime. Any church officer who is not
   ordained of Christ occupies an office which he ought to resign. Any
   person who practices a ceremony for which he has not scriptural
   authority should renounce it; and any man who preaches a doctrine for
   which he has not Christ as his certifier, should not demand for it the
   faith of men.

   But I fear there are times coming when the minister will not be true to
   his duty unless he goes further, and preaches Christ as the sole King
   of the Church. There has been a disposition on the part of the state,
   especially with regard to the Free Church of Scotland, to exercise
   power and judgement over church decrees. No king, no queen that ever
   lived, or can live, has any authority whatever over the church of
   Christ. The church has none to govern and rule over her but her Lord
   and her King. The church can suffer, but she cannot yield; you may
   break her confessors alive upon the wheel, but she, in her uprightness,
   will neither bend nor bow. From the sentence of our church there is no
   appeal whatever on earth. To the court of heaven a man may appeal if
   the sentence of the church be wrong, but to Caesar never. Neither the
   best nor the worst of kings or queens may ever dare to put their finger
   upon the prerogative of Christ as the head of the church. Up, church of
   God! If once there be any laws of man passed to govern thee, up, dash
   them in pieces! Let us each catch up the war cry, and uplift the lion
   standard of the tribe of Judah; let us challenge the kings of the earth
   and say, "Who shall rouse him up?" The church is queen above all
   queens, and Christ her only King. None have jurisdiction or power in
   the church of Christ save Jesus Christ himself. If any of our acts
   violate the civil laws, we are men and citizens, and we acknowledge the
   right of a state to govern us as individuals. None of us wish to be
   less subjects of the realm because we are kings and priests unto God.
   But as members of Christian churches we maintain that the
   excommunication of a Christian church can never be reversed by the
   civil power, or by any state act, nor are its censures to be examined,
   much less to be removed, mitigated, or even judged. We must have, as
   Christ's church, a full recognition of his imperial rights, and the day
   will come when the state will not only tolerate us as a mere society,
   but admit that as we profess to be the church of Christ, we have a
   right by that very fact to be self-governing, and never to be
   interfered with in any sense whatever, so far as our ecclesiastical
   affairs are concerned.

   Christ must be preached, then, and exalted in all these respects, or
   else we have not preached a full Christ; but I go one step further. We
   have not yet mounted to the full height of our ministry unless we learn
   to preach Christ as the King of kings. He has an absolute right to the
   entire dominion of this world. The Christian minister, as ordained of
   God to preach, has a perfect right in God's name to preach upon any
   subject touching the Lord's kingdom, and to rebuke and exhort even the
   greatest of men. Sometimes I have heard it said, when we have canvassed
   the acts of an emperor or senator, "These are politics;" but Christ is
   King of politics as well as theology. "Oh! but"--say they--"what have
   you to do with what the state does?" Why, just this: that Christ is the
   head of all states, and while the state has no authority over the
   church, yet Christ himself is King of kings, and Lord of lords. Oh,
   that the church would put her diadem upon her head, and take her right
   position! We are not slaves. The church of God is not a grovelling
   corporation bound for ever to sit upon a dunghill; never queen was so
   fair as she, and never robe so rich as the purple which she wears.
   Arise, O Church! arise, the earth is thine; claim it. Send out thy
   missionary, not as a petitioner to creep at the feet of princes, but as
   an ambassador for God to make peace between God and man. Send him out
   to claim the possession which belongs to thee, and which God has given
   to thee to be thine for ever and ever, by a right which kings may
   dispute, but which one day every one of them shall acknowledge.

   The fact is, we must bring Christ himself back into camp once more. It
   is of little use having our true Jerusalem swords, and the shields, and
   the banners, and the trumpets, and the drums; we want the King himself
   in the midst of us. More and more of a personal Christ is the great
   lack of the time. I would not wish for less doctrine, less experience,
   or less practice, but more of all this put into Christ, and Christ
   preached as the sum and substance of it all.

   II. But, secondly, I am now to speak, for a short time, upon the
   COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE SUBJECT which the text announces.

   It is an old and trite saying that the ministers of the gospel may be
   divided into three kinds--the doctrinal, the experimental, and the
   practical. The saying is so often repeated that very few would
   contradict it. But it betrays at once, if it be true, the absence and
   lack of a something essentially necessary for the church's success.
   Where is the preacher of Christ out of these? I propound this, that if
   a man be found a preacher of Christ, he is doctrinal, experimental, and
   practical. The doctrinal preacher generally has a limited range. He is
   useful, exceedingly useful; God constitutes him a barrier against the
   innovations of the times: he preaches upon his subjects so frequently
   that he is well versed in them, and becomes one of the armed men about
   the bed of Solomon. But suppose the doctrinal preacher should have it
   all his own way, and there should be none others at all, what would be
   the effect? See it in our Baptist churches about one hundred and fifty
   years ago. They were all sound and sound asleep. Those doctrines had
   preached them into a lethargy, and had is not been for some few who
   started up and proposed the missions for the heathen, and who found but
   little sympathy at first, the church would have been utterly inactive.
   Now, I would not be hard with any, but there are some brethren still
   whose preaching might justly be summed up as being doctrinal, nothing
   more than doctrinal, and what is the effect of their ministry?
   Bitterness. They learn to contend not only earnestly for the faith, but
   savagely for it. Certainly we admire their earnestness, and we thank
   God for their soundness, but we wish there were mingled with their
   doctrine a somewhat else which might tone down their severity and make
   them seek rather the unity and fellowship of the saints than the
   division and discord which they labour to create.

   Again, I will refer you to the next class of preachers, the
   experimental. How delightful it is to sit under an experimental
   preacher! Perhaps of all ministries this one is the most useful, he who
   preaches the doubts, the fears, the joys, the ecstasies of the people
   of God. How often do the saints see the footsteps of the flock, and
   then they find the shepherd under an experimental minister! But do you
   know the effect of an experimental minister, purely so, I mean, when
   all else is put aside to make room for experience? There is one school
   of divines always preaching the corruption of the human heart. This is
   their style; "Except thou be flayed alive by the law; except thou art
   daily feeling the utter rottenness of thine heart; except than art a
   stranger to full assurance, and dost always doubt and fear; except thou
   abidest on the dunghill and dost scrape thyself with a potsherd, thou
   art no child of God." Who told you that? This has been the preaching of
   some experimental preachers, and the effect has been just this. Men
   have come to think the deformities of God's people to be their beauty.
   They are like certain courtiers of the reign of Richard III, who is
   said by history to have had a hump upon his back and his admirers
   stuffed their backs that they might have a graceful hump too. And there
   be many who, because a minister preaches of doubts and fears, feel they
   must doubt and fear too; and then that which is both uncomfortable to
   themselves and dishonouring to God comes to be the very mark of God's
   people. This is the tendency of experimental preaching, however
   judiciously managed, when ministers harp on that string and on that
   alone; the tendency is either to preach the people into a soft and
   savoury state, in which there is not a bit of manliness or might, or
   else into that dead and rotten state in which corruption outswells
   communion, and the savour is not the perfume of the king's ointments,
   but the stench of a corrupt and filthy heart.

   Take also the practical preacher; who would say a word against this
   good man? He stirs the people up, excites the children of God to holy
   duties, promotes every excellent object, and is in his way an admirable
   supplement to the two other kinds of ministers. But sit under she
   practical preacher; sit under him all the year round and listen to his
   people as they come out. There is one who says, "the same thing over
   again--Do, do, do, nothing but do." There is a poor sinner yonder just
   gone down the front steps. Follow him, "Oh," says he, "I came here to
   find out what Christ could do for me, and I have only been told what I
   must do for myself" Now this it a great evil, and persons who sit under
   such a ministry become lean, starvelling things. I would that practical
   preachers would listen to our farmers, who always say it is better to
   put the whip in the manger than upon the horse's back. Let them feed
   the people with food convenient for them, and they will be practical
   enough; but all practice and no promise, all exhortation and no sound
   doctrine, will never make the man of God perfect and zealous for good
   works.

   But what am I driving at in bringing up these three sorts of ministers?
   Why just this: to show you that there is one minister who can preach
   all this, without the dangers of any one of the others, but with the
   excellencies of the whole. And who is he? Why, any man in the world who
   preaches Christ. If he preaches Christ's person he must preach
   doctrine. If I preach Christ I must preach him as the covenant head of
   his people, and how far am I then from the doctrine of election? If I
   preach Christ I must preach the efficacy of his blood, and how far am I
   removed then from the great doctrine of an effectual atonement? If I
   preach Christ I must preach the love of his heart, and how can I deny
   the final perseverance of the saints? If I preach the Lord Jesus as the
   great Head and King, how far am I removed from divine Sovereignty? Must
   I not, if I preach Christ personally, preach his doctrines? I believe
   they are nothing but the natural outgrowth of that great root thought,
   or root substance rather, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who
   will preach Christ fully will never be lax in doctrine. And what better
   experience can you preach than in preaching Christ? Would you preach
   the sufferings of the saints, preach his agony and bloody sweat, his
   cross and passion; for the true sufferings of the saints are in
   fellowship with him. If you would preach their joys, preach his
   resurrection, his ascension, and his advent; you are never far from the
   joys of the saints when you are near to the joys of Christ; for did not
   he say, "My joy shall be in them that their joy may be full"? And what
   better practice can be preached than preaching Christ? Of every virtue
   he is the pattern; of the perfection of human character he is the very
   mirror; of everything that is holy and of good report, he is the
   abiding incarnation. He cannot fail, then, to be a good doctrinal,
   experimental, practical preacher, who preaches Christ. Did you ever
   know a congregation grow less spiritual by a minister preaching Christ?
   Did you ever know them get full of doubts and fears by preaching
   Christ? Did you ever hear of their getting lax in sentiment by his
   preaching Christ? Did you ever hear a whisper that men became unholy in
   their lives because they heard too much about Christ? I think that all
   the excellencies of all ministers may be gathered up into the teaching
   of the man who can preach Christ every day in the week, while there
   will not be any of the evils connected with the other forms of
   preaching.

   III. I shall now pass onto notice some of the surpassing excellencies
   of the subject

   First, he will always have a blessed variety in his preaching. In
   Australia I have heard that the only change for the backwoodsmen is to
   have one day damper [unleavened cake baked in wood ashes), tea, and
   bread; the next day, bread, damper, and tea; and the next day, tea,
   bread, and damper. The only variety some ministers give, is one Sunday
   to have depravity, election, and perseverance, and the next Sunday,
   election, perseverance, and depravity. There are many strings to the
   harp of the gospel. There are some brethren who are so rightly charmed
   with five of the strings, which certainly have very rich music in them,
   that they never meddle with any of the other strings; the cobwebs hang
   on the rest, while these five are pretty well worn out. It is always
   pretty much the same thing from the first of January to the last of
   December. Their organ has very few keys, and upon these they may make a
   very blessed variety, but I think not a very extensive one. Any man who
   preaches Christ will ensure variety in his preaching. He is all manner
   of precious perfume, myrrh, and aloes, and cassia. He is all sorts of
   music, he is everything that is sweet to the ear; he is all manner of
   fruits; there is not one dainty in him but many. This tree of life
   bears twelve manner of fruits. He is all manner of raiment; he is
   golden raiment for beauty, he is the warm raiment for comfort, he is
   the stout raiment for harness in the day of battle. There are all
   things in Christ, and he that hath Christ will have as great a variety
   as there is to be found in the scenery of the world where are no two
   rocks alike, and no two rivers wind in precisely the same manner, and
   no two trees grow in precisely the same form. Any other subject you may
   preach upon till your hearers feel satiety; but with Christ for a
   subject, you may go on, and on, and on, till the sermon swells into the
   eternal song, and you begin to sing, "Unto him that loved us and washed
   us from our sins in his own blood."

   There is yet another excellence about this subject, namely, that it
   suits all sorts of people. Are there rebels present? Preach Christ; it
   will suit them. Are there pardoned sinners present? What is better, to
   melt their hearts than the blood of the Lord Jesus. Are there doubting
   Christians? What can cheer them better than the name of Christ. Are
   there strong believers? What is stronger meat than Jesus crucified? Are
   there learned, polite, intellectual hearers? If they are not satisfied
   with Christ, they ought to be. Are there poor, ignorant, unlettered
   men? Jesus Christ is just the thing to preach to them--a naked Christ
   to their simple ears. Jesus Christ is a topic that will keep in all
   climates. Land in New Zealand in the midst of uncivilised men, move off
   to another post and stand in the midst of poetical Persia or fickle
   France, the cross is adapted to all. We need not inquire into the
   doctrinal opinion of our hearers. If they are high, I am sure Christ
   will suit them. If they are low, if they be true believers, I am sure
   Christ Jesus will suit them. No Christians will reject such meat as
   this; only prepare it, and with a hot heart serve it up on the table,
   and they will be satisfied and feed to the full. So that there is
   adaptation as well as variety in this subject.

   IV. But more than this, I must add, and this will bring me to my last
   point, for my time flies--there is a power about this subject when it
   is preached with the demonstration of the Spirit, which is not found in
   any other. My brethren, what power there is in this subject to promote
   the union of the people of God! There is a man there, he is almost a
   Puseyite. "I do not like him," says one. Stop till I tell you something
   more about him, and you will. There is another man there, a
   Presbyterian--true blue; he cannot bear Independency, or anything but
   Presbytery--a covenant man. "Well," says one, "I like him a little
   better; but I do not suppose we shall get on very well." Stop! I will
   tell you some more about him. There is another man down there; he is a
   very strong Calvinist. "Humph," says one, "I shall not admire him."
   Stop, stop! Now, here are these three men; let us hear what they say of
   each other. If they know nothing of each other except what I have
   stated, the first time they meet there will be a magnificent quarrel.
   There is yonder clergyman--he will have little fraternity whatever with
   the ultra-Evangelical; while the Presbyterian will reject them both,
   for he abhors black prelacy. But, my dear brethren, all three of you,
   we of this congregation will approve of you all, and you will approve
   of one another when I have stated your true character. That man yonder,
   whom I called almost a Puseyite, was George Herbert. How he loved the
   doornails of the church! I think he would scarce have had a spider
   killed that had once crept across the church aisles. He was a thorough
   churchman, to the very centre of the marrow of his bones; but what a
   Christian! What a lover of his sweet Lord Jesus! You know that hymn of
   his which I have so often quoted, and mean to quote a hundred times
   more: "How sweetly doth my Master's sound," and so forth. I hear a
   knock at the door. "Who is that?" "Why, it is a very strong churchman."
   "Do not show him in; I am at prayer; I cannot pray with him." "Oh, but
   it is George Herbert!" "Oh, let him in, let him in! No man could I pray
   better with than Mr. Herbert. Walk in, Mr. Herbert; we are right glad
   to see you; you are our dear companion; your hymns have made us glad."

   But who was that second man, the Presbyterian, who would not have liked
   George Herbert at all? Why, that was Samuel Rutherford. What a seraphic
   spirit! What splendid metaphors he uses about his sweet Lord Jesus! He
   has written all Solomon's Song over without knowing it. He felt and
   proved it to be divine. The Spirit in him re-dictated the song. Well
   now, I think, we will introduce Mr. Rutherford and Mr. Herbert
   together, and I am persuaded when they begin to speak about their
   Master they will find each other next of kin; and I feel sure that, by
   this time, Samuel Rutherford and George Herbert have found each other
   out in heaven, and are sitting side by side. Well, but then we
   mentioned another; who was that high Calvinist? He was the man who was
   called the Leviathan of Antinomians. That he was a leviathan I will
   grant, but that he was an Antinomian is false. It was Dr. Hawker. Now,
   I am sure, George Herbert would not have liked Dr. Hawker, and I am
   certain that Dr. Hawker would not have liked George Herbert, and I do
   not suppose that Samuel Rutherford would have had anything to do with
   either of them. "No, no," he would say, "your black prelacy I hate."
   But look at Hawker, there is a sweet spirit; he cannot take up his pen
   but he dips it in Christ, and begins to write about his Lord at once
   "Precious Immanuel--precious Jesus." Those words in his morning and
   evening portions are repeated again and again, and again. I recollect
   hearing of Mr. Rowland Hill, that he said to a young man who was at tea
   with him one night when he was about to go:--"Where are you going to?"
   "Oh!" said he, "I am going to hear Dr. Hawker, at St. George's in the
   Borough." "Oh, go and hear him," he said; "he is a right good man,
   worth hearing. But there is this difference between him and me; my
   preaching is something like a pudding, with here and there a plum; but
   Dr. Hawker's is all plum." And that was very near the mark, because Dr.
   Hawker was all Christ. He was constantly preaching of his Master; and
   even if he gave an invitation to a sinner, it was generally put in this
   way: "What sayest thou? Wilt thou go with this man, and be married and
   espoused unto him? It was the preaching of a personal Christ that made
   his ministry so full of marrow and fatness.

   My dear friends, let a man stand up and exalt Christ, and we are all
   agreed. I see before me this afternoon members of all Christian
   denominations; but if Christ Jesus is not the topic that suits you, why
   then I think we may question your Christianity. The more Christ is
   preached, the more will the Church prove, and exhibit, and assert, and
   maintain her unity; but the less Christ is preached, and the more of
   Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, the more of strife and division, and the
   less of true Christian fellowship.

   We will only mention the power of the preaching of Christ upon the
   heart of sinners. There is a person, now a member of my church, whose
   conversion was owing to the reading of that hymn:

   "Jesus, lover of my soul."

   "Ah," said he "does Jesus love my soul? Then how vile I have been to
   neglect him." There are scores whose conversion is distinctly and
   directly traceable, not to doctrine--though that is often useful--nor
   experience, nor practice, though these are fruitful, but to the
   preaching of Christ. I think you will find the most fertile sermons
   have always been the most Christly sermons. This is a seed which seldom
   rots under the clod. One may fall upon the stony ground, but it oftener
   happens that the seed breaks the stone when it falls, and as Christ is
   a root out of a dry ground, so this finds root for itself even in dry,
   hard, stony hearts. We ought to preach the law, we ought to thunder out
   the threatenings of God, but they must never be the main topic. Christ,
   Christ, Christ, if we would have men converted. Do you want to convince
   yonder careless one? Tell him the story of the cross. Under God it will
   arrest his attention and awaken his thoughts. Would you subdue the
   carnal affections of yonder profligate? Preach the love of Christ, and
   that new love shall uproot the old. Would you bind up yonder broken
   heart? Bring forth Christ, for in him there is a cordial for every
   fear. Christ is preached and we do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice "for
   he is the power of God unto salvation unto every one that believeth."
   Judge not, my dear brethren, any man's ministry. The world has too
   often condemned the man whom God intended to honour. Say not of such an
   one "He can do no good, for his language is rough and rude." Say not of
   another that his style is too often marred with flippancy. Say not of a
   third that he is too erudite or soars too high. Every man in his own
   order. If that man preach Christ, whether he be Paul, or Apollos, or
   Cephas, we wish him God speed; for God will bless the Christ he
   preaches, and forgive the error which mingled with his ministry. I must
   even frankly admit the truth of many a criticism that has been uttered
   on my ministry, but I know it has been successful, and under God it has
   been, because I have sought to preach Christ. I say that without
   boasting or egotism, because if I had not done so I had no right so be
   a minister of Christ at all, and as I claim to be God's minister, I
   will and must declare it, whatever I have not preached, I have preached
   Christ, and into whatever mistakes I have fallen, I have sought to
   point to his cross, and say, "Behold the way to God." And if ye see
   others preaching Christ, be not you their foe. Pray for them; bear them
   in your arms before God; their errors may yet be outgrown, if they
   preach Christ; but if not, I care not what their excellency may be, the
   excellency shall die and expire like sparks that go out in darkness.
   They have not the fuel of the flame, for they have not Christ Jesus as
   the substance of their ministry.

   May I entreat, in closing, your earnest prayer, each one of you, that
   in this house as well as in all the places of worship round about,
   Christ may evermore be preached, and I may add my own sincere desire
   that this place may become a hissing and the abode of dragons, and this
   pulpit be burned with fire, or ever any other gospel be preached here
   than that which we have received of the holy apostles of God; and of
   which Jesus Christ himself is the chief corner stone. Let me have your
   incessant prayers. May God speed every minister of Christ. But where
   there is so large a field of labour may I claim your earnest and
   constant intercessions, that where Christ is lifted up, men may be
   drawn to hear, and afterwards drawn to believe, that they may find
   Christ the Saviour of our souls. "He that believeth, and is baptized,
   shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned." "Repent and be
   converted, every one of you," said Peter. Yet again said Paul to the
   jailer, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, and thy
   house." God give us grace to believe, and unto him be glory for ever
   and ever. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          Evangelical Congratulations

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON MONDAY EVENING, MARCH 25, 1861, BY THE REV. W.
   BROCK, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Christ is preached, and I therein do rejoice, yes, and will rejoice."
   Philippians 1:18.
   HOW Paul would have rejoiced had he been living now! Judging from the
   effect that was produced upon his mind by the evangelical labors at
   Rome, what do you think, Brothers and Sisters, would have been the
   effect produced upon his mind by the evangelical labors in London?
   Because the Brethren there were waxing bold in the name of Christ, he
   was glad. The fact that in the metropolis of the empire the glad
   tidings were proclaimed filled him with the most profound satisfaction.
   His heart was, and his heart still would be, joyful in the Lord! And
   yet I take it that the ministry of the Gospel in Rome must have been
   comparatively on a small and insignificant scale. I suppose that in
   proportion to the population, and in proportion to the size of that
   city, the preaching must have been very circumscribed, and all things
   considered, considerably obscure. No preacher had lifted his voice from
   the terrace of the Capitol, no congregation had been gathered into the
   great area of the Coliseum, no public announcement had been made over
   all Rome, that if the people would flock to the Pantheon, they might
   hear about the Incarnation of the Son of God. Anything like that would
   have kindled Paul's gladness into rapture! Christ preached out on the
   Campus Martius, or in the Hall of Minerva, or on the platform of the
   Athenaeum at Rome would have left him nothing this side of Paradise to
   desire! As it was, his cup was running over. Men were told in honest
   speech about the One who had come down from Heaven, who had come at the
   Father's bidding to proclaim His will and to accomplish His purposes.
   They had been told of a Friend that "sticks closer than a brother;" of
   the Advocate and the Mediator between God and man. And, the Spirit of
   all Grace concurring with that which had been preached, the Apostle was
   fully persuaded in his own mind that they had heard words whereby they
   would be saved, and that the promise of the life that now is, and the
   promise of the life that is to come, would by them be personally
   enjoyed. Hence he said, "I do rejoice," and then emphatically again,
   "Yes, and will rejoice."

   But how he would have rejoiced, or how he would rejoice if he were
   living now! Why, for every one man who preached the Gospel in his time,
   there are thousands who are preaching it now; for every hundred hearers
   of that day, there are thousands upon thousands now; and for every one
   place into which the citizens of Rome might go to hear about Christ and
   Him Crucified, I need not say that there are many and ever multiplying
   places now. And you, my Brothers and Sisters--the pastor of this
   Church, and those connected with him--you have added to the number,
   thank God, of those places, and we are tonight to celebrate the
   completion of one, I suppose, of the best places that has ever been
   raised for the honor and for the Glory of Christ! From the first day
   until now, from its foundation to its top stone, you have begun and
   continued and ended--your desire, your prayer, your purpose, your
   ambition having been just simply this--that here the Redeemer's name
   may be magnified, that here His great salvation in all simplicity may
   be proclaimed! And we have come here tonight to assure you of our
   sympathy, to give to you the pledges of our brotherly affection, and in
   the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, to bid
   you heartily God speed--

   "Peace be within this sacred place, And joy a constant guest; With holy
   gifts and heavenly Grace, Be our attendance blessed."

   Well, the Apostle rejoiced, and would have rejoiced a great deal more
   had he occupied the place which I am occupying now! My purpose is to
   show to you tonight why there should be such rejoicing in connection
   with the preaching of Christ Crucified.

   Various reasons, of course, could be assigned--at least several reasons
   could be thrown into various forms. I throw my idea of the matter into
   this form--by the preaching of Christ, the renovation of mankind is
   intelligently proposed, and not only so, but it is graciously
   guaranteed. Given--a ministry that shall speak out openly what Christ
   is, what Christ has done, what Christ is doing, what Christ requires,
   what Christ administers, and the renovation of our fellow man is not
   only intelligently proposed but is thereby on God's part graciously
   guaranteed. I rejoice that the very first text from which my Brother
   has preached in this noble edifice was, though unfeignedly, so
   singularly coincident with my own--"They ceased not to teach and to
   preach Jesus Christ." The preaching and the teaching of Christ was the
   very first message with which he opened his service here, and I take
   that among other things to be a token for good.

   I. In the first place, we rejoice in the preaching of Christ because
   thereby THE RENOVATION OF FALLEN MAN is intelligently proposed.

   High time, by common consent, that something was done in that
   direction! Of course everybody admits the foundations are out; and
   while many persons admit it, they also go about to suggest improvement,
   amendment and cure. You will give me your attention while I
   recapitulate some of the projects which they suggest in order to the
   attainment of an end which is desired by us all. This is one
   suggestion--Give the people, they say, a good, sound, secular
   education; impart to them the elements of knowledge, and when they are
   apprehended and understood, then educe and cultivate the corresponding
   results. Let them know about their own bodies and their own minds; let
   them know something about the chemistry of common life; let them know
   something about their relations to one another and to society at large,
   and then when you have done that, there is some hope that their
   renovation may be obtained. This is another suggestion--Give to the
   people sound remunerative employment, recognize the right of every
   honest and industrious man to live, and then act upon your recognition
   by not preventing or interfering so that he cannot live. A fair day's
   wages, they say, for a fair day's work. The ample recompense for the
   unbegrudging toil. Save your countrymen from the dread of pauperism,
   and never insult them any more by the sanctimonious condescension of
   some of your so-called Christian charities. Let every man be enabled to
   earn his bread in the sweat of his brow, and thus you may hope that
   their renovation will be obtained. This is another suggestion--Confer
   upon them honorable enfranchisement. Barring the criminal and the
   imbecile, esteem every man throughout the country to be a free man. If
   you expect him to pay the tribute, give him a voice in the imposition
   of that tribute; let him be regarded by yourselves, and equally with
   yourselves, and in all practical respects touching the commonwealth,
   let him be regarded as a free man, and then you may hope that the
   renovation so desirable will be obtained.

   This is another suggestion--Take care to raise them into better and
   more civilized habits. See where they live; see how they eat and
   drink--mark their demeanor, one towards another, and towards the
   community at large. Change all that, or get them to change it so that
   they shall prefer cleanliness to filth, frugality to wastefulness, the
   seemly garment to the rotten rags, and the well-ventilated and the
   well-lighted apartment to the moldy attic in the roof, or to the dark
   pestiferous, rotten cellar underground. And when you have done that,
   you may hope that so far their renovation will be obtained. And this is
   another suggestion--Let the people have their tastes cultivated.
   Introduce them to the great works of ancient and modern art, throw open
   your museums, take them into your art galleries, admit them into your
   artistic and your antique salons, fire their love for the beautiful,
   kindle it yet more brightly and more brightly still! Insure their
   rejection of the base through their predilection for the refined, and
   accomplish their abhorrence of the groveling through their rapture with
   the sublime, and when you have done that, you have done much to obtain
   the renovation that we all desire.

   I believe these are the great suggestions of the men who designate
   themselves, and I respectfully regard their designation, as the
   philosophical philanthropists. These are the suggestions which those
   men make; and they say get all such things done, and then you will have
   society just what society ought to be both in regard to God and in
   regard to man. But now, can you look at these suggestions for a single
   moment without marking a most fatal defect throughout them all? They
   tell you about dealing with a man externally, but not a word about
   dealing with him internally. He is to be better cultured, better
   dressed, better housed, and all that, but as to the man, the subject of
   all that we are talking about--as for the man essentially and
   inherently considered, there is nothing whatever done, and after all
   that philosophy and philanthropy together have accomplished, the man's
   heart is just what it was before! Well, I say in any company, in any
   place, what I say here--that if you leave the man's natural heart
   untouched, you may culture and cultivate him as you may, there is that
   which will laugh all your culture and all your cultivation to scorn! If
   a man's heartis right, his life will be right; if a man's heartis right
   in its relations towards God and towards man, his life will be right,
   but not else. And no man's heart on earth is right. No! There is an
   universal, an absolute and unvarying necessity, as our Lord brought it
   out so distinctly with Nicodemus, "You must be born-again." "You must
   be born-again;" and choosing as we do to sit at His feet, we accept the
   great oracular deliverance from Heaven, and authorized by that, we
   pronounce that all the suggestions which I have referred to are worth
   nothing! No, my Brothers and Sisters; to educate the people is
   expedient, to remunerate them incumbent, to enfranchise them desirable,
   to civilize them important, and to cultivate their tastes, if you will,
   laudable in all respects--but if you were to do all that tomorrow with
   every man, and women, and child in England, you have not put them into
   their right position, you have not inspired them with the right
   dispositions, you have not set them on the prosecution of the right
   career. A man may be educated and yet licentious--he may be well-paid
   and yet vindictive; he may be enfranchised and yet covetous; he may be
   civilized in all his habits, and yet intemperate; he may be a man of
   cultivated taste, and yet he may have no love for his neighbor and no
   love for his God.

   Why, what dishonesties, what startling dishonesties have been
   perpetrated by men who have had all the benefits of our foremost
   colleges and of our first-rate schools! What debaucheries, what fearful
   debaucheries have been perpetrated by men whose barns have been filled
   with plenty, and whose presses have burst out with new wine! What
   inhumanities, what cruel inhumanities have been perpetrated by men who
   have boasted, and who have blustered and who have brawled that they
   were free! What falsehoods, what shameful, incredible falsehoods, have
   been perpetrated by men who have been clothed in purple and fine linen,
   and have fared sumptuously every day! And what profanities, cross and
   blasphemous, have been perpetrated by men who have been the warmest
   admirers of Michelangelo and Rubens, and who have been among the
   choicest of your connoisseurs, the very choicest of them in art! I need
   not adduce the evidence. It would insult and grieve the congregation if
   I did. Everybody here knows how that evidence accumulates. No, no,
   education and morality are not coincident--competence and morality are
   not coincident--civilization and morality are not coincident-- liberty
   and morality are not coincident--and refined and cultivated tastes are
   not coincident with morality so that if you have the one, you are sure
   to have the other! Brothers and Sisters, you may deal with man's
   external condition as scientifically as you can, and with his
   character--so far as the outward character goes--as philosophically as
   you can; but as I said before, there is an underlying aboriginal
   peculiarity of his nature that laughs all your science and your
   philosophy to scorn! You cannot turn his condition into a paradise, you
   cannot convert him into a king and a priest unto God. Everywhere,
   without the exception of a land under Heaven, and without the exception
   of an individual under Heaven, men need the clean heart and the right
   spirit--the new creation in Christ Jesus. They are dead in trespasses
   and sins; and they must be made alive unto God before you will get for
   them the renovation or the improvement which is so much desired.

   Hence my rejoicing, and hence, as I believe, Paul's rejoicing, were he
   here, because of the preaching in a commodious place like this--because
   of the preaching of 'Christ/Brothers and Sisters, it will be preaching
   that goes down to the bottom of things; it will be preaching that deals
   not with the symptoms, but with the sources of human guilt; it will be
   preaching that takes all profanity and debauchery, and dishonesty, and
   inhumanity, and falsehood, and deals with them, mark--not in their
   overt acts so much as in their rudimental germs. My Brother's preaching
   here will declare that if you could do all which our philosophic
   philanthropy desires, man would go wrong, and be wrong, and presently
   would actually go on to justify and to glory in the wrong. It will be
   the preaching, in one word, that declares the absolute necessity of a
   new creation, of a new creation in Christ Jesus.'lt will deal not with
   conjecture but with certainty, not with theories but with facts, not
   with experiments but with realities, not with the words which man's
   wisdom teaches but with the words which the Holy Spirit teaches! It
   will deal not with the superficial, temporary, partial amendment, but
   intentionally at least with a profound, a radical, a fundamental, an
   everlasting cure! The preaching will never ignore one peculiarity of
   our nature because it is embarrassing, nor overlook another because it
   is inconvenient, nor tremble at another because it happens to be
   possessed of some authority and power. I anticipate and rejoice that
   here will stand the preacher to declare in the good mother tongue of us
   all, that the tree is bad, but that, by God's Grace, it can be made
   good; that men are living unto themselves, but that, by God's Grace,
   they can be brought to live unto Him; that the Divine image is defaced,
   but that that Divine image can be restored; that where sin is reigning
   even unto death, there Divine Grace may reign instead, through
   righteousness, even unto everlasting life; and therein we do rejoice
   and if you are of my mind therein tonight we will allrejoice!

   Think of this place, look around it. Conceive of it devoted to a
   purpose like this, and with tendencies and probabilities--for I am
   speaking only of these now--with tendencies and probabilities like
   these before our minds, is there a man or a woman listening to me who
   does not lift up his heart and rejoice and thank God now? Oh, I see the
   banner floating here that will be displayed because of the Truth. I
   hear the trumpet blowing here that will proclaim the message of God's
   own mercies to man; I see the embassy going on here touching
   reconciliation between God and man, and I see the confederacies of
   Christian brotherhood here provoking one another to love and to good
   works! Our country will be the better for this place; we shall be
   relieved of our pauperism after all, and saved from our licentiousness,
   and rescued from our immorality. Yes, and we shall be rescued, too,
   from the superstition that would endanger our immortality by its
   sacerdotal, and wicked, and mischief-making tendencies; from the
   superstition that would put our immortality in jeopardy; and from the
   atheism that would laugh that immortality to scorn. It will be that our
   own land, so happy amid the nations of the earth already, shall be the
   royal habitation of righteousness, and joy, and peace in the Holy
   Spirit. Christ is preached. He has been preached here today already,
   and "therein I do rejoice, yes, and will rejoice."

   II. Secondly, we rejoice in the preaching of Christ because thereby the
   renovation in question is GRACIOUSLY

   GUARANTEED.

   There can be conceived of by us a wise and sound plan that may,
   nevertheless, be frustrated when all comes to all by unknown and
   unperceived opposition. There are men all round about us who say, "Yes,
   and you ought to remember that and hold your peace, for just as beyond
   any question civilization will fail, so Christianity will fail
   likewise." And they apparently have a case; let us look at it. They
   say, "What can you do there" And then they point us to the masses
   rising up early, sitting up late, eating the bread of carefulness, if
   in hundreds of cases they can get the bread to eat. "What can you do
   there" And they point us to our merchants, our physicians, our
   statesmen, our artisans, our bankers who are all with one accord
   apparently looking for what they preposterously call the main chance.
   "What can you do there?''" And then they point us to religious
   assemblies where superstition and formalism have everything their own
   way, and where because of sacramental rites performed upon unconscious
   infants, people are told that they are members of Christ, children of
   God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. "What can you do there"
   And then they point us--alas, how they can point us--to multitudes
   whose licentiousness and profligacy are gradationally gross, and
   perhaps to quite as many multitudes whose licentiousness is
   gradationally refined, and then they say, "Now look at them, look round
   and tell us whether such ones will ever be prevailed upon to deny
   ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and
   godly in this present world?" And they take our own utterance, our own
   Scripture, and they say, "You may well enough call them 'dead in
   trespasses and sins.'"

   Brothers and Sisters, we looked at the other case--let us look at this.
   I acknowledge that there are about it indications that ought to make
   every thoughtful Christian a great deal more thoughtful and a great
   deal more Christian, too. Oh, the domination of ungodliness is
   desperate, and its tyranny is terrific, and its wisdom is superhuman,
   and its mastery of man is malignant in the last degree! How one stands
   sometimes and looks at it dismayed! If it would be content to take what
   is inherently abominable in itself, it would not be so bad. But it
   comes and takes what is in itself inherently amiable and moral, and
   with that it tries to do the work of death! It takes our legitimate
   occupations, and makes them a decoy to irreligiousness; it takes the
   amenities of our social life, and perverts them to ungodliness; it
   takes the great charities of our homes, and makes them antagonistic to
   devotion; yes, and it goes to the very altar of God, and it makes the
   sacred and solemn ordinances of the Church an opiate--pleasant
   enough--but dreadfully and fatally poisonous to the soul! So, I look as
   they bid me look, and then think of all the particulars and resources
   of my case again; and as I do so, I say, "Your premises apparently are
   sound, but your conclusion is altogether unsound; the Church is not
   always to be second to the world; Christ is not always to be resisted
   by the devil." No, no, my Brothers and Sisters, the Church is to take
   precedence of the world; Christ is to be triumphant locally and before
   the world; Psalms and hymns, and songs of praise are to come up into
   the ascendant, and knees are to bow, and tongues are to confess that
   Jesus Christ is Lord to the Glory of God the Father! And for believing
   like that, in the face of such a case, I offer these as my reasons.

   1. With the preaching of Christ, God has formally connected the
   exertion of His power. "With God all things are possible." I sometimes
   apprehend that good men are forgetful of this and they are for lying
   down and dying as though God had somehow or other ceased to be able to
   do everything. "With God all things are possible." And should He gird
   His sword upon His thigh, should He go about to show Himself strong, I
   ask what are the world, the flesh and the devil in their worst
   combinations, then? What adversary would not succumb then--what
   adversary would not become a friend? "Yes," you say, "almightiness in
   action would do all that we require." Brethren, I speak of almightiness
   in action now. It is not simply that in this place there will be the
   message of God. Along with that message there will be God Himself. It
   is not that the Word will be preached merely, but of His own will God
   will beget men by the Word. It is not simply that the Gospel will be
   proclaimed, but that that Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. My
   Brother will not stand here as the statesman stands in the senate house
   or the advocate at the bar, or the lecturer on the platform of an
   Athenaeum. He will stand here, I doubt not, as well-accoutered and
   well-furnished as they are mentally, intellectually and so on. But
   eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures as he or any other man may be, it
   is neither that eloquence, nor that might which will effect the end.
   These things and the things like unto them, are the vehicles through
   which God sends down His blessing, the instrumentalities by which God
   accomplishes His work, the means and medium by which it pleases God to
   work. He will stand here a fellow-worker with God, so that the Word
   will be in demonstration of the Spirit and in power. Mark--the human
   will be confirmed by the superhuman, the natural will be accompanied by
   the preternatural, the earthly will be helped and succored and blessed
   by the Divine. With all that may be persuasive or argumentative or
   pathetic, with all that may be properly and intentionally adapted to
   commend the Truth to every man's conscience in the sight of God, there
   will be the energy whereby God is able to subdue all things unto
   Himself. "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord
   of Hosts." And so in the face of all that seems to be opposed to us we
   do rejoice and we will rejoice because God's own channel for the
   communication of His power is the preaching of Christ.

   2. Secondly, with the preaching of Christ, God has been formally
   pleased to associate the accomplishment of His purposes. He has His
   purposes. "God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son,
   that whoever believes on Him should not perish, but have everlasting
   life." The Lord told Paul at Corinth, when Paul was all but giving way
   to our common unbelief--He told him to stay there and not to hold his
   peace. Why? "Because I have much people in this city." And emboldened
   and encouraged by that, he stayed there a year and six months! Well,
   those purposes which thus come out in the Scriptures of Truth which are
   possessed by us--those purposes are to be accomplished! "By two
   immutable things in which it is impossible that God should lie, His Son
   is to see of the travail of His soul until He is satisfied. God is in
   Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." But now, how are those
   purposes accomplished? Mark! "Go into all the world, and preach the
   Gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized shall be
   saved; he who believes not shall be damned." Mark again--"It has
   pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them who believe."
   Mark again--"Whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
   How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed; how shall
   they believe in Him of whom they have not heard, and how shall they
   hear without a preached" Mark again--"There is one Mediator between God
   and man--the Man, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to
   be testified in due time. Whereof I am ordained a preacher." Do you see
   my drift? The preaching, obviously, demonstratively, stands connected
   with the purpose, which cannot fail--bound up with the Everlasting
   Covenant which is ordered in all things and sure! "The Word of the Lord
   endures forever, and this is the Word which by the Gospel is preached
   unto you." I think therefore of our friend occupying this place, and of
   other men occupying similar places, and I take up with Paul's Jubilate
   again! He will stand here, and this will be the plea, "As though God
   did beseech you by me." That will be the plea, "As though God did
   beseech you by me."

   And do I speak to men tonight who do not understand as soon as they
   reflect how such a plea must chasten the preacher; how it must humble
   and yet dignify him; how, if he has a soul, it must bring out his soul
   and all that is within? "God by me beseeching you." What man so
   affected and impressed can be careless, heedless, prayerless, selfish?
   Oh, the plea does wonderful work for the minister! And what does it do
   for a people who will listen? Why, it arrests them, takes hold upon
   them, keeps hold of them, and God being present with His blessing,
   never lets them go! And what does it do in regard to the Spirit of all
   Grace, the Author and Giver of all the gifts you need? That plea
   adopted, earnestly and devoutly used, will bring the preacher into the
   fullest sympathy with the Holy Spirit of promise, as he stands here
   pleading, expostulating, comforting, encouraging, warning--with the
   plea moving everything within him, and everything around him, the
   Divine purposes are recollected and they are accomplished--until he and
   the brotherhood will have to say, "Who has begotten us these? the young
   men and maidens, the old men and children, and the strangers who are
   within your gates." Yes, and let us hope that some of you who have
   heard all the sermons up to now and have never surrendered yourselves
   to Christ--that you will be given to them in answer to their prayer;
   not the units, but the groups; not the individuals, but the many, born
   "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
   but of God." Oh, what will this place be then? Brethren, the angels
   will have large employment in this Tabernacle! Heaven will have much to
   do in what is passing here! "For God is not a man that He should lie,
   nor the son of man that He should repent. Has He said it, and shall He
   not do it, has He spoken, and shall He not make it good?" Of Him, and
   through Him, and to Him are all things, and He will come and stand by
   our Brother here, proving Himself to be "God over all, blessed for
   evermore."

   3. Then, lastly--God has been pleased formally to identify the
   preaching of Christ with the manifestation of His sympathies.

   Why, we could tell of much already--we could tell of much which has
   been done in our own time, and not upon a small scale either. But let
   us rather remember what God did in the earlier times of our evangelical
   history. What happened at Jerusalem? Believers were the more added unto
   the Lord, multitudes both of men and women, and "a great company of the
   priests were obedient to the faith." What happened at Ephesus? The name
   of the Lord Jesus Christ was glorified, and "the men who had used
   curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all
   men, and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand
   pieces of silver." What happened all through Macedonia? "God makes us,"
   said the Apostle, "to triumph everywhere in Christ." And what happened
   upon the larger scale through proud and philosophic Greece, and through
   lordly and domineering Rome? Why, we have it on the testimony of our
   enemies, that the preaching turned the world upside down! The
   preachingdid, mind you! Before the preacher came, everything was
   earthly, and sensual, and devilish; after the preacher came, there was
   the alteration, the improvement, the renovation of which we speak. Not
   by the preacher's unassisted, original, independent effort--the
   excellence of the power was of God, and not of man! Mighty through God
   were the preachers throughout Greece and Rome, and Asia Minor, and
   mighty, too, through God will the preacher be here! Say that London is
   as corrupt as Corinth was, that it is as worldly as Rome was, that it
   is as rationalistic as Athens was, that it is as dead set against
   Christ and His Gospel as Jeru- salem was, and you cannot very well say
   more than that. Yet He that stood by the preacher in those places, and
   in those times, will stand by the preacher here! "Go, go, stand and
   speak in the Temple all the words of this life." On Sabbath mornings he
   will hear that, and at other times besides, and when his courage and
   his heart may fail, he will hear besides, "Go, for I have much people
   in this city;" and so sent, he goes, and so going, what ensues?
   Participation of the Divine Nature is vouchsafed unto the people.
   sympathy with the Divine Purposes is induced within the people,
   communications of Divine Grace are given to the people, life
   everlasting becomes possessed by the people; "Heirs of God" are they,
   and "joint-heirs in Jesus Christ."

   Brothers and Sisters, I speak boldly as I ought to speak. It is a vile
   and wicked calumny that our Doctrines of grace lead to licentiousness.
   Never was there anything more palpably contrary to the Truth of God!
   And all the history of the Church being my proof tonight--where Christ
   is preached as He ought to be preached, after the Apostolic manner--
   neither licentiousness nor wickedness of any kind, will abound there!
   No, there will be honest dealing, kindly neighborhood, patriotic
   loyalty, world-wide philanthropy, truth-telling speech; there will be a
   race of men loving God with all their hearts, and therefore their
   neighbor as themselves! You cannot alter that order; you will never get
   a man to love his neighbor as himself till he has first of all loved
   God! And what we are looking for, and hoping and praying for being done
   is that order will supervene here. Loving the Lord their God with all
   their hearts, therefore the people will love their neighbors as
   themselves; and not being the amended ones, but the regenerated ones;
   not being the improved ones, but the twice-born ones; not being the
   corrected ones but the newly-created ones--the law will have no need to
   arm itself for them, justice will never need to be on the alert for
   them, humanity will never need to tremble for them! No, and the purest
   chastity will never need to blush for them. Their bodies will be the
   temples of the Holy Spirit, and their members will be the members of
   Christ, sacred to His service in every way in which they can be
   employed. The tree having been made good, there will be fruit unto
   holiness, and the end of that shall be everlasting life!

   Well then, who does notrejoice? Everybody responds, "I rejoice." We all
   rejoice because of what will be done by the preaching of Christ here!
   We know that this place will be the birthplace of precious souls
   through successive generations; we know that this place will be like a
   great big human heart, throbbing, pulsating with beneficence and
   benevolence obtained directly from the Cross of Christ; and this great
   big human heart will be propelling far and near, a thousand influences
   which shall be for "Glory to God in the highest, for peace on earth,
   and good will towards men." It will be none other than the House of God
   and the very gate of Heaven!

   If indeed, the preaching were of another kind from what we know it will
   be, it would be a very different thing; if I thought the preaching here
   was to be the preaching of Christ robbed of His Divinity--the pure and
   perfect man to admiration, but not the co-equal and the co-eternal Son
   of God--I could not rejoice! But I know that it will be preaching in
   which Christ's proper Deity will be spoken out unambiguously, and
   unequivocally, and systematically. I know that He will be declared here
   to be the Friend that "sticks closer than a brother," and at the same
   time, our Lord and our God. If I thought that the preaching here was to
   be the preaching of Christ as merely an example and not as a Sacrifice,
   or as a sacrifice in some vague, indeterminate, rationalistic,
   deceitful, false sense of submitting His own will to His Father's, I
   could not rejoice. But I believe that it will be the preaching of
   Christ's propitiatory Sacrifice, as a proper sin-offering, and that
   these words will bring out the aspect of the case as presented here--

   "He bore that we might never bear His Father's righteous ire."

   If I thought that the preaching here was to be the preaching of Christ
   with any hesitancy as to His power, or His readiness to save the
   transgressor, I would not rejoice; but I believe that there will be no
   approach to such hesitancy, that it will be Christ with His precious
   blood cleansing from all sin, Christ able to save even to the uttermost
   all who come unto God by Him. If I believed that it would be the
   preaching of Christ independently or apart from His jurisdiction; if I
   thought it would be represented here that Christ had nothing to do with
   the lives, and the conduct of His people--I would not rejoice. I
   believe, on the contrary, that His royal and kingly Character will be
   insisted upon, and that every Believer will be told, "At your peril do
   you make Christ the minister of sin." If I believed that the preaching
   here was about to be at variance with the scholarship, the
   thoughtfulness, the uprightness, the spiritual-mindedness, of the past
   ages of the Church, I could not rejoice. I believe, on the contrary,
   that it will be preaching in strictest harmony with the sound
   evangelical scholarship, and with the lofty evangelical integrity, and
   with the concordant evangelical orthodoxy of all the ages that are
   past! I stand here as I would stand in some other places that I know to
   resent the imputation, and to show cause, if necessary, for the
   resentment that in preaching Christ as we do, we have no scholarship,
   no talent, no honesty, no spiritual-mindedness on our part. Brothers
   and Sisters, it is not so! I speak unto wise men, and ask you to judge
   what I say.

   If I believed that the preaching here would regard all godly mystery as
   a scandal, and all godly boldness as a calamity, and all godly
   aggressiveness as a nuisance, and all godly joyfulness as an offense, I
   certainly could not rejoice; but I believe that the preaching here will
   hold all godly mystery in veneration, will strengthen and enforce all
   godly boldness, will honorably vindicate all godly aggressiveness, and
   will give, on behalf of godly joyfulness, the conclusive argumentation
   and the kindly and the pathetic appeal. And so believing, I ask again
   whether we shall not close our gathering, our service, tonight, with
   one great song and Psalm of thanksgiving to the Lord our God!

   The maxim, the watchword, the war cry here will be Revelation, not
   intuition; faith, not imagination; the Scriptures, not tradition; the
   Gospel, not philosophy; the Person, not the proxy; Grace, not merit;
   the Cross, not the crucifix; the Savior, not the Church! I, believing
   that, and knowing that, hearing indeed from all the brotherhood
   constituting the Church here, a great, unanimous, hearty, irrepressible
   AMEN, as I am thus speaking on their behalf--let us, I say, take the
   cup of salvation, and let us call upon the name of the Lord! There may
   be others, I dare say there are, who have to sing the melancholy
   dirge--we have to sing the exultant Psalm! They may, if they will,
   chant the lamentable elegy-- we mean to chant the triumphant Canticle!
   They may go and perform, if they must, the service for the dead--we
   come here to celebrate the great festival of a living Gospel, a living
   Church and a living Savior--

   "Let the vain world pronounce its shame,
   And fling their scandals on Your cause;
   We come to boast our Savior's name
   And make our triumphs in His Cross!
   With joy we tell a scoffing age,
   He wwho was dead has left the tomb!
   He lives above their utmost rage,
   And we are waiting till He come."

   Christ is preached! Therein do I rejoice, and therein I will rejoice!
   And now, Brothers and Sisters, let us have the rejoicing in a joyous
   collection. I catch that response of yours, and I catch it as an honest
   man with his eyes upon honest men; and if you go--in the main, at all
   events--with what I have now been saying, I ask you that you will give
   the evidence of your sympathy with me, and then and thereby the
   evidence of your sympathy with our Brothers and Sisters, in making your
   collection tonight the outward and the visible sign of a gladness of
   your inmost soul, which amounts, approximately at least, to the joy
   that is unspeakable and full of glory!
     __________________________________________________________________

                                Opening Services

   Tuesday Evening, March 26, 1861

   MEETING OF THE CONTRIBUTORS.

   On Tuesday evening, March 26th, the first of the Public Meetings in
   connection with the opening of the Tabernacle took place. It was
   limited exclusively to the Contributors to the Building Fund, of whom
   more than 3,000 were present. Up to the moment Sir HENRY HAVELOCK took
   the Chair, the platform below the pulpit presented a busy scene, as it
   was here the collecting cards had to be turned in. Some half-dozen
   gentlemen officiating as clerks were for about an hour unceasingly
   engaged in receiving and recording the contributions handed in by some
   hundreds of volunteer collectors, the respective amounts varying from a
   few pence up to many pounds. Rich and poor vied with each other, and it
   would be hard to say which excelled. The whole matter seemed to awaken
   a personal interest in each individual.

   When the period arrived for commencing the business of the meeting, Mr.
   SPURGEON gave out the third hymn, which had been composed expressly for
   the occasion --

   "Sing to the Lord with heart and voice,
   You children of His Sovereign voice;
   The work achieved, the temple raised,
   Now be our God devoutly praised.
   For all the treasure freely brought--
   For all the toil in gladness worked--
   For warmth of zeal and purpose strong--
   Wake we today the thankful song.
   Lord of the temple! Once disowned,
   But now in worlds of light enthroned--
   Your Glory let Your servants see
   Who dedicate this house to Thee!
   What if the world still disallows--
   Our corner and our top-stone You!
   Your shame and death and risen joy,
   Shall here our ceaseless thought employ.
   Be Your dear name like ointment shed
   O'er every soul, on every head.
   Make glorious, oh our Savior King,
   The place where thus Your chosen sing.
   More grand the temple and the strain
   More sweet, when we Your Heaven shall gain;
   And bid, for realms where angels dwell,
   Our Tabernacles here, farewell!"

   After offering up a few words of prayer and reading portions of the
   35th and 36th of Exodus, descriptive of the offerings brought to the
   Tabernacle by the Jews in the wilderness, he briefly introduced Sir
   Henry Havelock, the Chairman for the evening.

   The CHAIRMAN said he hoped he would be excused if he were at a loss how
   to address such a meeting as this, because he supposed that a similar
   assembly in a building like this had never been addressed before in
   England. The kind way in which they had greeted him gave him
   encouragement, and was sufficient to enable him to give utterance to
   thoughts, which, but for their hearty welcome, he would hardly have
   power to express. He had been expressing a doubt to a friend near him,
   that he would not be able to get through the duties which devolved upon
   him satisfactorily, but his friend remarked to him that this was not an
   occasion when speaking was required, for the occasion spoke for itself.
   He thought it did speak for itself. They could not look around that
   magnificent building without feeling that it was entirely of God's
   doing. The progress which had been made in that work of God was the
   most extraordinary thing in modern Church history! It began two and a
   half years ago with fear and trembling; but from the first they had
   been triumphantly advancing, and they had seen the work grow larger and
   larger, until now they saw it completed. It was impossible to come to
   any other conclusion but that God had worked mightily with His people.
   Then let them look at their pastor, and at the different phases through
   which he had passed, and they would agree with him that God had been
   with him in each of them. At one time it was said the work would break
   down in a month, but it did not come to pass; it was also said that it
   was a passing excitement, and would soon come to an end, but he thought
   their appearance there did not look like passing excitement! What
   excitement there might be before the end of the meeting, he could not
   foretell; but if they were really mad, as some people said, there was
   certainly a great deal of "method in their madness." He was no orator,
   and they should not expect a long address from him, but he thought they
   ought to thank God for the blessings which He had showered upon that
   building at each stage of its erection. There had been nothing like it
   accomplished before! Let them hope it was but the beginning of many
   such undertakings destined to be carried to a similarly successful end.
   Their pastor, in speaking to him of the building, pointed out some
   deficiencies in the inner room. He said that everything was not as yet
   quite comfortable, and remarked that it was like a newly married couple
   coming to a new house. Now, he (the Chairman) hoped the simile would be
   carried a little further, and that the church would not only be like
   the newly married couple in a new house, but like the noble matron who
   had become the mother of many children! They had heard that the small
   sum of £3,000 was required for the complete payment of every liability
   connected with past expenditure, and from what he saw there that night,
   he felt convinced that all would be speedily given. And when no more
   should be needed, that need not prevent them from displaying their
   generosity in the cause which they had at heart. They had just had a
   precedent in Scripture brought before them where the people of old were
   told they need not bring any more to the Tabernacle; but they had not
   been told so there! He therefore hoped they would still contribute to
   the work until they had accomplished everything which they desired. It
   was intended that after the building itself had been paid for, the
   remainder of the money which might be raised would be devoted to the
   education of young men intended for the ministry; in addition to that,
   there was accommodation beneath the church for about 2,000 scholars;
   and he was sure that was a purpose for which their contributions would
   still be given, even though the money might not be needed for the mere
   bricks and mortar of the structure. He trusted they would excuse him
   saying more; but he could not conclude without thanking them kindly for
   so patiently listening to the remarks he had made.

   The REV. C. H. SPURGEON said they were all aware that there was a happy
   contest between himself and his congregation. It was a very bad thing
   certainly for a newly married couple to fall out, especially in the
   scarcely furnished home, but it so happened that the contest in their
   case was as to which should bring the better dowry to stock the house
   with. The minister should in every case do his share of the work, or
   how could he with any conscience appeal to his flock? Now, he had
   undertaken that he would bring in £1,000 between the month of January
   and the opening of the building. He had fulfilled his pledge; in fact,
   he had gone somewhat beyond it. They might remember, that on the last
   occasion they left off with a drawn battle. Having two or three bankers
   behind him, who generously came to his aid, he had outstripped the
   congregation by some 30 shillings. However, he considered it an
   undecided battle, and if they could beat him tonight, he would be very
   glad. He then read over a list of the various contributions he had
   received, amounting to £1,170 14s. There was still, he said, a shot or
   two in the locker to win the victory with, even should their industry
   and zeal excel in their results what he had accomplished. They might
   say the amount was £1,200 and it was matter of wonder and thankfulness
   that the bazaar had realized a clear £1,200. He ought to state, and he
   should not be saying more than should be said, that there were many
   ladies in the congregation who had been working very, very hard, and
   had always been at the side of his beloved wife whenever there had been
   a meeting for work; still, the main anxiety and arrangement had rested
   upon her, and had it not been for those ladies, who, like the women of
   Israel, brought the labor of their hands, the work could never have
   been so singular a success. Of old it was written (Exo 35:25, 26)--"And
   all the women who were wise-hearted did spin with their hands, and
   brought that which they had spun, both of blue and of purple, and of
   scarlet, and of fine linen. And all the women whose heart stirred them
   up in wisdom spun goats' hair." So now they did the same. Thus had the
   willing-hearted people of God, each in their own way, brought an
   offering unto the Lord of gold, and silver, and copper, and blue, and
   purple, and scarlet so that the house of the Lord might be completed.
   So large a sum as had been realized spoke well, both with respect to
   individual co-operation, and to the sympathy of the Christian public.
   The result which they had attained was exceedingly satisfactory,
   because almost every farthing which they required had been raised. He
   would not say the whole of it; but they would, no doubt, have the
   amount in a few minutes. The top-stone would soon be brought forth with
   shouts of praise! How had such a result been attained? The reply was,
   that there had been three main elements in it. The first was faith in
   God. At the beginning of the year, they needed £4,000 and an entry to
   this effect would be found in the Church book, signed by himself and
   the deacons--"This Church needs rather more than £4,000 to enable it to
   open the New Tabernacle, free of all debt; it humbly asks this temporal
   mercy of God, and believes that for Jesus' sake, the prayer will be
   heard and the gift bestowed, as witness our hands." As for himself, he
   never had a doubt about the opening of that place free from debt since
   he attached his name to that entry. The work in which they had been
   engaged had been a work of faith from the beginning to the end; the
   Lord has fulfilled His promise to the letter--for according to our
   faith has it been done to us. Why not have faith in God for temporals?
   Will He ever allow His own cause to lag for lack of means? In this
   case, as the need grew, the supply increased; as the proportions of the
   project were enlarged, the liberality of the Christian public
   increased; and even during the last three or four weeks, he had been
   amazed at the contributions which he had received. Contributions had
   come by post varying in amount from pounds to a few shillings; they had
   come from America, from Australia, and from almost every country in the
   world, from men of all ranks, and persons of every denomination!
   Universal sympathy had been shown, and most of the donations from
   readers of the weekly sermons were accompanied by letters so
   affectionate and encouraging, that it was a happy thing that such an
   opportunity had been given for the utterance of up to now unknown
   Christian love! Faith in God had done much of that which had been
   accomplished, and unto a faithful God be Glory. But "faith without
   works is dead"--very dead indeed in chapel building! One must work
   there, and he could say he had toiled as hard as any man could to
   accomplish his purpose.

   The house had been built for God, and his sole objective with regard to
   its future income was that it might be applied to the tuition and
   training of young men as ministers, that thus the Church in the
   Tabernacle might be a helper to many of the Churches of Christ. But
   besides individual energy there had been a third thing, combination of
   numberslaboring with one aim. Many poor persons had brought offerings
   which they could ill afford to spare, and no one could ever know how
   many of them had received back, indirectly from himself, the amount
   they had given, but which they would have been grieved if he had
   refused. He publicly thanked all his generous friends throughout the
   world for their cooperation, and he would thank them all, individually,
   if it were possible to do so. Before the Chairman sat down, Mr.
   Spurgeon paid a warm tribute to the memory of General Havelock, the
   Chairman's father. They might not, he said, be aware that there were
   only two dissenting lords, and those two were Baptists; there were only
   two dissenting baronets, and those two were Baptists also. Both of them
   had earned their titles fairly--those were Sir Samuel Morton Peto, and
   Sir Henry Havelock; the one the king of spades, and the other the
   savior of our empire in India. He was sure the country would for many
   years remember the name of Havelock. As a Christian minister, he was no
   apologist for war, but it was a righteous cause in which Havelock was
   engaged; it was rather to save than to subdue; to rescue women and
   children than to slaughter men; but he was sure that when his fame as a
   warrior should cease to be heard, his name as a Christian would live.
   He was glad to see Sir Henry Havelock with his father's people in a
   Baptist Tabernacle; he hoped they would see him for years to come, and
   that the blessing of the God of his father might richly rest upon him.

   Mr. MUIR said there was no one who attended the last meeting held two
   months ago but must have felt a desire to do all they could to show
   their zeal in raising that building, and he was very glad the wish had
   now been accomplished. At the time to which he referred, it was his
   intention to take a journey to the north, and he thought he would do
   what he could to further the work. He accordingly took a number of
   cards with him in order to collect contributions. Some of his friends
   gave very liberally, although he must confess that he had more
   difficulty in obtaining contributions from others. He then read his
   list of contributions, which amounted to £123 14s.

   The REV. F. TUCKER of Camden Road Chapel, said he could echo every word
   that had fallen from Mr. Spurgeon with regard to the gentleman who
   occupied the chair that evening. Long, long indeed would it be before
   to any Baptist, or to any Christian, or to any Englishman, the name of
   Havelock would be a common or indifferent word. He had himself come
   there that evening partly from sympathy, for he knew what it was to
   have to do with a chapel debt; and although the debt upon his chapel
   was only about one-tenth part of that which rested upon theirs, he only
   hoped it would cost him one-tenth part of the trouble! One of the most
   difficult things in the world to deal with was the tail of a debt. They
   might bury the body of the animal, but if the tail still was above
   ground--it was like the tail of the rattlesnake--it made a great and
   formidable, and alarming noise although the body had been safely
   interred. Now, that night, he understood they intended to bury the
   rattlesnake, tail and all, and over that grave no one might write
   "Resurgam." He had come, however, personally to congratulate them. It
   was not the first time that he had stood within these walls. He was at
   the first public meeting held in that place some few months ago. It was
   then in its deshabilleand yet he looked around the place with
   admiration and he felt, as he told his Brother Spurgeon, as he supposed
   the captain of some ordinary seafaring steamer must have felt when he
   first stood in the hold of the Great Eastern. The Great Eastern was now
   on the Gridiron in Milford harbor. They intended tonight to float their
   magnificent vessel off the Gridiron, and might God grant her a long and
   prosperous voyage. He congratulated them not merely on the size of the
   great building, but also on its beauty.

   He did not think it was anything too large. His own chapel would seat
   about 1,100 persons, and it was large enough for him. But if John
   Bunyan were on the earth, should they like to confine him to a little
   company of 1,100 persons? If George Whitfield were on the earth, should
   they like to limit him to a little company of eleven hundred? Now they
   had got Charles Spurgeon on earth--should they shut him up in a little
   company of eleven hundred? As to the beauty of the building, no words
   he could use could adequately describe it. He did, from his heart,
   congratulate them on the size and beauty of the edifice. But he had
   also to congratulate them upon another matter--upon the Doctrines that
   would be preached in that grand building! He was not there to give
   account of every word that his Brother Spurgeon had ever uttered, nor
   of every aspect of every Doctrine which he had presented; but as an
   older man than his Brother, he was sure he would not be thought
   impertinent if he said that he, with many of his Brethren throughout
   the country, had watched Mr. Spurgeon's course with intense and
   prayerful interest. They could see his growth and development towards a
   liberality and a symmetry of creed which had filled all their hearts
   with gratitude and joy! Just as dear Jonathan George--dear sainted
   Brother--just as he had at the meeting to which he (the speaker) had
   referred, there were some people who wanted to keep the eagle in a very
   small cage; but he said it was no use doing that--the eagle would
   either break his wings or break the cage. Well, they rejoiced that
   night that it was not the wings of the eagle which had been broken, but
   the cage; and they now saw the noble bird careening through the
   firmament in the shining light of the Sun of Righteousness!

   He looked upon his Brother Spurgeon as one who upheld the Sovereignty
   of God and who, on the other hand, declared the responsibility of man.
   He preached that never could the sinner repent without the aid of the
   Holy Spirit, and yet he called upon every sinner to repent and believe
   the Gospel. Especially did his Brother make prominent the grand
   Doctrine of the atoning Sacrifice of Christ, and the kindred Doctrine
   of Justification by Faith in the Righteousness of the Lord and Savior.
   He took it that the central object which would be exhibited by his
   Brother in that place would be the Cross and nothing but the Cross. The
   central object would not be the roll of the eternal decrees, not the
   tables of the moral Law, not the laver of Baptism, not the throne of
   judgment--the central object would be the Cross of the Redeemer! Right
   and left they would find the roll of the eternal decrees, the tables of
   the Law of God, the laver of Baptism, and the judgment throne, but the
   CROSS of Jesus would stand in the midst, shedding its pure and
   harmonizing light over all besides. There was many a building in the
   Established Church of this land where they might enter, and they would
   hear as clear an exposition of Gospel Truth as they would from Mr.
   Spurgeon, but in many another building of the Established Church, all
   was priestly power, and sacramental efficacy. In many another, all that
   was preached was reason, intuition, the wisdom of man and not of God.
   And yet all those men had subscribed to the same articles; all those
   men belonged to the same Church. Come within this building, whenever
   they might, he believed they would hear nothing of sacramental efficacy
   on the one side, or of man's reason or intuition on the other; but
   their dear Brother would say that he had determined not to know
   anything among them but Christ, and Him Crucified.

   One word more and he had done. They were living in the days of "Essays
   and Reviews"--living in the days of a Nationalism, which, for his own
   part, he considered far more unscriptural than any Romanism. He wished
   to explain himself; he meant to say for himself that he would rather be
   a poor humble-minded member of the Church of Rome, believing too much,
   than he would be one of those modern philosophers, too wise to believe
   anything at all. With this modern philosophy he had no patience! The
   Bible, according to those men, was an old-fashioned book which had its
   value 2,000 years ago, but now its value was diminished by all the
   length of those 2,000 years. They had now outshot the Bible, said these
   men--they had got ahead of the Bible! They were now more intelligent
   and wiser than the Bible. Well, let them take it as those men said, and
   then he (the speaker) would add, let the venerable Book have fair play
   after all. If by it those men were so much wiser than they would have
   been, then, he said, it was only fair that they should strip themselves
   of all they had learned from the Bible--with regard to the attributes
   of God, the origin of the universe, the standard of morals, the destiny
   of spirits beyond the grave--and if they did that, he could fancy he
   saw them peeling off coat after coat, like an onion, and getting "small
   by degrees" but not "beautifully less," and he did not know what would
   remain of them. Why, in ancient Greece there were intellects as subtle,
   and spirits as profound as any in modern times. He believed that on
   some lines of philosophical inquiry, none had been able to surpass
   them; but when those men entered on the Doctrines of theology, how far
   did they get? Why, just as far as this, "the world by wisdom knew not
   God." That was as far as they got! The youngest Sunday school child, he
   was going to say, knew more about God, than Socrates and Plato, and if
   these men knew more about God than Socrates and Plato, where did they
   get their knowledge, except where the little Sunday scholar got his,
   from the Scriptures! It was easy to stand on the Mount of Revelation,
   and then to spurn the ground upon which they stood; but let them cut
   that ground from under them, and down they would go into the pit of
   Hell! There was, he continued, in ancient Athens an old cynic who went
   into the marketplace with his lantern kindled in the full blaze of day,
   and said, in the Market of Athens, "I am come to look for an honest
   man." And all Athens smiled at the satire. But suppose he had said, "I
   have come here at noon with my lantern to light up the scenery, to
   bring to view those grand hills, and this glorious city, and that blue
   sky?" Would not the cry have rung through Athens, "Diogenes is mad"?
   What, then, is the insanity of the men who, in the full noon-day of the
   Gospel illumination, bring forward the little lamp of their own
   intuition and say, while turning their back upon the Sun of
   Righteousness shining in His strength, "See what our little lantern can
   show? See what a vast circumference it illuminates?" But oh, let that
   Sun but withdraw His shining, and the pall of night come down upon the
   scenery, and what a very twinkle would their lantern be in that abyss
   of darkness!

   The REV. J. BIGWOOD said he could not fail to express his deep
   gratitude to God that He had permitted such a building as the present
   to be erected in which the glorious Gospel in all its purity and
   simplicity would be preached. He had been wondering why it should be
   called a tabernacle--a tent--a place that was to pass away. Surely if
   there was a mansion in London, this was the one which would remain when
   all others had passed away! Was it not rather a temple than a
   tabernacle? Regarded in an ecclesiastical point of view, it was a
   marvel that such a building should be built and opened free from debt.
   What was the secret? If was the faith which the pastor and Church had
   exhibited in the mighty power and goodness of God. The minister was not
   alone; God was with him, and he with God; He walked with God, and
   relied upon His power, and God had granted him the desire of his heart.
   He congratulated them with his whole heart upon what they had
   accomplished, and he hoped that God's blessing would rest upon them,
   and that thousands might there be born-again to God.

   The REV. J. RUSSELL congratulated Mr. Spurgeon and his friends on the
   completion of the Metropolitan Tabernacle at Newington. Its being
   erected so near the Borough made him feel a deep interest in it, for he
   was born in the Borough, and knew the whole neighborhood well. Close
   by, in former days, there stood the Fishmongers' Almshouses with their
   pretty gardens, and there his beloved father used to go and speak to
   some of the aged inmates of the love of Christ. And he hoped the
   members of this Church would visit the poor all around, and make known
   to them the glad tidings of mercy through Christ. It was called a
   Tabernacle, which curiously enough in its derivation meant a little
   wooden house--taberna, a wooden house, tabernaculum, its
   diminutive--but the general sense is an habitation, and its sense in
   Scripture, the habitation of God. They had erected a large and
   magnificent house, but its size, its splendor, its elegance, its
   beautiful columns, would avail nothing if it were not the habitation of
   God. But he believed it would be, and that would be its glory. He
   rejoiced that a place of that size had been erected. There were large
   theatres, large Roman Catholic chapels, why should there not be large
   chapels where great numbers of people might be brought together to hear
   the Gospel? He hoped there would be others like this. They had showed
   great zeal and generosity; it was a coincidence rather amazing that the
   poll-tax computed on the children of Israel, for the erection of the
   Tabernacle in the wilderness, amounted to about £35,000 and the cost of
   their tabernacle was not much less! It was entitled to the name of
   Metropolitan, for it drew its hearers from all quarters, and the
   results of this great effort will affect not only the metropolis, but
   the world. The numerous Sunday school children there instructed would
   grow up and carry with them to many distant parts, the good Seed of the
   Kingdom of God. He thanked God for what Mr. Spurgeon and his friends
   had been enabled to accomplish, and he trusted they would have the
   continual and abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

   Mr. SPURGEON said they might get their hymn books ready; but he would
   first give them a statement of the liabilities that had been sent up to
   him. They needed for the builder, £3,000; for the architect, £200; for
   gas, £160; for the gates and boundaries, £300; for the treasurer, £100,
   matting, carpets, etc., £350, for fittings, furniture, etc., about
   £100; which made £4,200, or thereabouts. These calculations were made
   so that they would meet all demands; but the pledge he made to the
   public was that they should enter that place free of debt and that
   would be accomplished when rather more than £3,000 had been paid in,
   for the other matters could wait awhile, and would not be undertaken
   until the funds were in hand to warrant their being done. He read
   additional lists of contributions received from various sources, and
   gave the following abstract of the whole--he had brought in over
   £1,500; his wife and her lady friends, £1,200;the people that night,
   about £771. Clear proceeds of the lecture by Mr. Layard, £100. The
   collection on the previous day amounted to rather more than £120,
   making a total of £3,700. Mr. Spurgeon then called upon the whole
   assembly to sing the Doxology; the congregation immediately rose and
   sang with great fervor those words of praise to the God of Heaven, and
   repeated them with enthusiasm at the request of the rejoicing pastor.

   The REV. C. STOVEL was then called upon. They had maintained, he said
   their operations with a constant living zeal, and he wished them to
   receive the affectionate assurance of his joy in their success. Yet he
   could not join in any flattery that could lead them from the point
   where zeal, care and discretion would be required. Not a little would
   it require of personal effort, and of wisdom to maintain the
   institutions in this place in due order and in effective operation; not
   a little would be required of patient reliance upon God before the
   agencies committed to their trust should have been brought out for use.
   They must become learners at the feet of Jesus, and while they kept the
   Cross in the center, as Mr. Tucker had reminded them, and promised in
   their behalf, they were to remember that above that Cross--the Cross
   never to be forgotten--there would be a living Savior before whom they
   must all bow. Reference had been made to some of the features of there
   own time. He wished not himself to enter the Establishment and define
   its various features. He had read the book, or nearly the whole of it,
   to which reference had been made. He besought them not to turn to that
   book to awaken a theological odium about it; but to study practically
   in the testing house of daily life, the points which it threw out into
   public light. His impression was, that there was more to be dealt with
   than at first sight might be suspected, and they might be assured, that
   in the present time they stood in a position where the docility of a
   learner was much required to bring the Truth of Heaven home to the
   direction of our present affairs. If they would take his advice--he
   presented it only for what it was worth--it was that they should
   entangle themselves as little as possible with the theories of the
   past, or with the speculations of the present--but to keep themselves
   in thought, in heart, and in action, free to follow the commandments of
   Him who lived and ruled forever. For his part he could not help
   thinking that the personality of our Christianity was precisely the
   point on which their thoughts should always rest. The reverend
   gentleman enlarged upon this topic, and concluded by assuring the
   meeting that they had the most tender and sincerest desires of his
   heart for their spiritual welfare.

   Mr. SPURGEON then stated that while the last speaker had been
   addressing them, Sir Henry Havelock had been compelled by his camp
   duties to retire, and Mr. Moore of the eminent firm of Copestake and
   Moore had occupied the chair at his request. He should, by the
   chairman's leave, depart from the ordinary rules of public meetings, by
   putting two or three motions to them. The first was that their hearty
   and sincere thanks should be tendered to Sir Henry Have-lock for
   presiding over them, coupled with their kindest wishes, and earnest
   prayers for his esteemed mother, Lady Have-lock, and the whole family.
   The motion was carried by acclamation.

   Mr. SPURGEON then proposed a vote of thanks to the architect, and the
   builder for their joint skill and generosity. The builder, he was happy
   to tell them, had become a deacon of the church; and in referring to
   the architect, he remarked that the chapel would be a model for others,
   whether large or small. The motion was carried in the midst of loud
   applause.

   Mr. POCOCK, the architect, and Mr. HIGGS, the builder, both returned
   thanks and were warmly applauded.

   Mr. SPURGEON said he wished them to signify their hearty recognition of
   the splendid Christian generosity of which they had been partakers by
   proposing a vote of thanks to the contributors to that magnificent
   building. The motion was carried by acclamation.

   Mr. SPURGEON: Now, my Friends, I would ask you tonight to offer one
   more prayer for me than you have offered before. What am I to do with
   such a work as this upon me? It is not the getting up of this building;
   it is not the launching of the vessel--it is keeping her afloat! Who is
   sufficient for these things? How shall I, a young man, a feeble child,
   go in and out before this people? Blessed be God, there is a glorious
   answer to this question! "Mystrength is sufficient for you; Mystrength
   shall be made perfect in your weakness." That arm which has upheld us
   up to now, shows no sign of palsy! Those eyes which has smiled upon us
   until now, have not grown dim. The promise has not failed! We have had
   this day another pledge of His faithfulness, and another foretaste of
   His future goodness. In the name of the Lord would I set up my banner
   tonight. He has been Jehovah-Jireh here; now, tonight we would call
   this place Jehovah-Nissi--for here has the Lord's banner been
   displayed! But, Brothers and Sisters, as to the future we must ask for
   the blessing, or we shall not have it. If you ever prayed for me
   before, pray for me tonight! Oh, my dear Brothers and Sisters, upon
   whose hearts I have been borne so long--you who have listened to me so
   patiently, and have sometimes had your souls comforted, do not forget
   me! Of all men the most pitiable if you take away your prayers, and if,
   in consequences, God take away His Spirit--of all men the most happyif
   you will bear me in your arms; if the Lord shall still be my Strength
   and my Shield! More than I have done to advance His Gospel, I cannot
   promise to do, for God knows I have preached beyond my strength, and
   worked and toiled as much as one frame could do. But I hope that in
   answer to your prayers I may become more prayerful, more faithful, and
   have more power to wrestle with God for man, and more energy to wrestle
   with man for God. I pray you, as though I asked it of you for my very
   life, do this night commend me to God! If you have ever been edified,
   encouraged, or comforted through me, I beseech you carry me before God.
   And especially you who are my spiritual sons and daughters, begotten of
   me by the power of the Holy Spirit--you who have been reclaimed from
   sin; you who were wanderers in the wild waste until Jesus met with you
   in the Music Hall, in Exeter Hall, or in Park Street--you, above
   all--you mustpray for me! Oh, God, we pray You, let multitudes of the
   vilest of the vile here be saved! I had rather die this night, on this
   spot, and end my career than lose your prayers. You aged members,
   deacons and Elders, will you not be more earnest than ever? My younger
   Brothers and Sisters, my co-equals in age, comrades in battle, you,
   young men, and women, who are strong to overcome the Wicked One, stand
   up with me, shoulder to shoulder, and give me your help! Let no strife
   and no division creep in among us! Let no vainglory mar our deeds! Let
   nothing be done which could drive away the sacred dove, and rob us of
   the Presence of the Holy Spirit! Brothers and Sisters, pray for us, in
   the name of all the ministry, I say, pray Brethren, pray for us! I
   think the ministers here would rise as one man, and say with me,
   standing as I do in the most perilous of positions, "Brethren pray for
   me." For oh, if I fall, what dishonor to the Holy Church at large? If
   your pastor sins, what shame! If this Church becomes a failure, what
   dishonor! Great God, we lay hold upon Your promise tonight! We prayed
   last Sabbath evening, "If Your spirit go not with us, carry us not up
   hence." And now we grasp the promise, and by faith would we believe in
   its fulfillment--"My Presence shall go with you, and I will give you
   rest."

   Mr. SPURGEON concluded by proposing a vote of thanks to Mr. Moore, who
   occupied the chair; and it was also carried by acclamation.

   Mr. MOORE, in returning thanks, said, he had never seen a sight so
   thoroughly charming as the one before him. Speaking in sober earnest,
   and as a Churchman, he must say that this was a magnificent sight. Mr.
   Spurgeon had done the Church of England more good than any clergyman in
   it, in his opinion. He had watched his career ever since he came to
   London, when he was supposed to be not quite as sane as he was now. He
   had listened to his sermons, and he had considered his success a
   miracle. He believed that Mr. Spurgeon was a miracle raised up by
   Almighty God to advance His Kingdom. He had had something to do with
   selling that plot of land, as he was one of the Fishmongers' Company,
   and he must say that he had been astonished how they had raised the
   money. It would have taken Churchmen 10 years! It was a thing almost
   unexampled in the Christian Church! There was no one who sympathized
   with them more than he did, and he believed that that Church would be
   instrumental in bringing many to Christ. He would just say one thing
   further in reference to the miraculous influence which the preaching of
   Mr. Spurgeon had had on the Christian world. He had said a hundred
   times, that they would never have had St. Paul's, nor Westminster
   Abbey, nor the Theatres opened for Sunday preaching if it had not been
   for such influence. He hoped Mr. Spurgeon's appeal for their prayers
   would be listened to, and he prayed God, himself, that their minister
   might never be left to disgrace the position in which he was placed.

   Mr. SPURGEON then pronounced the benediction, and the proceeding closed
   with the Doxology.
     __________________________________________________________________

                      Meeting Of The Neighboring Churches

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE NEWINGTON, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 1861.

   THE invitation to the ministers and members of neighboring churches, to
   show their support in the opening of the new Tabernacle, by attending
   especially at a meeting held this evening, was most cordially accepted,
   and the number present proved the heartiness of the response. An
   audience approaching 4,000 in number assembled on the occasion, while
   on the platform and pulpit were a goodly array of ministerial Brothers.
   The CHAIR was occupied by the Rev. Dr. STEANE.

   The fourth hymn, given out by Mr. SPURGEON, and described as a hymn of
   welcome and fellowship, was first sung.

   The Rev. WILLIAM ROBINSON, of York Road Chapel, offered prayer.

   The CHAIRMAN, in opening the proceedings, said two days ago that
   magnificent edifice for the first time resounded with the proclamation
   of the Gospel, and its lofty dome thrilled with the notes of prayer and
   praise. Then, with an appropriate and becoming solemnity, it was
   consecrated and set apart to the worship of Jehovah, the Father, the
   Son, and the Holy Spirit, the God of our salvation. He had not the
   privilege of being present on that occasion, but then, as now, he most
   affectionately, and cordially sympathized with his Christian Brother
   who was henceforth to minister there in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He
   said that by Rev. Spurgeon's godly zeal, and untiring diligence,
   sustained by the whole Christian public, the magnificent structure had
   been reared; and now, the pastors, the deacons, and the members of the
   neighboring churches, without regard to denomination, without
   distinction of name, without reference to varieties of judgment, and
   opinion, had been by him, and his friends, invited to gather together
   in that great concourse. That invitation had been accepted with the
   deep affectionate Christian sincerity with which they believed it to
   have been given; and they were there to offer to Mr. Spurgeon, and to
   the church over which he presided, their affectionate congratulations.
   As they surveyed that splendid structure--the largest sanctuary which
   had ever been reared by such churches as theirs to the service and
   Glory of God--they were filled with adoring reverence and gratitude,
   and exclaimed, "What has God worked!" He wished on that occasion to be
   commissioned by the meeting to assure Mr. Spurgeon, and the church
   itself of the entire cordiality, of the affectionate respect, of the
   brotherly love with which the sister churches in the neighborhood
   regarded them all. He did not want that expression to be the individual
   expression of his own heart, but of the hearts of the pastors and
   members of the churches present. Perhaps he should proceed in a novel
   and unexpected way, but he should ask if his Brothers, the pastors of
   the churches, would entrust him with the commission to communicate
   their congratulations and affectionate love, to signify it by rising.
   (Here the ministers rose at onc^. If the meeting would commission him
   to tell Mr. Spurgeon how much they loved him, and how devoutly and
   unanimously they wished him, "God speed," they would signify that by
   rising. (Everyone in the building at once ros^.

   Nothing could have been more prompt, more unanimous and more
   delightful, and he now begged to offer to Mr. Spurgeon the right hand
   of brotherly fellowship. (This was done in the most hearty manner). He
   had no intention, when he entered the building, of proceeding in the
   manner that he had done. But was it not a good, a wise, and happy
   suggestion? He trusted that his dear Brother would live to be the
   pastor of that church for a far longer period than any of the Brothers
   present had ministered in their respective churches; long might he live
   with God's blessing to labor there! He devoutly desired to thank the
   Providence of God which had brought Mr. Spurgeon among them. That
   Providence might have brought a Brother who would have been an element
   of strife and discord--but God's Grace had brought a Brother among
   them, with whom they were one in feeling, one in doctrine, one in
   heart, one in sympathy, and one in Christ. There were present the
   representatives of many churches, yet they were one Church--a part of
   the general assembly and Church of the First-Born. They were not two
   churches, if they spoke of the Church of the redeemed in Heaven, and
   the Church of the blood-bought on earth; they were not two churches,
   but one body of which Christ was the ever-living and glorified Head! He
   trusted, through the Grace of the Lord Jesus pervading all members of
   that one body, they would henceforth be still more united than in past
   time they had been, and exhibit that unity in the face of a scoffing,
   infidel, and ungodly world. He trusted they would spend a happy
   evening, the recollection of which would never be erased from their
   memories, and when, in that upper and better sanctuary, the true
   Tabernacle, not made with hands like this, through the infinite riches
   of Divine Mercy, they would be worshippers together, it might be among
   the sweetest and hallowed reminiscences of their life on earth, that on
   the present occasion they were gathered together a united assembly of
   Brothers and Sisters in the Lord.

   Mr. SPURGEON did not know what he could say in answer to the
   affectionate expressions of his Brothers. They would excuse him if he
   did not attempt to express his gratitude on his own account, for his
   heart was too full. It had been singularly his lot to be placed in a
   position where he had the kindest Brothers for neighbors that ever
   gathered round any man. It was not easy for people to love him, for he
   sometimes said very strong things; when he meant to say a thing that
   should take effect, he felt that he ought to say it in a strong manner
   in an age like this, so shallow and so careless. Yet he had the love
   and esteem of his Brothers far more than if he had attempted to speak
   smoothly. He believed he was everybody's debtor; he did not know that
   anybody owed him anything, but he owed something to everybody; for all
   his friends had kindly helped in the present effort. While his own
   church had to do the most, yet there had hardly been a place from which
   they had not received some aid. He could scarcely look round London
   upon any Church of Christ where he could not find some dear Brother who
   had taken as large an interest in the work as themselves. He could only
   say on behalf of his own church, that they were heartily at one with
   all Churches of our Lord Jesus Christ who held their common faith in
   that neighborhood, and he hoped in the future they would have better
   opportunities of testing their willingness to assist all efforts
   carried on by their Brethren. Next week there was to be a meeting,
   called a meeting of denominations, which would be addressed by members
   of all denominations upon the Scriptural Unity of the church. They, as
   a church, had ever been distinctly Baptists, but he hoped it would be
   their pleasure yet more and more in the future to bear upon their
   banner the motto of, "Union in Christ," which was the true light in
   which to see the union of all the saints. He hoped they should have
   meetings for fellowship, and mutual encouragement at least every
   quarter, and thus the pastors of the district would become more
   intimate and more cordial, by joining their prayers, and by mingling
   their efforts.

   The Rev. WM. HOWIESON, of Walworth, said he had come there that evening
   to bid his Brother Spurgeon, "God speed," in his new and enlarged
   sphere of labor. He believed he was his nearest ministerial neighbor,
   and if his coming to Newington should affect the attendance at other
   places of worship in the neighborhood, he (Mr. Howieson) would be very
   likely to suffer himself! Still, whatever might be the consequences to
   him in that respect, he did most heartily welcome Mr. Spurgeon to
   Newington, and he prayed that his most sanguine expectations as to the
   success of his ministry might be more than realized. A short time after
   the site for the building had been secured, he had some conversation
   with a Baptist minister from the West of England, respecting it. He was
   asked, "What do you and the other ministers in the neighborhood of the
   Elephant and Castle mean to do, now that Mr. Spurgeon's tabernacle is
   to be built there?" He did not understand the question. "Well," said
   the gentleman, "you will find Brother Spurgeon a very potent neighbor,
   and if you do not do something, you will find you will not hold your
   own." He wanted to know what they were to do, and asked his friend what
   he had to suggest. The reply was--"You must do as they were accustomed
   to do in the old coaching days. When a new opposition coach had been
   put upon the road, the people connected with the old Evangelist said
   one to another, 'If we mean to stand our ground, we must horse the old
   coach better.' So, he said, you and your Brothers must preach
   better--horse the coach better." He trusted that this would be one of
   the effects of Mr. Spurgeon's coming there--that they should all preach
   better! There was, no doubt, much room for improvement; and perhaps
   that improvement was needed more in the spiritual than in the
   intellectual qualifications for their work. The Chairman had been
   nearly 40 years, a pastor of the same church, and he was sure he could
   not have been so long a pastor, "without having become acquainted with
   the peculiar temptations to which they as ministers were exposed." He
   knew they were in danger of neglecting their own hearts, while they
   were professedly taking care of the souls of others; he knew that they
   were tempted to substitute a critical study of the Scriptures, as
   ministers, for a devout and daily perusal of them as Christians; that
   they were apt to perform or discharge the duties of their office in a
   professional sort of way, instead of feeling themselves the power of
   those Truths which they declare to others; that they were in danger of
   resting satisfied with a fervor and elevation of soul in public,
   instead of a calm and holy communion with God in private. He said if
   they gave way to those things, then as the result of diminished
   spirituality, there would be a barren ministry, for it was only as they
   were living near to God, themselves, that they could be the means of
   blessing to others--it was only by feeding on His Truth, themselves,
   that it became spirit and life to those who heard it--it was only as
   they were living and preaching in the spirit of prayer, that the
   weapons of their warfare were mighty through God to the pulling down of
   strongholds! Happy then would it be for them as ministers, and happy
   for their respective churches, if the coming of Mr. Spurgeon to
   Newington should drive them all to their knees in prayer, and should
   lead them to cry mightily to God for the help of His Spirit, and should
   impress upon their minds more than it had ever been--that a minister's
   life was the life of his ministry! But he demurred to one
   representation of his West of England friend, for this was not an
   opposition coach! It was doubtless opposed to something, for it was
   opposed to Satan, and all his works, but it was not opposed to him, nor
   to his church, nor to any minister in that neighborhood who preached
   Christ and Him Crucified. What was his Brother Spurgeon's objective in
   the building of that large place of worship? Was it merely to gather
   around him a large and influential congregation? Was it merely that he
   might be admired and applauded? Was it that he might commend the Gospel
   to the tastes, rather than the consciences of his hearers? Oh, no! It
   was that he might not cease to teach and preach in that place, Jesus
   Christ, and that a great number might believe and turn unto the Lord!

   Then their hearts, their Master, and their success were one. There were
   "diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." There were "differences of
   administration, but the same Lord." There were "diversities of
   operations, but it was the same God which worked in all." When,
   therefore, he looked round upon that beautiful structure, and tried to
   imagine its future history, he could not but rejoice to think of what
   would take place within its walls. There, hearts would be broken by the
   power of God's Spirit, and then healed again by the restoring power of
   Christ's precious blood! There, multitudes of conversions would be
   worked by regenerating Grace, and then these multitudes trained up for
   Glory! There backsliders would be reclaimed, mourners comforted,
   Believers established! There, there would be many triumphs of faith
   over temptation, of love over selfishness, and of hope over the fear of
   death! There, there would be workings of devout emotion--now sinking
   down in the dust of penitence, now soaring to Heaven in
   praise--sometimes earnestly wrestling in supplication, and sometimes
   pouring forth the strains of adoring gratitude; one hour weeping before
   the Savior's Cross, another exulting before the Savior's Throne! Oh,
   when he thought of the probable history of that magnificent place of
   worship, he was compelled as a Christian to pray, "The Lord God of your
   fathers make you a thousand times as many more as you are, and bless
   you as He has promised."

   The Rev. PAUL TURQUAND said he was the nearest independent minister to
   Mr. Spurgeon, and perhaps the first of that denomination who had spoken
   in that place of worship. He did not wish to bring them before him as a
   Christian Church, and utter the language of flattery, nor did he wish
   to stand before the minister of that noble place of worship, and swing
   the censer of adulation, and cover him with that perfume. But he would
   like to utter the language of heartfelt praise. The minister and the
   congregation had done well, nobly, magnificently, triumphantly, and he
   did not think he was praising them unduly when he gave expression to
   those words. They had taught others by the success which had crowned
   their efforts, that they ought to hope for nobler things, and dare
   greater things than they had up to now done; they had proved there was
   a latent power in the Christian Church which only needed circumstances
   to fully evoke it; their friends had shown them, when the Christian
   Church had a good purpose before it, resolution to accomplish it, and
   faith in God to accomplish it, that their work would be sure to be
   crowned with success! He was exceedingly glad that this admirable
   edifice had received the name of "Tabernacle." It was a word which
   carried them back to the structure erected in the wilderness; it told
   them of the bronze altar on which the substitutionary victim was laid;
   it brought before them the bronze laver in which the water typifying
   the influence of the Holy Spirit was held, and as his Brother, Mr.
   Howieson, had said, just as it was there so should it be here--that
   God's work and power should be greatly manifested! His prayer for them
   and their minister was, "Clothe Your ministers with the garments of
   salvation, abundantly bless the provision of Your house, satisfy Your
   poor with bread, so we, Your people, will give You thanks, and show
   forth Your praise from day to day." He was very glad the Tabernacle had
   been placed in the midst of London. Some country Brother told him that
   it would be a good thing if it had been placed in Pekin or St.
   Petersburgh. He himself would not have been sorry if it had been built
   in Paris, or better still, in Rome! What would the Pope have thought of
   it? If he had been consulted, he would perhaps have recommended that it
   should be erected on the other side of the water. As, however, it was
   in Newing-ton, he would say it was in a very good place indeed. He was
   glad that it was placed in the middle of London, for there was no city
   in the world that had so much influence as London, and if they acted
   upon London, they acted upon the whole world! He was pleased to think
   that the Tabernacle was in his own neighborhood, but still, some
   prophets of evil put the question, how would it act upon their
   churches? It might perhaps cause some vacant seats--perhaps some
   members of their churches might leave. Well, there was no garden but
   what needed occasionally to be weeded--and they might depend upon
   it--the Garden of the Lord occasionally needed weeding! "What is a
   weed?" was asked of a celebrated botanist. And he said, "a weed is a
   flower out of its right place," and Mr. Spurgeon very likely would take
   some of those weeds, and by planting them in their rightplaces, cause
   them to become flowers in the Garden of the Lord! He had a powerful and
   eloquent voice, and was well able to arouse the indifferent, and to
   make those who were careless and unconcerned, thoughtful with regard to
   their souls. If there had been one burden upon his (Mr. Turquand's)
   spirit, it was this--that in that neighborhood, indifference seemed to
   have gathered like a cloud on the people. He did not think they were
   more immoral than in other parts of London, but he did think they were
   more indifferent. If, however, they would come to hear Mr. Spurgeon,
   they might be led to go and hear others, and he hoped a spirit of
   hearingwould be diffused among them! Why, in such a case, when the
   congregations grew larger, the preacher would grow more eloquent, and
   possibly the Paul of York Street might become an Apollos! At any rate,
   when a noble boat was stranded, and men were perishing, it was a high
   crime to quarrel about the manning of the life boat! Let us hasten to
   the rescue and be as willing to take the oar as to stand at the helm!
   As the representative of his congregation, he could say they had always
   had a friendly spirit towards Mr. Spurgeon, and had done something to
   help him. They had but one objective in view--the conversion of souls,
   and the Glory of their Master. When an army stood in phalanx before the
   foe, they did not regret that some general, great in battle, was coming
   to their help, and should they not rejoice that another had come to
   assist them in the tremendous struggle, whose watchword was--"to the
   help of the Lord against the mighty"?

   A hymn was here sung, after which the CHAIRMAN introduced the Rev.
   George Rogers as the gentleman who had the educational superintendence
   of the young men, who were in training for the ministry, under Mr.
   Spurgeon.

   The Rev. GEORGE ROGERS, after speaking in terms of congratulation, said
   he had been told the building was an extravagant affair--a nine-days'
   wonder--and that before many months had passed, it would be converted
   into a penny theater. A man's prophecy was often the intimation of his
   desire. The wish was father to the thought. Such a remark might apply,
   if it had been a simple speculation, erected for an untried object. But
   he believed it to be the result of a gradual and solid growth. A giant
   infancy, and a giant youth required a habitation of its own when it
   came to manhood. He felt and all must feel, that that magnificent
   structure had been raised as a public homage to the Doctrines which Mr.
   Spurgeon preached, and to the earnest manner in which he had proclaimed
   them. This house was built, not for him, but for the God whom he
   serves; not for him, but for the Savior whom he loves; not for him, but
   for the Spirit on which he relies; not for him, but for the church over
   which he presides; not for him, but for the souls by which he is
   encompassed. It was a noble memorial of the unseen realities of the
   faith of the Gospel. To every passer-by it would be a witness that the
   tabernacle of God was with man, and that He would dwell among them. To
   every eye it would tell of the liberty, and the independence which
   Protestant dissenters could claim in this land, and of the readiness of
   the Christian public to support Doctrines of such a nature, when
   earnestly preached! Some ascribed it to the infatuation of the people.
   Why, Englishmen were not such fools as to give their money away without
   consideration, and without an approval of the object! Some time ago, in
   a continental city, the priest of a certain cathedral got up a
   subscription for a golden crown to be put on the head of the Virgin. A
   solemn festival was held on the occasion of the coronation, at which
   the king, and his courtiers were present; but one man retired from the
   scene to weep, and when asked why he wept, said, "They put a golden
   crown upon the Virgin, but there is no crown for the Infant Jesus." But
   here, what they had done had been to put a crown upon the head of
   Christ, and as they would often sing in that place, to "Crown Him Lord
   of All." The building gave the lie to those who said the Doctrines of
   Grace were inimical to good works. Their friend Mr. Spurgeon preached
   all the Doctrines of Grace. Election, Particular Redemption, came from
   his lips in trumpet tones. He saw the love of Christ to His Church, and
   of the Church to Christ overflowing in sweet nectar in the Song of
   Solomon. Some said those Doctrines were destructive of all good
   works--that people who listened to such Doctrines did nothing--his
   answer to these objectors was, let them look at this building. Election
   would never have built it, except by seeking to make their calling and
   election sure. Particular Redemption would never have built it without
   the particular love which it was calculated to inspire. The Doctrine of
   Perseverance would never have built it without the act of perseverance.
   Faith would never have built it without works. One of his students, who
   came late one morning, said his clock did not go right. He replied to
   him it was an anti-nomian clock--it was without good works. The creed
   of Mr. Spurgeon was not antinomian, and that building was a witness to
   it! Nor would works without faith have built it. No tree could grow
   without being well watered at the roots; and if they wished this tree
   of theirs to grow and bear much fruit, they must bring down the rains
   and dew of Heaven by their prayers. Why were they, the neighboring
   ministers and Churches there, but to show that the objective was not to
   set up altar against altar? It was to publish the same Doctrine. The
   God whom we all honor is to be honored in this place. The Savior whom
   we love is to be exalted in this place. The Gospel which we love is to
   be preached here. The Atonement on which we rest our hope is to be the
   open fountain here for sin, and for uncleanness. He, therefore, felt an
   interest in the building, and all his Brothers in the ministry must
   have a common interest in it. Although one star might differ from
   another star in Glory, it was their combined rays that guided the
   pilgrim on the desert, and the mariner upon the wave. They had done a
   good work, and had worked long and hard, and unitedly. What was next to
   be done? They had now no more to do with begging, with bricks and
   mortar, and with bazaars. Let them turn all their energies into
   spiritual channels; let the hands that had been stretched out to labor,
   be lifted up in prayer; let the feet that had borne them to the houses
   of the rich to collect gold, now carry them to the habitations of the
   poor to give them that consolation whose price was far above rubies!
   Having such a start, great things were expected from them. The eyes of
   the Church and of the world were upon them. There was much Grace
   needed, and it was to be had with faith and prayer. He came to that
   meeting from the bed of an aged lady, and when he told her he was
   coming to Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle she said, "May it be a house in
   which thousands shall be turned to God." That was his wish, and he was
   sure it was the wish of them all.

   The CHAIRMAN called upon the Rev. Mr. BETTS, of Peckham, whom he
   introduced as the successor of the well-known Dr. Collier.

   The Rev. R. W. BETTS said, like William Jay of Bath, he was not born
   under the platform dispensation, but, when he received the hearty
   letter from his Brother, Mr. Spurgeon, asking him as a neighboring
   minister to come and give them a few words of greeting upon taking
   possession of that magnificent edifice, he felt it altogether
   impossible for him to refrain, and therefore he had come as a
   neighboring minister to bid them welcome and God speed. He was
   perfectly astonished at that beautiful, and that magnificent structure.
   After some remarks upon the name of the building, he proceeded. As he
   was coming from Westminster the other evening on an omnibus, there were
   two large buildings which he passed, and he could not help remarking
   the contrast presented by the outward aspects of those buildings. The
   one was St. George's Cathedral; the other was the "Metropolitan
   Tabernacle." The one was dimly lighted, with a group of some dozen
   miserable people standing outside the gate, and the whole thing seemed
   enshrined in gloom. But in the Tabernacle, the light was brilliantly
   streaming from the windows, and the whole place seemed full of life and
   vigor. If he had been a stranger in London, he would not have needed
   anyone to tell him the difference of those buildings--the one all
   darkness, the other all light; the one full of the light of
   Christianity, the other a hollow empty sepulcher of rites and
   ceremonies. In the one, the living personal Christ, preached as the
   power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes; in the other His
   Glory eclipsed by rites and ceremonies, and all taken away that is
   vital and essential in the Gospel of our Lord and Savior. There was
   another thing that struck him about those two buildings--the
   incompleteness of the one, and the beautiful perfection of the other.
   The spire of the one structure--where was it? It was nowhere! Although
   so many years had elapsed since that structure was commenced, yet the
   faithful did not seem to be ready with their offerings; the necessary
   was not exactly forthcoming. What was the case with the Tabernacle?
   Within a year or two the magnificent sum of £30,000 had been subscribed
   for its erection. He looked upon that as a token of the earnest
   Protestantism of our Sav-ior--of the love of the people of England for
   the simple Gospel of our Lord and Savior. He supposed that the spire of
   St. George's Cathedral would one day be completed, but whether
   completed or not, Roman Catholicism as a system must fall; it was
   founded in the sands of human tradition and priestly ordinances; and
   when the waves of our Gospel salvation and the winds of Divine Truth
   shall have beaten upon it a little more, it will fall, and great will
   be the fall of it--and God speed that day! But he did not come to tell
   them that; he came there simply as a neighboring minister to bid Mr.
   Spurgeon and his friends a hearty welcome, and God speed to that
   locality. He did so because they came in his Master's name. In
   conclusion, he urged them, as there only remained £500 to completely
   finish the edifice, to see if they could subscribe it that night, and
   then in future the meetings would be free.

   "All hail the power of Jesus' name," was then sung.
   The Rev. NEWMAN HALL congratulated the congregation and the pastor upon
   the successful termination of their arduous labors, and upon their
   being able to meet in a building free from debt--a building not raised
   by taxes wrung from the community at large, willing or unwilling, but a
   structure raised by the free-will offerings of God's people--of those
   who, recognizing the spiritual gifts with which God had endowed their
   friend, and were desirous that a building should be reared capable of
   holding as many thousands as could be conveniently reached by his rich
   voice. He need not say to them, what, no doubt, they were saying to
   themselves, "Be not high-minded on account of what you see." He knew
   they felt it to be a matter, not of pride, but of deep humble gratitude
   to God, who condescended to permit unworthy sinners in any way to be
   engaged in advancing the interests of His Kingdom. He knew their
   earnest prayer was that the old words might be continually
   verified--"What house will you build for Me? I dwell in the high and
   holy place, but with this man will I dwell, who is of an humble and
   contrite spirit and who trembles at My word." For some time, Surrey
   Chapel had been the largest Christian sanctuary south of the Thames. He
   hoped there was not a worthy member of Surrey Chapel who did not
   rejoice that there was a sanctuary raised more than twice as large! And
   even should it lead to a decrease of the number of worshippers at
   Surrey Chapel, yet, if on the whole, the cause of God were more
   advanced, it would be their duty and their pleasure to say--"Herein do
   I rejoice, yes and will rejoice." Envy, jealousy, pity everywhere, were
   monstrous in connection with the work of God. What? Regret if others
   are doing more than we are? Regret that others are more useful than we?
   Is it not all one business--one interest? Are not all things ours?
   Whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas--all are ours! We are rowing the
   same boat against the strong tide--each of us doing our best. Shall I
   regret if others in the crew with stronger arms, and more vigorous
   strokes, are helping to send the boat more strongly against the tide,
   and bringing it more quickly into port? Our house is on fire, we are
   bringing water to extinguish the flames--shall I be sorry if my brother
   can handle a larger bucket, and throw a greater volume of water upon
   the flames? We are engaged in one grand warfare, and if we are, each of
   us, standing in the place our Captain has bid us occupy, and fighting
   bravely for Him, shall we regret it if others are more advanced in the
   fight, and with heavier blows, and surer aim are making greater havoc
   among the enemy? It might sound anomalous, but it was most true, in
   great enterprises every man must do his best to excel his brethren, and
   when he had done his best, he must rejoice that many of his brethren
   excelled himself. They might excel Surrey Chapel in the size of the
   building, and in the number of the congregation, but they did not and
   could not be expected to excel it in the machinery they employed for
   evangelization. This was the work of his revered predecessors, Rowland
   Hill and James Sherman, and therefore he could refer to it without any
   supposition of arrogance or boasting. In connection with Surrey Chapel,
   they had 18 Sunday evening services conducted by members of the
   congregation in various courts and lanes in the district--five
   Evangelists were maintained to go about and instruct the poor, and
   comfort the sorrowful. They had 12 Sunday schools with 4,500 children,
   and 400 teachers--four week-day schools, three sets of secular lectures
   going on, week by week, in different parts, for the benefit of the
   working classes. They had benevolent societies distributing about £400
   a year in addition to the money collected at the Sacrament for poor
   members, and they had the Temperance Society helping all. He sincerely
   hoped the time was not far distant when they would exceed Surrey Chapel
   in all these instrumentalities and labors; when they would have 36
   Sunday evening services, ten Evangelists, 24 schools with their 9,000
   children, and 800 teachers, eight week-day schools, and half a dozen
   sets of lectures; and he trusted that this sanctuary would soon be
   opened for the advocacy, if the glorious temperance principle, which
   had rescued so many from vice and ruin. Let them always bear in mind
   what a Church was. It was not an institution the members of which had
   nothing to do but to come on Sunday, and hear comfortable sermons, and
   go home and discuss them, weigh the Doctrines in them and criticize the
   preacher. He knew their minister would be the last to encourage them in
   a namby-pamby sort of religion of that kind! No, the churches were to
   be arsenals where the weapons of love were stored with which they were
   to attack the enemy round about--grand depositories of Christian
   enterprise; a glorious propaganda, every member a member of the society
   of Jesus--not leaving it to the pastor to be the only Evangelist, but
   every man saying to his neighbor, "Know you the Lord God."

   What an interesting sight was the opening of a new sanctuary! How one's
   thoughts looked forward! What important events would take place in this
   sanctuary in the course of years--events that might not be chronicled
   in the history of this world, but in which angels would take the very
   deepest interest! Here the people of God, worn and jaded by the toils
   and cares of life, will come to be refreshed with the heavenly manna,
   and the invigorating streams of the River of Life. Here the sorrowful
   and downcast will feel their burdens lightened, and be able to say to
   an old Yorkshire working man, a friend of mine, "Ah, it is blessed
   work, Cross-bearing, when it's tied on with love!" Here those who come
   tormented with doubts and fears, will see the clouds dispersed, and
   feel their anxieties removed. Here the tempted, carried down headlong
   by the tide of peril, will see the hand of love stretched out, and
   grasping it by the hand of faith, will be drawn up unto the firm land
   of salvation! Here souls dead in trespasses and sins will hear the
   voice of Jesus, Come forth! There will be many a cry, "What must I do
   to be saved?" There will be many a prayer heard, "Jesus, Son of David,
   have mercy upon me!" Here the saints of God will be trained for a
   better sanctuary. Angels will often hover over this spot and carry up
   the glad tidings, "Behold, he prays!" I seem to see the ladder that
   Jacob beheld let down from Heaven--angels are coming up and down,
   blessings are descending, and prayers and praise are ascending; and
   Jesus the Redeemer is above, seated at the right hand of Power, making
   all-prevalent intercession for His people. Oh, may this be the
   consecration that shall hallow this Tabernacle! Never may Ichabod be
   written on these walls! Never may there cease to be preached here, and
   loved here, the pure, the simple, the all-glorious Gospel of the Grace
   of God--the Grace of God revealed to all transgressors! The size of the
   building seems to me in glorious harmony with the glorious character of
   the Redemption that we preach. It seems impossible to speak of a
   straitened and limited theology in a spacious building so vast as this.
   No, as Dr. Chalmers says, "In the commission we have received to preach
   the Gospel to every creature, there is no frozen limitation, but a
   munificence of mercy, boundless as space, free and open as the expanse
   of the firmament." I am persuaded that never will there be so great a
   multitude gathered together here that your minister will hesitate to
   proclaim a Christ for every man, declaring that all who believe shall
   be saved, and that none shall be lost except those to whom it is said,
   "You will not come unto Me that you might have life!" Christ--Christ
   Crucified, the only foundation of the sinner's hope, the only secret of
   the Believers' life and joy! This, my Friends, is the true palladium of
   the Church. "Here," as old Oliver Crom- well says in one of his
   letters, 'here would I rest, and here only.'" It is not our sect,
   however we may prefer it-- Episcopacy, or Independency, or
   Presbyterianism, or Methodism. It is not the having a Liturgy, or the
   having free prayer; it is not a gorgeous ceremony, and it is not a
   Scriptural simplicity; it is not much water or little water--it is not
   the adult immersion or the infant sprinkling--no, it is Jesus exhibited
   in the pulpit, honored in the worship, manifested in the lives of all
   the people that is the glory of the Church--and without that there is
   no glory. It is not the splendor of architecture, nor your glorious
   portico, and majestic columns--not this graceful roof, and these airy
   galleries, and these commodious seats so admirably arranged for worship
   and for hearing. It is not the towering dome, or the tapering spire
   emulating the skies. It is not clustering columns and intersecting
   arches through which a dim religious light may wander--it is not all
   these--though I do not despise the beauties of architecture--which is
   the glory of the Church. Nor is it the splendor of the pew, though
   wealth and fashion and learning may be there, and overflowing numbers
   crowd the sanctuary. It is not the splendor of the pulpit--the
   eloquence that can wave its magic wand over a delighted audience till
   every eye glistens, and every heart beats with emotion--the erudition
   that from varied stores of learning can cull its illustrations to adorn
   the theme--the novelty of thought and sentence, and argument that can
   captivate the intellect and satisfy the reason--the fancy that can
   interweave with the discourse the fascinations of poetry, and the
   beauties of style. No, it is not any one of these, nor all of these
   together! It is Christ in His real and glorious Divinity; Christ in His
   true and proper Humanity; Christ in the all and sole sufficiency of His
   Atonement; Christ in His in-dwelling Spirit, and all-prevailing
   intercession. This is the glory! And without this, though we had all
   other things, Ichabod must be written on the walls of any church. This
   is the true Ark before which alone Dagon falls prostrate. This it is
   that gives us a glory greater than that which the Temple of Solomon
   ever possessed. For here we have the living manna upon which we may
   feed. Here we have the true Mercy Seat. Here we have the real
   Sacrifice--He who takes away the sins of the world! Here we have
   constant miracles. What? Will they tell us there are no such things as
   miracles possible? There are miracles-- actual, glorious miracles
   taking place continually, verifying the Truth of our Christian system.
   The eyes of the blind are still being opened! The ears of the deaf are
   still being unstopped! And the lame man still leaps as a hart, and the
   dead man sepulchered in his sin comes forth to live a life of holy
   obedience and grateful love! Because I know this Gospel of Christ
   Crucified is preached, and will be preached and manifested here,
   therefore I say there is no enchantment against Israel, there is no
   divination against Jacob. "How goodly are your tents, O Israel and your
   tabernacles, O Jacob." Peace be within these walls, and prosperity
   within these palaces. For my Brother and companion's sake, we all of us
   now say, "Peace be with you."

   Mr. SPURGEON proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman and to the
   various ministers, observing that large as the place was, and preaching
   as he did a great Redemption, yet every pillar was made of iron, firmly
   fixed and immovable, and he hoped to preach a sure, settled Covenant
   Gospel, and not a frail and failing one. The thanks were carried by
   acclamation. The Doxology was sung and the meeting separated.
     __________________________________________________________________

                       Christ Set Forth As A Propitiation

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON GOOD FRIDAY MORNING, MARCH 29, 1861, BY THE REV.
   C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Christ Jesus whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith
   in His blood"

   Romans 3:25.

   We commenced the services in this place by the declaration that here
   Christ shall be preached. Our Brother who followed us expressed his joy
   that Christ was preached herein. He did rejoice, yes, and would
   rejoice, and our friends must have observed, how, throughout the other
   services there has been a most blessed admixture not only of the true
   spirit of Christ, but of pointed and admirable reference to the glories
   and beauties of His Person. This morning, which is the beginning of our
   more regular and constant ministry, we come again to the same noble
   theme. Christ Jesus is today to be set forth! You will not charge me
   for repeating myself--you will not look up to the pulpit, and say,
   "Pulpits are places of tautology." You will not reply that you have
   heard this story so often that you have grown weary of it, for well I
   know that with you, the Person, the Character, and the work of Christ
   are always fresh themes for wonder! We have seen the sea, some of us,
   hundreds of times, and what an abiding sameness there is in its deep
   green surface; but who ever called the sea monotonous? Traveling over
   it as the mariner does, sometimes by the year together, there is always
   a freshness in the undulation of the waves, the whiteness of the foam
   of the breaker, the curl of the crested billow, and the frolicsome
   pursuit of every wave by its long train of brothers. Which of us has
   ever complained that the sun gave us but little variety--that at morn
   he yoked the same steeds, and flashed from his car the same golden
   glory, climbed with dull uniformity the summit of the skies, then drove
   his chariot downward, and bade his flaming coursers steep their burning
   hooves in the western deep? Who among us has complained of the monotony
   of the bread that we eat? We eat it today, tomorrow, the next day; we
   have eaten it for years passed, and though we have other savory matters
   therewith, yet still the one unvarying food is served upon the table,
   and the bread remains the staff of life. Surely I know that as Christ
   is your food, and your spiritual bread; as Christ is your sun, your
   heavenly light; as Christ is the sea of love in which your passions
   swim, and all your joys are found, it is not possible that you as
   Christian men and women should complain of a monotony in Him, "He is
   the same yesterday, today and forever," and yet He has the dew of His
   youth. He is the manna in the golden pot which was always the same, but
   He is the manna which came from Heaven which was every morning new. He
   is the rod of Moses which was dry, and changed not its shape, but He is
   also to us the rod of Aaron which buds and blossoms and brings forth
   almonds.

   I come then now to preach Christ Crucified, as God has set Him forth to
   be a Propitiation for us through faith in His blood. To begin at once,
   then, we shall notice first, what is meant here by God's setting forth
   Christ as a propitiation. Secondly, we shall dwell upon the Truth which
   may very naturally be drawn from the first--Christ the Propitiation, as
   looked upon by the Believer. And then, thirdly, putting the two
   together, I mean inverting the two thoughts, we shall look at Christ as
   set forth by us, andlooked upon by God.

   I. First then, the text says ofChrist Jesus, "WHOM GOD HAS SET FORTH TO
   BE A PROPITIATION THROUGH FAITH IN HIS BLOOD."

   The words, "set forth," in the original may signify, "foreordained;"
   but according to eminent critics, it has also in it the idea of setting
   forth as well as a "foreordaining." Barnes says, "The word properly
   means to place in public view; to exhibit in a conspicuous situation,
   as goods are exhibited or exposed for sale, or as premiums or rewards
   of victory were exhibited to public view in the games of the Greeks."
   So has God the Father set forth, manifested, made conspicuous the
   Person of the Lord Jesus as the Propitiation of sin. How has He done
   this? He has done it first by ordaining Him in the Divine Decree as the
   Propitiation of sin. Christ did not take upon Himself the office of
   High Priest without being chosen thereunto as was Aaron; as surely as
   every member of Christ's body is elect according to the foreknowledge
   of God; as certainly as in God's Book all His members were written
   which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them,
   so certainly was the Head, Himself, ordained the chosen of God. As our
   poet puts it--

   "Christ is My first Elect He said, Then chose our souls in Christ our
   Head." Perhaps some might say there could be no election where there
   was no room for choice. But how do we know that there was no room for
   choice? We can scarcely imagine that angel or archangel could have been
   set forth as propitiation for sin. Who can tell whether the Almighty
   mind might not have devised another plan? Who shall dare to limit the
   Holy One of Israel? At any rate, there was this choice between the
   Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; the Divine Wisdom conjoined with
   Divine Sovereignty, and chose and appointed and determined that Christ
   Jesus, the Second of the Mysterious Three, should be the Propitiation
   for our sins. When Christ comes into the world, He comes as One of whom
   all eternity had spoken--He is the Child born--born from the womb of
   destiny; He is the Lamb whom God had appointed from before the
   foundation of the world. Long before this world was made, or Adam fell,
   Christ had been set forth; in the volume of the Book, it had been
   written of Him, "I delight to do Your will, O God." I think those who
   are afraid of looking back upon the great decrees of God, because they
   say they are secrets, have a fear where no fear is appropriate. There
   is never fear, my Brothers and Sisters, of our meddling with secret
   things. If they are secret, it is quite certain that we shall not
   meddle with them! Only let it be announced once and for all, that they
   are secret, and there is no one who can betray the secrets of God! But
   things that are revealed belong to us and to our children; and this is
   one of the things that is revealed; this is the decree and we will
   declare it, the Lord said unto Christ, "You are My Son, this day have I
   begotten You, and He has said unto Him moreover, I will make Him My
   First-Born, higher than the kings of the earth." And all this that He
   may be the "Propitiation for our sins by faith in His blood."

   And next, God had set forth Christ to be the Propitiation for sins in
   His promises before the Advent. Did He not set Him forth most plainly
   in the Garden where we fell? Was He not plainly revealed afterwards in
   the Ark in which Noah was saved? Did not God speak constantly, not only
   by verbal promises, but by typical promises, which are just as sure and
   certain as those which are spoken in words? Did He not to a 100 seers,
   and to multitudes of holy men and women, constantly reveal the coming
   of Him who should bruise the serpent's head, and deliver His people
   from the power of the curse? It is wonderful to see how engaged the
   Holy Spirit was through every age and era in ordaining types, in
   bringing forth representations, and symbols in which Christ should be
   set forth as being the appointed Propitiation for sins through faith in
   His blood! But the great setting forth was the actual doing of the deed
   when Jesus Christ came forth from the chambers of mystery, and revealed
   Himself in the manger--when God set Him forth by angelic messengers
   appointed to be His attendants--set Him forth by the star in the East
   which should guide the distant strangers to the place where the young
   Child was. He set Him forth afterwards by preserving His life in the
   midst of imminent perils, fulfilling promises made concerning His
   Infancy in the place where He was hidden from Herod's fury, and in the
   spot where He was educated and brought up. Throughout the life of
   Christ, how constantly did His Father set Him forth! The voice of God
   was in the voice of John--"Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the
   sins of the world." And on the Cross itself, "when it pleased the
   Father to bruise Him, and put Him to grief," what an exhibition was
   there of Christ to the eyes of Jew and Gentile, of prince and peasant,
   of the learned Greek, of the ruler Roman--that God had appointed Christ
   to be the full Propitiation for sin! I think, my dear Friends, while we
   must always regard the Cross as being the representation of Christ's
   love to His Church, we must also view it as being God setting forth to
   man the way by which He will accept man, pardon his sin, hear his
   prayer, and be reconciled with His erring creatures.

   But, O my dear Friends, this is not all; God the Father set forth
   Christ since then by signs following. What a setting forth that was of
   Christ the Propitiator, when the Holy Spirit came down on Pentecost!
   And what have all conversions been since then? Have they not been
   repeated seals to the testimony that Christ is the appointed Redeemer
   of men, and that through Him the faithful are justified and accepted?
   You, I trust--many of you--had such a special setting forth of Christ
   in your own hearts, the that you can set your seal to the text before
   us for Him has God set forth in you as being the Propitiation. By
   effectual Grace your eyes have been opened--by infinite love your
   stubborn heart has been melted; you have been turned from every other
   hope and every other refuge; you have seen Christ to be the Power of
   God, and the Wisdom of God; compelled by an Omnipotent influence which
   you neither could nor would resist, you have received Him as the Sent
   of God, have taken Him as being God's Messiah, and your only refuge.
   God in you, then, has graciously fulfilled the text, "Him has God set
   forth to be a propitiation."

   But now, to change the subject for a moment, and yet to continue on the
   same point--what is it that God has so manifestly set forth? We have
   seen how He has done it--we turn now to what? Sinner, listen, and if
   you have already accepted that which the Father has revealed, let your
   joy become full. God has set forth Christ as being the Propitiation!
   The Greek word has it, ilasthrion, which, being translated, may mean a
   mercy seat or a covering. Now God has said to the sinner, "Do you
   desire to meet Me? Would you be no longer My enemy? Would you tell Me
   your sorrows? Would you receive My blessing? Would you establish a
   commerce between your Creator and your soul? I set forth Christ to you
   as being the Mercy Seat, where I can meet with you, and you can meet
   with Me." Or take the word as signifying a covering--as the Mercy Seat
   covered the tablets of the Law, and so covered that which was the cause
   of Divine ire, because we had broken His commandments. "Would you have
   anything which can cover your sin? Cover it from Me, your God, so that
   I need not be provoked to anger? Cover it from you so that you need not
   be cowed with excessive fear, and tremble to approach Me as you did
   when I came in thunder and lightning upon Sinai? Would you have a
   shelter which shall hide altogether your sins and your iniquities? I
   set it forth to you in the Person of My bleeding Son! Trust in His
   blood and your sin is covered from My eyes--no, it shall be covered
   from your own eyes, too! And being justified by faith, you shall have
   peace with God through Jesus Christ your Lord." Oh that we may have
   Grace to accept now what God the Father sets forth! The Romish priest
   sets forth this and that; our own Romish hearts set forth
   such-and-such-another thing, but God sets forth Christ. The preacher of
   doctrine sets forth a dogma. The preacher of experience sets forth a
   feeling. The preacher of practice often sets forth an effort. But God
   puts before you, Christ "Here will I meet with you. This is the place
   of My rest--glorious to Me, safe to you???come to Christ! Come to
   Christ, and you will come to Me." The Lord Almighty comes to Christ,
   and there He comes to you. God, then, has set forth Christ Jesus--made
   Him conspicuous as being the Mercy Seat, and the great hider of sin!

   What has He set forth? He has set forth Christ before every one of you,
   in the daily preaching of the Word, and in this Inspired Book as His
   anointed to do His work, suffering in the place of all who believe on
   Him. He has set Him forth as nailed to Calvary's Cross, that your
   sinsmight be nailed there; set Him forth as dying, that your sins might
   die--no, buried that your iniquities might be buried--risen, that you
   might rise to newness of life; ascended, that you might ascend to God;
   received in triumph, that you might be received in triumph, too; made
   to reign, that you might reign in Him; forever loved, forever crowned,
   that you in Him may be forever loved, and forever crowned, too. Christ
   has God the Father set forth, that by faith in His blood, your sins
   being put away, you might enjoy the blessing of complete justification!
   "Who is he that condemns, Christ has died, yes, rather, has risen
   again, and sits at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession
   for us." "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Thus,
   then, and in these respects, has God the Father set forth Christ.

   II. And now I proceed in the second place--and may the Spirit of God
   descend more visibly into our midst than at present--to speak upon a
   duty, rather a privilege, which so naturally rises out of God's having
   shown forth His Son as being the Propitiation through faith in His
   blood. That privilege is that WE SHOULD LOOK TO CHRIST, AND LOOK TO
   CHRIST, ALONE, AS THE PROPITIATION FOR OUR SINS, AND TAKE CARE THAT OUR
   FAITH IS SIMPLE, AND FIXED SOLELY ON HIS PRECIOUS BLOOD.

   A very common mistake is to look to our sense of need as being, at
   least in some degree, a propitiation for sin. Repentance is an absolute
   duty, and a Christian Grace--a Grace without which there can he no
   salvation; but there has been a strong temptation upon many minds to
   make repentancea preparation for Christ, and to regard a sense of need
   as being a kind of wedding garment in which they may approach the
   Savior. How many read that promise, "Come unto Me, all you who are
   weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest," and they fondly
   imagine that if they could be more weary, and more heavily laden, then
   they would have rest? Whereas, being weary and heavy laden gives no man
   rest! It is coming to Christ that gives him rest, it is not the being
   weary and the being heavy laden! And I have known some ministers who
   preach what is called a deep experience and law-work, and preach very
   rightly, too, because many of the people of God have to endure this;
   but I think they lead the people into error, for the people imagine
   that this law-work, this deep experience, has something to do with the
   propitiation of their sins. Now, my Hearers, the sins of God's people
   are taken away by the blood of Christ, and not by any repentance of
   their own. I have already guarded my statement, and now I will make it
   as bold as possible. I say that repentance of sin does in no way
   contribute to the removal of that sin meritoriously. I say that our
   sense of need does not take away our guilt, nor help to take it away;
   but the blood, the blood, the blood alone, pure and unmixed, has
   forever washed the people of God, and made them whiter than snow! So,
   poor Heart, if your soul is as hard as a nether millstone; if your
   conscience seems to be seared by long habits of sin; if you cannot
   force tears from your eyes, and scarcely can get a groan from your
   heart--yet you are groaning today because you cannot groan, weeping
   because you cannot weep, and sorrowing because you cannot sorrow--hear
   you, then, this Gospel message! God the Father has set Christ forth to
   be your Propitiation! Not your tender conscience; not your groans; not
   your sense of need; not your law-work; not your deep experience! He is
   enough without any of these--have faith in His bloodand you are saved!

   But again, many have fallen into another mistake. They make their
   propitiation depend upon their evidences. I would be the last to say,
   "Away with evidences, away with evidences," for they are good things in
   their proper place; but there are too many persons who always judge of
   their past conversion, and ultimate salvation by present evidence.
   Judge Brothers and Sisters, whether you could ever form a proper
   estimate of the world by its appearance on any one day. If I had taken
   you out a month ago into the fields, you would have declared that the
   trees were dead; what signs of life would you have perceived? The bulbs
   were buried in the ground--you might have taken a solemn oath that
   flowers were banished, and you might have imagined that because there
   were none, there never would be any! But what was your evidence of the
   world's state worth? Look at it now--the buds are bursting on the
   trees; the flowers are springing from the sod; everything is hastening
   on towards spring and summer. Why as it is absurd and ridiculous for us
   to judge of the world's estate by the fact that there was a cloud
   today, and there was a shower of rain yesterday, and therefore infer
   that the sun has lost its force and will never shine--it is just as
   ridiculous to judge of our standing before God by our present standing,
   according to our evidences on some one day! The right way to read
   evidences is this. First, my Soul, whether you are saved or not, as a
   poor guilty sinner, look to Christ! When you have done this, then read
   your evidences--then--not till then. Then the blessed evidence will be
   a confirmation. The witness of the Spirit will confirm your faith; but
   if you look to your evidences first, you will be foolish indeed. It is
   as in a reflector--first, let us have the light, then will the
   reflector be of use to us to increase and reflect back the light; but
   if I take my reflector into a dark place and look for light in it, I
   shall find none--I must first see to the light itself--and then to the
   reflection of it. Our Graces are the reflection of Christ's love; they
   are the tokens of it, but we had better go to Christ first, and then
   look to the tokens afterwards!

   I am sure if you, as a spouse, had offended your husband, you would
   find but very sorry comfort in looking at those little tokens of love
   which in the past he had conferred on you. You would go to him first,
   ask him whether his love was still firm, whether he had forgiven the
   fault, and when you had received the assurance of his unabated and pure
   affection, could you go upstairs to the secret drawer, and look over
   the love notes and the love tokens--but they would have afforded you
   sorry comfort before. So with any child who has been chastened by his
   parent--if he thinks that his father is angry with him, he will not, if
   he is a wise child, a simple-hearted child, go up to the nursery, and
   look at the gifts which his father gave him--but going to his father's
   knee, he will look up with a tear in his eye and say, "Father do you
   love me? Can you forgive your child?" And, when he has had the personal
   token, the kiss of acceptance, then may the child go back and see in
   every mouthful that he eats, and every garment which he wears, the sure
   token of his father's continued affection! Evidences are good as second
   things, but as first things they are usurpers and may prove
   anti-Christs to Christ. Whatever my evidences may say, if I believe in
   the precious blood, there is not a sin against me in God's Book, and in
   the teeth of everything which might make me tremble--

   "Just as I am, without one plea, But that His blood was shed for me And
   that He bids me come," I come again, and come afresh to Him whom God
   has set forth to be the Propitiation for our sins!

   Friends, I may surprise you by what I am about to say, but there is
   another fault into which we sometimes fall, namely, looking to God's
   promises instead of looking to Christ as the Propitiation of sin. The
   text does not say that God the Father has set forth promises; indeed He
   has given us exceedingly great and precious promises, and they are true
   in Christ. We often err by going to promises, instead of going to
   Christ. I know many Christians who, when they are in distress, take up
   the Bible to find a promise--a very good and a very admirable plan, if,
   mark--it is preceded by something else! It they go to Christ first,
   they may come to the promise afterwards. "Yes," says one, "but suppose
   a promise is fulfilled." Very good; you have comfort out of it, but I
   say suppose the promise is notfulfilled? What then? Why it is just as
   sure for all that--whether the promise is fulfilled or not! Fulfillment
   is not my duty--my business is to take Christ, whom God the Father has
   set forth as the Propitiation of my sins, and if in searching this Book
   through there is not a single promise which I dare lay hold of; if I
   cannot find one bottle filled with the rich wine of consolation--if I
   can lay hold on no bunch of the grapes of Eshcol, still, God the Father
   has set forth Christ, whatever else He has not set forth-- and my eye
   looks to Christ and to Christ alone! There is a man who very much
   desires an estate. At the same time his heart is smitten with the
   beauty of some fair heiress. He gets the title deeds of her estate.
   Well, the title deeds are good, but the estates are not his though he
   has got the title deeds! By-and-by he marries the lady, and everything
   is his own. Get the heiress and you have got the estate. It is so in
   Christ--promises are the title-deeds of His estates--a man may get the
   promises and not get Christ, and then they will be of no more use to
   him than the deeds of another man's estate would be to me, if I am not
   the lawful proprietor. But when my soul is married unto Christ, then I
   am heir of all things in Him and with Him! Why, Christian, what right
   have you to say, "that promise is not mine because it is not
   fulfilled." Your right to the promise does not lie in its being
   fulfilled, nor yet in yourpower to lay hold of it! Every promise that
   is in the Bible belongs to everyone who is in Christ, and belongs to
   him as much one day as another day, because Christ is his at all times,
   evermore the same! Oh, I do not know whether I can put this exactly as
   I mean it. What I mean is that the devil has often tempted me with,
   "You have not had a promise sent home to your heart for months; you are
   no child of God; you cannot get that sweetness out of such-and-such a
   passage that some men can." I reply to Satan in this way, "Well, God
   has never said He has set forth the promise to be a propitiation
   through faith, but He has set forth Christ, and my soul accepts that
   which God has set forth, and if ever a promise is applied to me, the
   promise is mine for all that, and in faith I will lay hold on it, and
   defy you to rob me of it when my soul has laid hold on Christ." Oh,
   that we lived more on Christ and less on anything but Christ--nearer to
   Christ's Person, more surely resting on Christ's blood--more simply
   accepting Him as our All-in-All.

   I have not yet done on this second head--A remark or two suggest
   themselves to me now. God has set forth Christ to be the Propitiation
   through faith in His blood, and we ought to accept Christ as being an
   all-sufficient Propitiation. I believe in Christ today; but if some sin
   lies upon my conscience and I am worried and troubled about it, ought I
   not to perceive at once that I have failed to accept Christ as an
   all-sufficient Propitiation? Whether my sin is little or it is great,
   whether it is fresh or old, it is the same sin, and blessed be God, it
   has all been atoned for through Christ the Propitiation! We ought to
   take Christ as being the death of every sin and of all sin--as having
   expunged and wiped out the great debt as well as the little--the 10,00
   talents as well as the 100 pence. We have never gotten the full idea of
   Christ till we know that every sin of thought, of word, of deed that
   the Believer has ever been guilty of finds its death, its drowning, its
   total annihilation in the Propitiation which God has set forth! Oh, we
   need to come where Kent was, when he said--

   "Now free from sin I walk at large
   My Savior's blood's my full discharge!
   At His dear feet my soul I lay
   A sinner saved, and homage pay."

   Well, but when we have come as far as this, we need to add a second
   thought. God has set forth Christ to be not only an all-sufficient, but
   an immutable Propitiation for sin. Christ is as much my soul's
   Propitiation when my soul has fallen into sin, as when I have stood
   firm and resisted temptation, if I am a Believer. "That is putting it,"
   you say, "in a bold and almost Antinomian way." I cannot help it. It is
   true--it is true that the Propitiation of Christ is never more, never
   less; it cannot be more, it is complete; it cannot be less, for it is
   the same yesterday, today and forever! That man who has been washed in
   blood is spotless; his doubts and fears have not spoiled his
   appearance, his powerlessness yesterday in prayer, his despondency a
   week ago, his all but complete unbelief last month, do not mar the
   perfection of Jesus' righteousness--do not take away from the complete
   achievement of the pardon of his sin by precious blood! I do believe
   and hold and rejoice in that precious Truth--that our standing before
   God, when we have believed in Jesus--depends no more upon ourframes,
   and our feelings, than the sun itself in its native glory depends upon
   the clouds and darkness that are here below. The same--the same in all
   its splendor, the same undimmed, as full of Glory, as full of majesty,
   the righteousness and blood of Christ abides; and we, standing before
   God in Him--not in ourselves--are always complete in Him--always
   accepted in the Beloved; never more so, never less so. "Strong meat
   this," says one. Be it strong--nothing short of this will ever satisfy
   the tried Christian in the hour when sin rolls over his head! If any
   man can make a bad use of the Doctrine of the real Substitution of
   Christ, and the standing of Christ's people in Christ's place every
   day--if any man can make a licentious use of that, his damnation is
   just; he has no part nor lot in this matter! But I know this--I am not
   to be restrained from the comfort of a Doctrine because some licentious
   vagabond chooses to destroy his soul with it! Still there stands the
   glorious Truth. And nothing short of this is the full glory of Christ's
   atonement--that when once He shed His blood, and when once that blood
   has been applied to us, by it, and italone, we stand completely pure
   and are as pure one day as another day--perfect, complete, accepted,
   made secure and safe in Christ Jesus the Lord. "Him has God the Father
   set forth to be a propitiation for sin." My soul accepts Him today as
   it did yesterday, and knows that the sin is put away forever.

   III. Now I shall come to my third and last point. Turn the thoughts
   over. We have said God sets forth Christ, and we looked at Him. Now, as
   a matter of duty and privilege, we must SET FORTH CHRIST, and GOD WILL
   LOOK AT HIM.

   The preacher, standing here as he does today before this immense
   assembly, knows that without God's looking upon the ministry, it will
   be vain and void. How shall God's eyes be secured? How shall His
   Presence be guaranteed? If in this pulpit Christ is set forth, God will
   look down upon that Christ set forth, and honor and bless the Word.
   Brothers and Sisters, I might preach clear Doctrine, but God might
   never looks down upon Doctrine; for I could point you to churches with
   tears in my eyes, because I am able to do so, where conversions are
   rare things. The Doctrine is high, high enough--perhaps so high as to
   have become putrid. I will not say that, but I do know some churches
   where there has not been an addition to the church by the stretch of
   ten or a dozen years together, and I have known the reason. Christ was
   not set forth, and therefore God did not look down on what was set
   forth! I have known, too, churches--and with equal sorrow do I mention
   them--where practicehas been preached, but not Christ. People have been
   exhorted to do 10,000 things; moral duties presented before the people
   in pleasing and well-polished essays have taken the place of the Cross
   of Christ, and there have been no conversions! By degrees the
   attendance has become very slender--for Christ is not preached. It is a
   strange thing--there are some exceptions to the rule, but still the
   rule is there even where there are not many to listen. Only preach
   Socinianism, and what a splendid hunting-ground this tabernacle will be
   for the spiders! Give up Christ and preach philosophy--you need not
   have an organ, and a skillful person to play the people out of the
   church--they would never need that. They will never come in! So it is.
   Those flimsy doctrines never can prevail because no one will listen to
   them--they are not attractive. They look as if they would attract
   all--but none can receive them; the secret being that God will not look
   down on any man's ministry unless that man sets forth what God sets
   forth-- Christ Jesus as the Propitiation of our sins!

   It is not a question as to whether there will be conversions when
   Christ is set forth; that is certain. Some good Brothers quote the
   text, "Paul may plant, and Apollos may water, but"--and they are a long
   while upon the, "but," and they pervert the text a little, "but God
   gives the increase." Now the text does not say any such thing! It says,
   "Paul plants and Apollos waters, God gives the increase." They are all
   linked together--Paul does not plant in vain; Apollos does not water in
   vain--God gives the increase! He is sureto do it, and if there are not
   souls saved, there is always some reason for it; and the reason to
   which I would look--leaving now the inscrutable Sovereignty of God out
   of the question for a moment--the reason would be either that Christ is
   not preached, or else He is preached in such a way as He never ought to
   be preached--with cold-heartedness, with lack of zeal, with want of
   tenderness! Only let Christ be preached by an earnest heart, though
   there be no eloquence or though the elocution is defective--Christ
   being set forth, God the Holy Spirit will come forth, and the Word must
   and wilbe blessed! His Word shall not return unto Him void. It shall
   prosper where He has sent it.

   But again, as in the ministry we must set forth Christ if we would have
   God's smile, so you, my Brothers and Sisters, in your pleadings for the
   souls of men, must set forth Christ. What a mass of wickedness is
   hereabouts. What tens of thousands in this immediate neighborhood who
   know nothing of God! Here is a city with very nearly three millions
   inhabitants; it is not a city, but an empire in itself. What shall we
   do when we are on our knees? I confess I have sometimes found myself
   utterly unable to express my desires in prayer to God for this city.
   When you once get a notion of its sin, its infamy, its dens, its
   innumerable missionaries teaching Satanic doctrines, its multitudes of
   men and women whose likelihood it is to ensnare the simple ones, it is
   an awful burden to carry before God! You cannot pray for London except
   in sighs and groans! Good old Roby Flockhart, who stood for many years
   in the streets of Edinburgh, used to be much laughed at, but he
   preached every night in the week, and had during the winter months, a
   little lantern which he put upon a stick, and then stood in a corner
   and preached to the passers-by. He preached with a great power, but
   much eccentricity. That good man was eminent in his prayers when alone.
   A gentleman who was extremely poor, told me that he went one night to
   see poor Robert; the candle had been blown out, and he stumbled his way
   up two or three pair of stairs and came at last to Flockhart's room; he
   opened the door and he could not see the good old man, but he could
   hear him say, "O Lord, dinna forget Edinboro, dinna forget Edinboro,
   turn not away Your hand from auld Reekie, dinna forget her, Lord! Your
   servant will never give You rest till You pour out Your spirit upon
   Edinboro." My friend stood still and there was that old man alone with
   his God--my friend had never heard such groaning and crying--it seemed
   as if he could even hear the falling of his tears while he prayed for
   God to bless Edinburgh, and to pour out His Spirit upon that city. He
   made some noise, and the old man said, "There is somebody there I
   suppose." He struck a light and found he had taken one of the pillows
   of his bed to kneel upon by the side of an old chair which was about
   the only furniture, with the exception of the bed. He would pray for
   Edinburgh by the hour together, and then go out to preach, though many
   laughed at and hooted him. Oh, one wants to feel like that for London,
   too, kneeling there till one's knees are sore, crying, "Do not forget
   London, do not forget London! Lord do not turn Your face from London!
   Make bare Your arm in this great city." But how are we to make our
   prayers prevail with God? Brothers and Sisters, we must show forth
   Christin prayer, and then God will look upon our prayers! The Methodist
   cry which was once heard at the Prayer Meeting when a poor Methodist
   Brother could not go on, and someone at the far end of the chapel cried
   out, "Plead the blood, Brother, plead the blood"--that old Methodist
   cry has force and power in it! "Plead the blood." God cannot, cannot,
   cannotresist the cry of the blood of Christ! Abel's blood demanded
   vengeance, and it had it. Christ's blood demands pardons, and shall
   have it, must have it--our God cannot be deaf to the cry of His own
   Son's blood! And if you and I, and all of us together can plead the
   precious blood of Christ for London, a revival must come, will come,
   shall come, and the face of the times shall be changed! God's arm shall
   be revealed, and, "all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of
   the Lord has spoken it."

   Yet once again and here with affectionate earnestness--I come to plead
   personally with each of you. Soul, are you this morning sick of self,
   and longing to be saved? Do your sins condemn you? Do the lusts accuse
   you; does your conscience flog you? Have you been to God in prayer?
   Have you sought for mercy, and has no mercy come? Have you read the
   Bible to find a promise? Has no promise dropped with honey to you?
   Come, I pray you, and obey the Word of God which I utter in your
   hearing--come and take CHRIST, and show Christ's blood to God, and He
   will, He must smile upon you! If you cannot take the promise, take the
   BLOOD! If you cannot come before God with any feelings, come with
   CHRIST in your hands! "May Itrust Christ?" asks one. May you?! You are
   commandedto do it! He who believes not has made God a liar because he
   believes not! He who believes has set to his seal that God is true!
   Sinner, God is satisfied with Christ; does He satisfy God, and will He
   not satisfy you? The eternal Judge has accepted Jesus, and do you
   refuse Him? The Lord has opened the door, and stands at it. Is the door
   good enough for the king, and yet not good enough for a rebel like
   yourself? "But." Away with your "buts!" You want to bring something to
   add to Christ--is He enough to reconcile God, and not enough to
   reconcile you? "But, but," again. So God thinks the precious blood to
   be a sufficient price, and you think it is not? Oh fool and slow of
   heart, how dare you think that God has not set forth enough, but you
   must add to it! Instead of this, I pray you in Christ's stead, believe
   in Christ as you are! Whoever you may be, whatever your past life has
   been, whatever your present feelings are--entrust your soul with
   Christ, and God declares that your sins are put away! Put your soul as
   it is--I care not how black with sin, it matters not how depraved it
   is--put it here on that Mercy Seat which God has set forth, and you
   have put it where God commanded you put it, and its salvation rests no
   more with you. You have put your salvation into Christ's hands, it is
   His business to save you, and He will do it--

   "I know that safe with Him remains
   Protected by His power
   What I've committed to His hands
   Till the decisive hour."

   I do not know how it is, but this simple Doctrine is the hardest
   Doctrine to make clear. It seems so easy, and yet many will mystify and
   doubt it. "What, no good works, no good feelings?" All these things are
   fruits of Grace--but salvation does not dependupon good works--they are
   a result of salvation. Salvation is in Christ, wholly in Christ--in

   Christ alone--and the moment any of you trust Him genuinely to be your
   sole and only Savior, you have accepted God's Propitiation, and God has
   accepted you. It is not possible for the Lord, unless He could reverse
   His Nature, to stain His honor, belie His Character, make His Word a
   farce, and the Atonement of Christ a falsehood--to reject any man under
   Heaven who believes in Christ, and takes Him to be His All-in-All!

   This day is called Good Friday--may it be a good Friday to some of you!
   Perhaps I have some here to whom I have preached these last seven
   years, and yet you have remained unsaved. I am clear of your blood if
   you had only heard but this one morning sermon, for God witnesses I
   know not how to put the plan of salvation more clearly than I have
   done! "God has set forth Christ to be a propitiation through His
   blood." I bid you look to Christ bleeding, to Christ sweating drops of
   blood, Christ scourged, Christ nailed to the Cross, and if you believe
   in Christ's blood, He is the Propitiation of your sins. But I can do no
   more than this; it is mine to preach, it is mine to pray, and mine to
   plead. Oh may God the Holy Spirit give you Grace to receive, to accept,
   to yield to this blessed proclamation of free mercy! Other salvation
   there is none. You may rack your soul with pain, and wear out your
   bones with toil, but there is rest nowhere but here, "Believe on the
   Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." "He who with his heart
   believes, and with his mouth makes confession, shall be saved." "For he
   who believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who believes not
   shall be damned." What shall I say? Instead of pleading further with
   you, I would plead with God in private that many of you may now try
   whether Christ cannot save you. Rest yourself on Him, trust yourself
   with Him, and He will be as good as His word, and save younow, and save
   you even to the end. The Lord add His blessing, for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

              The Interest Of Christ And His People In Each Other

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON GOOD FRIDAY EVENING, MARCH 29, 1861, DELIVERED BY
   REV. C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "My Beloved is mine, and I am His." Song of Solomon 2:16.
   THE Church says concerning her Lord, "My Beloved is mine, and I am
   His." No "ifs," no "buts." The two sentences are solemn assertions.
   Not, "I hope, I trust, I think." But, "my Beloved is mine, andI am
   His." "Yes," but you will say, "the Church must then have been gazing
   upon her husband's face. It must have been a season of peculiar
   enjoyment with Him, when she could speak thus." No, Brothers and
   Sisters, no! The Church, when she thus spoke, was in darkness, for in
   the very next verse she cries--"Until the day breaks, and the shadows
   flee away, turn, my Beloved, and be You like a roe or a young hart upon
   the mountains of Bether." I say, Brothers and Sisters, this solemn
   certainty, this double assertion of her interest in Christ, and
   Christ's interest in her, is the utterance of the Church even in her
   darkness, in the cheerless season of His absence! So then, you and I,
   if we believe in Christ, ought, even when we do not see His face, still
   to cultivate full assurance of faith, and never be satisfied unless we
   can say, "My Beloved is mine, and I am His." When you cannot say this,
   my Hearer, give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. Be
   not happy; take no solace find no comfort as long as there is any doubt
   about your union with the Beloved--His possession of you and your
   possession of Him!
   We will now, having thus prefaced the text, come at once to it. There
   are two members, you perceive, to the sentence, "My Beloved is mine,
   and I am His." These two things come in a strange order, you will say,
   "Surely we are first Christ's, before Christ is ours." A right thought
   of yours. We shall take the text, then, this evening two ways. We shall
   first speak of it as it would be in the order of time. "I am my
   Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine." We shall afterwards speak in the
   order of the text, which is the order of experience. The words as
   Solomon penned them, are not the order of fact as far as God is
   concerned, but the order in which we find out God's great doings!
   You know God's first things are our second things, and our second
   things are God's first things. "Make your calling and election sure."
   Calling is your first thing--election is the second. But election is
   God's first thing, and calling is the next! You are not elected because
   you are called; and yet, at the same time, you shall never know your
   election until first you have made your calling and election sure! The
   order of the text is the order of experience. We shall take the members
   of the sentence as they would be if they spoke in the order of fact.
   I. To begin, then. I AM MY BELOVED'S, AND MY BELOVED IS THEREFORE MINE.
   1. "I am my Beloved's." Glorious assertion! I am His by His Father's
   gift Long before suns and moons were made, and stars twinkled in the
   midnight darkness, God the eternal Father had given the chosen to
   Christ, to be His heritage and marriage dowry. If God, then, has given
   my soul to Christ, I am my Beloved's. Who shall dispute the right of
   God to give, or who shall take from Christ that which His Father has
   given to be His heritage? Fiends of Hell! Legions of the Pit! When God
   gives, can you take back the gift? If He puts the souls of the chosen
   into the hands of Christ, can you pluck them from Him? If He makes them
   Christ's sheep, can you pluck them out of His fold, and make them your
   own? God forbid we should indulge the blasphemous thought, that any can
   dispute the ownership which Christ has in His people, derived from His
   Father's gift!
   But I am my Beloved's, if I am a Believer, because of Jesus Christ's
   purchase of me. We were bought not with corruptible things, as with
   silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. Christ has an
   absolute right to all that He bought with His blood. I do not believe
   in that dreamy atonement, by which Christ redeems, and purchases, and
   yet the purchase is a fiction, and the redemption a metaphor! All that
   Christ bought with blood He will have. If a man buys with gold and
   silver of an honest man, he gets his own, nor will he be content until
   he does; but when Christ ransoms with His blood and buys of God
   Himself, and redeems His own people, it is not possible that He should
   be frustrated of His purpose or denied the objective of His death! I am
   my Beloved's then, because He has paid the full price for me, counted
   down the purple drops, and positively and surely has as much bought me
   with His money as ever Abraham of old bought flocks of sheep and oxen,
   or as ever of old Jacob served for Rachel and for Leah. No title deeds
   ever made estate more tru- ly the property of the purchaser, than did
   the Resurrection guarantee the rights of Christ in the "purchased
   possession." "I am my Beloved's," by a double tie--by the Father's
   gift, and by the Son's Divine purchase. These two things are not easily
   reconcilable to some minds. But let it be carried in your hearts as a
   matter of fact, that there is as much Grace in the Father's giving the
   elect to Christ as if no price were paid, and secondly, that there was
   as full and true a price paid to the Father as though the Father had
   been Justice only and not Love. The Grace of God and His justice are,
   both of them, full-orbed, they are never eclipsed; they are never made
   to you with divided luster; He is as gracious as though He were not
   just; He is as awfully severe as though there were no Grace in His
   Nature.
   But more than this, "I am my Beloved's," for I am His by conquest. He
   fought for me, and He won me, let Him possess me. He went alone to that
   great battle. He defied all the hosts which had made me their prey,
   encountered first my sins, and slew them with His blood, He encountered
   Satan himself next, and bruised the serpent's head, encountered Death,
   and slew him by "destroying him that had the power of death, that is,
   the devil." O Christ! You deserved to have those for whom You did
   wrestle and agonize even unto blood, and who by Your strong hand, You
   brought out of the land of their captivity! Never could a conqueror
   claim a subject so justly as Christ claims His people; they were not
   only His, eternally His, by the purchase of His blood, but they are His
   because He has taken them by overwhelming might, having delivered them
   out of the hand of him who was stronger than they! That word which He
   gird upon His thigh, is both the right by which He claims, and the
   might by which He keeps His ransomed.
   Besides this, every true Believer can add, "I am my Beloved's," by a
   gracious surrender. "With full consent I give myself to You." This is
   your language, Brothers and Sisters. It is mine. "I am my Beloved's."
   If I were never His before, I do desire to give myself up to Him now.
   His love shall be the fetters in which I, a happy captive, will walk at
   His triumphant chariot wheels. His Grace shall bind me with its golden
   chains so that I will be free, and yet His bondman forever. The mercies
   of each hour shall be fresh links, and the benefits of each day and
   night shall be new rivets to the chain. No Christian would like to be
   his own; to be one's own is to be lost; but to be Christ's is to be
   saved! To be one's own is to be a wandering sheep; to be Christ's is to
   return to the great Bishop and Shepherd of our souls. Do you not
   remember, many of you, the night when you first surrendered to Christ?
   He stood at the door and knocked--the door was overgrown with brambles;
   the hinges had rusted from long disuse; the key was lost; the keyhole
   of the lock was welded together with filth and rust. Yes, from within
   the door was bolted fast! He knocked--at first a gentle knock, enough
   to let you know who it was. You laughed. He knocked again. You heeded
   not; you heard His voice as he cried, "Open to Me, open to Me. My hair
   is wet with dew, and My locks with the drops of the night." But you had
   a thousand frivolous excuses, and you would not open to Him! Oh, do you
   remember when at last He put in his hand by the hole of the lock, and
   your heart was moved for Him? "Jesus! Savior! I yield, I yield! I can
   hold out no longer, my heart melts. My cruel soul relents. Come in!
   Come in! Please pardon me that I have kept You out so long; resisted so
   long the wooings of Your heavenly love." Well, you will say tonight,
   and set your solemn hand and seal to it, that you are Christ's because
   you do once again, voluntarily and freely, surrender yourself to Him!
   I think tonight would be a very proper occasion for each of us to renew
   our dedication vows. We are, many of us, Believers; let us go to our
   chamber and say thus--"O God! You have heard our prayers as a Church.
   We have entered into Your house; we have seen it filled to the full. By
   this, the answer which You have given to our prayers, we rededicate
   ourselves to You, desiring to say with the spouse more fully than
   heretofore, 'I am my Beloved's.'"

   Let us pause here an instant. We have seen how we came to be our
   Beloved's, let us enquire in what sense we are so now.

   We are His, first of all, by a near affinity that never can be broken.
   Christ is the Head; we are His members. There is nothing which my Head
   possesses so truly as my hands, and my heart. Your head could not say
   that its helmet and plume are so truly its own as the neck, the sinews,
   the veins, which are joined thereunto. The head manifestly has a
   distinct and peculiar property in every member. "I am my Beloved's,"
   then, even as my hands and feet are mine. "I am my Beloved's"--if He
   loses me, I will be mutilated. "I am my Beloved's," if I am cut away,
   or even wounded, He will feel the pain. The Head must suffer, when the
   members are tempted and tried. There is nothing so true and real, in
   the sense of property, as this! I would that you who doubt the
   perseverance of the saints would take these few words to heart. If once
   Christ should lose His people, He would be a Head without a body. That
   would be a ghastly sight! No, if He lost one of His people, He would be
   the Head of a mutilated body--that would not be a glorious sight. If
   you imagine the loss of one mystical member of Christ, you must suppose
   an imperfect Christ--one whose fullness is not full, whose glory is not
   glorious, whose completeness is not complete! Now I am sure you would
   reject that idea. And it will be joy for you to say, "as the members
   belong to the Head, so am I my Beloved's."

   Further than this--we are our Beloved's by a most affectionate
   relationship. He is the Husband, Believers are the spouse. There is
   nothing that a man has that is so much his property as his own wife,
   except it be his very life. A man's wealth may melt by losses; a man's
   estate may be sold to pay his debts; But a man's wife, as long as she
   lives, is his absolute property. She can say, "He is mine." He can say,
   "She is mine." Now Christ says of all His people, "You are mine, I am
   married to you; I have taken you unto Myself, and betrothed you unto Me
   in faithfulness." What do you say? Will you deny the celestial marriage
   bond? God forbid! Will you not say to your Lord tonight, "Yes, I am my
   Beloved's"? Ah, there is no divorce court in Heaven; there is no
   division; no separation bill possible, for He "hates divorce." If
   chosen, He will not reject; if once embraced, He will never cast out;
   His she is, and His she shall be forevermore. In this sense, then, "I
   am my Beloved's."

   Yet once more--"I am my Beloved's" by an indissoluble connection, just
   as a child is the property of his father. The father calls his child
   his own. Who denies it? What law is so inhuman as to allow another to
   tear away the offspring of his heart from the parent? There is no such
   law among civilized men! Among the aboriginal savages of the Southern
   States of America, such a thing may exist; but among civilized men
   there can never be any dispute but that the father's right to his child
   is supreme, and that no master, and no owner can override the rights of
   the parents to his children. Come, then-- even so are we His! "He shall
   see His seed." "He shall see of the travail of His soul." If He could
   lose His Glories, if He could be driven from His Kingdom, it He could
   be despoiled of His crown, if His Throne could totter, if all His might
   could melt away as the snow wreath melts before the summer's sun--yet
   at least His seed would be His own! No law, human or Divine, could
   unchild the believing child, or unfather Christ, the Everlasting
   Father. So then, it is a great joy to know that each Believer may say,
   in the highest sense--"I am my Beloved's. I am His child, and He is my
   Parent." I half wish that instead of my preaching now, we could stand
   up, each of us who feel the force of this sweet sentiment, and say,
   "'Tis true, great God; by eternal donation, by complete purchase, by a
   full surrender, by a mighty conquest, I am my Beloved's. He is my Head,
   my Husband, my Father, and my All."

   2. The second sentence in order of time is, "My Beloved is mine." Ah,
   you very poor men and women, you who could not call one foot of land
   your own, and probably never will till you get the space where you lie
   down to sleep the sleep of death! If you can say, "My Beloved is mine,"
   you have greater wealth than Croesus ever knew, or than a miser ever
   dreamed! If my soul can claim Christ, the eternal God and the perfect
   Man, as being my own personal property, then my soul is rich to all the
   intents of bliss--even if the body walks in rags, or should the lips
   know hunger, or the mouth be parched with thirst!

   But how is my Beloved mine? He is mine, because He gave Himself to me
   of old. Long before I knew it, or had a being, He covenanted to bestow
   Himself on me--on all His chosen. When He said, "Lo, I come; in the
   volume of the Book it is written of Me, I delight to do Your will, O
   God," He did in fact become My Substitute, giving Himself to do my
   work, and bear my sorrow! Mine He is because that Covenant has been
   fulfilled i n the actual gift. For me (I speak in the first person,
   because I want you each to speak in the first person, too), for you, my
   Soul, He laid aside His robes of Glory to become a Man; for you He was
   swaddled in the weakness of Infancy and lay in the poverty of the
   manger; for you, my Soul, He bore the infant body, the childish form,
   and the human flesh and blood; for you the poverty which made Him cry,
   "Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but I, the Son
   of Man, have not where to lay My head." For you, my Soul, for you that
   shame and spitting, that agony and bloody sweat, that Cross, that crown
   of thorns, those expiring agonies, that dying groan! "My Beloved," in
   all this, "is mine." Yes, yours the burial; yours the Resurrection and
   its mystic meaning; yours the Ascension and its triumphant shouts;
   yours the session at the right hand of God; yes, and by holy daring we
   avow it, He who sits today, "God over all, blessed forever," is ours in
   the splendor of His majesty, in the invincibility of His might, in the
   Omnipresence of His power, in all the Glory of His future Advent! Our
   Beloved is ours, because He has given Himself to us, just as He is.

   But besides that, our Beloved is not only ours by His own gift, which
   is the reality of it all, but He is ours by a graciously completed
   union. What a wonderful thing is the Doctrine of Union with Christ. "We
   are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause
   shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his
   wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I
   speak concerning Christ and the Church." Christ and His Church are
   one--one as the stones are one with the foundation; one, as the
   branches are one with the vine; as the wife is one with the husband;
   one, as the members are one with the Head--as the soul is one with the
   body--no, if there can be conceived a union closer, and there is but
   one, we are one with Christ, even as Christ is one with His Father! "I
   in them, and You in Me;" for thus the union stands. Now, as soon as
   ever we are one with Christ, you see at once that Christ must be ours.
   There is a common property between Christ and His people. All theirs
   belongs to Him--His belongs to them. They have not two stocks, they
   have but one. He has cast in His wealth, they have cast in their
   poverty--from that day they have common funds. They have but one
   purse--they have all things in common. All He is and all He has is
   theirs, and all they are or can be belong to Him.

   I might add, but this is a high point, and needs to be experienced,
   rather than preached upon, Christ is ours by His indwelling. Ignatius
   used to call himself the God-bearer and when some wondered at the
   title, he said--"I carry God about within me; our bodies are the
   Temples of the Holy Spirit." That is an amazing text, amazing in the
   splendor of its meaning! Does the Holy Spirit dwell in a man? Yes, that
   He does! Not in this temple, "not in tabernacles made with hands." That
   is to say, of man's building, but within this soul, and in your soul,
   and in the souls of all His called ones, He dwells. "Abide in Me," He
   said, "and I in you." Christ must be in you, the hope of Glory; Christ
   must be formed in you, as He was in Mary, or you have not come yet to
   know to the fullest, the Divine meaning of the spouse, when she said--
   "My Beloved is mine, and I am His."

   Now, tonight, I wish that we could get practical good, to our comfort,
   out of the thought that Christ is ours, if we are Believers. Hear me,
   then, a moment or two, while I dilate upon that thought. Christ is
   surelyyours. It is not a questionable property, a matter to be put into
   dispute with Heaven's chancery; beyond question Christ is the
   property--the rightful heritage--of every elect and called one!

   Again--Christ is ours personally. We sometimes speak of severally and
   jointly. Well then, Christ is ours jointly; but, blessed be His name,
   He is ours severally, too! Christ is as much yours tonight, however
   mean you may be, as though He did not belong to another man living. The
   whole of Christ is yours! He is not part mine, and part yours, and part
   another man's. He is all mine, all yours--personallymine, personally
   yours! Oh that we could realize this fact!

   And then, again, Christ is always ours. He is never more ours at one
   time, and less ours at another. The moment we believe in Him, we may
   know our perfect and invariable right to Christ--a right which depends
   not upon the changes of the hour, or upon the temperature of our frames
   and feelings, but upon those two Immutable things wherein it is
   impossible for God to lie. Christ is ours tonight; and, Glory be to His
   name for it, if we believe, He is ours forever--

   "This sacred bond shall never break, Though earth's old columns bow!
   The strong, the feeble and the weak Can claim their Savior now!"

   And this they shall do, perhaps with greater joy, but not with greater
   right, when they stand before the Throne of God!

   I cannot, tonight, in a place to which I am so little accustomed, bring
   all my thoughts together as I would. But, I think if I could but put
   this Truth of God before you, or rather, if the Spirit of God would put
   it so that you could feel Christ to be yours, it would make you spring
   from your pew with ecstasy! Why, it is enough to thrill every chord in
   a man; and if a man may be compared to a harp, make every string in him
   pour forth an ocean of music! Christ mine-- myselfChrist's--there
   cannot be a more joyous or more heavenly theme beneath the skies!

   II. I have thus completed the first work of this evening--taking the
   sentences of the text in the order of time. I shall now take the text
   IN THE ORDER IN WHICH IT IS GIVEN TO US, WHICH IS THE ORDER OF OUR
   EXPERIENCE.

   Do you not see, that to a man's experience, God's order is reversed? We
   begin thus--"My Beloved is mine." I go to Him, take Him up in the arms
   of my faith, as Simeon took up the little Child in the Temple, and
   pressing Him to my heart, I say--"Jesus, You are mine. All unholy and
   unclean, I nevertheless obey Your command; I believe You, I take You at
   Your word; I touch the hem of Your garment; I trust my soul wholly with
   You; You are mine and my soul can never part with You." What next? Why
   then, the soul afterwards says--"Now I am Yours, tell me what You would
   have me to do. Jesus, let me abide with You. Lord, I would follow You
   wherever You go; put me on any service, dictate to me any Commandment;
   tell me what You would have me do to glorify You"--

   "Through floods, through flames, if Jesus leads, I'll follow where He
   goes."

   For I am His! Christ is mine--this is faith. I am His--this is good
   works. Christ is mine--that is the simple way in which the soul is
   saved! I am Christ's--that is the equally simple method by which
   salvation displays itself in its practical fruits. I am afraid some of
   you have never carried out the last sentence, "I am Christ's." I know
   some, for instance, who believe (mark, I am not speaking to those who
   do not who believe it to be the duty of every Christian to profess his
   faith in Baptism, but nevertheless are not baptized. They say they are
   Baptists in principle. They are Baptists without any principle at all!
   They are men who know their Master's will, and do it not, and they
   shall surely be beaten with many stripes. In other men it becomes a sin
   of ignorance; but with such men it is willful. They reply, "It is a
   non-essential." Things non-essential to salvation are nevertheless
   essential to obedience As I said a few Sabbaths ago, you would not like
   a servant who only did what he liked to do, and told you that some of
   your commands were non-essential. I am quite certain that if a soldier
   did not load his gun, or stand in rank, or shoulder arms at the word of
   command, the court martial would never listen for an instant to the
   plea of non-essential! God's commands require obedience, and it is
   essential that every servant be found faithful. I say, it is
   exceedingly essential to a Christian to do what he is told to do.
   Whatever Jesus bids us do, if it save us from nothing, at any rate the
   fulfillment of it will save us from the sin of being disobedient to
   Him!

   Now will you try, my dear Friends, not in the one command only, which
   lies at the threshold of the house, but in all others, to feel that you
   are not your own? "Ah," says one man, "I am not my own; I have so much
   to do for my family." Another says, "I am not my own; I belong to a
   political party." Another, "I am not my own; I belong to a firm." Just
   so--all these are ways in which men are kept from saying, "I am my
   Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine." Oh that we could, by any means
   whatever, feel that we were all Christ's! I, though I had a drop of
   blood in my veins that was not His, I would seek to have it let out;
   and if there were a single power I have--mental, physical, or spiritual
   which could not and would not serve God, though it might impair my
   comfort--I would devoutly pray that this Jonah might be thrown into the
   sea, this Achan stoned with stones, this Haman hanged on the gallows!
   This cankered thing, it is a deadly thing--this damnable thing must be
   cut away, once and for all, for, "better to enter into Heaven halt and
   maimed, than having two eyes and two arms to be cast into Hell fire."
   We must have eyes that see Christ! We must feel that we are all
   Christ's, and live as if we were all Christ's, for we have no right to
   say, "My Beloved is mine," unless we can add, "And I am His." Why look,
   Sirs, look at the great multitude of professors. How few there are who
   live as if they belonged to Christ! They act independently of Hm! They
   buy, they sell on their own account--that they are stewardsnever
   penetrate their thick brains; that all they have is not their own, but
   His, never seems to have come into their heart, though they have sung
   it with their lips--

   "And if I might make some reserve, And duty did not call, I love my God
   with zeal so great, That I would give Him all."

   Many a man has sung that, with his thumb-nail going round a coin in his
   purse, to find out whether it was a four penny or a three penny bit! He
   says he would give Christ all; but then he means that the bill is to be
   drawn at a very long credit, and he will pay when he dies--he will give
   up what he cannot take away with him--and when he leaves his rotten
   carcass, he will leave his rotten wealth. Oh that we could all feel
   that we were all Christ's! Why, the Church of God would not be penned
   and shut up within the narrow bounds of England and America for long,
   if once we felt we were Christ's! At this very moment China is open to
   Christian enterprise. The leader of the so-called "rebels" turns out to
   be, after all, a man who is exceedingly enlightened in the things of
   God. He has said to Mr. Roberts, the missionary, "I open today 18
   chapels in Nankin--write to your friends and tell them to come over and
   preach, and we will be glad to hear them. I give you a passport, that
   no man may touch you, and any man who will preach Christ's Gospel shall
   go unharmed through my dominions." And he actually issued, but a few
   days before the coming of the last mail, a proclamation by which all
   idolatry is abolished throughout his dominions, and witchcraft and
   fortunetelling are made crimes, and he invites and prays specifically
   that his Brothers in England will send over the Word of Life, that they
   may have it among the people. Now I do honestly avow, if this place had
   not been built, and I had had nothing beyond the narrow bounds of the
   place in which I have lately preached, I would have felt in my
   conscience bound to go to learn the language and preach the Word there!
   But I now know what to do. I must here abide, for this is my place; but
   I would to God some were found in the Church, some in London, who have
   not such a gracious tie as this to keep them in their own land, to say,
   "Here am I, send me. I am Christ's man; there is Christ's field. Let me
   go and reap it, for the harvest is ripe. Help me, O God, and I will
   seek to ingather it for Your honor." "My Beloved is mine, and I am
   His." That last, "I am His" would make life cheap, and blood like
   water, and heroism a common thing and daring but an everyday duty, and
   self-sacrifice the very spirit of the Christian life! Learn well, then,
   the meaning of that sentence, "Iam His."

   But will you please notice once again--(I fear lest I shall weary you,
   and therefore will be brief)--"My Beloved is mine"--that is my calling.
   He calls me to Him. He gives Himself to me. He is mine. I am His--that
   is my election!I was His before I knew Him to be mine; but I learned my
   calling first, and my election afterwards. We have scores of people who
   will not come to Christ because they cannot understand election. Meet a
   boy in the street, and invite him to go to a two-penny school. "No,"
   says the boy, "I don't feel fit to go to a national school to learn to
   read and write--for, to tell you the truth, I don't understand the
   Hebrew language," You would reply, "But, my good lad, you will learn
   Hebrew afterwards, if you can--but that is no reason, at any rate, why
   you should not learn English first! Come first to the little school;
   you shall go afterwards to the grammar school; if you get on, you shall
   go to the University, take your B.A. degree, and perhaps come out as a
   Master of Arts." But here we have poor souls that want to be have their
   M.A. before they have gone to the penny school! They want to read the
   tomes before they will read the primer book. They are not content to
   spell A, B, C--"I am a sinner, Christ is a Savior"--but they long to
   turn over the book of decrees, and find out the deep things of God. You
   shall find them out afterwards--you shall go step by step, while the
   Master shall say to you each time, "Friend, come up higher." But if you
   begin with election, you will have to come down again--for there will
   be a more honorable man than you who will come in, and you will begin
   with shame to take the lowest place. I have seen plenty of high-flying
   Christians who began at the top of the tree; they were themen; wisdom
   would die with them; the judges, the dictators, the very consuls, the
   cardinals, the popes--they knew everything. And whenever such men are
   gracious men, the Lord always puts the lancet into them, and makes them
   grow smaller and smaller, and smaller, till at last they say, "Woe is
   me, for I am undone." And they cry, "My soul is even as a weaned
   child." Begin at the bottom and grow up. But do not begin at the top
   and come down! Thatis hard work--but going up is pleasant work, joyous
   work! Begin by saying, "My Beloved is mine." You shall come to know
   your election, by-and-by. and say, "I am His."

   And now I do not think I will preach any longer about my text, but just
   come down upon my Hearers for a few minutes, with all my might! How
   many among us can dare to say this tonight? Hundreds of you can!
   Thousands of you can! If this were the Day of Judgment--if tonight you
   stood, fresh risen from your graves--if nowyou heard the trumpet
   sound--if nowyou saw the King in His beauty sitting upon the Great
   White Throne, I know that many of you would say, "My Beloved is mine,
   and I am His." If this day the millennial reign of Christ had begun--if
   the vials had been opened, the plagues poured out, and if now Christ
   were come--that the wicked might be driven out, and that his saints
   might reign--I am sure there are many of you who would say, "Welcome,
   welcome, Son of God! My Beloved is mine, and I am His." And there are
   many of you, too, who if the angel of death should pass the pew, and
   flap his black wings into your face, and the cold air of death should
   smite you, would say, "'Tis well, for my Beloved is mine, and I am
   His." You could shut your eyes and your ears to the joys, and to the
   music of earth, and you could open them to the splendors and melodies
   of Heaven! To be fearless of death should always be the mark of the
   Christian. Sometimes a sudden alarm may rob us of our presence of mind;
   but no Believer is in a healthy state if he is not ready to meet death
   at any hour, and at any moment. To walk bravely into the jaws of the
   dragon--to go through the iron gates and to feel no terror--to be ready
   to shake hands with the skeleton king; to look on him as a friend, and
   no more a foe--this should be the habitual spirit, and the constant
   practice of the heir of Heaven. Oh, if this is written on my soul, "My
   Beloved is mine, and I am His!" Come, welcome Death--

   "Come, Death, and some celestial band, I'll gladly go with you."

   But--and a solemn "but"--pass the question round these galleries, and
   in this area, and how many among you must say, "I never thought of
   that. I never thought whether I was Christ's, or Christ mine." I will
   not rebuke you tonight. I will not thunder at you. God's Grace to me
   forbids that this should be a day of thunder. Let it be a day of
   feasting to everyone, and of sorrow to none. What shall I say to you,
   then, but this? O that Christ maybe yours! When He was here on earth,
   He chose to go among sinners--sinners of the blackest hue! And now He
   is in Heaven; up yonder He loves sinners as much as He ever did. He is
   as willing to receive you tonight as to receive the thief! It will give
   as much joy to His heart to hear your cry tonight, as when He thanked
   God that these things were revealed unto babes. It is to His honor that
   you should be His; it is to His joy that He should be yours. Sinner! If
   you will have Christ--if now the Spirit of God makes you willing--there
   is no bar on God's part when the bar is taken away on your part! If you
   are willing, by His Grace, He is more willing than you are! If the gate
   of your heart is on the latch, the gate of Heaven is wide open! If your
   soul does but yearn after Christ, His heart has long yearned after you!
   If you have but a spark of love to Christ, He has a furnace of love to
   you; and if you have none at all--no love, no faith--oh I pray you have
   it now! "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved."
   You! You! YOU! Did you come here out of curiosity? Zaccheus heard
   Christ out of curiosity; but he was saved. Did you come for a worse
   purpose? God bless you, anyhow, for whatever reason you came; and may
   He bring you to Himself tonight! Trust Christ now, and you are saved.
   My life for yours--if you perish trusting in Christ, I will perish,
   too! Even should I have an ear listening to me which belongs to a
   harlot, to a thief, to a murderer, yet, "he who believes in the Lord
   Jesus Christ shall be saved." And if you believe in Him, and you are
   lost, I will be lost with you; and the whole Church of Christ must be
   lost, too; for there is the same way to Heaven for the best as for the
   worst--for the most vile as for the most righteous! "No man comes unto
   the Father but by Christ." Nothing can damn a man but his own
   righteousness! Nothing can save him but the righteousness of Christ.
   All your sin--your past sin--shall not destroy you--if you now believe
   in Jesus! It shall be cast into the sea forever, and you shall begin
   again as though you had never sinned. His Grace shall keep you for the
   future, and you shall hold on your way an honor to Christ's Grace, and
   a joy to your own soul! But if you are disobedient and will not eat of
   the good of the land, then will I say, as Isaiah said of old, "I am
   found of them that sought Me not, but all day long have I stretched out
   My hands to an ungodly and gain-saying generation." God has stretched
   out His hands! Oh that you were wise and would run into His arms
   tonight!

   I know I am speaking to some self-righteous men--some who say, "It is a
   shame to tell men they are depraved. Iam not." Well, we think if their
   lives were written, it might be proved they were. "It is a shame," they
   say, "to tell men that they cannot get to Heaven by their good works,
   because then they will be wicked." It is an odd thing, though, that the
   more this Truth is preached, the better the people are! Preaching good
   works as the way to Heaven always makes drunkards and thieves, but
   preaching faith in Christ always produces the best effects. Dr.
   Chalmers, who was no fanatic, says, "When I preached mere morality, I
   preached sobriety till they were all drunkards; I preached chastity
   till it was not known anywhere; I preached honesty till men grew to be
   thieves. But," he says, "as soon as ever I preached Christ, there was
   such a change in the village as never was known!" Well, we believe that
   self-righteousness will destroy you, my Friend, and we therefore tell
   you, honestly and plainly, that you might as well hope to get to Heaven
   by flying up in a balloon as to get there by your good works! You may
   as soon sail to India in a sieve as get to Glory by your own goodness;
   you might as well go to court in cobwebs as seek to go to Heaven in
   your own righteousness. Away with your rags, your filthy, rotten rags!
   They are only a harbor for the parasites of unbelief and pride! Away
   with your rotten righteousness, your counterfeit gold, your forged
   wealth! It is of no worth whatever in the sight of God! Come to Him
   empty, poor, naked! It grates on your proud ears, does it? Better, I
   say, to lose your pride than to lose your soul! Why be damned for
   pride's sake? Why carry your head so high that it must be cut off? Why
   feed your pride on your soul's blood? Surely there is cheaper stuff
   than that for pride to drink! Why let it suck the very marrow out of
   your bones? Be wise! Bow, stoop, stoop to be saved! And now, in the
   name of Jesus of Nazareth, the Man, the God, I do command you, as His
   messenger and His servant--and at your peril reject the
   command--"Believe, repent and be baptized, every one of you." "Believe
   in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved," "for he who believes
   and is baptized shall be saved. He who believes not shall be damned."

   God add His blessing, for His name's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 Temple Glories

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING, MARCH 31, 1861, DELIVERED BY REV.
   C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "It came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to
   make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD; and when
   they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and
   instruments of music and praised the LORD, saying, For He is good; for
   His mercy endures forever: that then the house was filled with a cloud,
   even the house of the LORD; so that the priests could not stand to
   minister by reason of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD had filled
   the house of God"

   2 Chronicles 5:13,14.

   "Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from
   Heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the
   glory of the LORD filled the house. And the priests could not enter
   into the house of the LORD, because the glory of the LORD had filled
   the LORD'Shouse. And when all the children of Israel saw how the fire
   came down, and the glory of the LORD upon the house, they bowed
   themselves with their faces to the ground upon the pavement and
   worshipped and praised the LORD, saying, For He is good. For His mercy
   endures forever." 2 Chronicles 7:1,2,3.

   IN the wilderness God showed His glorious Presence in the midst of the
   camp of Israel. To show His secret indwelling in His Church--in the
   innermost chamber of the sacred tent, there perpetually beamed the
   bright and ineffable light of the Shekinah; and to manifest His visible
   Presence to protect and guide His flock, a pillar of cloud covered the
   people by day, screening them from the burning heat of the sun, so that
   in that extremely hot and terrible region they were delivered from
   excessive heat; and at night lest they should feel forsaken in the
   midst of the desolate darkness of the desert, this pillar of cloud
   became a pillar of fire. There was light throughout all their
   dwellings, for I suppose that this pillar of fire, like a luminous
   atmosphere, covered the entire camp. They had thus a sun and a shield.
   They had light in darkness, and salvation from the heat, their shelter
   was God's wing, their light gleamed from His eyes. Now the thought had
   fallen into the heart of David to build for God a house instead of the
   tent in which He was willing to dwell, which, by reason of years, had
   no doubt grown old and somewhat shorn of its glories. He purposed to
   build a permanent structure. Solomon, his son, carried out the purpose
   of David. The Temple was built. We have no precise idea of the
   architecture and appearance of this glorious edifice. The two pillars,
   Jachin and Boaz, are thought by some to have been vast castings of
   brass, set up in front rather for ornament than service, like the
   enormous obelisks in the gateways of the Egyptian temples; while others
   conceive that these renowned columns supported the entablature of the
   portico; in either case they were stupendous in size, and beautified in
   the most elaborate manner. The building itself was not large, but
   exceedingly magnificent. We make a great mistake when we think of
   Solomon's Temple as being famous for size; it was scarcely half as
   long, and barely half as wide as this present house, or that the area
   was not one fourth of this which is now crowded with immortal souls. It
   was 60 cubits long in the clear, which with the most liberal
   calculation which can be given for the cubit, is but 100 feet, while if
   the cubit is half- a-yard, the breadth was but 30 feet. There are
   hundreds of Christian Churches which excel that marvelous building in
   mere size. Its chief fame lay in the countless treasures lavished upon
   it. One of the most reasonable calculations of the expense of that
   gorgeous structure is 120 million pounds, while other estimates arrive
   at the inconceivable sum of one billion! The wonder is how they could
   have used such an amount as even the smaller sum. Whatever it might
   have been, it would have been a vain-glorious work, unless in that
   temple There had been the same manifestation of the Divine Presence as
   had been given in the Tabernacle.

   Now these were two, the cloudand the fire. The two passages of
   Scripture which I have read to you give you two pictures. In the first
   you have the cloud, in the second you have the fire; and in these two
   together you have the sacred mystic symbols of the Presence of the
   Eternal God in the midst of His people. Oh, that now, tonight, though
   no visible cloud shall be seen, though no fire shall burn the bullock
   and the ram, yet may faith discern the cloud, and may experience in the
   heart perceive the fire, and may each of us say, "God was with us of a
   Truth;" and add, "Did not our hearts burn within us, while he spoke
   with us by the way?"

   I. The first passage of Scripture, which I read in your hearing,
   affords me the first head of my discourse. You will perceive that the
   people were gathered together to praise God. Then THE CLOUD appeared;
   the priests were no longer able to minister, for God had claimed the
   great house as being exclusively His own!

   Let us note the occupation in which they were engaged. They were
   praising God. Let us mark how they performed this work. You will
   perceive that they did it unanimously "It came even to pass, as the
   trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in
   praising and thanking the Lord." What a joyous thing it is to hear the
   thousands praise God at once; every man contributing to the song; the
   poor coarse voice belonging to some of us who never can learn music,
   let us try as much as we will; the flute-like voices of our sisters,
   the deep resounding mellow bass of the full-developed man; all the
   different tones, and notes, and voices, perhaps expressive of our
   different degrees and growths in Grace, of our different trials, and
   our different temperaments, all join to swell one common hymn which
   rolls upward to the Throne of God! Every man who refuses to praise God
   mars the song. Every dumb lip spoils the music. Every silent tongue has
   a disastrous effect upon the unanimity and oneness of the choir. Let us
   all praise the Lord! Let all creatures that have breath praise Him! Let
   the Heaven of heavens extol Him! We can never expect to have God in
   this house, or in our own houses, or in our own hearts until we begin
   to praise Him! Unless as a people we unanimously, with one heart,
   though with many tongues, extol the King of kings, farewell to the hope
   that He will give us His Presence in the future! Oh, my dear Brothers
   and Sisters, let us look back upon the past! Who among us is not a
   debtor to mercy? "Let those refuse to sing who never knew our God," and
   never tasted of His Grace! Be silent, O tongue, if you have never
   tasted of the goodness of the Lord! Breath, be wasted on the air, if
   your mouth has never been satisfied with good things! But, my Soul, if
   your life is His gift, and your joy His mercy, let no wicked silence
   bury His praise! He has been so good, so kind, so generous to all of us
   without exception, that we can and must, each one of us, according to
   our ability, with heart and voice, praise, laud, and bless His name
   always!

   But then you perceive they not only sang unanimously, but they shouted
   heartily. In some of our churches, there are half-a-dozen people
   dressed in white, who stand up to praise the Lord or rather to magnify
   the music leader. In many of our dissenting congregations, some five or
   six who are the choir, sing to the praise and glory of themselves, and
   the people sit still and listen, not daring to spoil music so
   magnificent. In many other places, it is thought most seemly to
   delegate the work of human hearts, and tongues and lips to some
   instrument which shall praise the Lord. May that never be the case
   here! As often as we meet together here, may the song roll up to Heaven
   like the voice of many waters, and like great thunders. A little God
   might deserve little praise, but the Great God deserves the great
   praise of all His creatures! I have noticed that in business, many men
   show a great deal of energy; but in singing God's praises they are
   almost as mute as Matthew's fish! They can listen to the notes, but
   they do not attempt to join; they have no objection that others should
   sing, but they are mute themselves. Oh, let us sing to our God! And
   heartily, too! And if the voice is not so well tuned as we could wish,
   yet if the heart is in tune, God will accept the song, and even angel
   notes shall not be more acceptable! Fathers love to hear the voices of
   their own children--why should our heavenly Father have a dumb family?

   Mr. Rowland Hill was one day in the pulpit, and an old woman among the
   crowd got right up to the pulpit steps. She had the art of singing
   through her nose, and she sung so desperately bad, that good old
   Rowland turned round and said to her--"Hold your tongue, my good woman;
   you spoil the singing." "Oh, Sir," she said, "it comes from my heart,
   Mr. Hill. It comes from my heart!" "Sing away, good soul," he said,
   "sing away as much as ever you like. I am sure I beg your pardon for
   interrupting you." And so would I say to every man who, in God's house,
   cannot sing as he would--if it comes from the heart, we could not
   interrupt you, for the very stones would speak if they who fear God and
   have tasted of His Grace did not exalt and extol Him! Well, if you will
   not praise God in earnest, you must not expect to see the cloud of His
   Presence, for it was when with one heart, with a mighty sound, they
   praised God that the cloud suddenly made its appearance.

   Then notice next, that their praise was Scriptural praise. They sung
   that old Psalm, "His mercy endures forever." Now you, I dare say,
   thought when I was reading that Psalm, there was not much in it. It was
   a repetition--a monotony; it was striking the same note again and
   again--ringing the same bell. Well, this just shows that God does not
   require in our song the display of great poetical ability; He does not
   need that the verses should have in them flights of rhapsody or dreams
   of fancy! Let the rhyme be good by all means; let the syllables each
   have their proper length. God always should have the best of the best;
   but better is the wild song of the Revivalist with the homely street
   tune, sung from the very soul, than the noblest music that was ever
   penned, or ever flowed from human lips, if the heart is absent, and if
   the strain is not in accordance with God's Word. The more Scriptural
   our hymns are, the better. In fact, there will never be found music
   which can excel old David's Psalms! Let us interpret them in an
   evangelical spirit; let us fill them full of the Gospel of Christ, of
   which they are, indeed, already full in prophecy, and we shall sing the
   very words of the Spirit, and shall surely edify each other, and
   glorify our God! If tonight, then, our music has been Scriptural; if
   our praise has been hefty; if our song has been unanimous; if we have
   sung of that mercy which endures forever, we have good cause to expect
   that God will manifest Himself to us, and faith will perceive the
   cloud.

   That is a grand old Calvinistic Psalm, "His mercy endures forever."
   What Arminian can sing that? Well, he willsing it, I dare say; but if
   he is a thorough-going Arminian, he really cannot enjoy it and believe
   it. You can fall from Grace, can you? Then how does His mercy endure
   forever? Christ bought with His blood some who will be lost in Hell,
   did He? Then how did His mercy endure forever? There are some who
   resist the offers of Divine Grace, and all that the Spirit of God can
   do for them, yet disappoint the Spirit and defeat God? How, then, does
   His mercy endure forever? No, no, this is no hymn for you--this is the
   Calvinist's hymn! This is the hymn which you and I will sing as long as
   life shall last, and going through the dark Valley of the Shadow of
   Death we will make the shades resound with the joyous strain--

   "For His mercy shall endure, Ever faithful, ever sure!"

   It was while the people were thus engaged that all of a sudden that
   cloud which before floated over the Tabernacle made its appearance over
   the Temple; but this time, instead of hanging over the roof, it
   descended and entered into the courts and filled the sacred places! The
   priests were standing, each of them, in his proper place, swinging to
   and fro the sacred censers, and making a sweet perfume; others of them
   were standing at the altar waiting till the time should come for
   sacrifice. But no sooner did this cloud fill the house than the priests
   ceased to minister! They felt there was no room for man, for God had
   filled the place! Brothers and Sisters, will you give me your attention
   while I try to picture to you what shall be the effect if God shall be
   pleased to fill this house with His Glory? I can conceive the effect
   upon that vast assembly on that august day of the dedication. The Glory
   of God had filled the house, and the priests were set aside. Where God
   is, man is forgotten; you will think little of the minister, save for
   his work's sake; you will talk the less of the man when you shall see
   the Master! This house shall cease to be called by my name, and shall
   be called by God's name! If God shall fill the place, it will be to
   your souls not the house where you can sit to hear this man or that,
   but the place where you shall see the beauty of God, and enquire in His
   Temple. You will love your pastor; you will cherish your Elders; you
   will rally round your deacons; you will, as a Church, recognize the
   bonds of your Church-relationship--but pastor, Elders, deacons,
   Church--all will be merged and all forgotten if the Glory of the Lord
   shall fill the house! This always has been the effect of great
   revivals--no man has ever been very apparent. When God blessed the
   world through Whitefield and Wesley, who were they, and what did they
   think of themselves? "Less than nothing they became when God was
   All-in-All!" The going up of priests is the dishonor of the High
   Priest, Christ Jesus; but when priestcraft ceases to be, and is cast
   down--then the Lord alone is exalted in that day! May the Lord here,
   while He uses human instrumentality, let you all see that "it is not by
   might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord."

   This has indeed been my mission, to show the power of God in human
   weakness! I do acknowledge and confess what is so continually said of
   me, "The man is not educated." Granted. "His periods are unpolished."
   Granted. "His manner is rough." Be it so, if you will ' 'Himself a
   fool"--Yes, amen, and whatever else you choose. Gather together all the
   epithets in the catalog of abuse--come heap them here! But who has done
   this, who has saved souls, and called the people to His footstool? Why,
   if the instrument is mean, the more Glory be to Him who used it! And if
   the man is nothing, "I glory in infirmity, that the power of God may
   rest upon me." Make me less and less; I pray you do it; let it be so;
   but still, O

   God, use this poor ox-goad, make it still mighty to the slaying of
   Philistines, and make Your Word still a discerner of the thoughts and
   intents of the heart! Let the Lord fill the house, and man will be
   forgotten!

   Besides this, you can easily picture in your minds what a solemn awe
   fell on all who were gathered that day when once that cloud had filled
   the house. Perhaps there were in that vast assembly some who came there
   flippantly, to see the edifice. There were some who had heard of its
   plates of gold; they had heard of its bronze laver; they had listened
   to the stories of the great stones which Hiram, King of Tyre, had
   floated on rafts to Joppa, and they came to see the place. There were
   others, too, who had contributed largely to the building of it; they
   came to be seen--that the king might thank them for the gift--that the
   people might see their generous benefactors. These motives, we admit
   were base, but the motives were lost, and forgotten when once the Glory
   of God filled the house! Then they felt the place was too solemn to be
   looked at as a mere display; they thought it, then, too awful to be
   regarded as their own, and on the breast of every Israelite might have
   been read these words, "This is none other than the House of God, and
   the very gate of Heaven," for God had filled the house! Then, too, you
   may believe right well that the saints of Godrejoiced/They had sung
   before; the prayers made sweet melody; but oh, what music was in their
   souls when once that cloud had covered all! I think they wept for joy!
   They could not speak. I know I would have been transfixed to that spot.
   I would have said--

   "Come, then, expressive silence; hymn His praise," for oh, when God is
   present, how can we tell our joys! Sing unto Him, sing unto Him! Praise
   Him on the cymbals; praise Him on the high-sounding cymbals! But when
   you have done, all your joy overflows your words--the music of your
   hearts excels the music of your lips!

   And then, I think I may add safely enough, the suppliants of that day
   felt they might pray more earnestly because they prayed surely. God had
   filled the house--now He would hear their prayers! Whenever they turned
   their eyes to the Temple, they would meet the eyes of God; when for
   deliverance from sin, pestilence, war, drought, mildew, locusts, or
   caterpillars, they turned their eyes towards Zion's hill--they felt
   they must be heard, for God had filled the house. Oh, that tonight the
   people of God may be glad! Oh, that you may go home as they did from
   Solomon's Temple, blessing the king, each man, in the gladness of
   heart, and feeling that you may pray, for God will hear; that God has
   so manifestly acknowledged this house as His that whensver we shall
   meet for supplication, though we are but two or three, where prayer is
   desired to be made, there Christ is in the midst of us to bless us! I
   ask, my Brothers and Sisters, that we may have such a manifestation of
   God that all these effects, in the very highest and fullest degree, may
   be received and participated in by us!

   I have thus preached upon my first text as briefly as I could, leaving
   the more time to enforce the lesson of the second. You have sung His
   praise; now, Lord, fill the house! You have chanted His name; you have
   lifted up your voices to Him whose mercy endures forever. Oh, King of
   kings, shine forth! Oh, You who dwells between the cherubim, display
   Yourself to each of us and do it now, for Jesus' sake!

   II. The first text has had reference to the past. For mercies received
   we must praise God if we would be favored with His Presence. The next
   text dwells especially upon the future. The people, after praise,
   joined with one another in solemn prayer and sacrifice--then was it
   that THE FIRE came down! They had the cloud before, but now they had
   the fire, and then once again they stood up, after having bowed
   themselves, and they worshipped the Lord and sang once again, "His
   mercy endures forever."

   I have said in this place five or six times already, that unless my
   Church shall pray for me, and God shall hear their prayers, I am of all
   men the most miserable, but if your supplications shall be heard in
   Heaven, I am of all men the most blessed by God! Think of this
   assembly, repeated as it will be Sabbath after Sabbath--what if we
   should have no food for the saint--what if the Word should never be
   spoken earnestly to sinners, and should therefore be unblessed? It will
   be in vain that this house is filled! In vain did I say? Infinitely
   worse than that! Will it be nothing that we are associated together in
   Church-fellowship. Nothing! It will be everything that shall foretell
   our future misery unless God is here. In vain the rearing of this
   structure with all the perseverance that has been used, and with all
   the smiles of God, unless we have His blessing now. If ever you prayed
   for me, and for this Church before, pray for us seven times now! Oh,
   you who are my sons and daughters spiritually--who have been born to
   God by the preaching of the Word--to you I make my first appeal! I
   beseech you never cease to pray that here God's Word may be a
   quickening, a convincing, a converting Word. The fact is, Brothers and
   Sisters, we must have conversion work here! We cannot go on as some
   churches do with- out converts. We cannot, we will not, we must not, we
   dare not! Souls must be converted here, and if there are not many born
   to Christ, may the Lord grant to me that I may sleep in the tomb of my
   fathers, and be heard of no more. Better, indeed, for us to die than to
   live if souls are not saved! You, then, who have already been saved
   under our ministry, make this, I pray you, a matter of daily prayer.
   You who are members of this Church, who have been long ago in Christ,
   before our time--I charge you by Him who lives and was dead, be instant
   in season, and out of season with your constant supplications. O Sirs!
   What shall I do if I have the misfortune to lose my prayer book? And
   you are my prayer book--my litany, my daily collects are all written on
   my people's hearts! Where am I? Like a poor shipwrecked man floating
   far out at sea upon a raft with no friendly sail in sight, unless I
   have your daily prayers. But if I have them, I shall be as some
   well-laden ship floating in the midst of its convoy with many larger
   vessels, and fairer sails which keep it gladsome company in storm and
   in fair weather, till we all shall reach our port together and at once!
   Pray for us that our faith fail not, that our pride break not forth.
   Pray for us that we may pray! Pray that we may read the Word with a
   greater understanding of it, and that when we stand up to speak, a horn
   of the oil of the Spirit may anoint our head that we may speak the
   Words of God, and not the words of man. And with your prayers, mingle
   your sacrifices; bring each day, each one of you, the precious blood of
   Christ! Take in your hands, handfuls of the frankincense of His merits!
   Stand each morning and each night before the Divine Throne as the
   king's remembrances, putting Him in remembrance of what Jesus did.
   Plead with Him by His agony and bloody sweat, by His Cross and Passion,
   by His precious death and burial. Plead with Him to save souls! Use the
   strong arguments of Jesus' veins; take to yourselves the Almighty logic
   of a bleeding Savior's groans; stand to it that you will not let the
   angel go except He bless you! Back up your prayers with tears! Prove
   the sincerity of your tears by acts! Live out your prayers. Pray for
   the peace of Jerusalem, and then work and strive for it. As one man,
   with one heart, be you daily crying to your God, and seeking by acts of
   faith to prove the reality of your supplication.

   And then, mark you--then shall the fire come down! We already have, I
   trust, the cloud. God this week has acknowledged this house to be His.
   We need the fire. "But what is the difference?" you ask. Why, there may
   be the Presence of God in a house after a certain fashion, inasmuch as
   His people there worship Him; but yet it may not be His active
   Presence. We need not the cloud--the symbol of only His being there in
   mystery--we need the fire which is the symbol of His acting while He is
   present! Oh, my Brothers and Sisters, how much the preacher needs the
   fire! He who has the tongue of flame can soon melt hearts, but what are
   these poor pieces of clay unless God bid the seraph touch them with a
   live coal from the Altar? Preaching is a farce unless the minister has
   fire within him! And when the fire is there, preaching is God's
   ordained and guaranteed way of bringing souls to Himself. You have
   heard preachers, I do not doubt, with an erudition so perfect that you
   could not fathom their meaning. You have heard them with an eloquence
   so exalted that you could not explain what it was that they would set
   forth. You have listened to some who rather seemed to have lips of ice
   than lips of fire; you have heard of many who are successful in giving
   sleep to those who never sleep at home. There are some preachers who
   can distribute narcotics with a bounteous hand, and send at one motion
   of their deadly arm a whole crowd to sleep! May it never be so here! If
   we cannot keep you awake, it is better ourselves to go to sleep. When
   the congregation is asleep, it is a sign the minister ought to be in
   bed--where he could be comfortable--rather than in a pulpit where he is
   mischievous. But attention may be riveted without feeling being
   excited. We need the fire to make the feeling. Oh, I have heard a man
   preach a sermon to which an angel might have listened for its faultless
   truthfulness, but it lacked fire; but I have known another whose
   ministry was faulty in many respects, rough were his words, the Gospel
   which he preached was not a full-orbed Gospel, but yet he spoke like a
   man who meant what he said, with his heart boiling over at his eyes,
   with his soul rolling out of his mouth in one tremendous cataract, and
   men were moved, and the masses flocked, and thousands listened, and
   souls were saved because the man was in earnest! Ah, when I see a man
   go up into his pulpit and ask the Lord the Holy Spirit to assist him,
   and then opens wide his manuscript and reads it all--I wonder what he
   means? And when he prays that he may have the tongue of fire, and then
   speaks in such a mumbling cold trivial manner that his hearers detect
   at once that there is no heart about him--I wonder what he means?

   Oh, fire of God, come down upon the tongue of the minister! But we need
   this fire upon the hearers, too. How well people listen when they come
   to hear something! When they come up, and do not expect to get
   anything, it is not often they are disappointed; but when they are
   willing to listen to whatever is to be said in God's name, how
   delightful, how easy, how pleasant it is to address them! We need much
   of that kind of fire! Oh, how we need the ear that is circum-
   cised--the heart that is softened! The minister is the sower; O God,
   plow the furrows first! The minister waters; great God, plant the cedar
   first! We are but the lights; Great God, give the eyes! We are but the
   trumpets; O Lord, open the ears! We do but speak--Great God, give life
   that when we speak, we may not speak to dead men, but that life may be
   given through our word! Fire is abundantly needed upon the hearers!

   What a noble effect is produced when once the fire comes down upon a
   congregation! I will picture you a Church without fire, and then one
   with it. There is a Chapel--we will not say where--anywhere you like.
   On Sabbath morning the minister enters his place; he hardly expects to
   see it half full. He comes in about five minutes late. He gives out the
   hymn--two or three singers rise up and slaughter the praise. The people
   keep dropping in all through the hymn. Prayer begins, and they are
   still dropping in. The Chapter has been read, and the second hymn going
   on; they are still coming in. At last they have got quietly settled.
   The clerk has just finished the last verse; he composes himself to his
   usual sleep; the congregation also prepare themselves for what they are
   about to receive. Firstly has produced its effect; secondly is telling
   upon the people very manifestly; and by the time that thirdly has been
   given out,[three sermon points] perhaps the last pair of eyes will have
   ceased to gaze upon the pulpit and the vacant face within it! But as
   you stand in the aisle, you say to yourself, "Well, this is a sight
   indeed! That is a good man in the pulpit, but what right has he there?.
   These are good people, but what do they come here for? There is no
   earnestness, no life." The notices have to be given out-- "Prayer
   meeting on Monday evening; lecture on Thursday." Well, we will come on
   Monday evening. So we go. There is the minister and about four people
   besides ourselves. There are hardly enough to ask to pray; after one
   has prayed, the minister will have to pray twice to make up the time;
   the prayers are 20 minutes long--they are not prayers, they are
   sermons. If anything, the Prayer Meeting is duller than the service,
   for there were people at the one, if no life; but here there are
   neither people nor life! Well, we will go and speak to the deacons.

   "Well, Friend, how has your Church increased of late?" "Well, Sir, we
   do not increase; we have not looked to that lately; but Sir, things are
   very well; we are going on very comfortably." "How long since you have
   had a baptizing?" "Oh, we had a baptizing in old Dr. So-and-So's time.
   That is about, I think--let me see--fifteen years ago, I think." "You
   have not had one since?" "Well, I do not know; we may have had one. We
   have had some members join from other Churches, but we certainly have
   not had many." "And are you doing anything in the neighborhood for
   good?" "Well, no. We have some young people who are a little too rash
   and hasty; they will not be quite quiet; but our minister does not
   think there is any use in going out of the old ways. Besides, he says
   revivals are all wildfire--that the Lord will certainly have His own,
   and that we ought not to exert ourselves beyond the proper limit. You
   know, he says that ministers who preach too often, always die
   prematurely. Our minister wants to live to a good old age, and
   therefore he is careful of his valuable life."

   We will go and see the minister now. We will ask him to let us into the
   study. Sets of manuscripts--a bad sign! Shelves full of sermons, and
   very little Puritan theology. Bad sign again. I wonder whether he will
   let us stop by while he is making a sermon? The way to begin to make a
   sermon is to bend the knees and to cry to God for direction; that is
   the first point. He does not do that; he has marked 20 or 30 texts for
   the next month or two, and he has had a bill printed, and told the
   people what he means to preach from, to prove that he is guided by the
   Spirit for months in advance, and not in the same hour when he needs
   it! So he looks to see what the text is, and takes down various books
   that he has upon the subject, writes out his epistle to his church and
   the thing is done, and he may go out visiting. No groaning over souls,
   mark; none of Baxter's compassion; no knocking of the knees together as
   he goes up the pulpit stairs; no sleepless nights because he cannot
   preach as he would; no groaning when he comes home because he thinks
   there has been a failure where there ought to have been a success. No;
   the reason is because there is no fire. O God! Send down the fire and
   what a change there will be!

   The fire has come. The next Saturday the minister is in his study
   again, and the thought--an awful thought-- strikes him, "What if the
   blood of souls should be at my door?" He gets up. He paces the room;
   puts his hand upon his forehead; he had never thought of that before!
   Preaching these years, but he never thought he was responsible for
   men-- never imagined that he must certainly be either his brother's
   keeper, or his brother's murderer! He cannot stand it. That discourse
   he was going to deliver will not do; he will take another. A text comes
   to his mind; it shall be this--"Ho, everyone who thirsts, come you to
   the waters!" When he wakes on Sabbath morning, he is all in
   fear--suppose he should break down? He lifts up his heart to God; he
   prays for help. He goes up into the pulpit; he is trembling. He begins
   to speak; the people do not know what to make of it--the minister is
   different from anything he was before! He begins to speak to everyone
   who thirsts, and now he begins to cry, "Ho!" He never spoke as loud as
   that before! Now he begins to plead, "Come you to the waters!" They
   never saw him stretch his hands out to plead before. "And he who has no
   money, come, buy wine and milk." And the tears roll down his cheeks,
   and he begins to plead with all the pathos of his nature while he begs
   souls to come to Christ, to come to Christ, to come to Christ!

   The old sleepers find they cannot sleep; those who have had the most
   comfortable nap before, cannot effect it now. Eyes gleam--rays flash
   from many eyeballs which had for months been unconscious of a
   sympathetic glance; tears are seen! The minister pleads with God after
   he has pleaded with men; he comes down to the vestry. The old deacon
   takes hold of both his hands--"Bless God for such a sermon as this,
   Sir; it has quite stirred me up; this is how old Dr. So-and-So used to
   preach." And the next deacon says, "I bless God for this! Don't you
   think we ought to have a special Prayer Meeting about it? Better give
   notice of it this evening." Prayer Meeting next Monday. There are not
   many, but there are four times as many as there were before; and oh,
   how they pray! Twenty minutes does not do; they pray 10 minutes each;
   they keep to the point; they do not preach; they pray for God to bless
   the minister. Next Sabbath morning a fuller house; Sabbath evening
   crowded; souls are awakened, God is blessing the Word--saints pray,
   sinners tremble. The neighborhood is changed, and Christ is glorified!
   This is the effect of the fire. O God, send the fire here!

   But, you will perceive, it is said that the priests could not enter
   into the house of the Lord because the Glory of the Lord filled the
   house. The first time the priests could do nothing, but they stopped
   where they were. The second time they had to be more forgotten, still,
   for they could not stay in the house. Let God send the fire of His
   Spirit here, and the minister will be more and more lost in His Master;
   you will come to think less of the speaker, and more of the Truth of
   God spoken; the individual will be swamped; the words spoken will rise
   above everything! When you have the cloud, the man is forgotten; when
   you have the fire, the man is lost, and you only see his Master!
   Suppose the fire should come here and the Master be seen more than the
   minister--what then? Why, this Church will become two, or three, or
   four thousand strong! It's easy enough in God to double our numbers,
   vast though they are. We shall have the lecture hall beneath this
   platform crowded at each Prayer Meeting, and we shall see in this place
   young men devoting themselves to God; we shall find young ministers
   raised up and trained, and sent forth to carry the fire to other parts!
   Japan, China and India shall have heralds of the Cross who have here
   had their tongues touched with the flame! The whole earth shall receive
   benedictions! If God shall bless us, He will make us a blessing unto
   all! Let but God send down the fire, and the biggest sinners in the
   neighborhood will be converted; those who live in the dens of infamy
   will be changed; the drunk will forsake his cups, the swearer will
   repent his blasphemy, the debauched will leave their lusts--

   "Dry bones be raised and clothed afresh, And hearts of stone be turned
   to flesh." If there is anywhere within these walls tonight a man who
   has not been within a place of worship for these last 20 years. If
   there are others who have forfeited all claim to honor, and all title
   to respect, Great God, make these the first-fruits of Your power! Make
   them instances of Your mercy, trophies of Your Grace! This will be the
   effect of that fire which of old consumed the sacrifice, and which
   today consumes our sins, and fires our works, our songs, our prayers,
   till all smoke up to Heaven, and God accepts them as an offering of a
   sweet smell.

   I shall not detain you longer, having thus set before your mind's eye
   the two things for which we should earnestly seek, and for which we
   should cry to God. I shall close by simply preaching the Gospel, and I
   do not think that on this first occasion I can do it better than by
   simply telling the story of how I was brought to Christ myself. I had
   been for years as a child in secret the prey of the most desponding
   feelings. One thought had crushed me. I was a sinner, and God was angry
   with the wicked every day. I began to pray, prayer gave me no comfort,
   but made my burden more heavy. I read the Bible; the Bible was full of
   threats to me; I could find no promises there. I attended the house of
   God constantly, but I never knew from all the preaching that I heard
   what I must do to be saved; my eyes were blind and my soul ignorant. I
   heard a practical preacher, but what was the use of practice? It was
   like teaching a man to march who had no feet. I heard the Law
   thundered, but it was not thunder that I wanted, but notes of mercy. I
   hope that no creature ever had more intense and awful sorrow of heart
   than I under conviction of sin--feelings which I strived to conceal
   from all--and I was thought to be dull and idle because I had little
   heart for anything. As I have said before, I prayed daily and
   constantly, but my groans seemed to be reverberated from a bronze
   Heaven, and God gave no mercy to me. It might have been so to this day
   if it had not been for the purpose and Providence of God which
   prevented me from going to my usual place of worship, and compelled me
   to turn into a little Primitive Methodist chapel. Now that day was so
   snowy that there were very few people there, and the minister did not
   come; I think he was snowed up. But they found out some poor man, a
   local preacher, and he was put into the pulpit. Blessed be God! Blessed
   be God for that poor local preacher. He read his text. It was as much
   as he could do. The text was, "Look unto Me, and be you saved, all the
   ends of the earth." He was an ignorant man, he could not say much; he
   was obliged to keep to his text. Thank God for that. He began, "Look,
   that is not hard work. You need not lift your hands, you do not need to
   lift your fingers. Look, a fool can do that. It does not need a wise
   man to look. A child can do that. You don't need to be full grown to
   use your eyes. Look, a poor man may do that, no need of riches to look.
   Look--how simple--how simple." Then he went on, "Look unto Me. Do not
   look to yourselves, but look to Me, that is, Christ. Do not look to God
   the Father to know whether you are elected or not, you shall find that
   out afterwards, look to Me. Look to Christ. Do not look to God the Holy
   Spirit to know whether He has called you or not. That you shall
   discover, by-and-by. Look unto Jesus Christ." And then he went on in
   his own simple way to put it thus--"Look unto Me. I am sweating great
   drops of blood for you. Look unto Me, I am scourged, and spit upon. I
   am nailed to the Cross. I die. I am buried. I rise and ascend. I am
   pleading before the Father's Throne, and all this for you."

   Now that simple way of putting the Gospel had enlisted my attention,
   and a ray of light had poured into my heart! Stooping down, he looked
   under the gallery and said--"Young man, you are very miserable." So I
   was, but I had not been accustomed to be addressed in that way. "Ah,"
   he said, "and you will always be miserable if you don't do as my text
   tells you. That is, look unto Christ." And then he called out, with all
   his might, "Young man, look! In God's name look and look now!" I did
   look, blessed be God! I know I looked, then and there; and he who but
   that minute ago had been near despair, had the fullness ofjoy and hope!
   And that instant he who was ready to destroy himself, could have stood
   up then and there to--"Sing of Him, whose pardoning blood had washed
   sins away." And now here I stand to preach in this great building the
   same Gospel in the same simple tones. Sinners, look to Christ and be
   saved--

   "Ever since by faith I saw the stream,
   His flowing wound supply,
   Redeeming love has been my theme,
   And shall be till I die."

   Oh, Sinners! What if God should make this your spiritual birthday? And
   it can only be thus by your simply looking to Christ! Yes, by the
   prayers of an earnest wife, I beg you look. Oh, young man! By the
   groans of a loving mother, I beg you care for your soul and look! Yes,
   old man! By the decline of years, and by those gray hairs and the
   nearness of your grave, I pray you look! Yes, you sons of poverty, by
   all that you have to suffer here, look, look to Jesus, that you may
   find in Him eternal riches! And you rich men, if you would not be
   cursed by your riches, look and find the healing for the diseases of
   this life! To one and all is the Word of this salvation sent--"He who
   believes and is baptized shall be saved; he who believes not shall be
   damned." "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved, and
   your house."
     __________________________________________________________________

                 Public Meeting Of Our London Baptist Brethren

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 1861.

   SIR MORTON PETO IN THE CHAIR.

   A noble assembly having filled the house, after singing, the Rev. C. H.
   SPURGEON offered prayer. REV. C. H. SPURGEON--In inviting our Baptist
   Brethren to meet together this evening, it was in the hope that
   something might be suggested which might promote our success as a
   united body, and that words of encouragement from comrades in the same
   regiment might gladden all hearts; we offer the heartiest welcome to
   our beloved friends--this chapel belongs not to me nor to my Church
   specially, but to all the Baptist denomination! I feel tonight as if I
   were rendering up the trust deeds to the proper
   proprietors--acknowledging that this house belongs not to any man, but,
   first, to the God of the whole world, and, next, to those who hold the
   pure primitive ancient Apostolic faith. We believe that the Baptists
   are the original Christians. We did not commence our existence at the
   Reformation, we were Reformers before Luther or Calvin were born; we
   never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it. We have an
   unbroken line up to the Apostles themselves! We have always existed
   from the very days of Christ, and our principles, sometimes veiled and
   forgotten like a river which may travel underground for a little
   season, have always had honest and holy adherents. Persecuted alike by
   Romanists and Protestants of almost every sect, yet there has never
   existed a Government holding Baptist principles which persecuted
   others; nor, I believe, any body of Baptists ever held it to be right
   to put the consciences of others under the control of man. We have ever
   been ready to suffer as our martyrologies will prove, but we are not
   ready to accept any help from the State to prostitute the purity of the
   Bride of Christ to any alliance with Government! And we will never make
   the Church, although the Queen, the despot over the consciences of men.
   I will now resign the meeting to my esteemed friend, Sir Morton Peto,
   who has many a stone in this building, and who, I trust, will honor us
   with his presence on many future occasions.

   The CHAIRMAN--My dear Christian Friends--when invited to lay the first
   stone of this building, I deemed it a high honor and privilege. To be
   asked to preside tonight at the meeting of the Baptist Brethren of the
   metropolis, I deem also to be an honor and a privilege. Let me say at
   once how much I sympathize with all of you in meeting in this
   magnificent building tonight, under circumstances of the most
   gratifying character, without anything to allay or diminish our joy and
   thankfulness to God. I recollect having said when the first stone was
   laid, that I saw no reason why this building should not be opened free
   from debt, and what has just fallen from your esteemed pastor has shown
   how that anticipation has been abundantly realized! In meeting my
   Baptist Brethren for the first time in this building, my thoughts
   naturally recur for a moment to the past. Mr. Spurgeon has spoken of
   our history, of our martyrologies, and the sufferings of our
   forefathers. They have labored; we have entered into their labors. The
   result of that is shown in the ability of God's people connected with
   our denomination to raise a temple like this to His praise; and we have
   to acknowledge how much we owe to our forefathers in the opportunity we
   have of giving as a privilege, not as an exaction, and in seeing such a
   result of giving as this edifice displays. There are many grounds on
   which we rejoice with our friend--the first and greatest of all is that
   which was referred to in the text on the evening of the opening
   day--"Christ is preached and therein do I rejoice; yes, and I will
   rejoice." In the sermon of the afternoon, to which that of the evening
   seemed a graceful and fitting pendant, your pastor said that with all
   the misconceptions entertained with regard to his ministry, there was
   one point about which there could be no misconception--he thanked God
   he could say from his heart he had simply preached Christ. Now I
   believe the evidence we have in this building is no mean one that he
   has preached Christ--because if ministers have recourse to what they
   deem intellectual or philosophical preaching, or any other than that of
   preaching Christ, we soon find in our denomination empty pews show the
   result! There is an underlying stratum in the deep feelings and hearts
   of our countrymen of reverence and love for the old Gospel which
   nothing else can supplant. The great strength of this country is that,
   whatever may be written or said, the people at once refer to the Law
   and to the Testimony, and that which is not found written there has no
   place in their reverence or their esteem!

   The next cause we have for rejoicing is the feeling that the privilege
   we have of worshipping God according to our consciences in this and
   every other edifice connected with His praise is to be traced to the
   result of the sufferings of our forefathers. But that privilege has
   entailed on us an adequate responsibility. In reading the writings of
   the Puritan Fathers, I am struck to see how deeply they were impressed
   with the principles on which they acted. They were not Nonconformists
   because their fathers were; they would themselves have gone to the
   stake to assert the principles connected with the Headship and the
   position of the Great Head of the Church in the sole right of
   sovereignty within that Church. In the present day there is entailed on
   us a great responsibility in guarding tenderly and carefully these
   privileges. There is not only a desire on the part of the State to keep
   the Church so-called allied to the State, but to put in the thin end of
   the wedge and intermeddle with other denominations. If we find the
   Church as we understand it, in the slightest degree interfered with, we
   must as one man arise and say we will never allow the privilege of the
   Headship of the Great Head of the Church to be interfered with by any
   State in existence--all honor to the Queen! No one can say more
   fervently than the Baptists, "God save the Queen," but while we render
   to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, we must have respect to the
   commandment which enforces that nothing of Caesar's shall touch that
   which is God's. We--the members of other Baptist churches, congratulate
   with all our hearts the pastor, deacons, and members of this Church on
   the accomplishment of this great work, without any feeling excepting
   that of devout thankfulness to God for what He has enabled them to
   achieve! And we desire that abundant success may attend the
   proclamation of the Gospel in this building. Long may the pastor be
   spared to minister to a devoted, loving, and affectionate people! Long
   may he be surrounded by deacons who are able and willing to take the
   stroke oar in all the labors that appertain to them in connection with
   the secular affairs of the church; long may he see this place too
   narrow for even the communicants who assemble as his church members,
   and long may he have the power of the Holy Spirit attending an
   effective ministry and witnessing every month in that baptistery to the
   result of his labors! That which does not bring souls to Christ is
   worth nothing!

   Among Evangelical bodies, especially our own denomination, there may be
   slight differences, and will be among men who think for themselves--yet
   in the great fundamental and vital Truths of godliness, there exists no
   difference among us, and we only rejoice in so far as our ministry is
   made effectual in the way I have mentioned. Look at the influences
   which will go forth from this Church--look at the schools brought
   together here, and the children instructed in the knowledge of God and
   Christ! Look at the evangelical labors of the Brethren who constitute
   the Church in the surrounding districts, teaching and preaching Christ!
   Mr. Spurgeon will not conceive that his members, when they have simply
   attended here on the Sabbath and partaken of the Lord's Supper, have
   done their duty, but will feel that they must become living Epistles of
   Christ, known and read of all men! And then, while we shall no doubt
   consistently maintain that great Truth which we feel has been committed
   to us, we shall live in harmony with all those who hold the great,
   vital truths of godliness. One cannot but feel a most anxious desire
   and hope that long after our Brother is called to the upper sanctuary,
   his place may be filled in generations to come by those who, like he,
   will lead their hearers constantly to Christ, and that this will not
   only be a monument to the praise of God in our own generation, but in
   many generations following!

   What a splendid monument is this building to the voluntary principle!
   When I am in the House of Commons, I am continually told on the
   Church-rate question. "Oh, but the rural districts." Well, if my friend
   Mr. Spurgeon can raise during 18 months throughout the country a sum of
   money to erect this edifice, do you think that the State Church need be
   so anxious about the rural districts? One could not desire a better
   thing than that those members of Parliament who are so afflicted for
   fear the country churches should fall down, should come and see what
   has been raised here! This edifice tells--and may it long tell--the
   world at large that when people are imbued with all their heart and
   soul with the love of Christ, and feel that their great end is to live
   to Him, there is no fear of their allowing the House of God to fall
   about their ears! And when anything ceases to be a church which so
   holds the sympathies and hearts of the people, if the church falls
   down, I pity the church, I pity the people, I pity the denomination!
   Three years ago I called the attention of the House of Commons to the
   fact that the natives of Calcutta had spent more money in one year in
   the erection and sustaining of their heathen temples, than the whole
   amount of the church-rates of this country collected during the
   previous year! I then asked this question, "Is your religion not of a
   character to take a more vital hold on your hearts than the religion of
   Hinduism? Shall it be said that the Son of God became Incarnate and
   died in this world, and left as His legacy to His loving disciples the
   propagation of His Truth, and they can only support the edifices in
   which that glorious name is praised by exacting from their fellow men
   that which shall sustain them?" Our friends have done nobly in
   asserting what can be done on the voluntary principle, and if anyone
   points me in future to the rural districts with regard to the
   church-rates or anything of this kind, I shall, among other things,
   point to this place, and say, "See what the Baptist denomination in the
   person of our friend and his Church have done, and do not insult me by
   imagining that I think Christian principles require such support as you
   would give it."

   We do rejoice with you most heartily, genuinely, and lovingly tonight.
   I have told you the grounds on which we rejoice. It is not a mere
   sentiment, a mere effervescent feeling, but that true bond of
   brotherhood kindled in the heart by love to the same Savior, by
   adopting as we do from sincere conviction those Truths which we hold to
   be vital and necessary. It is to the assertion of those Truths that we
   desire to see not only this, but every edifice in connection with our
   denomination, so that in regard to all our churches and their pastors,
   there may be no doubt that they act from one princi-ple--a love to
   Christ and a desire to follow Him--for it is in following Him, alone,
   that they honor Him!

   Rev. J. H. HINTON--I am happy in being permitted to take a part in the
   services connected with the opening of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and
   in having the opportunity of saying, in the terms of the invitation of
   my Brother Spurgeon, "a few kind words." Kind words are, indeed, easy
   of utterance when the heart is kind, and my heart is kind towards my
   Brother and has been so from my earliest acquaintance with him! Let Mr.
   Spurgeon, then, and his friends accept my warmest congratulations and
   best wishes! Long may the life be spared which is so devotedly and
   laboriously spent; the intellectual powers which acquire and supply so
   large an amount of Evangelical Truth; and the magnificent voice which,
   with so much facility, pours it into the ears of listening thousands!
   As no resolution or topic has been put into my hands, I will take one
   as presenting to us a collateral aspect of the great Doctrine of the
   Influence of the Holy Spirit--an influence blessed and Divine, wherein
   lies the entire success of the Evangelical ministry. It is said of our
   Lord that, "God gave not the Spirit by measure unto Him." Undoubtedly,
   the absolute fullness of the Holy Spirit rested on Jesus; He was
   capable of receiving it all, and His great work required it all. But we
   get here the idea of the Spirit being communicated "by measure"--to
   some persons, and on some occasions, more--to others, less. It is
   natural that this should be so, the bestowment of that Divine Influence
   being an act of Sovereign Grace; the history of the progress of
   Christianity presents many illustrations of the fact. The Holy Spirit
   was poured out in a comparatively small measure during the life and
   ministry of our Lord. Of all preachers of the Gospel, He may be said to
   have been the least successful in the conversion of men--not absolutely
   unsuccessful, but successful in the smallest degree as to the number of
   conversions. There were, doubtless, fit reasons for this--the time was
   not then, nor the circumstances in which a very copious effusion of the
   Holy Spirit's influence could fitly have been given. You know how
   copiously the Spirit was poured out after the Ascension of Christ.

   In subsequent ages the changes have been manifest. If the Spirit had
   continued to be poured out as it were on the day of Pentecost, I
   imagine that long before this time the whole world would have been
   converted to God. We know what took place in the Middle Ages; that,
   when the Man of Sin was to be revealed and Popery established, the
   influences of the Spirit were restrained--not absolutely, but
   communicated in small measure. At the time of the Reformation a large
   outpouring of the Spirit was given; at successive periods and in
   various parts of the world, as in America, Scotland, Wales, Ireland,
   Jamaica, Sweden and elsewhere, at periods of no certain recurrence, and
   for durations of time not definite, but yet in extraordinary degree as
   compared with other times and places, the Spirit has been poured out.
   The present seems to me to be a dispensation in which the Spirit is
   communicated "by measure," and in a measure determined by Divine
   Sovereignty and Wisdom; a measure incorporated with and subordinated to
   the development of God's own plan, and the opportunities to be supplied
   for the manifestation of man's and the devil's corruption. Since we
   live under this dispensation, a question of practical interest to
   ourselves is this--what is the kind of measure, the amount according to
   which the influence of the Spirit is poured out now? Thank God, it is
   not absolutely withheld, otherwise there would be no conversions at all
   under the ministry of the Gospel, and even a proclaimed Savior would be
   a Savior universally trampled on and despised! That it is not the
   outpouring of the Spirit in its fullness is palpable from the fact
   that, amid such multiplied privileges, such vast and multiform
   activities for the dissemination of the Truth, so few comparatively are
   converted to God. The majority, even of Gospel hearers, is probably
   unconverted--the entire population scarcely touched--and when we
   consider not only how many people are now alive, but how fast people
   are born and die, the small number of conversions takes a character
   still more striking! At this rate it appears to me quite certain that
   the conversion of the world would never come. To accomplish it there
   must be a much larger outpouring of the Spirit than there now is. Then,
   in connection with this, a much larger supply of the influences of the
   Holy Spirit may be had; the abundant supply lies in the hands of
   Christ! It is not that all is done that can be done; a very great deal
   more can be done; a power remains by which the whole world may be
   rapidly subdued to God! This may be done any time, anywhere--this
   moment, next year--whenever and wherever God pleases. It waits for the
   arrival of the appointed time given for the development of human
   corruption, and the time when the Man of Sin is to die. Whether the
   Church is awake or asleep--whether there is prayer or no
   prayer--whether there is activity or no activity--it matters not. It
   must come, and perhaps it will come like a heavy, copious shower to
   wake us all up from sleep, and to set us on an activity such as we have
   never entered on before! At the same time it may have, and probably
   will have its antecedent and concomitant signs. Very likely it may be a
   time when there is much prayer and activity--when there is much
   depression and agony of heart--when the Church humbles itself in
   unknown throes of sorrow for a declining work of Grace. Nobody knows
   when, nor how. We have to pray for it, to wait for it, to hope for it,
   to look for it, as some people say they look for Christ's Second
   Coming. We do not know when it comes; I only say, Sir, God grant it may
   be here, and grant it may be now!

   The REV. ALFRED C. THOMAS said he could scarcely feel himself worthy of
   the name of a Christian, certainly not of a Baptist, if he could not
   rejoice in their Metropolitan Tabernacle, and express his hearty thanks
   to God for the accomplishment of its erection. He had been asked to say
   something upon the fact that the Baptists as a denomination were
   distinguished for maintaining the nullity of ordinances without
   faith--a point that might be well sustained by reference to the history
   of their denomination. They had never regarded anything external or
   ceremonial as worth a rush, except as inspired by faith in Christ, who
   alone could sanction with His Presence and fill with His blessing, the
   ordinances that set Him forth, and told to the world the great Truths
   of His Gospel. In order to sustain that, he purposed to read to them
   extracts from their confessions of faith set forth in the 17th Century.
   Those confessions were not made with a view to bring the minds of men
   under a servile sway, but to convey to others what in their estimation
   the mind and will of Christ was as revealed in His Scriptures. They had
   never sought, as it had been affirmed, to force them upon any set of
   men; they had never gone to any temporal power to ask the shield of its
   authority for the maintenance or the right of proclaiming them.
   Nevertheless, there had been times in their history when they had felt
   it necessary to put forward explanations of their faith in Christ. In
   the confession of faith put forth by the General Baptists in 1611, the
   Tenth article was as follows--"That the Church of Christ is a company
   of faithful people, separated from the world by the Word and the Spirit
   of God, being knit unto the Lord and unto one another by Baptism upon
   their own confession of faith and sin." In the 39th article of a
   confession put forth in 1646, by "seven congregations in London,
   commonly but unjustly called Anabaptists," they said, "Baptism is an
   ordinance of the New Testament given by Christ to be dispensed upon
   persons professing faith, or that are made disciples, who upon
   profession of faith ought to be baptized, and after to partake of the
   Lord's Supper." That would suit their strict Baptist brethren to the
   letter. In 1656, another confession maintained the same forms of faith.

   He would read one given in 1660, which was rather more strong than some
   of the rest. It was, "That the right and only way of gathering churches
   according to Christ's appointment, is first to preach the Gospel to the
   sons and daughters of men, and then to baptize in the name of the
   Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, such only of them as profess
   repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. And as
   for all such who preach not this Doctrine, but instead thereof the
   Scriptureless thing of sprinkling of infants, (falsely called baptism),
   whereby the pure Word of God is made of no effect, and the New
   Testament way of bringing members into the church by regeneration, is
   cast out, when, as the bond-woman and her son--that is to say, the Old
   Testament way of bringing in children into the church by regeneration,
   is cast out, as says the Scripture, all such, we utterly deny,
   forasmuch as we are commanded to have no fellowship with the unfruitful
   works of darkness, but rather to reprove them." That, he thought, was
   strong enough for any Baptist! Another confession put forth by the
   Elders and deacons of many congregations in London and the adjacent
   counties, 1688, stated in the 29th article, "Baptism is an ordinance of
   the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ to be unto the party
   baptized a sign of his fellowship with Christ in His death and
   resurrection; of his being engrafted into Him, of remission of sin, and
   of his giving up himself unto God through Jesus Christ, to live and to
   walk with Him in newness of life. Those who do actually profess
   repentance towards God, and faith in and obedience to our Lord Jesus
   Christ, are the only proper subject of this ordinance. The outward
   element to be used in this ordinance is water, wherein the party is to
   be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
   Ghost. Immersion, or the dipping of the person in water, is necessary
   to the due administration of this ordinance."

   Those were confessions of faith in which they as heartily agreed that
   day, as their fathers had in every age of the Church. That amounted to
   an historical and unquestionable fact; but how were the Baptists
   entitled to say that they were the only denomination who had always
   maintained the nullity of religious ordinances without faith, and
   especially on the vexed subject of baptism? Two religious sections--the
   Papists and Episcopalians--maintained the requisiteness of sponsors,
   and baptized children upon the faith of the sponsors. Their
   Presbyterian and many of their Congregational or Independent Brethren
   baptized infants upon the supposition of there being some covenant
   between God and the believing parent together with his children. It was
   assumed that there was a faith in the parents, but it was a proxy
   faith. Others, like Dr. Halley, threw this altogether overboard, and
   did not charge baptism with the requisition of faith at all, either in
   the infant, the parents, or relatives. The Baptists believed that that
   which was without faith was sin. That of course was a Truth of God in
   religion, but it was equally a Truth of God in many other things! A
   worship which did not recognize God, lacked that element of faith. The
   service they gave to their Master--given without faith in His right to
   receive it, in His authority to command it, in His gracious acceptance
   of it--was not an act of religiousness to Jesus! Christ came to build
   up a Kingdom among men. Was it a national kingdom? Did He not come to
   overthrow it in the form of its nationality? Did He come to set up and
   maintain a kingdom of combined spiritual and unspiritual elements--to
   put the gold and the miry clay together? Or did He come to say that
   they should be henceforth separated--that He would cause them to be
   refined, and accept that which rendered to Him spiritual services
   alone? In that kingdom Christ was the only Redeemer, the only Lawgiver;
   there were none united to Him who were not united to Him by faith.
   They, only, who saw Him as the Crucified, and pursued Him with the same
   simple faith to His Throne, were the subjects of His Kingdom, whatever
   their name among men! In that Kingdom there were ordinances; Christ
   only had a right to appoint them, and without faith in Him as their
   King, how could they accept them? In that Kingdom all the subjects were
   distinguished from the rest of the world as Believers; that was their
   great distinction as separated from the world whose chief
   characteristic was unbelief.

   But then, were those ordinances of Christ's appointment purely tests of
   their fidelity to Him, or were they expressions of His loving will for
   His children--were they exhibitions of His love, or mere mandates of
   His authority? "If you love Me, keep My commandments, and you who do
   not love Me have not even to do with My commandments. You not only have
   no part in My righteousness; you have not to touch My commandments." He
   could not be served as a King who had not been trusted as the Great
   High Priest and Apostle of their profession! He would not allow them to
   lift up His ordinances, maintain His precepts, and advance His Kingdom,
   unless they had enshrined Him as the one Offering for sinners in their
   heart's affection and trust! The ordinances were given as symbols of
   Himself, and when the minister went down with his candidates to the
   baptismal font, they would see there as eloquent an exposition of
   Christ's Gospel as they would ever hear from the platform on which he
   stood! He (Mr. Thomas) never administered the ordinance without wishing
   he could preach as effectively and eloquently what Christ was, and what
   He had done for men, as that ordinance set the Gospel forth. Did not
   Christ say to them, "I ordain these ordinances as proofs to you of My
   love; I give you once in your life at least the opportunity of saying
   to all who are witnesses, 'I deserve to die eternally; I build my hopes
   for escaping that eternal death on Jesus and Jesus only'"? Once in
   their life at least, though they had a stammering tongue, they could
   tell to thousands that witnessed their baptism, that this was the basis
   of their faith. "Union to Christ" would be the echo of that font
   whenever its waters were disturbed! "Nothing but His death avails me as
   a sinner; my hopes were brightened when He rose from the dead and, as
   He lives and reigns, nothing can cloud them." And when they passed on
   from that ordinance to the Table of the Lord, did they say anything
   very different? They said in their baptism that they had come into
   possession of life by faith in the Savior who died--and when they
   participated in the memorials of His death, what did they say but that
   whereas they had life only by union with Him, they could live only by
   ceaseless union with Him? Hence the next and permanent ordinance was a
   meal, to show that as they sustained bodily nature by food and drink,
   so they had no life in them except they ate His flesh and drank His
   blood! With such convictions they would set forth, each one for
   himself, as a unit of a denomination, that they had no faith in
   ordinances that did not require faith in their subjects--faith in Him
   who ordained them!

   The Rev. C. H. SPURGEON--I have several things I want to say now that a
   great many Baptist brethren are gathered here. The first is, let me
   earnestly entreat all my Brothers and Sisters to back up our Chairman
   in a bill which he has introduced into the House with regard to the
   burial of unbaptized persons. I hope that all of you read the Baptist
   Magazine--you certainly ought to do so. I will not say that there is
   any improvement on the past--I can only say it is the aim of the
   editors to still make improvements, and to make it more worthy of the
   denomination of which it is the representative. In that magazine you
   may have read Sir Morton's speech, which is there embalmed in amber.
   There is a clergyman in Newton Flottman (I do not know whether the
   place is as dark as Timbuktu), who has actually been carrying away the
   mold from his churchyard to put it on his parish land. This mold was
   composed of bones of the dead, an entire skull having been found in it,
   and a complaint was made to the clergyman, who very coolly said, "Well,
   but that was the corner of the church yard where they buried Baptists,
   Methodists, and other Dissenters;" and therefore I suppose he thought
   it was the best thing to do to make some use of them after they were
   dead! If my bones shall ever by any ill fortune come into an
   Episcopalian churchyard, I hope they will be used in the same way, for
   I should like to be of use as long as ever there is an atom of me in
   existence! Sir Morton is introducing a bill into Parliament to compel
   clergymen to allow all, indiscriminately, to be buried in the church
   yard. It seems to be a very hard thing, indeed, that we are to pay to
   keep their churches up, and yet they will not allow us a tomb! The
   nation lends to the Episcopalian denomination, the national
   edifices--surely if they will not be generous enough to pay their own
   repairs--they might permit us to use the national graveyard in common
   with themselves! At present, in the dead of night, we are put up in a
   corner where the nettles grow. I have buried people in country church
   yards, and if I had time, I would go and do it in every churchyard, and
   defy anyone who dared do it, to use the law against me! If laws cannot
   be altered, they can be defied. It is abominable that any sect of
   Christians should have the opportunity of becoming obnoxious to their
   Brethren by fighting over the coffin of a dead child! I am as heartily
   at one with the Evangelicals of the Church of England as any man that
   lives; some of my dearest friends are members of that body, and it is a
   pity that they should be put in a position where they can insult the
   feelings of Christians by refusing to bury our dead. Let us put them
   out of harm's way; let every Baptist congregation send up a petition, a
   form of which they will find in the Baptist Magazine; let us show that
   Sir Morton does not represent a slender handful of men, who are
   inactive, but a Christian body who feel if they are to be insulted, it
   shall not be their fault if they do not remove the stumbling block out
   of their Brothers' way!

   I have a project on hand for which I want to engage your sympathies.
   The incomes of most Baptist ministers are so miserably small that they
   are not able to buy books. It would do all our country Brothers good to
   read more Puritan theology, and have the opportunity of stocking their
   libraries better. I have long had this project on my mind, and some
   time ago I asked Mr. Nichol, an eminent publisher in Edinburgh who
   brought out a series of the British Poets at a cheap rate, whether, if
   I could get some Presbyterians and Independents to back up the scheme,
   and spoke myself to my Baptist Brethren, he could not reprint much of
   our standard divinity at a cheap rate. There will be six magnificent
   volumes each year for a guinea. One hundred thousand copies at the very
   least must be sold before he will be able to see any profit at all; and
   what I have to propose is that every Baptist Church throughout the
   country should devote one guinea at least each year to provide a
   library which shall permanently belong to the Church so that in the
   course of 100 years, there would be a splendid mass of old divinity
   stored away which would be read by coming generations. Some time ago I
   offered my deacons all the books I had, to start a library here for the
   use of future ministers. They did not wish me to do that, but we shall
   seek to get such a library that any minister after me may find a
   well-stored granary at hand! If all our churches do the same, and spend
   their money this year in backing up the admirable scheme of Mr. Heaton
   by purchasing the four volumes setting forth Baptist views, they will
   have the first installment, to which they can add, little by little, in
   successive years, and thus confer a gift on the denomination second to
   none! Then again I should like to say a good word for the iron chapel
   movement. I wish some of them could be bought and moved about from
   place to place, although for permanent buildings, I have no faith in
   them. They are dreadfully cold in winter, and they are frightfully hot
   in summer, but they may be put up very cheaply, and attempts may in
   this way be made to increase the number of our churches in this city.

   I have been the means of opening two new churches within the last 18
   months and I hope to start some more. I wish we could as a body
   commence fresh places, and give our services for six months, taking it
   in turn until we worked the place up. I do not think there is the
   slightest reason why we should not double our number in the next two
   years; it seems to me that we have got such a real hold upon the public
   mind, that we only need to bring our principles out. I know they will
   say that we are getting desperately Baptist--we must be--we shall never
   tell until we do, we must hold inviolable the essential union of the
   Church; we must stand to it that all God's people are one in Him--but
   why should we lower our standard any more than any other denomination?
   What is there about Baptism that we should be ashamed of it? What is
   there about the history of our Church, the power of our ministers, our
   poets and divines, that we should be ashamed of? When we know that we
   have borne the palm in poetry with Milton, in allegory with John
   Bunyan, and stand second to none in the ministry with Robert Hall, I
   think we have no reason whatever to be ashamed! Let us come straight
   out determined that we will restrain no part of the Truth of God! I am
   glad that we have here Brothers representing different views among us.
   Here am I a strict Baptist, and open communion in principle; some of
   our Brothers are strict in communion, and strict in discipline; some
   are neither strict in discipline nor in communion. I think I am nearest
   right of any, but you all think the same of yourselves, and may God
   defend the right!

   Mr. DICKERSON said he had been much struck with the surprising contrast
   of circumstances between the original formation of that Church and the
   present moment, and if he knew how, he would deliver a capital speech
   upon the words, "Then," and, "Now." "Then," when the Church was
   originally formed, they were not permitted to have a chapel. "Now,"
   they were not only permitted to have a chapel, but a splendid place
   which they called a, "Tabernacle." When passing the building, he had
   tried the several points of resemblance in his own mind, to reconcile
   his thoughts to its being called a Tabernacle, that is--a temporary
   building, to be removed to different places. He supposed that was not
   meant, but he hoped it might always continue to be a Tabernacle, where
   God should dwell with men--that He who tabernacled among men might by
   the embodiment of His Spirit in the ministry, tabernacle with His
   people, and bless them with an abundant blessing. He looked upon the
   Church as having been formed in the year 1662. Their second pastor, in
   1664, suffered persecution, imprisonment and the pillory. Benjamin
   Keach in that year wrote a book, called "A Child's Primer," which was
   deemed schismatic and wicked. He was tried at the Aylesbury Assizes in
   1666, before Lord Clarendon, who, in a most wanton manner, browbeat the
   poor man, told the jury he should send a fellow before them presently,
   and he hoped they would do their duty by him. He told them that the man
   had written a book for the instruction of their children, and that if
   they learned from it, they would become as base heretics as he was
   himself! And he hoped they would stop his proceedings. The jury
   retired, but could not come to a decision, and one of them said there
   was a discrepancy in the indictment relating to a passage that was in
   the book. "Pray what is that?" said his lordship. The juror replied,
   "My Lord, the book says, 'that after the one thousand years reign of
   Christ, the rest of the dead shall be raised,' and the indictment says,
   'The rest of the devils shall be raised.' " "Is that all?" said his
   lordship. "Is that all the difference? It is a mere slip of the pen,
   correct that, and find your verdict accordingly." The sentence passed
   on the prisoner was as fol-lows--"The sentence of this court is--and
   you will consider it a very lenient one--that you stand in the pillory
   four hours--two hours during the market at Aylesbury; two hours during
   the market at Winslow; to have a label placed on your head, 'For
   writing and publishing a wicked and schismatic book, called 'The
   Child's English Primer.' Afterwards, this book to be burned before your
   eyes by the common hangman; you are to forfeit also £20 to the king; to
   find securities for your good behavior till the next assizes (that is,
   he was not to preach) and then to come to this court and renounce all
   your doctrines." That was then. The now, they saw tonight. The
   statements they had heard would have subjected the speakers to
   incarceration and the pillory. They blessed God that that monster of
   civil and religious tyranny, that colossus that strode over their
   liberties, had been slain, and they blessed Him for the liberty they
   enjoyed, and prayed that they might never become indifferent to its
   value or to the responsibilities devolving upon them.

   Poor Benjamin Keach was given to understand that probably he might have
   greater liberty in preaching the Gospel if he came to London. So he
   turned his few effects into money, and started with his wife and three
   children. He had to travel 50 miles from Winslow to London, a frightful
   day's work then, and so it turned out. On a heath, a set of highwaymen
   attacked the coach, compelled all the passengers to alight, robbed them
   of everything, and then allowed them to proceed; Keach, his wife and
   family, were set down at the Blue Boar, Holborn Hill, without a
   shilling or a known friend in London. That was then. Nowthe express
   travels from Winslow to London in 55 minutes. Keach became the pastor
   of this church in 1668, and in 1672, a proclamation was instituted
   called King Charles' Indulgence--an indulgence to allow the people to
   think and to tell what they thought. Well, it was a privilege, though
   Keach was one among the rest who saw through the scheme; it was an
   artful dodge, but still they availed themselves of it, and built their
   first chapel at Horsley Down to accommodate one thousand people, where
   Keach preached for the remainder of his life!

   Then in the year 1688 came what was called the glorious revolution out
   of which arose the Act of Toleration-- which ought to be perpetuated by
   an annual service! He (Mr. Dickerson) lived in the country till he was
   nearly 40 years of age, and if it had not been for a few books, he
   would never have known that such an Act had ever passed! Dissenters
   never heard anything about it. If Benjamin Keach's book was read more
   extensively, it would give a vast amount of information concerning the
   "Then" as compared with the "Now." In his book called, "Distressed Zion
   Relieved, or the Garment of Praise for the Spirit of Heaviness," there
   were some very choice passages. The address to the reader concluded as
   follows--"Let us strive to be thankful to God, and labor to live in
   love with one another, and improve the present Providence (referring to
   the Toleration Act). For since God has graciously been pleased to do
   wonders for us, let us endeavor to do some great things for Him." So he
   said then, what would he not, and what ought not Christians to say now!
   It was an important thing to keep the great point of civil and
   religious liberty permanently before the people so that the gigantic
   limbs of tyranny in Church and State might never stride over their
   liberties again; but as their fathers fought, were pilloried, suffered
   loss of property, and many of them of life, and had bequeathed unto
   their children that inestimable blessing, it was the duty of the latter
   to cherish it and always keep it in view. He concluded by citing two
   verses of the 90th Psalm, wishing he could do so as well as the aged
   Dr. Rippon at the opening of New Park Street Chapel. "Let Your work
   appear unto Your servants, and Your glory unto their children, and let
   the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish You the work
   of our hands upon us; yes, the work of our hands establish You it."

   Dr. JABEZ BURNS said a great number of things pressed upon his mind
   with regard to the Tabernacle. It appeared to him remarkable that such
   a building should be raised at all as a place of worship and, then,
   that it should be by any other than the wealthy State Church, or the
   wealthiest Non-conformist bodies. That it should be reared by the
   Baptists, who had been considered to occupy a very small place
   proportionately among the sections of the Christian Church, was a
   matter of very great surprise--especially when it was remembered that
   the building was mainly raised through the labors of a young minister,
   and during the first seven years of his pastorate! These things were
   really so wonderful, that if anybody had predicted their occurrence
   eight or nine years ago, no one would have believed it. As the building
   was peculiar in itself, so it was peculiar in its opening services. The
   Methodists had generally taken the lead in having protracted services
   at the opening of their chapels, but he believed the services in which
   they were assisting would far outdo any Methodist services as to any
   building in any part of the world, not only in their number, but their
   importance, in the various plans to be developed, the things to be
   suggested, and the classes of persons addressing the assemblies
   convened. As the building was magnificent externally and internally,
   and capable of holding a vast concourse of people, he would pray that
   it should always be filled with the Divine Presence and Glory, and that
   the Church within it might prosper and increase from year to year. He
   had been asked, "What is the great secret of Mr. Spurgeon's success?"
   Did anyone know? If anyone did, he would be much obliged for the
   information! He was inclined to think that there were a number of
   things connected with the secret of his success--some human, and others
   Divine. Some connected with himself as a man--others as a minister whom
   God had raised up, and abundantly blessed. Unquestionably, one secret
   was that he had broken through the old-fashioned conventionalities
   connected with the pulpit and with preaching. The pulpit had become so
   stiff, starched, and stereotyped, that something was required to break
   it down, and to bring it into closer contact with the masses of the
   people. Some reference had been made to the voice of the minister, and,
   certainly, it was not everybody who could by ordinary speaking fill the
   building, though it was not as difficult to speak in as might be
   supposed from its size.

   After speaking of the several divisions in the denomination, Dr. Burns
   said he had read enough of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons to know that he
   preached Christ, and made Him the central theme of his ministry! Among
   the various peculiarities which distinguished the Baptist denomination,
   the first was their conviction that religion was a personal thing, that
   it could not be hereditary, that it could not be transmitted from the
   ends of the fingers of priests, nor be obtained by proxy; but that in
   all cases religion was a personal thing, connected with spiritual
   illumination, with heart conviction, the regeneration of the soul, and
   with personal holiness. As the result of that, they held most
   tenaciously that if religion was necessarily a personal thing between
   man and God, it was not for any human authority to interfere; and
   therefore Baptists in all ages had been the persecuted, not the
   persecutors! It might be said that they had not the chance. That was a
   mistake, Roger Williams was banished from one of the New England States
   in the very depth of winter, for holding Baptist views; he was directed
   to the shores of Providence, and there, with his party, he founded one
   of the United States of America, where he gave the utmost freedom of
   conscience, and did not demand from any of those who chose to dwell
   with him the least infringement of their Christian liberties! He was
   the first, on that side of the Atlantic, to teach in all their depth,
   height, and blessed purity, the principles of religious equality! He
   (Dr. Burns) agreed with the last speaker that the word, "Tabernacle,"
   was improperly applied to the building, except in one respect, and that
   was that, like the ancient Tabernacle, it was reared by voluntary
   contributions, and there was money enough and to spare. He prayed that
   the Lord would bless the congregation, the minister, the office
   bearers, Sabbath school teachers, and those who should visit the
   benighted heathen in that locality--and unto Him, the source of all
   good, should the entire glory always be given!

   A vote of thanks having been accorded to the Chairman, Mr. Spurgeon
   pronounced the benediction, and the proceedings terminated.
     __________________________________________________________________

                  Public Meeting Of The Various Denominations

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON WEDNESDAY EVENING, APRIL 3,
   1861,

   FOR THE PURPOSE OF HEARING ADDRESSES ON CHRISTIAN UNITY.

   The CHAIR, which was occupied by EDWARD BALL, Esq., M.P., was taken at
   half-past six o'clock. The proceedings were commenced by singing and
   prayer.

   The REV. C. H. SPURGEON briefly stated the objective of the meeting to
   be not to collect money, for they were now out of debt, but to testify
   to the essential union of the Church. On the previous evening a meeting
   had been held in the same place to afford an opportunity for the public
   exposition of the Doctrines of Baptists, and there were some now
   present, perhaps, who would recollect how strongly Baptist they all
   were on that occasion, and how they all spoke of their own denomination
   and its progress. Now, he had no doubt, they would prove that they felt
   themselves to be none the less one with all Believers in striving
   against error, and upholding the Truth of God. The different Brothers
   in the ministry who would address them would take up different points
   with regard to union. They had not an Episcopalian, because the
   clergyman whom he had invited, though perfectly willing, was unable to
   come. Nor had they a Presbyterian. He had just received a telegram from
   the Presbyterian Brother who was to have been there, saying that he was
   taken ill yesterday. He would now give the meeting to the guidance of
   his friend, Edward Ball, Esq., of Cambridgeshire, and as he had often
   experienced the hospitality of Mr. Ball, he felt a very great pleasure
   in being his host, as it were, and making Mr. Ball the master of the
   occasion so that he might rule the roost in their midst!

   The CHAIRMAN said, if anything in connection with this extraordinary
   place of worship could be added to the feeling of surprise with which
   they had witnessed its progress, and now perceived its perfection and
   completion, it would have been the statement which had just been made
   by the minister, that not only had they built this house of such
   surpassing beauty, and such great convenience, and such large
   accommodation for all classes, but that they met at the opening of it
   entirely out of debt! Those who were acquainted with the efforts made
   by the Christian world were well aware of the difficulties that were
   oftentimes found in raising a sufficient sum of money to commence an
   edifice, and that occasionally, when the edifice had been raised, there
   was such a heavy debt resting upon it, that it loaded and oppressed the
   minds and efforts of the congregation, frequently discouraging the
   minister in his public duties, and altogether the occasion of sorrow
   and regret in the neighborhood in which the chapel was erected. What,
   then, must they think of the church and congregation of this place?
   What must have been their untiring efforts, their constant diligence,
   the exercise of faith in God, to have completed such an undertaking as
   this, to have watched its progress, and now to assemble at its
   completion, when all their desires had been realized, when they had
   raised a fabric such as London could not equal, and when they might
   congregate, as upon this occasion, without soliciting the aid of
   anybody, and welcome their guests to a union meeting, where they could
   have a festival of love unaccompanied with the inconvenience and the
   distaste which so commonly were associated with such meetings as
   this--without soliciting their charity or asking their aid! It was not
   only that they must recognize the great zeal and the unwearied exertion
   of the church and congregation under Mr. Spurgeon, but was it not
   manifest that God's hand was in the work, and God's power was
   exhibited? That power which was so constantly implored had watched
   over, had given guidance to, and had successfully realized the wishes
   of the minister and of the people of this place. Was not all they had
   seen in the progress of that congregation, under the minister, another
   evidence that not by might, nor by power, but by God's will, and God's
   help, and God's assistance, the mightiest projects, the grandest
   efforts, and all that a Christian could desire were to be accomplished
   when they gave continued effort and blended with that continued effort
   an unwavering faith in the promises of God's Immutable and
   indestructible Word?

   Perhaps, while all of them sympathized and had pleasure in the
   association of this night, it was not everyone who had so intimate and
   immediate an appreciation of the Gospel in this place, or so deep a
   sympathy with the success of the ministry, as he had. As Mr. Spurgeon
   had stated to them, Mr. S. and he had long known each other, had lived
   in the same neighborhood, and had associated for public purposes long
   before Mr. Spurgeon ever contemplated being a minister in

   London. He had witnessed his first efforts, he knew the village in
   which he first settled, and he could bear testimony to the good sense
   and the good judgment of that portion of the Christian world who
   considered that his services ought not to be confined to a village, or
   limited to a small association, but that his sphere was the metropolis
   and that to London he was to come, to awaken, to excite, and to give an
   increased effort to the Christian world, showing what might be done
   when people trusted in God, and when they labored continually and
   unweariedly in the service of God! Those gentlemen who accomplished the
   removal of Mr. Spurgeon, provided for him a very convenient and a very
   nice chapel, but in proportion as they afforded accommodation for the
   public, did the demand increase. That chapel was renovated, improved,
   and considerably enlarged, and no sooner was that accomplished, than it
   was filled as theretofore to overflowing. Why did he (the Chairman)
   mention this? To show that the grasp of mind of the congregation was
   justified--that it was not an aggressive undertaking, the erecting such
   an edifice as this--but that it was the continued success, the series
   of triumphs, the advancing interests, the multitudinous claims always
   attendant upon the ministry of this gentleman that justified them! The
   Chairman next commented on the value of Mr. Spurgeon's ministerial
   labors, which he considered ought not to be estimated by the visible
   effect upon his congregation, but also by the influence which the
   extended publication of his sermons throughout England and the
   Colonies, and the reprinting of them in America, might be expected to
   have upon multitudes of others.

   But, to return to the special objective of the present meeting, which
   he was told by Mr. Spurgeon was "Union," he was sorry to say, he
   thought the great calamity and error of the Christian Church was need
   of union. He thought that all Christian people should adopt as their
   sentiment this--that in essentials, they should have unity; in
   non-essentials, liberty; and in everything, they ought to have charity.
   If they did observe and carry out this great maxim, those little
   bickering and nasty jealousies, and unlovely envying, which were the
   disgrace of the Christian Church, would be known no more. What said the
   Apostle John? There were multitudes of circumstances which showed to us
   the surpassing love of God but--"Hereby," he says, "we perceive the
   love of God, because He laid down His life for us," and the inference
   which the Apostle drew from this was that, "If God so loved the world,
   as to send His only begotten Son into the world," was it not a motive
   and an obligation for those people for whom He loved, and suffered, and
   died, to love each other? Look, again, were we not all under the same
   condemnation, were we not all partaking of the curse and of the Fall?
   Had we not also the same hope, and the same expectation of Redemption
   and deliverance from that Fall, and should we not love one another as
   Brethren? Were we not passing through the wilderness together? Had we
   not sorrow enough, and trial enough, and vexation enough, bodily pain
   and mental distraction enough, that we must increase its bitterness by
   a lack of love, and by a narrow jealousy, one towards another? Were we
   not all aiming at the same Paradise above, banded together under one
   great Shepherd, and therefore ought we not to love one another as God's
   people, and as God's servants! Most of his hearers, perhaps, had a
   recollection of the circumstances of Ruth. Ruth was a most successful
   gleaner. She collected a great quantity, and after she had done so, she
   beat it out, and part she carried away, and part she left behind. Now
   what part did they suppose she carried away? Well, everybody would say
   she carried away the corn, and left the chaff. Could not, therefore,
   we, in our mutual union in our common services--in our common
   duties--look upon one another, see what was good, receive what was
   good, lay aside and leave what was distasteful and unpleasant? Could we
   not take that which was in correspondence to our views of the Truth, in
   harmony with our sentiments and our principles, and if there were
   anything disagreeable, ascribe it to that common infirmity to which
   they and we were subjected, and bear and forbear as it became Christian
   people to do one towards another? He remembered once a large Missionary
   meeting was to be held, and it was decided to hold it in the church.
   After the decision, it was found that there were no candles, no lamps
   in the church, and there was a question as to how it should be lighted
   up. Well, the friends there were not daunted by a few difficulties! The
   Episcopalians sent their lamps, the Wesleyans and other religious
   denominations sent their lamps, and others were sent from the Town
   Hall. When they assembled, it was beautifully lighted up, but it was
   said nobody could tell which was the light of the Church of England,
   and which was the light of the Baptists, and which was the light of the
   Wesleyans; but as one Spirit brought them together in the service of
   one Master, so one mind influenced the whole assembly, and they had a
   beautiful meeting in which they pledged their common faith diligently
   to preach the everlasting Gospel, and to assist others in doing the
   same!

   It was a remarkable circumstance, that while nowthey were continually
   hearing of some expressions of great bitterness of one class towards
   another class, which bitterness only generated similar bitterness in
   that class against whom they had spoken, or it only elevated the
   individuals against whom they had been denouncing, just in proportion
   as those things did occur, the church that used them, the minister who
   encouraged them, the individual who patronized, as it were, a nasty
   little bickering, envious spirit, was generally a minister that God
   would not acknowledge, whose services were never successful, whose
   congregation was an indifferent body of Christian people, and not
   unusually, the very minister who had been so bitter in his invectives
   against others who had preached the Gospel of Christ, had himself, by
   some strange circumstances, been forbidden long to occupy that sacred
   office! And therefore, he (the Chairman) would say that all should
   endeavor to carry out the principle which their minister had told them
   they were associated to celebrate, namely, UNION; that whether they
   were Wesleyans or Presbyterians, or whether they were Baptists or
   Independents, they were all under one Shepherd, they were all pledged
   to the same faith, they all had the same hope, and they would never
   advance their cause by repudiating and condemning others; they would
   never elevate their principles by speaking bitterly of those who could
   not agree with them; but in proportion as they demonstrated a Christian
   spirit, and showed forth the mind of their Master, God would commonly
   accept and bless their services. He regretted the absence of any
   representative of the Church of England. He wished all classes,
   churchmen and dissenters, would lay aside all angry and unkind feeling
   towards one another. They could not disguise from themselves that God
   had given great honor to the Church of England. They ought not to wish
   to disguise it that that Church never put forth such energy, and
   exhibited such anxiety to fulfill its mission as it did now, and they
   ought to rejoice together as those having the same interest, members of
   the same commonwealth, embodied in the same regiment, and marching
   under the same Leader, when any minister among the Church or among
   Dissenters was made preeminently useful in preaching the Gospel of our
   Lord Jesus Christ! If there was one thing that he (the Chairman)
   desired above all things in the Christian world, it was unity. He hoped
   he had always endeavored to carry that out. If they were God's people,
   there must be love in their hearts, one towards another. He only wished
   he could give utterance to one idea that would have the tendency to
   link together Christian people in attachment to their Master in
   affectionate union with those with whom they were fellow travelers
   through the wilderness, in hopeful and joyful expectation of
   associating with them in another and a better world where they should
   live as Brothers and Sisters in perfect peace and unity! Let them bear
   with one another's infirmities.

   The REV. J. HALL, Independent Minister, next addressed the meeting. He
   regarded it, and he thought all must do so, as a token for good, an
   auspicious sign of the times passing over us, that the friends there
   should attach so much importance to union among Christians, that they
   should give a whole evening to the discussion of this important
   subject. Was it possible to over-rate its importance? Why, they could
   not read their Bibles, even with moderate care, without seeing that the
   practical exemplification of union among Christians was one of the
   grand designs of the Christian dispensation! Indeed, they were
   expressly told that the Savior purposed, by His death, to gather
   together in one, all the children of God who were scattered over the
   earth, and they knew that for the accomplishment of this design He
   interceded, almost with His dying breath, in language that gave us to
   understand that the unity of the Church was one of the grand means of
   the world's conversion; And, as a matter of fact, while visible unity
   prevailed among the disciples of the Savior, the cause of Christianity
   everywhere triumphed. Yes, the poor fishermen of Galilee, without
   wealth, without learning, without patronage--standing only on God's
   Truth--were more than a match for all the powers of the world standing
   together on the devil's lie! Real visible union was the glory of the
   Church of Christ, and never till that Glory of the Lord was seen afresh
   upon her, would the nations come to her light and kings to the
   brightness of her rising. What was it that made it to be a good sign
   that they should meet together to talk about such a subject? The reason
   had already been referred to by the Chairman. Alas, the Church of
   Christ still presented a scene of strife and division, and contention,
   and Christians gathered together of all denominations to talk about
   this matter might, with Divine blessing, be the means of healing, or
   helping to heal, the breaches of Zion!

   We talked about the wonders of the age we live in. Well, it was
   certainly an age of progress. The inventions of science had come almost
   within the bounds of the supernatural, and natural marvels reached well
   nigh to miracles. The impossibilities of our forefathers had become to
   us a baffle and a pastime--we ride upon the wings of vapor, we bind the
   winds of Heaven to our car, we navigate the ocean against contrary
   winds and tempestuous waves, we lay hold of the lightnings of Heaven,
   and make them the world's errand boy, and we make the light our
   portrait painter and yet--it brought the blush to our faces--union
   among Christians was still in open question! And Christians, the
   intended peacemakers of the world, were not able to settle the
   preliminaries of a truce among themselves. Still, Christians who were
   commanded to love their own enemies, had not, many of them, enough
   religion to love one another; Christians who were required to pray for
   their persecutors were yet to be found who would not pray with their
   Brethren of other denominations! The question which he (Mr. Hall) had
   to consider was, "What do the Scriptures teach us concerning union
   among Christians?" Now it was evident from the whole Word of God, as
   well as from Christian experience, that there was an essential oneness
   among all the disciples of the Lord, whatever might be their party
   names or their sectarian divisions. By virtue of their common
   relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, they were allied, one to the
   other, in the bond of a common fellowship and in the hope of a glorious
   destiny. Wherever real Christians might be, whatever the color of their
   skin, whether they were white or black, barbarian, Scythian, bond or
   free--whether they burned at the equator, or shivered at the
   poles--they were all one in Christ Jesus! They were willing, too, to
   relinquish the world's wealth, and the world's fame, and the world's
   honor for the glory of His name, and the blessings of His Cross. If
   they went round the whole world and just asked every Christian this
   question, "What do you think of Christ?" they would get but one answer
   from every one of them, "He is the chief among ten thousand, and the
   altogether lovely." If they were to bring together into one room
   Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Wesleyan, and Baptist, and Independent,
   what would take place? If they named the prayer book, and found fault
   with it, he was afraid the Churchman would jump up. If they dared to
   call in question the confession of faith, he was afraid the
   Presbyterian would be annoyed. The same with the Wesleyan if they
   impugned the acts of the conference; and if they dared to say a word
   against the Baptist, he did not know how the Baptist Brother would
   feel; and then if they presumed to call in question, for a moment, the
   Divine origin of Independency, he did not know what the Independent
   would say. Well, now, these were the little things that would divide
   even good men, and perhaps, for a time, set them by the ears! But just
   ask them to pray together, and they would all bow the knee in the name
   of Christ; ask them to sing together, and they would shout in harmony,
   "God forbid that we should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus
   Christ." Ask them to work together, and there might be many forms of
   work, and some in which they might not be able to unite; but put before
   them God's Holy Word, without note or comment, and ask them to lend
   their efforts and their sympathies to give the Word of Life to the
   nations, and with one heart, and with one hand, they would find
   Wesleyan and Baptist, and Episcopalian and Presbyterian putting forth
   their energies to do this common work of all who love the Redeemer!

   Unity was the great thing which the Word of God demanded--that there
   should be an outward manifestation before the world of this internal
   oneness among all Christians. What was lacking, was that union among
   Christians should be a visible reality--that there should be a public,
   palpable manifestation of that reality before the eyes of the world in
   offices of brotherly kindness, and in efforts of Christian
   philanthropy. It was very delightful to know that all Christians were
   members of one body, of which Christ is the glorified Head--but then
   that unity was known only to the Church in Heaven, and understood only
   by the Church on earth! The worlddid not understand that--the world did
   not seethat. What, therefore, was lacking, was what Christ prayed
   for--and prayed for as indispensable to the world's conversion--that
   the real spiritual unity of the Church should become a visible fact
   before the eyes of the world. Well, then, what did this unity mean? Of
   course it did not mean compromise. No. Mr. Spurgeon had told them that
   last evening when they had a meeting of their own, to hear the
   exposition of their own peculiar views. Well, he (Mr. Hall) honored
   them for that, because the union which the Bible inculcated was one
   which allowed the Baptist to remain a Baptist, the Episcopalian to
   remain an Episcopalian, the Presbyterian to remain a Presbyterian, and
   the Wesleyan still true to Wesley, and the Independent still an
   Independent. It aimed at combining them together on earth, on the same
   principle upon which it united them together in Heaven, not as
   Denominationalists but as Christians!

   He remembered reading one of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons in which he was
   indulging in some bright visions of the future, of the good times
   coming when morn should come after the world's long night, and Sabbath
   after the world's long toil; and one of the visions was this--that they
   should certainly all be Baptists. Well, he verily believed that if
   there should be a Metropolitan Tabernacle, it might be ornamented as
   this tonight, with the marble baptistery, and he believed that all
   Episcopalians and Presbyterians who did not believe in it, would have
   their own way of doing it, and yet the Baptist Brother and the
   Paedo-Baptist Brother would have more love. He did not know that it
   would be all the better in the Millennium that they should all be
   Baptists; he did not know that it would not be better for the extension
   of the Kingdom of Christ, that there should still be some little
   difference in these little matters! Of course, the unity they had been
   speaking of did not mean uniformity. They knew that the Church of Rome,
   when she had the power of coercion, had repressed all religious
   opinion, and produced a very exact conformity to one system of doctrine
   and one formula of worship, and she called that "unity." Why, it
   reminded one of the unity of a Dutch garden, where the trees were all
   clipped to the same size and shape. Unity? Why, it was the unity of the
   graveyard--where the prince and subject exhibited the same rottenness,
   and molded to the same dust! Diversity in unity, unity in
   diversity--that was the characteristic of all life. The Dutch gardener,
   to whom he had just referred, must at times have trouble to keep his
   trees all of the same size and shape. Life was a very vigorous thing,
   and depend upon it, he had to be very busy about these trees to keep up
   any appearance of visible uniformity. There was a wonderful struggling
   in all life for individual manifestation. It would not be regarded as a
   very great compliment to his hearers if for a moment he imagined that
   they were all stone statues--and he saw a Christian Brother in the
   assembly who had just brought this thought to his mind--that they were
   all stone statues. They might exhibit the most perfect uniformity; they
   might sit in the same attitude, with the same gesture and, in every
   respect, be all alike. Well, but suppose, just in the midst of this
   paradise of uniformity, they should be endued with the principle of
   life. The moment they began to live, the uniformity ended--they would
   alter their attitude; one would be looking this way, and another would
   be looking that way; one would have a pensive look, and the other a
   joyful look; and there would be, all the while, the play of the various
   emotions and passions of the human soul depicted in their various
   countenances. And just where there was real life, there would be this
   diversity amid the underlying principle of unity. Why, the tastes and
   the temperaments of Christian people were as varied as their faces and
   their voices.

   The natural temperament, doubtless, had a great deal to do in the
   growth of Christian Graces. The temperament of a man before conversion
   remained with him after conversion, only with this difference--that now
   it was baptized with the Holy Spirit, and with fire, and consecrated to
   the service of God. For example, it was Divine Grace operating upon a
   disposition naturally amiable, which produced a Barnabas, a son of
   consolation. It was that working upon an energetic disposition which
   had fired a soul with great boldness in the faith and produced a
   Boanerges, a son of thunder. Look at Melancthon and Luther, Melancthon
   said the Scriptures imparted to the soul a holy and marvelous delight,
   it was the heavenly ambrosia. Now, Luther said, the Word of the Lord
   was a sword, it was a war, it was a destruction, and it leaped upon the
   children of Ephraim like lions of the forest! These men were equally
   pious, yet the gentle Melancthon saw in the Word of God little else
   than a fount of life, and a river of God's pleasure--while the
   impetuous and earnest Luther saw and heard only the thunder and the
   flame of an angry God! They might look at the history of Whitefield and
   of Edwards. Why, the ministry of Jonathan Edwards burst upon the people
   as alarming as the trumpet of doom, terrible as the kindling of the
   last fires, while the preaching of Whitefield came down upon the ears
   of the people like rain upon the new-mown grass. Depend upon it,
   Whitefield could never have preached that sermon, "Sinners in the Hand
   of an Angry God." He would have been compelled to stop a hundred times
   in the course of the sermon to preach the love of Christ to sinners,
   and to shed tears over souls in peril of the wrath to come! Just for a
   moment look at it in the case of Peter and John, and the same
   difference might be discovered.

   In conclusion he would say that the three elements of Christian unity
   were unity of faithin relation to Christ, unity of affectionin relation
   to one another, and unity of effortin relation to the world. With the
   visible practical union resulting from a common faith in
   Christ--brotherly kindness and confederated effort, the Church once
   more as of old would, "look forth clear as the moon, bright as the sun,
   and terrible as a bannered host."

   EDWARD CORDEROY, Esq., said a more fitting theme could hardly be chosen
   in a house of prayer, erected by contributions from members of various
   Protestant Churches, than that which had been announced this evening.
   To many it would be a subject of sarcasm--for it was not onlyby Papists
   that we were charged with lack of unity. It would be useless to attempt
   to conceal our diversities, indeed it would be unwise if we could.
   Certainly the aspect of the churches of this land justified to the
   full, the statement that we had embraced as Protestants most heartily
   one grand principle drawn from Scripture, and put forth at the
   Reformation--the right of private judgment. But there was a real,
   substantial, living unity among the disciples of Christ nevertheless.
   Except for the weakness and infirmity of men, or the obstinacy and the
   ignorance of men which occasionally magnified apparent into real
   differences, there was nothing in any Church organization, nothing in
   the formularies of religion, nothing even in Doctrine among what were
   called the Orthodox Churches of this land--there was nothing if we but
   believed that there was only one name given to men under Heaven,
   whereby we might be saved--to prevent a real, substantial, effective
   union among all the disciples of Christ! The doctrine of true essential
   union among the disciples of Christ should, he took leave to say, be
   more fully explained, set forth, and generally received than it was at
   present. Oh, if they could imagine a spirit of the just made perfect,
   enabled to pierce that thin veil which screens an unseen world from our
   mortal view, with this topic to discourse upon, how he would tell them
   that union with Christ the Head, must mean union of the members of His
   body, one with another! How he would tell them, as they had already
   been reminded, that it was written, "Beloved, if God so loved us, ought
   we not also to love one another?" How he would tell them that they
   fought for shadows if they fought for anything which bore not on the
   glorious hereafter! How he would tell them, with tones deepened from an
   intense realization of the things belonging to eternity, of the folly,
   the utter, miserable folly of those pettinesses which disfigure many
   Christian Churches because they come from weak, though in God's mercy,
   good men! How he would tell them of our Savior's word, "A new
   commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved
   you." How he would tell them that some of the very last utterances of
   Scripture, possibly the very last, the Epistle of John, breathed fully
   this Doctrine, and the aged saint and Apostle seemed to concentrate all
   the spirit of the Gospel in his exhortation, "Little children love one
   another!" Union merely in name would be thoroughly useless. Lip
   profession, unaccompanied by kindly acts, was little to be relied upon.
   Only a real spiritual, prayerful, brotherly union of the Church of
   Christ would increase the tone of the Church's piety, quicken the
   Church's zeal, and bless the world.

   The subject committed to him by Mr. Spurgeon was the influence of such
   a union upon the Church itself. If this spirit of real union were
   cultivated, there would be a prayerful cultivation of those
   characteristics which made this union desirable, and thereby there
   would be the growth in Grace of the whole Church. One of the first
   results would be an anxiety for the honor of Christ--

   "A jealous, just concern For His immortal praise! A pure desire that
   all might learn, And glorify His Grace."

   And whatever would magnify the Savior, add luster to His many crowns,
   and bring the world to His feet--that would be the object of the
   Church's prayerful and devout effort. There would then be an earnest
   desire to grow more and more like the Savior, and as far as possible to
   follow in His steps; and as the Church, by its individual members,
   sought to act in the Spirit of the Savior, more and more of His Spirit
   would be imbibed, and as they sought to grow more and more like the
   Head, they would more readily recognize His likeness in any of His
   members wherever they were, and under whatever circumstances. There
   would also be an honor placed upon the poor, humble and afflicted
   members of Christ's flock which they sometimes did not now obtain. The
   charity which gives the cup of cold water to the disciple would no
   longer be dashed by the expectation of human applause, but it would be
   given to the disciple in the name of the disciple for the sake of the
   Master. There would be an increase of the spirit of charity. We would
   have large eyes for each other's excellencies, and small vision for
   each other's defects. Oh, for more of the charity that forgives, the
   charity that covers the fault! Another effect would be the ability to
   rejoice in each other's success. What a hard matter that is to some of
   us! Again, there would be a disposition to work together where
   practicable, or still, if not practicable, together, yet in such a
   spirit that Judah should not envy Ephraim, nor Ephraim vex Judah. There
   would be, too, the quickening of our zeal, and faith, and love. We
   would rejoice to help each other, to bear one another's burdens. We
   would learn to speak lovingly, and kindly, and honorably, and
   respectfully of each other, and not detractingly and as though we were
   glad to hear a whisper of any delinquency

   The REV. ROBERT BUSHNELL, Free Methodist, next addressed the meeting in
   a very humorous speech. After some preliminary observations, he said he
   very much rejoiced in the erection of the building in which they were
   assembled for one or two important reasons. The first was, he believed
   it would be the birth place of immortal souls. There was a spot in old
   England--he knew it quite well, the likeness of it was gratefully
   embalmed in his memory--he did not mean to say that it was a bit better
   than any other spot, but it was better to him. He could remember the
   shape of the windows and the doors; he knew the look of that old
   building altogether, and there was not such a house in old England as
   that house was to him. He would tell them why. He was born there, and
   he was born-again there. A short time ago he visited that spot--he went
   to follow his poor mother to the grave. He looked at the house, and
   could have wept over it, and if the people there would not have thought
   him superstitious, he would not have minded giving a shilling to go to
   the very room and kneel upon the very spot where he was when God
   converted him. It was the second birth which made it glorious. And so
   he had no doubt at all that this house of prayer would be dear to
   thousands of souls, because they would be there born to God! But then,
   that was not all. He believed it would also be a place of spiritual
   refreshment for saints. He quite thought, notwithstanding all that
   people said to the contrary, that if they wanted a bit of good
   substantial food, they might get it there. He came on Good Friday
   morning, and he confessed that he felt it was God's house. He did not
   mean to say that they would get very many flowers there, they did not
   need them. Food was the sort of thing that they needed. Flowers looked
   very well upon the tables, but they would not like the flowers if there
   was not food as well. There were two men on a road one day, and they
   had had a very long journey, and were awfully hungry. At length, one of
   them saw what he conceived to be an inn. "This is it, Brother," he
   said, "come on." So in they went, and the waiter came with an apron,
   just as they do, and he looked very natty, and there was a table very
   beautifully spread, and the dishes and silverware, and all there. So
   these men said to the waiter, "What have you got?" "Well"--he hardly
   knew. "Have you got any ducks?" they asked. "No." "Chickens?" "No."
   "Beef steaks?" "No." "Why, what in the world do you keep, then?" they
   said. "Well," he said, "we keep a tavern." Now, there were some
   buildings in which there were all the things necessary except the one
   thing necessary. He believed that in this house of prayer there would
   be meat for men, milk for babies, and spiritual nourishment for the
   fainting and the dying! To come to the subject of unity, they all knew
   that unity was strength. A little drop of water might fall upon the
   face of a delicate lady, and she would hardly know it, but put a mass
   of drops together, and you have got the ocean big enough to bear or
   bury the Leviathan! Mr. Bushnell then gave several illustrations of the
   manifestations of unity, concluding with that afforded by the erection
   of the Tabernacle itself.

   The REV. W. G. LEWIS, of Bayswater, said the subject entrusted to him
   was one so vast in its extent, and so weighty in its consequences, that
   he almost felt guilty of temerity in attempting to handle it. It was,
   "What are the limits of practical union?" There could be no union
   without a creed. Let it be distinctly understood that beautiful and
   fair, and celestial as charity was, Truth was her lifeblood. Without
   it, she could not exist. All associations of men of whatever kind
   existed upon sympathy of belief. Moral, political, scientific or
   religious associations all had one common center, one basis of belief.
   So long, however, as men were built upon the foundation of the Apostles
   and Prophets, Jesus Christ, Himself, being the chief Cornerstone, all
   their differences were cast into the shade. The old axiom of the
   Reformers was, "In essentials, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in
   all things, charity." For his own part, he hesitated not plainly to
   announce that he could have no practical union with a man unless he
   believed the Inspiration of God's Holy Word, though he might feel
   charity towards him. He was not speaking of the limits of love, or
   attempting to put boundaries to the exercise of brotherhood and regard
   for the welfare of his fellow men, but for all purposes of concerted
   usefulness, and cooperation, he could have no Christian fellowship with
   the man who did not firmly hold the Inspiration of God's Word. They
   would have no platform upon which to stand; no standard to which to
   appeal in their differences. Such a man would go beneath the foundation
   of his (Mr. Lewis's) belief, and in these days the great enemy of our
   souls was very busy in deluding and impelling men to make attacks upon
   the sacred Word. He had no fear for the safety of the Ark of God. It
   had already survived darker storms than those which seemed at this day
   to impend upon it. It was only 70 years ago that Voltaire, the high
   priest of infidelity, published that blasphemous threat, "In 60 years
   there shall be no Bible." And tonight, where was the priming press that
   was employed in publishing the threat--in the city of Geneva, printing
   Bibles! All that infidelity had at present accomplished in regard to
   the Bible had been to prove the bitterness of its malice, and utter
   impotency of its own attacks! He could have no practical communion with
   a man who did not believe in the utter degeneracy of the entire human
   race in consequences of sin. He would not reiterate the statements of
   the Word of God to the effect that all have sinned and come short of
   the Glory of God. He need not point to the lives of men to illustrate
   it from their personal or individual history--it stood impressed upon
   every conscience that was not utterly seared, and dead! It was written
   on every page that recorded human life--whether that page were sacred
   or profane--and his own experience led him to the firm belief that no
   man ever yet did embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ until he had a deep
   conviction of his condition as a lost sinner in the sight of God.
   Neither could he have fellowship with a man who did not hold the
   Doctrine of the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Doctrine of the
   Trinity, to his mind, was essential to the very structure of the Sacred
   Oracles. The man who impugned the Doctrine of the Trinity, to his (Mr.
   Lewis's) mind, impugned the veracity of God! Nor could he hold union
   and co-operate with any man who did not stand fast by the Doctrine of
   the Atonement. Catholicity was not compromise. Catholicity and
   Christian unity must imply "No surrender of vital Doctrines."

   The REV. C. H. SPURGEON, who was introduced as the representative of
   the Primitive Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, made a few remarks
   upon the subject. It was among the Primitive Methodists that he first
   found the Savior. It was by one of their local preachers that he
   learned to look unto Jesus and be saved, and now he was really a
   Primitive Methodist, for he practiced Baptism after the most primitive
   form! But next he claimed to represent the Presbyterians because their
   Church was based on the Presbyterian model, and maintained the
   Eldership. The union of which they spoke was a union of the Church; and
   as the limit of union, the Church had no spiritual union with the
   world, with worldly professors, nor with carnal men, although they
   might be in the Church. The Church might sometimes be compelled to use
   worldly men, but any union with them would deceive and beguile her. The
   Church might have to use men for her purpose, that she might achieve
   her temporal and political liberties; but her real fellowship never
   extended beyond herself. It was an awful Truth, perverted and therefore
   forgotten, that there was no salvation out of the pale of the Church.
   But what was the Church? Those who believed in the Lord Jesus
   Christ--this was their visible character; those who were filled with
   the Holy Spirit--that was their secret character. It was utterly
   impossible to narrow the limits of Christian fellowship. He concluded
   by expressing his satisfaction at the meeting, and said it was a sweet
   and refreshing season.

   A vote of thanks was then unanimously accorded to the Chairman, which
   was acknowledged by him, and the meeting separated.
     __________________________________________________________________

                             Christ'S Finished Work

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, APRIL 4, 1861, BY THE REV.
   OCTAVIUS WINSLOW, D.D., AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "It is finished!" John 19:30.
   THERE never existed but one Being who in Truth could affirm of His
   work--"It is finished!" Incompleteness and defect trace the most vast,
   elaborate, and accomplished products of human genius and power. That
   brilliant volume of history, at a period of thrilling interest, falls
   from the death-struck hand of its author, fragmentary and incomplete.
   That magnificent work of art fades before the glazed eye of the painter
   and the sculptor, at a moment when the pencil is pointed, and the
   chisel upraised to impart the last and perfecting touch. That splendid
   edifice, the conception of a master mind, with all its architectural
   skill and beauty, is but a monument of human forethought and power,
   blinded and cramped in its range. Thus, contemplate man's noblest
   achievements--the intellectual and the physical--the touch of human
   imperfection and incompleteness mars and traces all. The great truth,
   then, stands out like a constellation flaming in its own solitary
   orbit, that there never was but one Man who could gaze with complacency
   upon His work and, with His expiring breath, exclaim, "It is finished!"
   That man was the God-Man, Mediator, who, as the Son, and yet the
   Servant of the Father, relinquished His Throne for a Cross, that He
   might accomplish the Redemption, work out the salvation of His
   Church--the people given to Him of God--and who, on the eve of that
   Redemption and with all the certainty of an actual Atonement, could
   thus breathe His intercessory petition to Heaven, "I have finished the
   work which You gave Me to do."

   We summon you this evening around the Cross of Calvary, to listen to
   the words now breathing from the quivering lips of our dying Lord--"It
   is finished!" And believing, as I do most firmly and solemnly, that no
   Scriptural Doctrine, no revealed Truth, will ever be able to confound
   the infidelity of the present day, we meet to explode the many errors
   and heresies, fearful and fatal, which are inseparable from this age of
   licentious thought, unchecked utterance and freedom of opinion. We
   summon you this evening to proclaim the one remedy--the simple, full,
   unreserved exhibition of the ATONEMENT, the SACRIFICIAL, and FINISHED
   WORK of the Lord Jesus Christ! I am the more anxious and earnest on
   this important and impressive occasion to bend upon it your especial,
   devout, and solemn attention. Oh, that our modern theological
   controversialists--the men who are desirous of contending earnestly for
   the faith once delivered to the saints--who are putting on their armor
   and furbishing their weapons for the approaching conflict, might learn
   the secret of their might, wherein their great strength lies! It is not
   in accumulating around the Cross the stores of ancient and modern love;
   it is not in a strife of arms, dazzling and distinguished by profound
   intellectualism, learning, and eloquence--but in a simple, bold,
   uncompromising presentation of the Atoning and Finished Sacrifice of
   Christ--the lifting up, in its naked simplicity and solitary,
   unapproachable grandeur, of the Cross of the Incarnate God, the
   instrument of the sinner's salvation, the foundation of the Believer's
   hope, the symbol of pardon, reconciliation, and hope to the soul; in a
   word, the grand weapon by which error shall bow to Truth, and sin give
   place to righteousness; and the kingdoms of this world long in
   rebellion against God, crushed and enthralled, shall yield to Messiah's
   specter, spring from the dust, burst their bonds, and exalt in the
   undisputed supremacy and benign reign of Jesus!

   And believing, too, as I firmly do, that so large an amount of
   corroding doubts, and gloomy fears, and painful forebodings, which so
   essentially and so widely impede the religious progress, invade and
   cloud the spiritual joy and hope of the Lord's people, is mainly
   traceable to imperfect, crude, and dim views and apprehensions of
   Christ's complete work, of the Savior's finished salvation which He has
   worked for His Church--not distinctly seeing that all is done--the
   great debt paid, the mighty bond cancelled, the full Atonement made,
   sin all and freely forgiven, I am still the more desirous of placing
   this great, this cardinal and precious Truth prominently and broadly,
   as the Lord the Spirit shall help me, before the present assembly,
   trusting and believing that, in answer to prayer, there will be tonight
   the Presence and power of the Holy Spirit descending, invisible and
   noiseless, upon your souls, sealing upon your hearts this grand, this
   essential, this saving Truth--the FINISHED WORK OF CHRIST. "It is
   finished." Let us consider these memorable words--

   I. As THE CRY OF A SUFFERER. And what a Sufferer! Contemplate for a
   moment the Divine dignity of the Sufferer. Here was no ordinary
   Sufferer, my Brothers and Sisters. We approach the scene of the
   Crucifixion, and we behold three individuals alike suspended upon three
   different crosses, two on either side and One in the center. They all
   suffer-- all languish--all die. But the sufferings and death of One is
   attended by circumstances so strange, and events so unparalleled, by
   prodigies so miraculous and sublime, that we are led to exclaim in
   wondering awe, "Who is this?" And the voice of Prophecy replies, "This
   is He of whom I spoke--'Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd and against
   the Man who is My Fellow, says the Lord of Hosts; smite the Shepherd,
   and the sheep shall be scattered.'" My dear Hearers, if throughout the
   life of Christ I could fasten upon no other event confirming the
   Doctrine of the Godhead of Christ, I would be willing and satisfied to
   predicate my argument in vindication of His essential dignity upon the
   closing scene of the Cross--the last moments of His parting life. If
   His life were destitute of fact, His death alone would supply the
   evidence that He who died upon Calvary was none other than the Son of
   God! Hold fast the Doctrine of Christ's essential Deity, for upon it,
   as upon a rock, reposes the entire and stupendous fabric of the
   ATONEMENT.

   The sufferings of Christ were expiatory and vicarious. You are aware
   that by many this fact is denied. The only solution of the mystery of
   Christ's death offered by the school to which I refer, is that which
   presents our Lord as a model of patience and resignation in
   suffering--a saint in virtue--a hero in endurance. And thus, the Cross
   of Christ is deprived of its magnificence and robbed of its Glory! But
   our Lord suffered as an expiatory Offering, as a vicarious Victim. All
   suffering is, in a sense, vicarious--not in the fullest meaning of the
   term, as conveying the idea of substitution, but simply and only in the
   sense that all suffering is the effect and consequence of sin. The man
   who violates the laws of his physical nature--who puts the empoisoned
   cup of intemperance to his lips to steal away his brains--who wastes
   his substance in riotous living--who herds among the unclean, and
   sacrifices to his baser passions health, property, character, shall
   suffer as a consequence of his lawlessness, folly and sin. He cannot
   trample upon the laws of his physical and mental constitution with
   impunity--he shall suffer. These sufferings shall not expiate his
   transgression, but they shall follow in its wake a sure and dire
   consequence. Our Lord's sufferings were also the result and consequence
   of sin--sin not His own, but His people's; and in the fullest and most
   emphatic meaning of the terms, were expiatory and
   vicarious--sufferings, not only the fruit of sin, but more than that,
   suffering expiatory of sin--sufferings, substitutionary and vicarious,
   sacrificial and atoning. There are theologians who dispute this
   statement, who deny this Doctrine. But I challenge them to explain
   these sufferings of our Lord satisfactorily upon any other hypothesis
   than this. I bring them back to the idea, that all human suffering is
   the effect of sin--our Lord suffered the death of the Cross. Was not
   that death in some way connected with sin? Most assuredly! Had there
   been no sin, there had been no suffering. This granted, we advance a
   step further, and claim for that death of Christ, a substitutionary
   character, an atoning nature--a sin expiatory result. And so the
   revealed Truth of God stands out in all its magnitude and Glory; and
   this is the only clue to the mystery--"He was wounded for our
   transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities." " Who, His own
   self, bore our sins in His own body on the tree." "Christ also has
   loved us and has given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to
   God, for a sweet smelling savor." " The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son,
   cleans us from all sin.""

   Behold the Almighty Sufferer! There stood the Son of God, bearing the
   sin and enduring the curse of His Church-- putting away the one, and
   entirely exhausting the other--by the Sacrifice of Himself. To all the
   demands of God's moral government, to all the claims of Law and
   justice, Jesus now, on behalf of the people for whom He stood as
   Surety, gave a full, honorable, and accepted satisfaction. Come, poor
   sin-burdened, heart-broken penitent, and sit beneath the shadow of this
   Tree of Life, and its bending fruit of pardon, peace, joy and hope
   shall be sweet to your believing taste! But the sufferings of Christ
   were unparalleled and intense. Never since the universe was formed was
   there such a Sufferer as Jesus. He was the Prince of Sufferers. No
   sorrow ever broke the heart like that which tore His in two. Truly
   could He challenge the universe of sufferers, and ask, "Is it nothing
   to you, all you who pass by? Behold and see if there is any sorrow like
   unto My sorrow." No, Lord! Your sufferings had no parallel, no sorrows
   were ever like unto Yours! I do not go with the Greek Church, as you
   know. I differ from it both ecclesiastically and doctrinally. But I
   admire and love what is good, find it where I may. And I perfectly
   assent to the remark of my beloved Brother, made in the vestry before
   the service,

   "That there's some good in all Christian communions and creeds, and
   that it is our wisdom to accept what is good and leave what is evil."
   Now, that is a sublime sentence in the liturgy of the Greek Church,
   which I have often pondered with emotion--"Your unknown agonies." Yes,
   the agonies of our sin-suffering, sin-atoning Lord were unknown! They
   were in their intensity known only to His own holy soul. No angel could
   ever fathom their depth; no finite mind shall ever be able to gauge the
   breadth, to scale the height, to conceive even of the agony of His soul
   when He exclaimed, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? I can
   bear the abandonment of My disciples--one has denied Me, another has
   betrayed Me, all have forsaken Me--but O My God, My God, why have
   Youforsaken Me?" We may form some idea of their character, else how can
   we with Paul have fellowship with Him in His sufferings? First, there
   was the physical element; our blessed Lord suffered bodily. Men of
   science and of sanctified intellect have endeavored to analyze and
   describe the physical agonies which Christ endured, when His heart was
   broken with grief; but physiology in its noblest triumphs has never
   been able to fully portray what the Savior endured when, like the
   rending rocks around His Cross--

   "That heart was torn asunder,
   Never once defiled by sin."

   Then there was mentalagony. The mental grief He endured, who can
   conceive? His mind was a human mind, and all the more sensitive because
   it was a sinless mind. The human sympathy of Christ infinitely
   transcends the most exquisite sympathy that glows in our bosom, because
   it was the sympathy of a pure and sinless Humanity. There is
   selfishness in our sympathy. We love to sympathize with the sufferer
   because we love the sufferer, and we are paying a homage to our love to
   the creature when we take the hand and dry the tears, and speak the
   words of consolation. But the sympathy of Christ was all the more
   exquisite, and all the more tender, and all the more human, because it
   was all the more free from sin. The perfect sinlessness of Christ's
   sympathy did not in the slightest degree affect the perfect humanity of
   His sympathy. He was more human than you and I are, because His
   Humanity was entirely free from sin. We are not all human. We possess a
   part of a demoniacal nature. Sin has impaired all those glorious
   virtues and excellencies which our humanity in its primitive condition
   possessed, and ours is a distorted, paralyzed, altered humanity. Let
   your humanity be restored to its original righteousness, to its
   primitive purity; let it be elevated, renewed, sanctified, ennobled, as
   your humanity will be if you are believers in Christ, and as you
   gradually recede from sin you will approach the perfect. As sin is
   eliminated and purged away from your nature, your crushed, your
   bruised, your bowed humanity will rise in its original purity, and
   majesty, and glory, and you will be all the more human because you
   approach all the more to the purity of the Divine.

   But the soul-suffering of our Lord was more intense than all. This was
   inconceivable, indescribable. Listen to the cry in Gethsemane, "My soul
   is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death." The billows of God's wrath
   began now to penetrate His Nature, the storm to break in upon His Soul.
   Oh, that was a terrible moment! It was only now that He began to
   succumb to the woe. Before this He had maintained a comparatively calm
   and uncomplaining Demeanor. The tempest until now was outside. When a
   vessel, coursing its way over the ocean, is arrested by a storm--the
   fierce winds blowing, the ocean broken into billows, seething, raging,
   roaring--as long as his gallant boat plows its way, and keeps its
   course, the mariner treads its deck undaunted by fear, confident in the
   strength and firmness of his vessel to outride and outlive the tempest.
   But let the cry be heard, "a leak! A leak! A plank is sprung, the
   waters are coming in!" And in a moment, despair enters and enthrones
   itself upon the brow, and the hearts of the stern sons of the sea die
   within them. Beloved, that was the moment of our Lord's deep, unknown
   agony, when He could exclaim, "Save Me, O God, for the waters are come
   into My soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing. I am
   come into deep waters, where the floods overflow Me. All Your waves and
   Your billows are gone over Me!" All this, O child of God, was for your
   soul! It pleased the Lord to crucify Him and put Him to grief for you.
   By His stripes you are healed. Your healing flows from His wounds, your
   joy from His sorrow, your glory from His abasement, your riches from
   His poverty; your hope beams through the darkness which enshrouds His
   holy Soul. Oh, was ever love like Christ's love? In what else can we
   resolve all this mystery of unknown agony--of intense, unparalleled
   suffering, but in the "love of Christ which passes knowledge!" "Christ
   also loved the Church and gave Himself for it!" O mystery of suffering!
   O deeper mystery of love!

   But these sufferings now are over. Hear him cry--"It is finished!"

   Have you ever stood by the dying bed of one you have loved--and have
   marked the throb, the throe of agony, the maddening convulsion, the
   terrible shaking of the earthly tabernacle as pin after pin, and beam
   after beam has fallen a shattered wreck; and as you caught the last
   breath that floated from the pale, quivering lips and closed those eyes
   in death, has not your heart in the depth of its grief felt something
   like a thrill of joy and gladness that the sufferings of the loved one
   now were over? Rejoice then--rejoice that the sufferings of Jesus are
   finished; that the storm and the tempest will no more beat around Him!
   The sun of God's love shall no more darken over Him, for He took the
   cup, pressed it to His lips, exhausted the last bitter drop, and then
   shouted out in words that made Heaven reverberate with its melody, and
   Hell to ring with its mightiness, "It is finished!" Child of sorrow,
   child of suffering, rejoice that the sufferings of your Lord are over,
   and that in all the suffering, and all the trial, and all the sorrow
   through which He leads you Home to Himself, has nor on drop of the
   curse to embitter it; has not one particle of the sufferings He
   endured. He took your cup of grief, your cup of the curse, pressed it
   to His lips, drank it to its dregs, then filled it with His sweet,
   pardoning, sympathizing love, and gave it back for you to drink, and to
   drink forever.

   II. Secondly, and more briefly, "It is finished" is not only the cry of
   a Sufferer, it is THE LANGUAGE OF A SAVIOR.

   Our Lord's mission to our world was simply and singularly to save. He
   came for no other objective than to save man, to give His life a ransom
   for many; to provide, to execute an expedient devised in the Eternal
   Council, and purpose, and love of the Triune God, for securing the full
   Redemption of His Church--an expedient that should harmonize and unite
   all the moral attributes and perfections of His being, and then lower
   from the battlement of Heaven to sin's fathomless depths the golden
   chain of mercy, pardoning mercy, to which, if in faith you take hold,
   it will lift you up to the Throne from where it came! It is the fashion
   of the present day to ignore the Saviorship of Jesus, and to represent
   His Person, and His life, and His death in any and every form, rather
   than acknowledge that He died on the Cross in the Character of a
   Savior, and that faith in the merits of His obedience and in in the
   efficacy of His death, constitute the only basis on which a lost sinner
   can build his hope of Heaven. I ask you, my beloved Hearers, what is
   the grand objective of modern heresy but to undermine the Cross of
   Christ, to ignore the Sacrifice of His death, to blot out the glorious
   Atonement, and to reduce the splendid paraphernalia of Calvary, with
   all its moral and sublime results, to a mere nonentity? His death, His
   obedience was the obedience of the Law-Maker in the form of the
   Law-Fulfiller to a Law which man had broken and violated; and that
   perfect and complete obedience of that broken Law is the righteousness
   that justifies the ungodly, and places him who believes spotless before
   God. Hold fast that Truth--the imputed righteousness of the Lord our
   righteousness worked out and complete in His perfect obedience to the
   precepts of a broken Law. His death on Calvary was an Atonement to
   Divine Justice; the shedding of His blood was for the remission of
   man's sins; the paying out of His soul to death was the perfect honor
   given to the moral government of Jehovah; and when He went out of the
   streets of Jerusalem staggering beneath the beam on which He was to be
   impaled; when, with lowly footsteps, He ascended that sacred hill,
   Calvary; when there, like a lamb led to the slaughter, He gave Himself
   up uncomplainingly, unreservedly into the hands of His executioners;
   when they stretched Him on that tree, transfixed His limbs to those
   beams, lifted it and let it fall into the place excavated for it to
   stand; when there the Son of God poured out His holy Soul unto
   death--oh, my Brothers and Sisters, it was to harmonize Justice and
   Mercy, Holiness and Truth, to blend in one vast bow of hope all these
   Divine Attributes, that they might span the moral Heaven, and encircle
   our lost humanity! It was then He gave up His Soul unto death, and
   offered up that Sacrifice for sin, which man, in his madness, folly,
   and infidelity, dares in this, our day, to ignore and to deny!

   Yes, it is the language of a Savior. Those words speak hope to the
   hopeless, pardon to the guilty, acceptance to the lost; they tell you,
   O poor sin-smitten, burdened sinner, that there is hope! There is
   pardon even for you!He has finished all that Justice asked, that the
   Law demanded; He has finished the mission His Father had confided to
   His hands; He has finished the grand oblation that was to restore to
   God's moral government the Glory it had lost in man's apostasy. He has
   finished all the ancient types, predictions and shadows; He has torn
   the veil in two, and opened the bright pathway for the sinner to
   retrace his steps back to Paradise, back to God, and once more feel the
   warm embrace of his Father's forgiving love. And yet this is the work,
   this is the Atonement, this is the Sacrifice which modern essayists
   dare with scorn and unbelief to trample beneath their feet! Oh, it is
   the language of a Savior which bids you come! Poor brokenhearted
   Sinner, with all your burden of sin, believe and be saved! It bids you
   come without money and without price; it tells you the blood He poured
   from His broken heart can wash out and cancel the deepest stain that is
   on your soul; it tells you there is room in that bosom which He laid
   bare to the lightening-stroke of God's wrath; it tells you, dry your
   tears, embrace the Cross, trust in the finished work of Christ; fling
   to the heavens all your own righteousness, wrap your- self up by faith
   in the righteousness of Christ, and all the choirs of Heaven shall tune
   their harps of gold, and make the heavens reverberate with their songs
   of praise over your submission in faith to the Atonement of the Son of
   God!

   III. Lastly and only one word or two on this--it is THE SHOUT OF A
   CONQUEROR.

   Christ was a Man of war, our glorious Joshua was He. He had come to
   gird on the sword, to invest Himself with the armor, and to go out and
   battle with Satan, with sin and with Hell. It was a terrible conflict,
   it was a fearful battle, but He girded Himself for the mighty and the
   solemn work, and He completed it, He finished it. He met His foes on
   the battlefield, confronted all His enemies, and on the Cross He
   destroyed--He divested death of its sting, triumphed over Satan, the
   grave, and Hell, and as He expired, He exclaimed, "It is finished!" Oh
   what a sublime conflict was that, my Brothers and Sisters, when the
   Captain of our salvation met single-handedly and overcame the powers of
   darkness, fought the fight, won the victory, and died, saying "It is
   finished!"

   With two or three brief inferences from the subject I will close.

   What a spring of comfort flows from it to the true Believer amid his
   innumerable failures, flaws, and imperfections. What service do you
   perform, what duty do you discharge of which you can say, "It is
   finished"? Alas, not one! Your service is imperfect, your obedience is
   incomplete, your love is fluctuating, yes, upon it all are the visible
   marks of human defilement and defect. But here is the work which God
   most delights in, "finished." " You are complete in Him." Turn, then,
   your eyes of faith out of yourself, and off of all your own doings, and
   deal more immediately, closely, and obediently with the finished work
   of Immanuel. Come away from your fickle love, from your weak faith,
   from your little fruitfulness, from your uneven walk, from all your
   shortcomings and imperfections, and let your eyes of faith repose where
   God's eyes of complacent love reposes--on the finished work of Jesus.
   God beholds you only in Christ--it is not upon youHe looks, but on His
   Beloved Son, and upon you in Him, "wherein He has made us accepted in
   the Beloved."

   2. If Christ's Atoning work is finished, what folly and what sin to
   attempt to supplement it/What vast numbers are doing this! Away with
   your tears, your confessions, your duties, your charities, even your
   repentance and faith, if these things dare to take their place side by
   side with the finished work of Christ! See that you attempt to add
   nothingto it. In a similar strain of exhortation let me

   3. Warn you of the utter worthlessness and fallacy of all grounds of
   faith, and of all human hope that comes in conflict with the finished
   work of Christ. My dear Hearers, you have nothing to do in the great
   matter of your salvation, but to accept in faith the one Offering made
   once and for all by God manifest in your nature. Cast your deadly
   doings at the foot of the Cross; cease from your own works; cease from
   your own righteousness; cease from resting in your confessions, in your
   tears, in your prayers, in your going to your church or your chapel.
   Oh, cease from all this, and in simple faith accept--take hold of--the
   Divine work of the Lord Jesus Christ! God needs no more sacrifices; God
   asks no other atonement; God looks for nothing on your part to
   propitiate His regard, or present you with acceptance; He is satisfied
   with the Divine work of Christ--with His obedience--and with His
   blood-shedding. And if tonight, sin-burdened and distressed one, you
   will renounce all your own doings, and rest in the finished work of
   Christ--the one eternal Redemption He has offered--God will expand His
   arms of love and embrace you, take you into a covenant, filial relation
   to Himself; and from that moment your path to eternity will be like the
   sun, growing brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. All is done!
   Christ has done all. Christ has suffered all--all He asks of you is in
   faith to receive His glorious Sacrifice. Believe in Him, and be saved!

   4. Beware of the errors of the day, the tendency of which is to veil
   the Light and Glory of Christ's finished work, and to mislead,
   misguide, and misdirect souls on their way to the Judgment Seat. The
   fact is too patent to ignore, and it would be affectation to veil
   it--that there exists at the present moment, a theological school in
   our land--which by the press is endeavoring to circulate doctrines and
   statements which go to undermine the Divine Inspiration and Authority
   of the Bible, and to cast the pall of darkness, and of death over the
   splendors of the Cross. I warn you of these terrorists, and against
   their errors. Perfidious men, false to your Master, and unfaithful to
   His Truth! You may attempt to veil the luster of the Cross, you may
   sepulcher Incarnate Truth, roll upon it your stone, seal it, and set
   your watch, but the Truth of God shall leap from the dark chamber in
   which you attempt to entomb it, and shall walk this earth again--a
   thing of life, light and beauty! Rejoice, O Christian, that all these
   attempts to subvert the Truth as it is in Jesus, God will laugh to
   scorn, and finally His Gospel shall fully and universally prevail--

   "Truth crushed to earth, shall rise again!

   The eternal years of God are hers; But error wounded writhes in pain,
   And dies amid her worshippers!

   And now, from my heart, I ask the blessing of the Triune God upon my
   beloved Brother, the grand substance of whose ministry I believe from
   my very soul is to exalt the finished work of Jesus. And I pray that
   this noble edifice, reared in the name, and consecrated to the glory of
   the Triune God, may for many years echo and re-echo with his voice of
   melody and of power in expounding to you the glorious Doctrines and
   precepts of Christ's one finished Atonement. And God grant that none of
   you may be found rejecting to your everlasting woe the Doctrine of the
   Cross. You may attempt to laugh it to scorn; you may make your excuses
   for its rejection; but the hour is coming, yes, the hour is near, when
   death confronting you--the veil falling upon all earthly scenes, rising
   upon all eternal realities--you will discover the unbelief and
   contumely that could trifle with the Atonement, dispute it in life, and
   in health, fail you in your solemn hour, and you will find yourself on
   the brink of eternity, without a plank, without a lifeboat, without a
   star of hope to cheer the dark spirit's travel to the bar of God!
   Reject it; deny it at your peril; your blood be upon your own heads.
   And may God grant in His Grace, that before long you who have believed
   in Him, confessed Him, and loved Him here on earth, may cluster around
   His Throne, gaze upon His unclouded face, unite in the anthem of the
   blessed, and from those lips which once uttered that glorious
   sentence--"It is finished," receive the "Well done, good and faithful
   servant;" "Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared
   for you from the foundations of the world." And to God the Father, God
   the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, we will all unite in one eternal
   ascription of praise. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               Perfect Cleansing

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 7, 1861, DELIVERED BY REV.
   C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For I will cleanse their blood that Ihave not cleansed." Joel 3:21.
   SOME think that this text has reference to the blood of the persecuted
   and martyred Israel. God had by terrible judgments avenged Himself of
   the different nations who had carried His people captive, and according
   to some expositors, in this verse He threatens to make His vengeance
   complete. If there is any blood which still cries from the ground, if
   there are any martyrs whose murders have not been punished upon their
   persecutors, God vows that He will cleanse their blood which He had not
   as yet cleansed. We shall however, this morning, take the text in a
   more simple and I think after a more spiritual sort. It is a great
   Truth of God which lies at the foundation of the Gospel system, that
   the blood of Jesus Christ, God's dear Son, cleans us from all sin. When
   a man is washed in the sacred laver which is filled with the blood of
   the Atonement, he is not partially cleansed, but he is thoroughly
   cleansed. Not so much as the shadow of a spot remains upon the
   blood-washed. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are
   in Christ Jesus." If that cleansing were partial, it were of not use.
   If it left but one sin still upon us in the sight of God, it would have
   no power to save. It is only because when once applied by the Holy
   Spirit and received by faith it makes a total, and complete cleansing
   from all past guilt, that it is of any use whatever to the poor
   trembling conscience of the distressed sinner. Let us lay it down,
   then, in our own minds as a settled fact which neither our experience
   nor any of the teachings of many heretics shall make us let go, that he
   who by faith lays hold on Christ, has his blood cleansed in that same
   hour, and all his iniquities are put away. But in what light, then, are
   we to understand the text? For it says, "I will cleanse their blood
   that I have not cleansed." Well, this may refer perhaps to the uncalled
   among God's elect. They are not as yet cleansed. Their faith has not as
   yet descended into the sacred pool of blood. They still stand in their
   iniquities, and in their transgressions, unconscious of their lost
   estate, and now God gives an absolute promise to the rest of His chosen
   that they shall in due time be brought in! They shall repent. "A new
   heart also will I give them, and a right spirit will I put within them,
   and I will sprinkle pure water upon them and they shall be clean. From
   all their iniquities and from all their transgressions will I cleanse
   them." It is not a matter of doubt as to whether the uncalled as yet
   shall or shall not be saved. If God has chosen them, He will call them,
   for whom He did predestinate, "them He also called, and whom He called,
   them He also justified." This stands as a part of the Divine Decree,
   and as an absolute promise uttered by the lips of Divine Sovereignty.
   "As for the rest of My elect as yet unwashed, as yet unsaved from all
   their iniquities, I will cleanse their blood which I have not
   cleansed." But I think I shall only be speaking the mind of the Spirit,
   if I say this is not the first meaning of the text. I shall confine
   myself this morning to two thoughts which I think very naturally arise
   out of it. There are two senses in which Believers in Christ have blood
   which as yet has not been cleansed, and to these two senses our text
   has especial reference.
   First, there remains still on the minds of some of the regenerate a
   certain consciousness of sin--their conscience has not been thoroughly
   purged from dead works. And secondly, it is an undoubted fact, that in
   the nature even of the regenerate, there still remains the black drop
   of the old depraved blood which needs to be cleansed away, and which
   according to this promise shall soon be removed.
   I. We shall commence with the first sense--GUILT UPON THE CONSCIENCE.
   The promise is given to Believers who have any guilt still remaining
   upon their troubled consciences, "I will cleanse their blood that I
   have not cleansed." If our faith were what it should be, we would know
   that there is no condemnation against the man who believes in Christ.
   If our faith were always simple, and had a clear eye to look alone to
   the Savior, we would always view ourselves as being, in the sight of
   God, accepted in the Beloved. But our faith partakes of the frailty of
   our nature. It is often trembling; it sometimes staggers at the
   promise, and then in such moods, and in such hours there comes upon the
   conscience a sense of sin to a greater or less degree. The soul is
   still justified, but doubts its justification; it is still accepted,
   but that acceptance is not so clearly read by its eye as to be to it a
   matter of certainty, and a cause ofjoy. Now, Brothers and Sisters, I
   think I can soon prove that very many of us have some guilt remaining
   upon our conscience. Let me ask you in the first place, what is it that
   makes us doubt our eternal salvation? We have believed in Christ--
   "Our hope is fixed on nothing less, Than Jesus' blood and
   righteousness," and yet we doubt. We have come to the Cross--we look to
   it as being all our salvation, and all our desire, yet we are troubled
   at heart--dark suspicions flit across our soul, and we ask, "If it is
   so, why am I thus?" Now what does this indicate but that there is some
   guilt still remaining on our conscience? If we knew ourselves to be
   what we really are; if we are Believers, guiltless, innocent, pure,
   clean in every way, do you think we should have any doubt of our
   salvation? If we could look upon ourselves in Christ as being without
   spot or wrinkle, or any such thing--and that is what we are if we
   believe in Him--do you think there would be a shadow of a shade of
   suspicion as to our eternal salvation? No. It is because the conscience
   knows some secret stain--because the black fingerprints of sin are not
   completely washed out, that we fear lest after all sin should involve
   punishment, and punishment should cast us into Hell. Oh that this blood
   upon the conscience were cleansed away, and we would never, never doubt
   again!
   And then again, let me ask you, are there not times when you think very
   harshly of God? You think, perhaps, that He deals severely with you;
   that He will not deliver you out of this seventh trouble; that He will
   let you sink at last, and perish in the deep waters, where the floods
   shall overflow you. You come to think of Him, not as a tender Father,
   but as, to say the least of it, a severe Taskmaster; you come to think
   that one of these dark days He will shut His eyes of love, withdraw His
   hand of power, and suspend the sympathies of His heart! Do you suppose
   you would have any of these thoughts of God if you knew yourself to be
   perfectly cleansed by Him? No, you would say, "Though He slay me, yet
   will I trust in Him. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, and
   blessed be the name of the Lord." You would be willing to leave
   everything in His hands, but the dark thought that there is sin in you,
   and that God is punishing you for that sin--that in that chastisement
   there is mixed something penal--that in the smiting of the Father's rod
   there is something of the severity of the Judge's hand, betrays the
   fact that your conscience is not thoroughly cleansed from sin. If it
   were, you would know that every affliction was but love; that every
   blow was but another form of a caress; that your troubles were not
   punishments, but chastisements; not penal inflictions, but the loving
   deeds of a tender Father who longed to make you perfect like Himself.
   Still further, why is it that so many of us dare not indulge in close
   access to our God? We pray, but it is often to a distant God, as to one
   who stands upon a mountain beyond our reach! How few of us come like a
   child to his Father, and lay hold on God as One who is near to us by
   ties of Divine affinity. The most of Christians, I fear, are
   outer-court worshippers; they stand in the place of the priests, but
   they never come to stand where the high priest stood, within the veil.
   Luther was a man who used familiarities with God, and if some of us had
   heard Luther praying, we would have been shocked--"Oh," we would have
   said, "how dare he talk thus with God?" But Luther knew that he was
   completely justified, that there was no sin on him, and therefore he
   did not tremble when he stood near to the Holy, the Perfect, and the
   Just. If I know that there is no sin remaining, but that all has been
   washed away, why need I fear? I may go the Throne of God and cry, "Who
   shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Not God, for He has
   justified, nor Christ, for He has died." Once let the soul have perfect
   peace through believing in its perfect purity in Christ, and the
   nearness of our access will be perfectly wonderful! The boldness of our
   fellowship will make us look with wonder, and even Christians will be
   astonished that we dare to indulge in such a holy familiarity with God,
   and talk so plainly with our Father--with our Friend. There is still
   guilt upon the conscience of many professors, and it is proved by the
   fact that they fear to have a near approach to God.
   How frequently does this lurking evil betray itself in another form!
   There is a promise before you--an exceedingly great and precious
   promise. Why do you not lay hold upon it? Why not receive it in all its
   length and breadth, and call it your own? "Oh," you say, "but I am so
   unworthy. How shall I take such a promise? I, so unbelieving, so
   ungrateful, so unheavenly, how can I think that such a promise is made
   to me? It is too good, too great for such an one as I am." Do you not
   perceive that when you say, "unworthy," you are acting as though you
   were under the Covenant of Works, instead of being under the Covenant
   of Grace? What has your worthiness to do with it, or your unworthiness
   either? God did not choose you for your worthiness--Christ did not
   purchase you from your goodness. The Holy Spirit did not call you
   because of your excellencies, nor will you be saved because of any
   inherent virtue in you! You betray at once, I say, the sad fact that
   there is some consciousness of evil still remaining upon you; oh, if
   your heart knew itself to be wholly purged from dead works, and freed
   from sin, you could walk at large; if no more a criminal, but absolved,
   pardoned and acquitted, you have leave to roam throughout all the rooms
   of your Father's palace, and to take hold upon all your Father's riches
   as His heir, yes--joint-heir with Christ--you would never stagger at
   the promise because of its greatness, but account it all the more true
   because its greatness proves that it came from a great God who has
   great faithfulness, and great power to fulfill! Precious, precious
   promise, "I will cleanse their blood which I have not cleansed." I will
   make your conscience yet so pure of sin that you can take the promise
   and believe it to be all your own.
   Yet once more. There is another fact which demonstrates at once that
   the conscience of some Believers is not totally purged from sin. Why is
   my Sister yonder afraid to die? Why does my Brother there tremble when
   he knows that he carries a disease about him which may all of a sudden
   launch him into eternity? My Brother, if you will probe that fear of
   yours to the bottom, you will find the old venom of some guilt still
   upon the conscience! Let us suppose that the promise of the text is
   fulfilled in you, and that you know today that there is no sin against
   you in God's Book--that you feel today that you are perfectly freed
   from the consequences and the guilt of sin through the Substitution of
   Christ. I defy you to be afraid of dying after that! The two things
   could not stand together! Sin is the sting of death, and the strength
   of sin is the Law. But when sin is removed, what is it but a serpent
   without its fangs, a thing which a child may play with, and not that a
   man must tremble at? What? When the dragon's teeth are broken, and we
   know it, shall we be afraid? When death is no more the gate of gloom,
   but the portal of the skies, and we know it, shall we tremble then? God
   forbid that I should allow the thought! No. Perfectly pardoned, with a
   conscience recognizing, and rejoicing in that perfect pardon, all fears
   of death would be impossible! There would even be a longing and a
   thirsting after death, not that we would be unclothed, but clothed
   upon, that mortality might be swallowed up in life. We would have a
   desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better! Do not think,
   my Brothers and Sisters, after the five reasons which I have given,
   that any of you would be willing to say, "I am guiltless there." We
   have guilt, many of us, still upon our conscience, because we at times
   doubt our salvation. Often we have harsh thoughts of God. We sometimes
   neglect to approach near to the Mercy Seat. We often tremble to take
   the promise at the fullest. We are afraid of dying. All these prove
   that the blood is not entirely cleansed from off the conscience.
   Having thus proved the necessity of the promise, let us sit still a
   moment, chew the cud of meditation, put the promise into our mouth, and
   taste its preciousness. Great God! You will yet by Your Grace take from
   my conscience, and the conscience of all Your people every stain of
   sin! And what then, Beloved? What then? Let these thoughts charm you.
   When once the last stain of sin is removed, then you will never have a
   doubt; you will triumph in full assurance. Who can doubt when sin is
   washed away? It shall not be partly day, and partly night with you when
   this promise is fulfilled. Your night shall be turned into day, and the
   light of your day shall be as though there were seven suns. You shall
   sing with Toplady--
   "My name from the palm of His hands Eternity cannot erase! Impressed on
   His heart it remains Li marks of indelible Grace."

   You shall know that Heaven might sooner pass away than your soul be
   imperiled; that for us the very Throne of God is a security of life.
   Because He lives, you must also live, and because He reigns, you must
   reign with Him. I pray that promise over till I have it fulfilled to
   me, because I know that in that hour all my doubts shall be brought out
   to execution, shall be hung on Haman's gallows, and shall never trouble
   me any more. And what next, Beloved, if this promise is fulfilled? Why,
   then, we shall praise the Lord with gladness. No more harsh thoughts of
   Him! Our life shall be one Psalm. We shall sing in our hearts, and sing
   with our lips, and each day shall be a note, when sin is pardoned--

   "How sweet the song there's none can say,
   But those whose sins are washed away
   Who feel the same within."

   I believe that the shouts of angels are not as glorious as will be the
   songs of the redeemed, because those songs shall warble from
   blood-washed lips! Oh, cannot you and I sing! We cannot get our praise
   out as we would. It is too big for expression when once we know beyond
   hesitation or suspicion that every sin is gone, and can say, "Great
   God, I am clean. Through Jesus' blood I am clean!"

   But more than this--to put each point in opposition to those evil
   things which prove sin to be still on your conscience, let it be
   removed, and what nearness to God will you have? Holy souls must come
   together; there is a mutual attraction between a holy God and a holy
   being. It were impossible for a perfect being to be far removed from
   Him who is perfection's self, and once let you and I know our perfect
   justification in Christ, and far from God we could not live! Just as
   the needle seeks its pole, so should we seek our God; as the dove flies
   to the dovecot, so would our perfect spirit fly to the bosom of a
   perfect God. It were impossible for us to be far from God when purity
   has covered us, and the righteousness of Jesus is plainly seen, and
   then, my Brethren, enjoying this nearness of access to God, we would
   never be afraid to take the promise. Adam, I think, never trembled to
   pluck the pomegranate or to crush the grape; he was a perfect man, and
   he knew that the bounties of God's Providence in Eden's Garden were his
   own. And when you and I are perfectly justified, and our conscience
   knows it, we shall take God's mercies with a thankful hand, we shall
   lay hold upon His promises with a firm grasp. The sin that made us
   tremble to lay hold being all withdrawn, we shall take the promise with
   a grip that death and Hell can never loose, and say, "It is mine, for I
   am cleansed in Christ!" Then no fear of death will ever disturb us; our
   cleansed spirit will not dread the Jordan, but long to pass through its
   streams; the fetter of sin broken, we shall never fear the loss of
   liberty. If the great enemy, Sin, has been conquered, we shall not feel
   the little enemy, Death; if the Hell within us has been quenched, we
   shall know that there can be no Hell without for us; we shall long for
   evening to undress, that we may rest with God, and having on the
   wedding garment we shall be ready to enter into the marriage supper
   with shouts and joy--with a heart full of thanksgiving! O Lord, fulfill
   unto us this Your promise whereon You have caused us to hope, and from
   our conscience cleanse that blood-guiltiness which as yet has not been
   cleansed, and so will we praise and magnify You forever and ever!

   But secondly, I think the text has perhaps a yet more pointed bearing
   upon our sanctifcation than upon our justification. It is thrice
   blessed to live daily and continually under a system of Divine Grace
   which gives a perfect deliverance from the guilt of sin; but this can
   never be separated from the desire to know the dispensation in its
   deliverance from the power of sin. If any man hopes to be saved from
   punishment, and yet to hold with sin as his friend, that man's hope is
   a delusion! The Lord Jesus came into the world to save His people from
   their sins, not in their sins. He who breaks the chain kills the tyrant
   master. When you and I are delivered from the taskmaster's lash, we
   must be delivered from the taskmaster's labor--but it is a fact that
   God's people, though perfectly justified and clean--are none of them
   here on earth perfectly sanctified! All dreams about perfect
   sanctification here are dreams, indeed! In fact, I find upon conversing
   with those Brethren who believe in perfection, that they only mean
   this--that men may come into such a state of Grace that the spirit of
   God will keep them from the cross of sin, and they shall finally
   persevere. I believe the perfection of the Wesleyan is nothing more
   than the justification of a Calvinist! The Wesleyan makes a mistake in
   the use of terms. If he were put to a school of a good theologian, he
   would speak more plainly what he meant, and we should find that we did
   not differ. In the sense many Wesleyans use the term, "perfect," I do
   not hesitate to say that I know thousands of perfect men, completely
   justified men, whose lives outwardly are free from any sin which the
   world could detect, and men whose private conversation is such, that if
   it were matched by any man, you would scarcely detect any flaw against
   which a worldling might exclaim. But my dear Friends, I think you and
   I, knowing a little about ourselves, are ready to frankly confess that
   there is much blood in us that is not yet cleansed. The corruption of
   the flesh remains even in the regenerate. Let me in a sorrowful spirit
   show some of those signs which prove to us the indwelling of sin.
   Sometimes our old nature betrays us into great and sudden sin. Have you
   a hasty temper? Have you ever risen in the morning, and prayed to have
   it subdued, and you have gone on and everything has been as smooth as
   possible? But suddenly a squall has come, and before you knew it, you
   had lost your balance and had been carried away by the winds! I don't
   think I ever grieved one-millionth part as much from any hurt my
   feelings ever had for another man, as I have done when I have hurt
   another man's feelings. Another man may hurt me as much as he likes, I
   defy him to hurt me now, but when I have been betrayed into a hasty
   word in reply, I have often felt more sadness of spirit than I could
   tell. And yet each of us knows that with the very best intentions,
   resolving against this evil nature of ours, there are seasons when
   suddenly it overwhelms us, and takes us by storm!

   Perhaps, however, your temptation is of another class, not with temper,
   but with some other frailty of your minds. Oh, have we not sometimes
   tossed on our beds sleepless because our eyes would not shut, for they
   were bursting with tears? We have done that which our soul hated. We
   have said, "I would sooner have lost my right hand than have said what
   I have said, or have done what I have done. Oh, wretched man that I am,
   who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" If any of you can
   live without sin, I wish I knew your secret. If you can at all times
   maintain the same purity of heart, the same loveliness of disposition,
   the same charity of carriage, the same holiness of bearing, I would to
   God that I, too, might sit where you have sat to learn the lesson which
   you have learnt so well! But I half suspect you have not seen yourself
   as you should have seen yourself, or else you would scarcely venture to
   boast of such proficiency in the Gospel school. But my Brothers and
   Sisters, when our old evil nature does not throw us into the ditch, and
   muddy us from head to foot, yet how every day it stains us! That
   everyday sin; that sin which gets into the closet; that evil which
   creeps into our very bed, which has a chair for itself at all our
   tables; that evil which goes with us into the market, haunts us in the
   street, follows us into the family, sits at the fireside, or goes with
   us into the throng--that evil which penetrates the House of God, gets
   into the Church Meeting, follows us even in prayer and in praise, and
   tries to spoil all that we do. Oh, I am sure if you have watched
   yourself with but half an eye, you must feel that in those daily acts
   which the ungodly call "trifles," but which you know to be solemn
   things, there are signs that there is blood in you which has not been
   cleansed! How often does this evil come upon us so as to disable us
   when we need the most spiritual strength! There is the Angel, and I
   would wrestle with Him, but sin has cut my sinew, and I cannot wrestle
   as I should. There is the Throne, and I would sing, but sin has made my
   voice hoarse and my spirit dull; the strings of my harp are loose, so
   that I cannot send forth music as I would. There are sinners to be
   saved. My heart will not melt with compassion; my eyes will not flow
   with tears; there are many to be addressed in the ministry, but sin
   takes away our power to plead for God as we would. We can't be Baxters,
   we can't feel that soul-moving compassion for the redemption of sinners
   which we would feel. Have not you, each of you, felt that if you did
   not hate sin for anything else, you must hate it because it would not
   let you serve God, and serve His Church as you would desire? When you
   want to be Davids, in comes Satan, steals your sling and your stone.
   When you would be like Jael, sin mislays the hammer, and hides away the
   nail! When you would smite the Philistines with the ox-goad of Shamgar,
   there may be the ox-goad, but you have not strength or courage to wield
   it. Sin! Sin! You accursed thing, you have desecrated the House of God,
   you have climbed the sacred heights of Zion. You have spit your venom
   upon the burnt offerings of David's self. Yes, you have gone up to
   Tabor's summit, and when we have been rapt and transfigured, even then
   we have heard the moving of your wings, and the dark shadow of your
   evil influence has crept over our spirits! Oh we have plenty of reasons
   in our best frames as well as in our worst to confess that there is
   blood in us that is not as yet cleansed!

   More arguments you do not need, but if you wanted one more, I might
   give it you in this. Why do we ever doubt our God? Some men make light
   of doubts as though they were little sins. To doubt God is the most
   damnable of crimes! There is no iniquity which has in it a greater
   blackness of rebellion against God than mistrustful thoughts of His
   goodness, and His faithfulness. Unbelief stabs at every attribute of
   God! Pride does but smite His crown. Lust does but tread upon the pure
   whiteness of His garment. But unbelief would snatch from His hand His
   scepter; from His head His crown; no, it would shake the very
   foundation of the Throne itself! Now why is it that we ever doubt God?
   We have no causeto doubt Him. He has never been ungenerous or unkind.
   The only answer we can give is that we still have an evil heart of
   unbelief in departing from the living God. There is still the house of
   Saul within our coasts. There is still the old Adam, still the deadly
   principle which needs to be cut up, root and branch, and to be totally
   eradicated; ad so may God cleanse in us the blood which He has not
   cleansed.

   II. Having thus endeavored to prove that there is blood in us in the
   matter of sanctification which is not cleansed, I take the promise just
   as we find it, and read it through again. "For I will cleanse their
   blood that I have not cleansed; for the Lord dwells in Zion." So then,
   one of these days, there will be no propensity to sin left in any one
   of God's people. Then it is true, after all, that perfection is
   possible, and is attainable, for it is guaranteed to us in that verse!
   And God will as surely give what He promises, as He has greatly given
   what He promised in the old time. It is a great Doctrine of the
   Christian religion which ought always to be kept prominent, that
   everyone who believes in Christ, by believing, re- ceives a promise of
   being totally set free from the indwelling of sin in his nature. But
   how is this to be done? There is a great dispute about progressive
   sanctification. Some of us take one view of it, and some another. I
   will endeavor to give you mine.

   And first the purging of true nature will not be done in the Antinomian
   way, by calling good evil, and evil good. That theory, as I have heard
   it expounded by some, is something like this--let a child of God do
   what he will, what was sin in another man, is no sin in him. That is to
   say, in other terms, that darkness in a child of God is light; that
   bitter in a child of God is sweet; that injustice--what would be
   injustice in another man--is justice in him! What would make another
   man a rogue, still leaves him honest. If any of you believe such
   villainous blasphemy as that, the sooner you drive it out of your mind,
   the better. There is a dreadful woe against that man who removes his
   neighbor's landmark--how much more against the man who, under pretense
   of Gospel teaching, would sap the foundations which divide morality
   from immorality, and righteousness from vice. Sin, in a child of God,
   is sin--as damnable a sin as it would have been in the most accursed of
   the profane! The reason why it does not destroy you is not because it
   has ceased to be a deadly poison itself, but because of the Grace of
   God which has given Christ to be the Propitiation for our sins, which
   is a most blessed antidote.

   Neither is the way in which the blood of Believers is cleansed, as some
   say, by the changing of their old nature. The old nature never did
   change, and never will. Old Adam, ever since he fell, was earthly,
   sensual, devilish. He will be the same as long as we live, depend on
   it! Brothers and Sisters, the common experience of Christians prove
   that their nature does not get any better. You know how our aged
   friends pray at the Prayer Meetings. They generally ask that the young
   may be kept in the slippery paths of youth. I do not hesitate to say
   that the paths of youth, though slippery, are not more slippery than
   those of old age. Look at Scriptural history! Who were the great
   sinners mentioned there in the Church of Christ? Not a solitary young
   man is there mentioned as having disgraced his profession. See David.
   While he was a young man, he stood. It was in his declining years, that
   he committed that great sin with Bathsheba. I do not read of Noah, that
   he was ever drunk as a young man. It was when he was old, and his
   children were all grown about him, that he fell into that iniquity! Was
   Peter a lad? Was Judas a child? No. Bible history goes to show this,
   that if there is one period of human life more dangerous than another,
   it is when men think themselves to be out of danger--dreaming that
   their nature is improved! Ask the venerable men to speak for
   themselves. It ill becomes the youth to bring an accusation against the
   hoary head; but let them be their own witnesses. They will tell you
   that the fires they have seen to tremble in ashes, are still as full of
   power to devour as they were when they blazed up in the first flames of
   early youth! They will assure you-- for I know, and often hear their
   testimony, that they need as much to be kept by the aid of Divine Grace
   at the age of seventy, as they did at seventeen--that at eighty, they
   will become, unless Grace keeps them, as fit fuel for the flame, as
   they might have done at twenty-eight! Oh, yes, my Brothers and Sisters,
   ask the Church, and they will tell you that the fiction of the old
   nature getting better is a fiction without a foot to stand upon. They
   will tell you that old Adam always is, and always will be an enemy to
   the Cross of Christ, the friend of sin, and the hater of all that is
   good.

   And yet once again--the way in which God cleanses our blood is not by
   making the newnatureany better. Believers are partakers of the Divine
   Nature. That Divine Nature as Divine cannot be improved. The new
   principle which God implants in Regeneration is as good as it can be.
   We are told it is a seed. That seed which cannot sin because it is born
   of God. The old nature cannot be good; the new nature cannot be bad.
   The new nature can by no means sin, for it is a spark of the Divine
   purity. It can by no means fall, for it has in it immortality, and life
   of perfection. "But," you say to me, "how then, how then is our blood
   to be purged?" You have perceived in yourself that daily these two
   principles come into collision. The old Adam wants his way, the new
   Adam will have his way. They fight, they struggle, they are contrary
   the one to the other. We are afflicted, we mourn and weep, "When we
   would do good, evil is present with us." How to will we find; but how
   to perform we find not. The evil that we would not, that we do, and the
   good that we would do, we often do not. So then, we find a law in our
   members warring against the law of our members. This will go on to the
   last, and on your dying bed it may be you will have as sore a conflict
   as you ever had while you were in health. John Knox said his sharpest
   spiritual struggle was his last. The old nature said to him, "John
   Knox, you have never feared the face of man, you have worked a great
   work in Scotland; you have some merits of your own." And the new nature
   said, "No, John Knox, you must be saved as a sinner resting simply on
   the merits of Christ," and it was as much as the new nature could do to
   tread out the last spark of the self-righteousness of the old Adam, but
   it did; and blessed be God, it shall be done in each of us, and in the
   last moment when we leave our body, we shall leave our sin behind! When
   we shall leave off this mortal coil, the dust that is in the garment
   shall be shaken off, too; when we are disembodied, we shall be
   disembodied of the body of this death of sin; when we stand in Heaven,
   we shall bear the image of the heavenly, and cease to bear the image of
   the earthy. We shall be changed, we shall be made like unto the
   quickening Spirit, and no more be merely as the living soul. We shall
   receive our second nature in all its fullness, while the first and
   fallen nature shall be shaken off and done with, and put away as filthy
   rags--only fit for the destroying dunghill--and we shall be clean! "I
   will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed."

   Brothers and Sisters, I was dreaming, dreaming of what would be the
   consequence if now our blood could be cleansed. We are assembled here
   as a mighty congregation. Oh, if the minister's blood were wholly
   cleansed! A perfect minister! What a pulpit! What a power! What a very
   incarnation of the love of Christ would there be! No fear of discord
   then. The shepherd's Presence in the midst of his flock would surely
   prevent all divisions. No hard words would ever come from His lips. All
   would be kindness, sympathy and Christ-like affection. And what
   preaching! What exhortations to Christians! What solemn earnestness,
   and what pleading with sinners! What tearful eyes! What a melting
   heart! What moving periods! What rousing thunders! What cheering
   syllables of consolation! Oh God, I would Your promise were fulfilled
   to me! "I will cleanse their blood which I have not cleansed." And what
   a consequence if the deacons and Elders had their blood cleansed, too!
   No mistakes then. We are fallible now because we are sinful men. What
   priests of the flock! What overseers of God's House! What examples to
   you all! What pillars of light! What flaming torches of devotion! How
   they would be like the horses of Pharaoh's chariot, glorious as they
   were strong, and strong as they would be pure! Oh, would that the
   prayer were fulfilled in them, "I will cleanse their blood which is not
   cleansed." And what a Church we would be! Perfect members, freed from
   sin! No denominations would break up into sections. There would be no
   denominations! Christ would be the one Head, and there would be no
   party names. A perfect Believer! What a power would he be against the
   darkness and the iniquity of this vast city! A perfect Church! What
   joy! What peace! We only need this, we sometimes think, to make a
   millennium. But indeed, it would not make a millennium. It would make
   an Aceldama. For the world would be in arms to put to death the perfect
   ones as they did Christ. It is only Christ's coming that can make a
   millennium! And when He shall come with power as well as purity, with
   reigning sovereignty as well as with wooing love, then shall the Church
   have her Sabbath, and it shall be said, Hallelujah! The kingdoms of
   this world have become the Kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ!"

   But as I was dreaming, I thought how different everything would be if
   our blood were wholly cleansed. How sweet would be the bread upon our
   tables! Is it scant, and is there little of it? What blessed
   contentment would there be to impart to it a manna-like flavor! Is our
   house ill-furnished, narrow, and ill-ventilated? If Divine Grace were
   in our hearts to perfection, would not that very hovel become a palace,
   and the dungeon itself glitter with the gems of Paradise? How different
   would our trials be! How light! How light! How easily should we endure
   them! How different our joys--not flashes in the pan, meteors that are
   and are gone--but as suns shining both by day and night! Oh, if we were
   perfect, what a different world this would look. We would not be
   standing on our dignity towards our Brethren, we would not be cut up
   because we were not enough respected. We would not be troubling
   ourselves because we were not made much of and fussed over. Perfect men
   would hate such as that, and be ready to be the least among saints,
   that they might so become the greatest of all. Oh, if we were perfect,
   what forbearance we would have! What forbearance towards the imperfect
   ones! Hard words we could afford to smile at. Dark sentences--we would
   be deaf to them, and the sharpest cuts of sarcasm would only just touch
   our armor to blunt theirs! With the perfect, this would be a new world,
   indeed, and if perfect, how new would Heaven seem to be to us! There
   would be rents in the firmament through which we should see the Glory
   of God; there would be windows without curtains or blinds to shut out
   the vision of angels and of the King of kings; a perfect eye would see
   through clouds and mists, and see God Himself and all the glories of
   the court! And how different would Hell itself seem to a perfect man!
   How awful and tremendous! What thoughts would he have of the sin which
   had dug the pit of Hell, and of the iniquity which piled the fuel, and
   of the justice which like a stream of fire had kindled it. Let us but
   mount to perfection, and we come to the highest degree of intellectual
   and spiritual attainment. We would not be what we are now--blind, deaf,
   dumb, halt, weak, dead--we would be full of all that life can mean! A
   quickened eye, a purified pulse would surely bring forth perfection in
   every other faculty--

   "O happy hour, O blest abode!
   I shall be near and like my God. And death and Hell no more annoy The
   solid pleasure of my joy."

   Hasten this, oh God, hasten it in Your own time!

   Well now--there is one of you who says, "Well, I shall never get
   there--perfection is too high for me. No, Sir, I can never think that I
   shall be perfectly free from sin." You shall be though, and that for
   these reasons. First, Christ purposes to do it. He loves His Church and
   gave Himself for it, that He might present it to Himself a perfect
   Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. That is His
   purpose, and He'll do it. But, next, the Spirit has engaged to do it.
   He has come into this world like purifying rain; He has come to take
   the flint away that would not be refined, and put into your soul a new
   and heavenly mind. Now what Jesus purposes, and what the Spirit works
   can surely be accomplished! Beside that, Heaven requires it! "There
   shall in no wise enter into it anything that defiles." You must be
   perfect, then, to enter there. More than this, God's honor needs it.
   Unless He utterly destroys the works of the devil, His honor is not
   perfect. If He does not make you completely free from all sin of every
   kind, then Christ has not completed His work, and "It is finished!" was
   but an empty brag. His honor requires it! Put your hand upon that
   promise and say, "His promise certifies it." I cannot see how. I can
   scarcely tell why; it seems impossible. My soul can scarcely get the
   thought into its mind. But, great God, with my finger this day upon
   that promise, I do believe that You will cleanse my blood which You
   have not cleansed, and I shall at length be without spot or wrinkle or
   any such thing, accepted in the Beloved!

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, how shall I conclude except with a practical
   exhortation? What then? If it is promised to us that the old nature
   shall thus be removed, and we shall be purged, what then? Why, then,
   let us struggle against our corruption, because we shall get the
   victory. Nothing makes a man fight like the hope of getting the
   victory. When poor soldiers feel that it is of no use, then they are
   only too glad to hear the trumpet sound a retreat; but when they are
   confident of victory, how they draw their swords, how they hasten to
   the struggle, how they weary not of the fight! Even now, today, my soul
   takes hold upon her sword. Sin, death, and Hell I defy you, for I shall
   bear the palm as surely as I bear the sword! I shall wear the crown as
   certainly as I agonized unto death! Struggle with yourselves, strive
   daily to get the mastery of your passions. The victory is sure. Let no
   discouragement weaken you. "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of
   His might," for He is able to give you the victory through Jesus Christ
   your Lord!

   And what next? Why, today pray against your corruptions more than ever
   you have done. You have got a promise to plead. Take it, salt it with
   your tears. Lay it upon the altar; put your hands upon the horns of the
   altar, and say, "Great God, I will not rise, I will not let You go
   until I know by Divine assurance that this promise shall be fulfilled
   to me." So shall you go forth to your daily struggle with temptation
   wearing a smile upon your face, and smoothing those wrinkles on your
   brow. Sorrow does not become the man who has so rich a promise! Be
   glad. The joy of the Lord shall be your strength. You shall at last win
   the victory!

   Sinner! He who believes in Christ may claim this text for himself. Do
   you believe? Then this text is yours as well as mine, and shall be
   fulfilled to everyone of us today, and in the last day, and in day
   without days in glory everlasting. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                           Meeting Of Our Own Church

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, MONDAY, APRIL 8, 1861.

   A MEETING, in which it was designed to set forth the independency,
   harmony, and family character of each Church, was held on Monday
   evening, April 8th. The Rev. John Spurgeon presided. The meeting was
   opened with singing and prayer, after which

   The Rev. C. H. SPURGEON said before giving up the meeting to the
   Chairman, I will, as on former occasions, briefly state the subject of
   it. We have met together during the last two weeks as a part of the
   Baptist denomination, and as a portion of the one great Church of the
   Lord Jesus Christ. We have endeavored to give expression to our firm
   faith in the unity of all the faithful in Christ. We have sought,
   moreover, to give prominence to our own distinctive Doctrines and forms
   of worship. We have met here for various purposes of fellowship, and of
   teaching, and now tonight, the one thought is to be this--that the
   Church of Christ meeting here is within itself a family; that it is
   whole and entire, and needs nothing from without to make it complete.
   We do not, for instance, need to appeal to a synod, or to a general
   assembly. We do not look up to one minister called a bishop, or to some
   other person called an archbishop. The Church has its own bishop or
   pastor; it has its own presbytery or elders; it has its own deaconship,
   and is not therefore dependent on any other, but should every other
   Church become extinct, its organization would not be marred. I take it,
   so far as I have read Scripture, that a modified form of Episcopalian
   Presbyterian Independency is the Scriptural method of Church
   government; at any rate, no other form of government would have worked
   in so large a Church as this. You have found it necessary to have one
   who shall be the overseer of the Church under God. You have found it
   necessary to gather a presbytery around him, that they may be with him
   the pastors of the flock. You believe it also to be exceedingly
   necessary that the Church should maintain its congregational
   principles, and yet be always ready to enter into Presbyterian alliance
   with any other Church, not for its government, but for mutual
   assistance to be rendered and to be received. You will have before you
   tonight, as a representative of the family principle, my own
   well-beloved father, and my brother also sits beside him. To show the
   union of this Church with the past, as well as with the present, you
   will have one Brother who officiated as minister during the latter
   years of Dr. Rippon's pastorate; another, Dr. Angus, now the tutor of
   Regent's-Park College; and then Mr. Smith, whom none of us can ever
   forget, because he always insists on printing two or three books a
   year, so that we should always have him in mind; they are full of
   Gospel Doctrine, and are printed at so extraordinarily cheap a rate,
   that they are scattered about by tens of thousands, and thus his name
   is had in remembrance.

   Mr. Walters would have been here tonight but he said, "There is a great
   work doing in my own Church, and I do not think I should be justified
   in sparing the time to come." I thought this a most admirable argument,
   though I should have been more glad for him to have been one in our
   midst tonight. We wish him God-speed, and pray that wherever he goes
   success may attend his labors. I do not think that in the course of the
   next 20 years, you, as a Church, will have such a choice of pastors as
   you have had during the last 20 years. If I should die you can do so, I
   suppose, but I do not think that anything short of that, would get me
   to go away from this spot. I hardly agree with ministers when they get
   beaten, showing the white feather, and resigning the charge. I feel I
   am captain of a vessel, and if there should be Jonah in the ship, I
   shall as gently and in as Christian a spirit as possible, pitch him
   out; I shall not think, because Jonah is there, that therefore I ought
   to get out, but will stand by the ship in ill weather as well as in
   sunshine! I know that by God's Grace I was called to this place; and if
   God's Grace and Providence shall move me, well and good, but nothing
   else ever will. I have not the slightest doubt but that, as our numbers
   shall increase, in answer to earnest prayer, the Spirit of God will be
   poured out yet more abundantly upon the minister and the people, and
   that we, being bound together yet more surely in ties of affection, and
   in ties of hearty cooperation, may go from strength to strength in
   glorifying God, and serving one another! Why should not this ancient
   Church become as glorious in the future as in the past? O may God hear
   our prayers, and it will be so. Jesus shall here be honored, and the
   Truth maintained.

   The CHAIRMAN--Christian Friends and Brethren--I feel tonight that I am
   not exactly where I ought to be; I feel that I cannot say anything,
   because I have so many things to say; in fact, I feel too much to be
   able to say anything, and I am happy to think I have been placed in the
   chair, because mine will be merely a nominal office. One thing,
   however, I would say. If we had time and it was proper, I would speak
   first of the love of God, and then of His faithfulness. God is

   Love, and He says He will withhold no good thing from them who walk
   uprightly. Our earnest prayers--for I speak of my dear partner as well
   as myself--have often gone up to the Throne of Grace, and we have said,
   "O Lord, who has led us and fed us all our lives, bless the lad." God
   has blessed him, and can you doubt, my Friends, that God is a God
   hearing and answering prayer? We have prayed that the little one might
   become a thousand; it has become a thousand and more than a thousand!
   God has given us, and given him, and given you the desire of our
   hearts. We have seen the foundation stone of this place laid, and now
   the topstone is brought forth with shouts of, "Grace, Grace unto it!"
   May God bless you still, and increase you as a flock. I rejoice there
   is so much harmony between us, even though we may differ, perhaps, in
   some points of view. I do not see clearly into this water before me
   [pointing to the Baptistery], but if I did, I would go down and be
   baptized at once! If there are any friends here tonight who have only
   weighed this matter, and feel that Christ has commanded you to follow
   Him there, it is your sin if you live another day without it. Oh, never
   bring this burden upon your mind, that you may not be able to have near
   communion with God by neglecting any known duty! It becomes a positive
   sin to any man if he lives in the neglect of that which he knows to be
   his bounden duty. I did hope I would have been able to have brought my
   own father here tonight. God has been pouring out His Spirit upon his
   labors in answer to earnest prayer. Some little time ago, when the
   people were all busy with the harvest, there were only three present at
   one of the Prayer Meetings, but the old gentleman was so led by the
   Spirit to believe in a revival of religion, and that God would pour out
   His Spirit upon them, that he was full of joy in looking for the
   blessing! Nor has he been disappointed, for at a later Prayer Meeting,
   when there were some 300 people present, he was so overcome with joy
   that they were obliged to take him home to bed! He wrote to me somewhat
   to this effect--"My dear boy, do not press me to go; I believe it would
   so affect me, that it would be too much for me. I would be so
   overwhelmed with the love and faithfulness of our God, and I had rather
   die at home." Oh, dear Friends, go away from this meeting not to doubt
   God, but to love and serve and praise Him for all that He has done! You
   will not expect me to make a long speech, and my feelings will not
   allow me to do so, but I would desire to bless God for all that He has
   done for us.

   The Rev. JAMES SMITH then addressed the meeting. He said he heard the
   chairman say the last time he saw him, that he thought his son had made
   a mistake in coming to London, but from the very first time he (Mr.
   Smith), had heard Mr. Spurgeon, he always thought he had done perfectly
   right. He well remembered that when he had decided on leaving London,
   several friends came and expostulated with him, and told him how very
   wrong it was for him to leave Park Street; and a minister in the city
   asked him what he thought would become of it when he had left. His
   answer was that if God wanted a man for Park Street, He knew where to
   find one; and if He had not prepared Him, He could prepare him in a
   short time. He now felt confirmed in that opinion, for if he had not
   left Park Street, humanly speaking, they would never have had that
   Tabernacle--they would not have had the Church they now possessed--nor
   would they have seen the wonders worked in the land which they had
   witnessed! God seemed to be setting forth most important subjects for
   His Church to contemplate. If they went to Bristol, God had been
   teaching them there that faith in, and prayer to a God of Providence,
   were all but Omnipotent, and in connection with themselves, they had
   seen that the old-fashioned Gospel still retained all its power. Some
   of them had been told years ago that they must keep pace with the
   times, that their Doctrines were growing obsolete, and that something
   new was required--but the old Doctrines had been preached among them,
   and had proved to be the power of God to the salvation of multitudes!
   No one could now say that the Truths of the Gospel had lost their
   power. What the Church needed was not something new, but more of the
   power and operation of the Holy Spirit. In that Church, those Doctrines
   had always been preached--though not always with the same fullness,
   with the same vivacity, or the same success. Before the immortal Gill
   formed the Church by a division from the one afterwards assembling in
   Unicorn Yard, the same Doctrines had been preached by Keach and others
   in the midst of opposition and persecution; and when Gill laid down his
   mantle, Rippon took it up, and preached the same Gospel with as much,
   if not more power; and after he had labored long, he found one to
   assist him in the same glorious work, before he quite retired from the
   field; and another Brother came forward till the Lord found him other
   work. When he (Mr. Smith) was invited to become the pastor, the Lord
   also enabled him in simplicity--not in the words of man's wisdom, but
   in the words of Scripture; in the language of the heart rather than the
   language of the head--to preach the same Doctrines in connection with
   their influence upon the heart, and their effects in the life; and
   though the measure of success awarded him was not to be compared to
   what had been awarded to their present beloved pastor, yet there were
   hundreds brought in through his instrumentality, and since that time he
   had met with many persons in various parts of the country who
   acknowledged that though they never joined the Church, they were,
   through the power of the Word, brought into union with Christ, and had
   been living in fellowship with Him. For his own part, he had no doubt
   that as long as his Brother lived, he would continue to preach the same
   great, grand, and glorious Truths, and he hoped with tenfold more power
   and success! Glorious as it was to see such a building as that in which
   they were then assembled, he would be glad to see ten more before he
   departed this life, and then to have the news brought up to Heaven
   after he had arrived there, that Christ was exalted in every one of
   them, and that the power of the Spirit was displayed, and the glorious,
   efficacy of atoning blood realized and experienced! At present he could
   but exclaim, "What has God worked!"

   He remembered coming to London on one occasion, after New Park Street
   Chapel was thronged, and a member of the Church, not very comfortably
   seated on account of the crowd that surrounded him, speaking to him of
   the wonderful success that was given, and the glorious work that was
   being worked, said, "Ah, Sir, your prayers are answered! Did you not
   use to pray Sunday after Sunday that God would crowd the place? Have I
   not heard you say, 'Lord cram the place?' And He has done it, and I
   think now you ought to be satisfied; however uncomfortable it may be
   for us, you ought to be very comfortable to think that God has answered
   your prayers." If his prayers had been connected with what God had done
   for them, he could only be thankful, and tell them to take
   encouragement, and believe more firmly the promises of God. Let them
   besiege the Throne of Grace, and determine in the strength that God had
   given them, that they would have no rest till the salvation of Zion
   should go forth as brightness! Let them make the present a
   steppingstone to the future; let them unfurl the blood-stained banner
   of the Cross everywhere, and let each one of them preach the Gospel of
   Christ by tongue and pen, and especially by their life and conduct. The
   chairman had said he could not see his way into the water. His (Mr.
   Smith's) sight was not as good as formerly, but though he had not his
   spectacles, he could see to the very bottom of it! After his
   conversion, the first thing he saw was, that it was his duty to profess
   Christ in Baptism. He was brought up in the Episcopal Church; he had
   never heard a sermon on Baptism, and had never witnessed the
   administration of the ordinance; but by the simple reading of God's
   Word, it appeared to him as clear as the sun shining at noon, or the
   letters of the Roman alphabet, and he wondered that other people could
   not see it. He was really tempted once to say that they could not see
   it because they would'not, but he had given that up now. Very many
   honest, enlightened, and godly men had assured him they could not see
   it, and all he could do was to say that as light must come before duty,
   let them pray for light, and then follow it. He had been very much
   struck lately, just before administering the ordinance of Baptism, by
   reading the Eighth Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. He thought that
   if a man who had never seen Baptism administered in any form, should
   simply read that narrative and than go to some Episcopal place of
   worship and see the priest in his surplice stand by the font, open a
   book, and after reading a certain form, take into his arms a beautiful
   baby, dressed and decorated for the occasion, sprinkle a little water
   on its face, and then mark the sign of the cross on its brow, and the
   man would ask what they were doing, and on being told they were
   baptizing the child, he would reply that he had been reading but
   yesterday in a very old book an account of a Baptism which took place
   nearly 2,000 years ago, but that it was totally different from what he
   had just seen!

   But supposing the same man went into a chapel in some respects like the
   Metropolitan Tabernacle, and should see the minister of Christ standing
   with Brothers and Sisters by his side, and after reading God's Word,
   and stating what he believed to be taught there, and then after solemn
   prayer and praise, taking a Brother or Sister by the hand, went down
   into the water and immersed the candidate, the man would say at once
   that this corresponded exactly to the case he had been reading of,
   while the other certainly did not! He only wished other people saw this
   as clearly, and enjoyed it as much as he did, for he had seldom
   attended to the ordinance without enjoying his Master's Presence and
   the witness of the Spirit as to the importance and Scriptural character
   of the ordinance! In conclusion, he hoped that as long as the marble of
   that Baptistery lasted, or at least until Christ should come the second
   time, the Baptistery may be in constant requisition, and that hundreds
   and thousands converted by the Spirit's power, and conformed to the
   image of God's Son, may there publicly profess their faith in Christ.
   They had erected the house for God, and he hoped God would be greatly
   glorified there; they had erected it for Christ, and he hoped Christ
   would be highly exalted there; and that much good would be done both to
   saints and sinners whenever Christ was lifted up before them.

   Mr. SPURGEON said that when they wanted to get the steam up, cold water
   was a very useful thing; but unless they also had some fire, they could
   not expect to get steam. He did not intend lighting the fire, but only
   bringing some coals, which he trusted some of the later speakers would
   kindle into a blaze. He thought by speaking for a short time, he could
   perhaps suggest some topics to the speakers. First of all, they had
   some peculiarities which he supposed were not to be found in any other
   Church, at least in England. The first of these was, that for some time
   they had maintained the Eldership in their midst. He supposed no one
   would deny that Elders were continually spoken of in the Acts of the
   Apostles. They were told in Baptist and Independent Churches that the
   deacons were Elders as well, but he wished to know by what law the two
   offices had been amalgamated. He could only say that it would have been
   utterly impossible for that Church to have existed, except as a mere
   shell and huge presence, if it had not been for the Scriptural and most
   expedient office of the Eldership! He blessed God for his deacons, and
   they worked very hard; but when they had both the temporal and
   spiritual conduct of the Church's work, it was too much for them, and
   he saw at once that if the Elders took the spiritual and the deacons
   the temporal conduct of affairs, the work would be much more
   efficiently performed. He believed his Elders had uniformly commanded
   the respect, the esteem, and the love of the Church, and he personally
   felt extremely grateful to them for what they had done. He only wished
   other Baptist Churches would follow their example in this matter, and
   he was sure that both the Churches and the minister would find the good
   effects of such a course. His officers and Church had made him the
   happiest man on earth, and when he had any cares or trouble, it was
   very seldom they came from the Church. Another of their peculiarities
   was that they were Baptists holding open communion, and yet having none
   but persons who had been baptized in the membership of the Church. He
   was prepared to maintain this position against the attacks both of the
   Strict Communionist and the Open Membership man, both of whose
   principles he believed to be unscriptural. He would rather give up his
   pastorate than admit any man to the Church who was not obedient to his
   Lord's command; and such a course would certainly promote the downfall
   of any church that practiced it! The mixed Baptist Churches were eating
   out the very vitals of the denomination; and though they were its
   strength in numbers, he believed them to be its real weakness. But
   however strict we were in discipline, Communion was a thing over which
   they had no control. Every man who became a member of a recognized
   Church of Christ had a perfect right to Christian ordinances, he had a
   right to Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and the fact of a man's being
   unbaptized, was no reason why he should not have extended to him the
   fullest Christian fellowship. He wished the Baptist Churches both of
   England and America would soon give up their open membership and hold
   the same position in this respect which his Church occupied--strict
   discipline, and unlimited fellowship with all the Church of God.

   Another peculiarity was that they had a perfect uniformity of
   Scriptural Doctrine. When his brother, a pastor of a Church at
   Southampton, had taught a class of young persons the Doctrines of
   Grace, and introduced the old Baptist Confession of Faith, he raised a
   clamor in the Church which made him an unhappy man, but which rendered
   him even more faithful to God, and to the Church! The Southampton
   Church had no doctrines--no creed. They claimed the glorious liberty of
   believing anything they liked! He (Mr. Spurgeon) denied that there
   could be a church without doctrines, and he denied their right even on
   their own unprincipled principles, to restrain their pastor from
   teaching whatever he believed. Those who did not insist upon Christ's
   Truths were not a church at all, but a mixed multitude of Israel and
   Egypt, ready to rebel at all times. Churches would get on very well
   without creeds as long as they were dead, but when they were alive, and
   had the energy of the Spirit among them, they would find that creedless
   men were like dead limbs, and would have to be cut off. He believed it
   would be difficult to confute the youngest member of their Church on
   any of the Five Points. They all loved the old Doctrines of Grace! It
   was sometimes said of him that he had preached an Arminian sermon; but
   he could say that he always preached what he believed true. Whenever he
   got a text, he tried not to make it Calvinistic, but to make it say
   what it really did say, whether that should be called Calvinism,
   Arminianism, Fullerism, Mongrelism, or whatever people liked to call
   it--it was his Master's Word and not his, and his Master would one day
   explain whatever did not seem to harmonize now. There were two or three
   things which had made that Church strong. One of these was its
   prayerfulness. A morning Prayer Meeting had been established some four
   or five years ago as the result of a sermon which he preached, and it
   was still continued, and he hoped it would never be given up. His
   success had been due under God to the prayers of his Church. No mere
   preaching could do what had been done, but it was the prayer which had
   done it. Another part of their strength was their young converts. The
   old members were the backbone of the Church, but the young members were
   its hands, and what a Church needed was an influx of young blood. He
   could narrate some most striking instances of some who had been
   converted during the last three or four years which would astonish
   those who heard them. Now-a-days it was the fashion to put the least
   thing that occurred in connection with a Church into the newspapers,
   but this had never been done by them, or if any had done it, they had
   done it on their own responsibility. That Church was always left to
   speak for itself by what it did in the Savior's cause. As a Church,
   too, they were all very united. It had been said that Baptist Church
   Meetings were a sort of ecclesiastical bear-garden. That, however, was
   not the case there, for they always had the most delightful Church
   Meetings. As a Church they had their dangers, and one of them was that
   they might grow proud and be lifted up. There were a great many people
   who professed to be very anxious about him on this point. A very
   stately gentleman or a lady dressed in the very height of fashion,
   would sometimes tell him that they made it a matter of daily prayer
   that he might be kept humble. Now there was great danger of all of us
   becoming lifted up, but such remarks as these, from conceited
   individuals, would not cure the evil. To God's Grace we look, and there
   alone!

   Mr. W. OLNEY, on behalf of the deacons, then addressed the meeting. He
   said they all felt they had experienced the amazing goodness of God in
   such a manner in the erection of that building, and that as a Church
   they were utterly unable to express the obligations they were under.
   From the very commencement God had been with them, and he felt they all
   ought to admit that their God had given them the place. It was not the
   house they had built for God, but the house God had built for them. God
   had given them the ground on which the building stood. He had given
   them wisdom in the choice of the design. He had permitted them to labor
   heartily and unanimously in the work, and He had opened the hearts of
   His people generally throughout the land to help them in raising the
   necessary funds. They had also to acknowledge the goodness of God in
   sparing to them the life of their beloved pastor who had been engaged
   in very arduous and incessant labor for the last seven years, and yet
   was among them then in every respect a better and happier man for all
   his labor in the Master's cause. They had other causes of thanksgiving
   such as--that they themselves individually were permitted to see the
   completion of the work--that they had with them on the present occasion
   their former pastors--and that the opening services had been so
   successful. But great as were the blessings they had received, they
   were warranted in expecting still more. Their God who had been with
   them in temporals would be with them in spirituals. They had a great
   work before them as a Church and congregation, and God would prosper
   and bless them in doing it. It was of importance to remember that as
   God had highly blessed them, so they should recognize His goodness by
   renewed consecration and devotedness to His cause. They had one special
   mission for God as a Church, which was, to pray for their pastor--to
   sympathize with him--to strive earnestly to hold up his hands, and
   encourage his heart. They would also find, every one of them, some post
   to occupy. Let it be the endeavor of all to support the institutions
   which were about to be established, and particularly to encourage
   strangers (who would come to hear in large numbers) to cast in their
   lot with the people of God! Above all, let that solemn text be
   remembered by every one of them, "Unto whomever much is given, of him
   shall be much required." However much some other persons might not like
   the name, Tabernacle, that had been given to the building--to them it
   was singularly appropriate! It was in that Tabernacle they would offer
   continual sacrifice. Here they would seek guidance in all spiritual
   matters--here they would enjoy mutual fellowship and union. The place
   would be for a memorial of God's goodness to their children--here they
   would find exercise for joy, and faith and love--here would they
   realize the special Presence of their Father and God--and here would
   they seek continual preparation for higher and nobler service, until
   having done with Tabernacle worship, they would be transferred to the
   Temple above to see Him, "Whom having not seen, we love; in whom,
   though now we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy
   unspeakable, and full of glory."

   The REV. DR. ANGUS said he was sure they must all feel with him that it
   was a most delightful thing to be present on that occasion. He could
   not tell them how much he sympathized with the chairman when he spoke
   of how God had blessed his son. He could hardly imagine the feelings of
   a father who had a son in the Christian ministry, and especially the
   feelings of one who had two sons, both serving the same Master, in the
   same noble and devoted spirit. Mr. Spurgeon had told them they were
   overdone with advice, but as Mr. Olney had set the example of running
   counter to the pastor, he for once would side with the deacon. He had
   heard of the Tabernacle before, but had not seen it, and he could only
   say the half had not been told him! A finer, nobler, and in some
   respects, more amazing sight than that place when filled with people,
   he could scarcely imagine. He would remind them that as they had a
   model place, and in most respects, if not in all, a model pastor, they
   should also be a model Church--for this purpose they needed to be
   humble, though perhaps they had less danger of becoming proud than if
   they had had fewer gifts; for the proudest men were generally those who
   had the least to be proud of, and the humblest man was generally the
   one who had great gifts and recognized the greatness of them. He did
   not say they were more likely to be proud there than in their old
   place, but that they needed a measure of humility in proportion to
   their new privileges. In addition to this, they should combine with the
   strongest maintenance of their old Doctrines, a large-hearted and
   catholic spirit. They could afford them both, and should combine them.
   Such was the soundness of their creed, and the Scripturalness of their
   Doctrines. They held firmly the views of John Calvin; they held the
   spirituality of the Christian Church, and saw clearly into the meaning
   of the ordinances; let them hold all these views still, but yet be
   always ready to give their hand and heart to all who loved the Lord
   Jesus Christ in sincerity and in Truth. In proportion as Churches
   combined these two things, and sacrificed neither of them to the other,
   they would be mighty in God's work and in extending His Kingdom. They
   needed to also combine spirituality with a wise machinery; the latter
   to meet the acquirements of such a Church, the former to give life and
   power to the whole. But especially he would urge them to continue to
   love their pastor, to pray for him, and work with him. Let them always
   remember that he was what the Grace of God had made him, and if in the
   Providence of God he should be taken from them--whether at a sooner or
   a later period--let them still trust in the same God! He believed Mr.
   Spurgeon was doing a work which all his predecessors, from Dr. Gill
   downwards, had not been permitted to do; in any event, God had blessed
   him more than He had blessed them all. For his own part, he could only
   be thankful that God had made him so useful as he had, and he prayed
   that God would continue to bless both him and his people more and more.

   The REV. C. ROOM then addressed the meeting, and gave some interesting
   particulars relating to the time when he was engaged as co-pastor with
   Dr. Rippon.

   Mr. SPURGEON then said that he had now in the name of the Church to
   present a testimonial to their senior deacon, Mr. James Low, as an
   acknowledgment of the judicious and valuable services he had rendered
   to the Church for more than 50 years as a member, and 25 years as a
   deacon. Mr. Spurgeon said he could most cordially agree with all that
   was expressed in the testimonial, and was right happy to assure his
   friend of his hearty appreciation of his prudent advice, and admirable
   counsels. Whenever he (Mr. Spurgeon) conceived a new scheme, Mr. Low
   was always the longest in seeing it. But when he did see it, he was one
   of the most fervent and earnest in carrying it out! He thought it was
   always a good thing to have a few conservatives in connection with any
   body in order to prevent the coach from going down the hill too fast.
   He was himself a very great conservative in Church matters, and he
   liked to have associated with him such a man as Mr. Low, so that when
   some of the younger people, such as the deacons behind him, were going
   too fast, Mr. Low and he could put the skid on! It was a great mercy
   that God had spared their friend's life so long, and he earnestly hoped
   that they should long have him in their midst. The testimonial, which
   consisted of an illuminated sheet of parchment, enclosed in a handsome
   and massive frame, was then presented to Mr. Low. We here present a
   copy to our readers.

   The Baptized Church of Jesus Christ, under the pastoral care of the
   Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. At the Annual Church Meeting, held on Wednesday,
   January 16thh 1861, the following Resolution was proposed, seconded and
   carried unanimously-- "That we desire to record our devout gratitude to
   our Heavenly Father for His continuing to us as a Church the eminently
   judicious and valuable services of our esteemed and beloved senior
   deacon,

   JAMES LOW, who has been a member of this Church for a period of 50
   years, and a deacon for 25 years. We desire also to express to our
   beloved Brother our hearty congratulations that God has so long spared
   his valuable and useful life, and granted him Grace to serve the Church
   of Christ so faithfully and so well. May that Master whom he has so
   long served graciously continue to our Brother His special and
   comforting Presence, and give him in his future life much nearness of
   communion with Him, and at a distant period an abundant entrance into
   His Kingdom and Glory." Signed on behalf of the Church by the Pastor,
   Deacons and Elders.

   Mr. Low, in coming forward to return thanks, was received with loud
   cheers. He said that they would easily conceive that the kind
   expressions of their beloved pastor, supported as they had been by
   their kind response, were enough to overwhelm any man, particularly
   such an old man as he was. If he looked back at the 50 years during
   which he had been in connection with that Church, he had great cause
   for gratitude and humility, especially that he had been spared to see
   the Church through so many phases, and to what it had risen under their
   dearly-beloved pastor. It fell to his lot first to invite Mr. Spurgeon
   to supply their pulpit, and he remembered that Mr. Spurgeon readily
   answered that invitation, expressing his surprise that he should be
   asked to supply a metropolitan pulpit, and that although he had been
   for some little time the minister of the Church where he was laboring,
   he was only 19 years of age. Young as he was, he (Mr. Low) renewed his
   application, and they all had had an opportunity of seeing the results!
   God had blessed him in a marvelous manner, and it rejoiced his (the
   speaker's) heart to see the Church in its present prosperous condition;
   and although his work was nearly done, it was a great consolation to
   him to have listened to the delightful and practical speech which had
   been made that evening by Mr. William Olney. Instead of the fathers,
   the children were rising up. With reference to the testimonial they had
   so kindly presented him, he had not the remotest idea that anything of
   the kind was going to be done. He highly appreciated it, and could
   assure them that he should hand it down to his family, and it would be
   carefully preserved by them. It had fallen to his lot to receive many
   testimonials from public bodies, but none had given him so much
   pleasure as that one. He was especially pleased to find that the
   testimonial had not been paid for out of the funds of the Church, but
   by the voluntary contributions of the members. In conclusion he begged
   to return his sincere thanks for the great kindness they had shown
   towards him.

   Mr. SPURGEON said he also had the pleasure of presenting a similar
   testimonial to their much-loved friend, Mr. Thomas Olney, who had been
   connected with the Church for 51 years as a member and 22 years as a
   deacon. Mr. Olney had been of great use to the Church in many ways
   during the long time he had been connected with it, and had rendered it
   most important service as its treasurer. Mr. Olney was a father to the
   minister, and a sleepless guardian of the Church. Such a deacon few
   Churches possessed, and a better was never chosen. He rejoiced in their
   joy, and sorrowed in their sorrow. Abuse fell to the pastor's lot
   sometimes, but his kind deacons and elders always had a cheering word.
   He had been told they were singing songs about him (Mr. Spurgeon) in
   the street. He was sure that if any poor man could get a half-penny by
   abusing him, he hoped he would carry on his trade. The following is a
   copy of the testimonial--

   The Baptized Church of Jesus Christ, under the pastoral care of the
   Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. At the Annual Church Meeting, held on Wednesday,
   January 16th, 1861, the following Resolution was proposed, seconded and
   carried unanimously-- "That this Church desires to record its devout
   gratitude to Almighty God for that abundant Grace which has preserved
   our dear and honored Brother,

   THOMAS OLNEY, as a consistent, useful and beloved member of this Church
   for the lengthened period of 51 years. And while to the Grace of God
   all the varied excellencies of our Brother are to be ascribed, the
   pastor, officers and Church members cannot refrain from returning
   unfeigned and hearty thanks to our Brother for his indefatigable labors
   as deacon for 22 years, and for his most valuable services as
   treasurer. No man can be more truly worthy of the esteem of his
   Christian Brethren, and we most earnestly invoke a blessing upon him,
   upon our beloved Sister, the partner of his life, and upon his godly
   family, which is by so many ties united with his as a people. We trust
   that in that great House of Prayer, over every stone of which he has
   watched so anxiously, he may be spared to see the largest wishes of his
   heart fulfilled in the gathering of immense assemblies, the salvation
   of many souls, and the daily increase of our members as a Church."
   Signed on behalf of the Church, by the Pastor, Deacons and Elders.

   Mr. THOMAS OLNEY then rose, but was unable to speak for some little
   time on account of the enthusiastic manner in which he was received. He
   returned his most hearty thanks to them for the kindness they had shown
   towards him, and said he felt extremely grateful if God had allowed him
   in any measure to be of any service whatever in connection with the
   Church.

   Mr. SPURGEON then proposed a vote of thanks to his father for
   presiding, which was carried with acclamation.

   The CHAIRMAN begged to return his thanks for the kindness which had
   been manifested towards him, and the honor conferred upon him. He had
   been exceedingly interested in the meeting, and he hoped its result
   would be an increased feeling of fellowship between them all. He was
   able to announce that he believed his son would soon have to baptize
   his mother in the Baptistery before him. He could but express his
   gratitude to God for the favors which had been shown both to him and to
   them, and he earnestly prayed that God would still extend His mercy
   towards them.

   The Benediction having been pronounced, the proceedings terminated.

   On Wednesday evening, a large number of Believers of all denominations
   assembled to celebrate the Lord's Supper.

   Dr. Steane, Dr. Hamilton, and Mr. Spurgeon presided at the tables. The
   deacons and Elders of the neighboring Churches served the communicants,
   and Rev. J. Lafleur of Canada, and Rev. J. Hitchens prayed. Solemnity
   of feeling and union of heart were manifest throughout the house, and
   the addresses were full of the sweet spirit of love and Grace. Such a
   season we have hardly ever enjoyed before.

   Dr. STEANE remarked that they met in the largest of Non-Conforming
   sanctuaries, as the largest number of Believers who had ever communed
   together at one time since the days of their glorified Lord! The
   offering, amounting to nearly 100 pounds, was presented to the widow of
   the late Rev. J. George.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               Christian Baptism

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON TUESDAY EVENING, APRIL 9, 1861,

   BY REV. HUGH STOWELL BROWN.

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Buried with Him in Baptism, wherein also you are risen with Him
   through the faith of the operation of God who has raised Him from the
   dead." Colossians 2:12.

   IT is the firm belief of almost all Christian people that our Lord and
   Savior Jesus Christ, before He left the earth, instituted two
   ordinances, namely, Baptism and the Lord's Supper--ordinances which
   were to be observed by His disciples throughout every age on to the end
   of the world. Perhaps, indeed, I ought to say that all Christian people
   without any exception whatever, acknowledge the appointment to which I
   have just referred; even the Society of Friends, although it rejects
   the outward and visible signs, nevertheless believes in those great
   principles which those signs are intended to symbolize, viz., the
   Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the communion of the soul with Christ.
   By almost all Christians in every age of the world, the observance of
   the outward sign as well as the recognition of the inward Grace has
   been regarded as part of the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. On this
   occasion we have to do only with the ordinance of Baptism, and to this
   I wish to draw your candid and careful attention. The ground upon which
   this ordinance is founded is the command of our Savior addressed to His
   disciples just before He ascended to Heaven when He said, "Go you,
   teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the
   Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Now if this is a command of Christ, (and
   I am not aware that the genuineness of the passage in which it appears
   has ever been called into question), then, of course, it is the duty of
   all Christian people according to their convictions as to the nature
   and meaning of this command to observe and to maintain it on to the end
   of time! I think it may also be asserted that with the exception of the
   Society of Friends, all Christians regard the ordinance of Baptism as
   one in which water is to be employed in some way or other, and very
   rightly so, because if Baptism is altogether inward and spiritual--the
   Baptism of the Holy Spirit--then we must believe that the Baptism of
   the Holy Spirit is a Baptism which one man cannot administer to
   another. The very fact that the Baptism mentioned in the Scripture is a
   Baptism which one man can administer to another, is sufficient to prove
   that in this Baptism there is some outward, visible, material rite,
   ceremony, or ordinance which Christian people are to observe. Thus far,
   with the exception of the Society of Friends, I believe we are all
   agreed that the ordinance of Baptism does imply the use and application
   of water in some way or other. So far we all, or nearly all, travel
   together, but at this point, the body of Christians to which we belong
   feel compelled to pursue a different course from that which is adopted
   by their Brethren. The very name we bear indicates that there is
   something or other in connection with the ordinance of Baptism in which
   we do not agree with the great majority of Christian people. And for
   the information of such as may not be thoroughly well informed upon
   this point, (and I by no means cast the slightest slur or rejection on
   any man's intelligence if I suppose him to be a little uninformed upon
   this point, for very extensive ignorance with regard to it prevails), I
   shall in a very few words try to explain the difference or differences
   which exist--between us and other Christians upon this matter.

   The majority of Christian people believe that as far as the outward
   rite is concerned, the conditions of the ordinance are fulfilled when
   water, in however small a quantity, is poured or sprinkled upon the
   candidate; we, on the other hand, believe that the outward conditions
   of the ordinance are not fulfilled unless the candidate is wholly
   immersed in water. Again, (and this is by far the most important point
   of difference), the very great majority of Christian people think
   infant children are fit and proper subjects for this ordinance; we, on
   the other hand, believe that none are fit and proper subjects for the
   ordinance of Baptism, excepting such as really believe and trust in the
   Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior and their King. You will perceive
   that the difference resolves itself into two questions--a question with
   regard to the mode of this ordinance, and a question with reference to
   the subjects. These two questions, "How ought Baptism to be
   administered?" and, "To whom ought Baptism to be administered?"--these
   are the questions to which we in our consciences feel compelled to
   offer answers which differ very materially from those which are given
   by other Christian people. Again let me explain this matter and set it
   in as plain terms as possible. We believe that this ordinance should
   never be administered apart from the entire immersion of the candidate
   in water, and we also believe that none should be candidates for this
   ordinance excepting those who avow their faith in Christ. And here let
   me observe that the very common notion that we are in the habit of
   practicing adult Baptism is utterly a mistake! We do not contend for
   the Baptism of adults; we contend for the Baptism of Believers. Show us
   a child however young, who believes in Christ, and we gladly accept
   him; but if a man as old as Methuselah were to come to us in unbelief,
   we would say to him, "Sir, your age certainly entitles you to our
   respect, but it gives you no manner of claim to Baptism as ordained by
   Jesus Christ."

   But now, perhaps, someone will exclaim, perhaps in scorn, perhaps in
   great surprise, "Who are you that you presume to differ from the
   general verdict of the Christian world? Who are you that you so
   pertinaciously maintain these crotchety notions of yours, when all the
   world is against you, and when there is not only the decision of the
   Church of Rome, against which we should ourselves rebel, but the voice
   of the Church of England, the voice of the Church of Scotland, the
   voice of the Lutheran Church, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and
   the Congregationalists, all against you, and the most able divines of
   the Christian world all testifying that you are in error? Who are you,
   that you should thus set up your opinions against everybody else? Call
   a solemn assembly; canvass the Christian world; and certainly for one
   hand held up in favor of your opinions, there will be a thousand held
   up to their decided and utter condemnation."

   Well, we do not choose to put it to the vote in this way. We have not
   such entire faith in the infallibility of majorities as to submit our
   religious convictions to any such tribunal! If the Copernican system of
   astronomy had been put to the vote 250 years ago, it would have had a
   smaller minority than our views would have if put to the vote now. If
   the Doctrine of Justification by Faith had been put to the vote 400
   years ago, the "Nos" would have had it! If the truth of Christianity
   were now submitted to the vote of the entire world, there would be
   somewhere about 500 millions'against it. And further, let the voters be
   all Christian people, let the suffrage be confined to those who really
   believe in Christ, and then if you as a Church of England man, or you
   as a Methodist, or you as a Congregationalist, or you as a
   Presbyterian, submit your views of Church government and some other
   things, depend upon it, you would as certainly be defeated as we would
   be if we submitted Baptism to the decision of such a council as that! I
   hope that no one is so silly as to suppose that we are necessarily in
   error because we are in the minority--for let this be borne in
   mind--especially by the worshipper of majorities, that every great
   Truth of God was at one time held by a very small minority, if indeed
   it is not held by a small minority now! Every great Truth, whether in
   the province of religion, or in the domain of science, or in the region
   of politics, is at first and for a very long time held by small
   minorities; and in all the currency of proverbs, there is no more
   pernicious maxim than that, "what everybody says must be true."

   But of course you will ask our reasons for maintaining this opinion. I
   think we have just as good a right to ask your reasons for maintaining
   the opposite opinion! Galileo had just as good a right to ask his
   opponents why they believed the world did not move, as they to ask him
   why he believed it did. However you ask for our reasons, and I shall
   endeavor to give those reasons as clearly and as briefly as I can. We
   ought to have good reasons, because I can assure you it has never been
   much to our secular comfort and advantage that we hold these views.
   These views have never done us very much good, considered in a merely
   secular or worldly sense. We are not bound to them by any golden chain.
   They have not been made plain and clear, and attractive to us by rich
   benefices and comfortable livings. Our opinions are not endowed with
   prelacies and prebendal [stipend drawn from Anglican Church] stalls,
   with manses, and royal bounties. Thank God, whatever people may choose
   to say of us, they cannot say we are Baptists for the love of filthy
   lucre! One thing is certain, "the root of all evil" is not likely to
   draw much nourishment from the soil of Baptist ministerial stipends. We
   must of course state our reasons, and I say they ought to be somewhat
   substantial reasons. Well, then, we go on this principle mark you, that
   the only appeal is to the Word of God! This is a principle in which
   every honest and sound-hearted Protestant must agree with us; it is his
   principle as much as ours, and it is the only principle that will save
   him from all the errors and superstitions of Romanism. So that, taking
   the matter into the court of God's Word only, it signifies very little
   to us what may have been said by such-and-such a council, or
   such-and-such a Church, or such-and-such a reverend father--it greatly
   simplifies the matter when it's understood that we intend to submit
   this question to the Word of God, and to the Word of God only! And I
   say to every Protestant here, that he must accept the principle and act
   upon it. If he begins to refer to fathers, and churches and councils,
   well then, let him take care; he may rely upon it that on such a prin-
   ciple he will not be able to stand for one moment. If he thinks with
   such weapons to vanquish us, let him rest assured that he will very
   soon be vanquished himself by the same. It may be that the charge from
   such ordnance shall destroy us, but depend upon it, the recoil will
   destroy the man who has the temerity to fire it! This principle, then,
   will be agreed in by every Protestant, excepting those who in these
   days are beginning to protest Scripture itself, but every
   sound-hearted, honest-minded Protestant, will go with us in saying that
   the Word of God is the only tribunal to which we can go. This being the
   case, let us see how the matter stands.

   It is alleged by us, then, that in the ordinance of Baptism the
   candidate should be wholly immersed in water. And now, if we were
   disposed, and if we recognized any other authority than Scripture, we
   might refer to the law of the Church of England, which is most
   distinctly to the effect that excepting in cases of certified weakness,
   immersion shall be the mode of administering this ordinance and the
   Church of England man, at all events, has nothing to say against the
   adoption of this practice; it is his practice as much as ours; it is
   his law as much as ours! His prayer book tells him we are right; the
   large fonts, three feet in diameter, which he sees in so many parish
   churches, tell him we are right! And he knows that in this respect we
   are the only faithful Church of England people in this land! We might
   also refer to the testimony of the ancient Church, and the practice of
   the olden time, with regard to which it may be said with perfect
   certainty, that in the first ages immersion was the commonly accepted
   mode. But of course we appeal to the Scriptures, and appealing to the
   Scriptures, we find that Baptism is, as our text informs us, a burial
   and resurrection with Christ, that it is a sign and symbol of the
   Believer's participation in Christ's burial and resurrection, and this,
   I think as plainly as possible, shows us what the mode was in ancient
   times. This, indeed, is generally admitted by divines who still
   maintain that this mode is not binding upon Christians at the present
   time; but surely, if Baptism is to be a representation of burialand
   resurrection, there must be something in the ordinance itself which
   shall be suggestive of such a Truth of God! And then again, we appeal
   to the meaning of the word; this word, Baptism, has not been translated
   in our Scriptures excepting in one or two instances, in which it
   appears in the form of the word, "wash" or, "washing," and in these
   cases the idea of immersion, if not absolutely required, is at all
   events perfectly admissible, and involves no incongruity; and if you
   search the Scriptures through, you will not find a single passage in
   which this word, whether it is employed literally or figuratively, does
   not suggest, or may not suggest the idea of immersion. When we consider
   that Philip and the eunuch "went down both of them into the water;"
   that our Savior "went up straightway out of the water" after John had
   baptized Him; that John "was baptizing near Salim because there was
   much water there," I think it is very evident that something more than
   aspersion, or pouring of water, must be implied. And if we consult
   trustworthy authorities for the meaning of this word, we shall find
   that in all cases it either may or must imply the idea of immersion.

   I lately read a very valuable paper by a most scholarly divine who
   tells us that he has thoroughly investigated every instance in which
   the word can be found, whether in the fathers or in the classics. He
   gives us upwards of200 cases, in the great majority of which the word
   must mean immersion, and in every one of which it may have, and
   probably really has, that signification. Indeed, almost all scholarly
   men are agreed that this is the meaning of the word, and not only so,
   but also that this was the mode that was adopted in the Apostolic Age!
   These things are not disputed, or are scarcely disputed. Men do ask why
   should you adhere to this mode? And that is a question we shall have to
   consider presently; but they scarcely dispute anywhere that this mode
   was ordained by Christ, and practiced in the Apostolic Age; and
   therefore, if you ask, "Why do you immerse in Baptism?" I say because
   Baptism must, in the very nature of things, be a representation setting
   forth figuratively the burial and resurrection of Christ, and because
   to immerse, and to immerse only, is the meaning of this word, baptize.

   But again, our more important difference with our Christian Brethren is
   that we decline to accept as candidates for the ordinance all but those
   who avow their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now here, although the
   practice of Christendom is very much against us, I think that even in
   that practice there are some points that tell very strongly in our
   favor. For example, Baptism is called a sacrament. This word is
   scarcely recognized among us I believe, but still let us examine it.
   Baptism is regarded as a sacrament. What is a sacrament? I suppose it
   is an oath. Now would you administer an oath to an infant child? Is
   there common sense in such a procedure as that? You would provoke
   laughter if you were to take your infant child before a Justice of the
   Peace, and there administer to it an oath to the effect that he should
   to the end of his days be a faithful subject, and servant of the Queen!
   And is there anything more rational than this, when you take an infant
   child to a minister of God's Word, that to that child an oath may be
   administered by which it shall swear fealty to the Captain of our
   Salvation? But you say it is not to the infant that the oath is
   administered at all; it is to the sponsors. Well then, I want to know
   to whom the sacrament is administered! The oath is administered to the
   sponsors; the Baptism is then administered to the sponsors, for the
   Baptism and the oath are one. But it would seem as though the ordinance
   were divided. The water is administered to the child, and the oath is
   administered to the sponsors. There is something rather like confusion
   here! If Baptism is a sacrament and a sacrament an oath, then in
   administering Baptism to a child, you are administering an oath to a
   child. But surely every oath ought to be administered to such-and-such
   only as understand the nature of an oath, and also give a solemn assent
   to the propositions that are embodied in it. And thus if the word,
   sacrament, is to be applied to Baptism at all, I accept it then, but I
   submit my most strong protest against the administration of this
   ordinance to any except to those who understand, and assent to the
   principles which are connected with it! Although our appeal is to
   Scripture, our Paedo-Baptist friends must really not suppose that the
   testimony of the Church is all in their favor, for certainly for two or
   three centuries, if not more, the Baptism of infant children was not
   the general practice of the Christian Church!

   It was opposed by Tortellini at the latter end of the Second Century or
   the beginning of the third; and at a far later date than this, we find
   Baptism administered to persons of mature years. I do not wish to press
   into our service such cases as that of Constantine, who was baptized
   late in life. He was born a heathen, and he appears to have continued
   practically a heathen of the very worst stamp to the last. The mistake
   in his case was not that he was baptized so late, but that he was
   baptized at all! As he was baptized during his last illness, his
   Baptism I presume was clinical, and therefore administered by
   aspersion, and those who are in favor of this mode are perfectly
   welcome to this sprinkled Pagan! I am very glad that the ordinance in
   its Scriptural form was never disgraced by having Constantine for a
   subject. But we find that several of the most eminent and pious fathers
   of the Church were not baptized until they had arrived at maturity, and
   were thoroughly Christian men. In the Fourth Century flourished Gregory
   of Nazianzum, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome, Chrys-ostom, and Augustine;
   these eminent men, who were afterwards such great theologians, were all
   of them the sons of Christian parents, at least of Christian mothers,
   and yet not one of them was baptized until mature age, and until each
   of them had strong religious convictions; in fact, none of them were
   baptized until they were truly converted to Jesus Christ. The case of
   Gregory is peculiarly in point. Gregory of Nazianzum, was the son of a
   Christian bishop; his pious mother, Nona, dedicated him to God from his
   very birth, and yet when was he baptized? When he was 30 years old! The
   instance of Augustine is, perhaps, still more remarkable. Augustine was
   the object of his pious mother's deepest solicitude; his conversion was
   the thing nearest and dearest to her heart, and yet she did not have
   him baptized. When he was a grown-up lad, he was attacked with a very
   dangerous illness, and expressed a strong desire for Baptism, and yet
   the ordinance was deferred, and the great Augustine was not baptized
   until he was a man 32 years old and was fully imbued with the knowledge
   and spirit of the Gospel of Christ! Now mark you, I do not say that
   these cases prove that there was no such thing as infant Baptism in the
   Fourth Century, and it is for no such purpose I adduce them; but they
   do prove this--that Christian mothers such as Nona and Monica and
   Anthusa--Christian women of the very highest intelligence and piety,
   did not in that age deem it necessary that their infant children should
   be baptized--but they left the matter to be one of personal profession
   when their children should have a faith to profess.

   But still we would appeal to the Scriptures, and when we come to
   consult God's Word, strange as it may appear, there is not one passage
   from the beginning to the end which indicates the Baptism of any but
   professed believers in Christ! It is true that households were
   baptized, and it is said that there might have been infant children in
   those households. It is a sufficient answer to this to say that there
   might nothave been any infants in those households! As to the
   Phi-lippian jailer, we read that, "he believed in God with all his
   house;" as to the house of Stephanas, we read, "they had addicted
   themselves to the ministry of the saints;" and, as to Lydia, there is
   not the slightest evidence that she was either a wife or mother. And in
   fact, so far as historical narrative is concerned, there is not a
   single incident in Scripture that leads us to suppose that any but
   professed believers in Christ were baptized. It would have been very
   strange if such an incident had turned up anywhere, seeing that our
   Lord's commission runs in this order--"Go you, teach all nations,
   baptizing them; he who believes and is baptized shall be saved." And we
   read that Peter says, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you;" and
   again, he says, "Can any man forbid water that these should not be
   baptized who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?" Does it not
   appear that he would have anticipated an objection, and would have
   allowed an objection if there had been no evidence of conversion to
   God? And Paul says, "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ
   have put on Christ." Is not this the work of an intelligent and
   believing man? Or to come to our text, Paul says that we are, "Buried
   with Him in Baptism, wherein also we are risen with Him through the
   faith of the operation of God, who has raised Him from the dead." The
   meaning of this passage seems to be this--We are buried and risen with
   Christ through the faith of the operation of God, through faith in
   God's operation, God's work, energy, and power, as manifested in the
   Resurrection of Christ from the dead; that is to say those persons
   evidently were baptized, buried, and raised with Christ through their
   faith in the fact that God's energy or power had raised Jesus Christ
   from the dead. The fact of Christ's Resurrection is evidently attached
   to Baptism here. And the Apostle Peter says, "Baptism does also now
   save us, (not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer
   of a good conscience toward God), by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ;"
   that is to say, those persons who have been baptized are persons who
   have the answer of a good conscience towards God through Christ's
   Resurrection--through faith in Christ's Resurrection they now have the
   consciousness of the forgiveness of sins; and so faith in the
   Resurrection of Christ, is represented as an essential and indeed the
   chief element of Christian Baptism.

   These then, are some of our reasons for holding these views. If you ask
   why we immerse, we say, "Because this is the undisputed--or all but
   undisputed--sole meaning of the word. and because apart from immersion,
   there is no sign of burial and resurrection with Christ." And if you
   ask, "Why do you baptize only those who believe?" We say, "Because we
   can discover no trace in God's Word of the baptism of any other; and we
   think, that as Baptism is a profession of a man's faith in Christ, this
   profession ought never to be made excepting by such as really are the
   subjects of the faith that is thus professed." And now, if anything can
   be advanced to show that any other but immersion is really the meaning
   of the word, and if any case can be had from the Scriptures, either
   directly or by implication, showing that any but believer's were
   baptized, we give this matter up. We have no interest to subserve but
   the cause of Truth.

   Of course many objections are urged against these views of ours, and to
   some of these objections, for we shall not have time to notice them
   all, I shall now briefly direct attention.

   I have heard it said by some, and I dare say you have heard it too,
   that the administration of this ordinance by immersion is scarcely
   consistent with decency. With decency! There are some people in the
   world, who I suppose would advocate the omission of the first Chapter
   from the Epistle to the Romans; there are some people who must think it
   would be a very proper thing to blot the Seventh Commandment from the
   Decalogue, for it is scarcely decent; and they ought to go in for an
   expurgated edition of the Sermon on the Mount, and that I hope would
   satisfy them! My dear Friends, Christ ordained, and His Apostles
   practiced this ordinance of immersion; most certainly they did; there
   is no dispute about that. There is dispute whether the ordinance is
   obligatory in this form at the present day, but really there is no
   dispute that this was commanded, and that this was done! Do you think
   that our Lord Jesus Christ would ever have sanctioned anything that
   bordered in the slightest degree on indecency? I have only one word to
   say to such objectors, and it is this, "To the pure all things are
   pure, but unto them who are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure,
   but even their mind and conscience is defiled."

   But it is a strong point, or supposed to be a strong point, that on the
   day of Pentecost, 3,000 people were baptized, and how could they all be
   immersed? Well, why not? The only objections I can imagine are these--a
   lack of water, and a lack of time. But to suppose that there was a
   deficient water supply--to suppose this from all that we know, and
   especially from all that we do not know about ancient Jerusalem,
   appears to me to be a great absurdity! And as to the lack of time--if
   the Apostles alone had baptized these three thousand, there certainly
   would be something rather formidable in the objection; but it would
   seem that the Apostles were not in the habit of baptizing many, and
   that they often gave this work to others--and on that occasion there
   might have been a hundred administrators of Baptism--those who were
   first baptized might baptize others--and in this way the administration
   to the whole 3,000 might very easily be accomplished before the sun
   went down upon the day of Pentecost!

   "Ah, but," say some, "there is a passage in the first Epistle to the
   Corinthians that you cannot get over. It is said that the Israelites
   'were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.' How can
   that be a case of immersion?" Well, I might ask you, how could it be a
   case of anything else? Undoubtedly it was a case of immersion! When you
   think of the cloud, you must not think of a small pillar of cloud
   suspended high above the people, and always going before them. It is
   written in one of the Psalms, "He spread His cloud for a covering." And
   they passed under the cloud; the channel of the

   Red Sea, with the waters piled up on either hand--this constituted the
   huge Baptistery for the people, and the cloud was the element in which
   they were baptized; as plainly as possible it was a case of immersion
   in the cloud.

   But again, there are many who say, "Well, after all, what does it
   really matter? If a man has been baptized by the Spirit of God, and is
   really regenerated and born-again, and has his sins washed away by the
   blood of Christ, the outward and visible sign is a thing of very little
   importance." Well, if it is such a matter of indifference whether you
   adopt this or that mode, I would say it would be as well to follow the
   Society of Friends, and adopt neither one nor the other! But you do
   believe there is some external rite--well, then--surely the external
   rite should be that which sets forth figuratively the very Truth
   intended by the ordinance! In the language of symbols, forms are
   everything; forms give those symbols all their meaning, and therefore
   it is not altogether an unimportant matter that Baptism, signifying
   burial and resurrection with Christ, should indicate this even in its
   very form and mode!

   But there are also objections to our baptizing none but Believers.
   Infants, it is said, should be baptized, not that there is any positive
   and direct proof of this in God's Word, still it may be inferred. For
   instance. "They brought infants to Jesus." What did they bring them
   for? That He might put his hand upon them, and pray for them! Yet it is
   inferred by many that our Savior was in the habit of baptizing infants
   because they brought infants to Him, that He might touch them and bless
   them! The opposite inference is the one I would be prepared to draw,
   for if our Savior were in the habit of baptizing infants, the disciples
   certainly would not have rebuked those who brought the infants to
   Jesus, because such an act would have been quite a matter of course! On
   this incident, Jeremy Taylor remarks, "To infer from such a passage as
   this that infants should be baptized only proves that there is a great
   need of better arguments." But again--it is said Baptism came in the
   place of circumcision, and since infants were circumcised, infants
   ought to be baptized. Now it appears to me to be altogether a matter of
   assumption that Baptism came in the place of circumcision. There is
   nothing in God's Word that states this. And let me particularly call
   attention to this fact; it is well known to every reader of the Acts
   and the Epistles that a great controversy arose in the early Church
   with reference to this matter of circumcision-- certain men went down
   to Antioch, and said to the Christians there, "Unless you are
   circumcised you cannot be saved." The church at Jerusalem met to
   consider this matter and they sent their decision. Now, if Baptism is
   come in the place of circumcision, of course the way in which common
   sense would settle the question would be this, "No, you need not be
   circumcised, because you have been baptized, and Baptism has come in
   the place of circumcision." But in the decision which the Church at
   Jerusalem sent to the Church at Antioch there is not the slightest
   allusion to any such substitution!

   Then again, Paul was perpetually arguing against those who were
   insisting upon the importance of circumcision--if Baptism is
   substituted for that institution, Paul's short and easy method of
   silencing every objector would have been this, "No, these people have
   been baptized, and that is the Christian circumcision." But what does
   Paul say?--we read what he says in the verse which precedes our text.
   He says, "In whom"--that is, in Christ--"In whom also you are
   circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off
   the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." Now
   observe, "In whom you are circumcised with a circumcision made without
   hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the
   circumcision of Christ." The circumcision of Christ is the Christian
   circumcision, is that which has come in the place of the old
   circumcision, and this Christian circumcision is a circumcision, "made
   without hands." Will any man in his senses say that this is Baptism?
   Christian circumcision is something that is accomplished without human
   agency! Baptism is not an ordinance made or administered without hands.
   Moreover, he says, with reference to this matter, that we are
   circumcised "in the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh,"
   which is certainly the work of an intelligent, conscientious,
   believing, and God-fearing man! In one word, if you want to know what
   the Christian equivalent for circumcision under the new dispensation
   is, it is conversion to God! It is this and it is nothing else. If
   Baptism has come in the place of circumcision, on what principle, then,
   did Paul circumcise Timothy? If this idea of the substitution of
   Baptism for circumcision is correct, then ought not Paul to have said,
   "In Christ Jesus circumcision avails nothing, neither uncircumcision,
   but Baptism"? Ought he not to have said, "We are the circumcised--we
   who have been baptized"? But what he does say is this, "In Christ Jesus
   neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision, but the
   keeping of the Commandments of God," and, "We are the congregation who
   worship God in one Spirit, and who rejoice in Christ Jesus and put no
   confidence in the flesh." Evidently, then, those who have received the
   Christian circumcision are those who keep the Commandments of God, who
   worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus--and these
   conditions are certainly applicable to none excepting those who are
   believersin the Lord Jesus Christ! Therefore I would say there seems to
   be no fairness in arguing from the one institution to the other. Only
   consider this fact, that in a controversy which this supposed idea of
   Baptism having come in the place of circumcision would have settled in
   a moment, there is no allusion to such mode of settling the question,
   and I think that we are led to infer, with the most absolute certainty,
   that it is altogether a baseless assumption that circumcision is
   represented by Baptism. No, in the Christian dispensation, if there is
   any equivalent, any succession to the circumcision of the Old Covenant,
   it is conversion to God--it is the circumcision of the heart--it is the
   putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh. Thatis the Christian
   circumcision!

   But it will be said by some, "You make a great deal too much of this
   ordinance of Baptism." Well, I am free to confess that there may be
   here and there a good Brother who makes rather too much of this
   ordinance. Yet this I certainly can say, from a somewhat extensive
   knowledge of our denomination, that in almost every case you will find
   that the ordinance of Baptism is held by us in a most thorough and
   lowly subordination to the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the work
   of Atonement by His Sacrifice and death, to the influence and the
   indwelling of the Divine Spirit, to the necessity of repentance and of
   faith, to the importance of a life of personal holiness, and to every
   other great principle of the holy faith which we profess. I do not
   think that we are fairly charged with making too much of this
   ordinance. When we say of this ordinance that it regenerates the
   soul--when we say that herein persons are made "members of Christ,
   children of God, and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven"--when we rush with
   all haste to baptize the sick and the dying, and when we refuse to
   accord to those who die unbaptized, the rites, the decencies, the
   charities of Christian burial--then tell us, for indeed we shall
   deserve to be told--that we do most monstrously exaggerate the
   importance of this ordinance! But you shall go through the length and
   breadth of this realm, and you shall visit all the Baptist churches in
   the States of America, and on the continent of Europe, and nowhere will
   you find such sentiments or such practices prevailing among the Baptist
   people! I trust we make no more of this ordinance, and no less than is
   made of it in God's Word. We do not baptize our own infant children,
   and this, I think, is evidence enough that we do not very grossly
   exaggerate the importance of this institution.

   Still you say, "You do not regard it as essential to salvation, and
   therefore why do you make this the ground of separation from your
   Brethren?" My dear Friend, are you a Congregationalist? You do not
   believe that your Congregational polity is essential to salvation--why,
   then, do you not join the Episcopal communion? Are you a Methodist? You
   do not think the Conference is to save your soul--why do you not return
   to the bosom of the Established Church? Are you a Free Church of
   Scotland man? You will admit that people can still be saved in the old
   Church; then why did you make such a fuss about that Disruption
   business? I do not blame you for the Disruption, not by any
   means--perhaps you did what was perfectly right. A thing may not be
   essential, and yet it may be very far from unimportant! We cannot but
   regard infant baptism as the main root of the superstitious and
   destructive dogma of baptismal regeneration, to which as Protestants we
   are opposed! We cannot but regard infant baptism as the chief
   cornerstone of State Church, to which as Dissenters we are opposed! We
   cannot but regard infant baptism as unscriptural, and to everything
   that is unscriptural we, as disciples of Jesus Christ, must be opposed!
   And we do trust that all who differ from us, and however widely they
   may differ, will still admit that we are only doing what is right in
   maintaining what we believe to be the Truth of God with reference to
   this matter. Up to now it has been in disgrace, and scorn, and
   ridicule, and oftentimes in persecution that these principles have been
   held! Up to now we have been a sect everywhere spoken against. Probably
   the first martyr burnt in England for religion, and certainly the last,
   was a Baptist! And others had trials of cruel mocking, and scourging,
   yes and of bonds and imprisonments--and became destitute, afflicted,
   and tormented.

   We cannot glory in our numbers, we cannot glory in our power, we cannot
   glory in our wealth; but we can glory in the faith and constancy by
   which those who went before us were enabled by Divine Grace to sustain
   the infliction of the most grievous wrongs--wrongs which were all the
   more keenly felt because they were received at the hands of
   fellow-Christians, fellow-Protestants, and even fellow-Puritans! Up to
   now we have been few in number, and have been oftentimes violently and
   bitterly opposed--nor do I think that there is now any very brilliant
   prospect of our rising to denominational greatness, and basking in the
   sunshine of popular applause. And indeed, when I see what the effect of
   such greatness and applause has been upon some Christian churches, I am
   disposed to say, "God defend us from power and popularity, for these
   are more dangerous foes than all the contumely, and persecution, and
   straitened circumstances with which we have had to struggle in the
   times gone by!" I do hope and verily believe that we have a far purer
   objective in view than mere denominational aggrandizement, and that we
   shall be content, as heretofore we have been content, come evil report
   or good, to have the testimony of a clear conscience that according to
   the best of our knowledge, and to the utmost of our power we have
   faithfully tried to maintain God's Truth against the commandments and
   traditions of men!
     __________________________________________________________________

                                The Last Census

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 14, 1861,

   BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The Lord shall record, when He registers the people, that this man was
   born there." Psalm 87:6.
   SEVERAL times, according to the record of Scripture, there was a census
   taken of the people of God. When Jacob went down into Egypt all his
   offspring were numbered, and they were three score and ten souls. How
   small, then, the visible Church of Christ; it could be contained within
   a single tent; it had sprung of but a solitary man. All those, then,
   who feared Jehovah, as far as it is known to us, were of the race of
   Jacob. There was another census taken when the people came up out of
   Egypt, and if you read in the earlier Chapter of the Book of Numbers
   you will be astonished at the wonderful multiplication which had taken
   place in the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. Truly, the more they
   were oppressed the more they multiplied. There were 600,000 footmen,
   all prepared for battle, besides women and children, and aged men who
   were exempt from the toils of warfare. There was another census taken
   after the people had been 38 years in the wilderness. Through their sin
   they had not been multiplied. So many had fallen in the wilderness,
   that notwithstanding the natural increase, the population stood at very
   nearly the same rate, or--taking the armed men as the standard--about
   2,000 less than it was when they first entered into the howling
   wilderness. You have further on in history another instance of the
   taking of the census, or rather of an attempt to do it, when David
   commanded Joab, the captain of the host, to go through all the tribes
   and number the people from Dan even to Beersheba. The people were God's
   people. When He numbered them, well and good; but none but the
   Sovereign power has a right to take the census of the people. David,
   forgetting that he was only God's viceroy, that he stood not as king in
   Israel, except as under the constitution which God had established,
   presumes to invade the priestly prerogative and commit to Joab the
   Levitical office of numbering the people, and that without offering the
   shekels of sanctuary or giving the tribute of redemption. So flagrant
   was the breach of the laws of Israel, that even Joab was quick to
   remonstrate. But before David could effect the task, the Word of God
   had come out against him, and three days of pestilence, or three years
   of famine, or a period of flight before their enemies, who would defeat
   them in war, were offered to him as dread alternatives for the
   punishment of his sin. So did God seem to say, "Jehovah shall number
   the people, but David shall not." God shall count His redeemed, and
   number His elect, but man shall not venture to touch the mysterious
   roll. None but the Lamb shall take that Book and open every seal. That
   Lamb's Book of Life is not to be read except by the eyes of Him who
   bought the people with His blood; nor are the people to pass under any
   hand to be counted except under the hand of Him that counts them, even
   the great Shepherd Himself.
   My Brothers and Sisters, according to the text, there is one day to be
   a great census taken of the Church of God. It is concerning that one
   census, final and decisive, that I shall have to speak this morning.
   May God grant that of all of us it may be said, when the Lord registers
   the people, "This man was born there."

   Concerning this writing up of the census I shall take four or five
   points. First, we shall notice what this writing will involve "when the
   Lord registers the people;" secondly, whose names will not be found
   written in the census; thirdly, whose names will be there; fourthly,
   who will register the people; and then lastly, why will it be done at
   all

   I. When this dispensation shall come to its close, when the Lord Jesus
   Christ shall come in the clouds of Heaven, when all His people shall be
   gathered to Him to share His splendors and to delight themselves in His
   triumph, then we believe the Lord shall register His people. WHAT WILL
   THIS REGISTERING BE?

   There will be written in this census nothing but personal matters. If
   you note my text, it says, "This man was born there." They are not
   taken in the plural--these men. They are not taken as a corporate
   body--this nation, this church, this family--but one by one each man's
   name shall be found either written there or else left out. Personal
   matters alone will come into the great census paper of eternity. There
   is no truth which we need more frequently to hold up before the eyes of
   our people than the truth that nothing but personal godlinesswill ever
   avail! If you could trace your pedigree through a line of saints up to
   the Apostles, no, up to Mary herself, the mother of our Savior, yet,
   unless you did yourself believe in Christ, and had yourself been the
   subject of the personal change which is called regeneration, you should
   in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. No connections, however
   admirable; no relations, however desirable, no proxies, however
   excellent, shall ever avail for any dying man! We must ourselves stand
   before God, each man for himself, to be acquitted, or to be
   condemned--to hear, "Come, you blessed," or "Depart, you cursed one."
   There may be, and there always must be, when we take men in the mass,
   (and God often in His Providence deals with men in the mass), there may
   be innocent persons who suffer in the common calamity. There are
   likewise wicked men who rejoice in common mercies. But at the last the
   evil shall be unto the evil; and the good shall be unto the good. The
   wheat shall be unmixed with chaff; the wine shall no more be mingled
   with the water; the gold shall not become dimmed through alloy. God's
   people, each of them personally accepted, and the wicked, each of them
   personally condemned, shall meet their final doom! See to it, Sir, each
   one of you, that you personally have an interest in the blood of the
   Lamb!

   Again, you will perceive that this great census deals not merely with
   personal matters, but with vitalmatters which concern a man's birth.
   Here you have it that this man was born there. 'Tis true the things we
   have thought, and those we have done shall be mentioned at the last,
   but not for their own sakes. They shall be mentioned only as means of
   proving that we were born-again, or else as evidence that regeneration
   had never taken place in us! The vital question which the Lord's Great
   Day shall touch will be this--"Was that man ever called from darkness
   into marvelous light? Was that heart ever turned from stone to flesh?
   Were those eyes ever opened to the celestial light? Were those ears
   ever ready to listen to the Divine command? Was there a vital, radical
   change insomuch that old things had passed away, and all things had
   become new? If not, in the golden roll of the Redeemed our names can
   have no place. When the roll is called, our names will not be
   mentioned, and we shall stand shivering with dismay because our names
   are left out when God calls-- "Gather My saints together unto Me, those
   who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice."

   Mark, once more, the matters with which the census shall have to do
   will be decisive. Perhaps, my Hearer, your name could not be written
   today among the regenerate, but there is hope yet, and we trust by
   God's Grace before you go from here, you may have a portion among the
   sanctified. If we could take today the number of God's people, at
   present converted, I thank God that before another hour it would be
   imperfect, for there would have been others added to the visibly-called
   of God. But the last census shall be final! To its number none shall be
   added--from its multitude none subtracted. Once let that be taken, and
   the angel shall cry in Heaven, "He that is holy let him be holy still."
   And his voice shall reverberate to Hell, but other words shall he sound
   there--"He that is filthy, let him be filthy still." That shall be the
   last polling of the people, the last counting of the jewels and casting
   away of the counterfeits, the last bringing in of the sheep and
   banishment of the goats. This makes it all-important that you and I
   should know today whether, "when the Lord registers the people, it
   shall be said that this man was born there." Oh that we were wise to
   look into the future! We are so bat-like, we see but so small a
   distance. We only see time and its trickeries, its paint, its gilt. Oh
   that we were wise that we understood this, that we would remember our
   latter end! So that come the census day when it may, we may each have
   our name written beneath our Lord the Lamb in some humble place among
   the chosen of the Lord our God. This census, then, will
   involve--personal, vital, decisive matters!

   II. Let us now ask--WHOSE NAMES WILL NOTBE FOUND WRITTEN WHEN THE LORD
   REGISTERS HIS PEOPLE? Now this is a question which no man can answer to
   the fullest. But with God's Word before us, supposing that the
   characters I mention shall be at the Last Day what they are now, we can
   tell you with a decision that is infallible, whose names will notbe
   found there.

   And first, for these are the most likely people to be deceived, the
   name of the hypocritical Church member will not be found there. You
   have entered the church for the sake of gain or respectability. You
   have made a profession which is a lie. You have assumed a garb which is
   but the sheep's skin while you yourself remain a wolf. You have a name
   to live, but are dead. You have whitewashed the sepulcher, but it is
   still a sepulcher. Oh Sir! It is one thing to have deceived the Elder
   or the deacon; it is one thing to have misled and to have cajoled the
   minister; it is one thing to have won the respect and the esteem of the
   church, but it is another thing to escape undetected from the fiery
   Glance which can read the secret things of the belly, and before which
   even Hell and death are naked and unveiled! Do not, I pray you, hope
   that your masquer- ading, your spiritual pretenses, shall be of any use
   before Him! He shall tear your garments in pieces, and you shall stand
   naked to be the target for all His arrows; you shall be banished to the
   place where the hissing, the rebuke, and the reproach of all the
   ungodly shall descend forever and ever! I tell you, your name may be in
   the church rolls without a blot, and no man may have suspected you, but
   except a man be born-again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. Church
   members, try yourselves, the oldest and the best of you; yes, and you,
   too, try yourself, O preacher, lest after having preached to others,
   you also should be a castaway! Oh, let us never take our religion from
   other men's opinions, not even from the opinion of the best of men! I
   would not be satisfied even with the assurance of an Apostle, if it
   came from his own judgment, we must have the assurance of the Holy
   Spirit, the Witness within us that we are born of God.

   Again, among the names that will notbe found there, we may mention the
   man who is a mere hearer. How many there are among you today whom we
   could but describe as hearers only! The ear is tickled, the mind is
   interested, the gaze is fixed upon the preacher. 'Tis well. God be
   thanked that so many are willing to listen to the Word of God. But to
   be a hearer and not a believer will involve no salvation. To have had
   the seed sown, but for the seed never to have taken root will never
   give a harvest. To have had the Light of God shining upon sightless
   eyes will have been of no use, or giving of sight. To have sat in these
   pews, though some of you may sit for 20 years--unless the Word is
   received into the heartthrough the Grace of God--will minister rather
   to your damnation than to your salvation! Mark this, my Hearers, if we
   are not "a savor of life unto life," we must be "a savor of death unto
   death;" and in either case, we are unto God a sweet smelling savor as
   well in those who perish as in those who are save. I know what a great
   many people think if they are regular church-goers, if they are always
   in their place twice on the Sunday, that is as much as can be expected
   of them. I tell you, Sirs, that you may make your church-going into a
   sin if you go to hear a Gospel which you reject! If you rest in your
   church-goings or your chapel-goings, you have rested in a lie, you have
   built upon the sand, and in the last Great Day if you shall cry, "We
   have eaten, we have drunk with You, and You have taught in our
   streets;" He shall say, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, I never knew
   you; depart from Me, you workers of iniquity."

   There is a man yonder, too, whose name is not written and will not be
   found written there, unless some great change shall take place--I mean
   yonder young man, who is saying, "I will repent, I will seek a Savior;
   I desire to be washed in His blood." Young man, you have said that 20
   times before! You said it when you left your mother's roof, and she
   rejoiced in the resolution. You said it when last the fever came into
   the establishment and you lay sick. You said it, Sir, when last time
   conscience pricked you, because you had retired to rest at night, and
   had omitted the prayer in which you had been so early trained; and you
   say it today! But "unstable as water you do not excel." Your promise
   made in your own strength is but a broken reed! Your penitence is as
   the morning cloud and as the early dew. You are paving your road to
   Hell with your good intentions. Up, Sluggard! Up! Pull up those paving
   stones and hurl them at the old Fiend who longs to keep you at this
   dreary work of making a smooth path to your destruction! Oh, my dear
   Friends, perhaps one of the worst of Satan's snares is the promissory
   note. Under a sermon, when the sinner has been awakened, the devil gets
   him to say, "Well, I will think of these things by-and-by." As you
   heard the other night, indifferent people are the most hopeless of all,
   because even when awakened, procrastination lulls them to sleep again!
   If Felix had hastily said to Paul, "Paul, I hate and despise you; you
   are an impostor;" there had been some little hope that in his quiet
   mood, reason might reverse the words which he had uttered; but when he
   said in bland tones, tones which deceived himself, though not the
   Apostle, "Go your way for this time, when I have a more convenient
   season I will send for you;" then might you have read upon the brow of
   Felix with spiritual eyes these words--"This is one who knows the
   Truth, but follows not its dictates. His damnation is as sure as it is
   just." I had infinitely rather hear, as I have sometimes heard, and as
   we constantly do, words of abuse against the minister, and language of
   hatred against the Gospel, than I would hear some of you who speak fair
   but mean foul, those who protest but belie, whose resolutions are like
   bad money or forged checks, which he who takes, loses thereby, and he
   who believes is deceived! Your name, Sir, unless there is something
   more than this, will never be found written there!

   Scarcely necessary is it, I think, to say that those men and women who
   are living in vice and open sin, and who die as they live, will never
   find their names written there. No drunk shall ever reel across the
   golden streets. No oath of the blasphemer shall ever shock the ear of
   angels! No light frothy or lascivious song shall ever taint the ears of
   perfection. Eden is not the place for thieves. Paradise is not the spot
   for harlots. Men and women who die with such blots upon their
   character, and such sins upon their souls shall find at Heaven's gate
   the angels say, "There shall in no wise enter here anything that
   defiles."

   And you, too, you moralists, against whose character no accusation can
   be brought--if you never received the new heart, you will be as surely
   shut out as the immoral! The honest tradesman who was only dishonest to
   his God, shall find dishonesty there to be damnable; the upright man
   who had no crooked ways except towards Christ and His holy Gospel,
   shall find those crooked ways destroy his soul. The man who said he
   loved his neighbor but forgot his God, shall find that "the wicked
   shall be cast into Hell with all the nations that forget God." Oh, my
   dear Hearers, except you have faith in Christ, except you have the
   Spirit of God in you, except you repent and are converted, there is a
   bar sterner than iron, and more durable than steel, which will shut you
   out of the place of happiness, and in the number of the saints your
   names shall never be found!

   III. We shall now turn to a more pleasing work--WHOSE NAME WILL BE
   FOUND THERE?

   When you made up the census paper last Monday morning, there may have
   been a thief in the house in the night. I suppose you did not put his
   name down. There may have been some person who, that night, knocked at
   the door and was, for some short time under your roof, but who went out
   from you because he was not of you, for if he had been of you,
   doubtless he would have continued with you. I know that you did not put
   his name there. You recorded there the names of the inhabitants of the
   house, but of no one else. Now, then, it shall be so at the last great
   census. Whose name shall be there? We reply, there shall be the name of
   every soul who ever believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, whoever fled to
   the Cross for refuge, whoever turned his tearful eyes to Calvary as his
   hope, whoever stretched out his finger to touch the hem of the sacred
   garment--these shall surely find their names there as well as the
   mightiest of the Prophets or the chief of the Apostles! Brothers and
   Sisters, we will take those who think themselves most likely to be left
   out, and we remark that there will be found there the name of the
   poorest. When this last census was taken, the paper was sent as much to
   the hovel of the poor in St. Giles's, as to the palace of the rich in
   St. James's. None were left out! The Act of Parliament was not passed
   to take a census of the rich--it was not needed that there should only
   be those written who paid a certain amount of tax; but as they were all
   subjects, the name of the beggar was recorded in the register as well
   as the name and title of the peer! So shall it be at the last. If you
   have believed in Christ, though you did never glitter on the pages of
   heraldry, though rags were your dress and penury your portion, yet in
   as fair a place as those who have worn a coronet, and have yet feared
   God, shall you find your name! Oh, let us never imagine that because a
   man wears fustian, or is clothed in corduroy, he has the slightest less
   reason to hope that he shall be saved! Not many great men after the
   flesh, not many mighty are chosen, but God has chosen the poor of this
   world, rich in faith, to be the helm of the Kingdom, so that if there
   is an advantage either way, it is where some would dream it should
   least be given! But, then, as the poorest, so the weakest saint shall
   be found there. You did not omit the name of your daughter because with
   some spinal disease she has been so long afflicted that she can
   scarcely sit upright. You put her name there as well as that of your
   stalwart son, who could boldly wield arms if it were needed to defend
   this country from the invader!

   And, I take it, when you wrote out the list, the infant child had a
   place as well as the full-grown man. You felt that the census would not
   be complete, and your family list would not be well made out even if
   that infant whose voice was but a cry, and whose life was but a pain,
   should miss his place. All were recorded there. And so, at the last,
   Benjamin shall be written as well as Judah, Mephibosheth as well as
   David; he who is lame in the feet, as well as the giant in strength.
   Father Earnest and Mr. Great-Heart shall have their place, but Mr.
   Fearing and Miss Much-Afraid shall not miss their portion. Every one of
   those who believed in Christ, though their faith was but as a grain of
   mustard seed, and their spiritual life was but as the smoking flax,
   shall find their names written there! I would that I could speak out
   this Truth of God so that the cast down, and the all but destroyed
   could lay hold upon it. Are you miserable today? Your misery does not
   erase your name! Have you sinned, but do you cry, "Father, have mercy
   upon me"? Your sin has not blotted the writing; engraved as in eternal
   brass, there stands your name! The powers of darkness shall never
   prevail to erase the everlasting characters. Are you today so conscious
   of your unworthiness, that you dare not look up? Are you thinking, "If
   I said, 'Abba, Father,' it would be presumption! If I claimed the
   privilege of a child, it would be arrogance"? Yet if Christ is yours,
   if you can stretch out your hand now and say--

   "My soul would lay her hand On that dear head of Yours,
   While like a penitent I stand, And there confess my sin," you need not
   be afraid but that among the blood-bought you shall share your lot!
   "Ah, my Soul, will you be there?" Pass the question now through this
   vast throng, and let each soul put itself into the balances with this
   as the test-weight--"What do you think of Christ? Is He your only help?
   Do you find cleansing in His blood, healing in His wounds, life in His
   death, Heaven in His pains?" If so, you shall be found when the Lord
   registers the people, and of you it shall be said, "That man was born
   there."

   IV. I shall now turn your attention to the next point of the subject,
   briefly. WHO IS TO MAKE OUT THE CENSUS PAPER?

   "The Lord shall record when He registers the people." But why shall the
   Lord make out the census? The first reason is-- Who else could do
   it?Suppose our enemies had the making out of the roll! "Oh, Lord,
   deliver me not over unto the will of my enemies, for false witnesses
   are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty." I think
   there is none among us who would be willing to have his eternal fate
   decided by an evil and gain-saying world. If we could put the pen into
   the hand of the wicked, they would write down the offscouring, but omit
   the jewels; they would surely record the base and the reprobate, while
   the chosen and precious would have no lot or portion. Imagine for a
   moment, my dear Friends, that the pen could be given to the old Pope of
   Rome, and that he had the writing up of the people. Now, my lord Pope,
   with your triple crown upon your head, write them out. I am sure he
   would omit yours and mine, because we are not obedient to the
   pontifical see; and even if he were under authority and command, I am
   sure he would make a great splutter in trying to write the name,
   "Martin Luther," and he would throw down his pen and utterly refuse to
   obey, if he had to write the glorious name of John Calvin! Well, thanks
   be to God, the pen is not in the hand of that arch-deceiver, nor in
   that of any of our enemies, but the Lord shall make out the census
   Himself. Suppose now we put the pen into the hand of Bigotry--Bigotry,
   who lives not quite so far off as Italy--but takes up her residence in
   our own land and hard by our own abode. I think I see her with her face
   bitter as wormwood, and with her eyes full of darkness and she, having
   written all the names down, reads--"There are few who shall be saved.
   They are so few that a child can count them." She makes a dash against
   the name of this man, for he did not hold all the five points of a
   certain system! She runs her pen right through another man's, because
   he dared to preach to sinners--and she takes a double dip for another,
   who had once ventured to say that faith was the duty of man, and
   unbelief was a high and damning crime! Oh, how few would ever go to
   Heaven, if Bigotry had the making out of the census paper!

   I might thus run through the list of all the enemies of Christ's
   Church, and show you that it would not be safe to trust any of them,
   from the devil downward to the Pope upward, with the making up of the
   list of those who shall enter into the King's palace. But, suppose our
   friends had the task. "Yes," says one, "let my mother have the pen."
   Yes, if this were left with our dear friends, they would not be long
   before some of them would write in bold text hand the name of their
   most reprobate son, or most hardened daughter! Affection in this world
   overmasters the understanding--and doubtless there would be many in
   Heaven who would defile its purity if affection had the keeping of the
   gates and if understanding had no place! Yes, but young man, your
   mother cannot save you. She can pray and plead, but if your iniquity is
   written as with an iron pen, and engraved on the horns of the altar,
   her tears cannot--acid even though they are-- eat out the dire
   inscription from the brass! You must be washed in blood, or else a
   baptism of tears will not avail. You must have the Spirit of Christ,
   for your mother's spirit cannot bear you on its wings to Heaven.
   Indeed, dear Friends, if the making out of the census paper were left
   even to ourselves, it were left to the wrong persons, for I take that
   the great end of all God's dispensations is His Glory, and if our
   entrance to Heaven were left to ourselves, there are many who would go
   there with a bee on their lips, and with blasphemy in their hearts.
   They would go to Glory fresh from their sins--rising from beds of lusts
   to beds of bliss; they would go red with murder, black with crime,
   dripping with the oozing of their vices, and Heaven would become a
   Sodom, and Paradise an Aceldama! The Throne of God would be no better
   than the Throne of Moloch, and the place of perfection would not be
   preferable to Hell itself! God and God only-- God the Only Wise--shall
   have the writing up of the people--for there is no one to be found but
   God who could do it!

   There is a second reason which I think will strike the spiritual mind
   with force. "The Lord shall record when He registers the people."
   Instructions were given at the late census, that the paper should be
   made out by " the head of the family.''" Now I suppose, though it is
   not always the fact, that the husband is the head of the household, and
   that the father stands in the position of the head of the family. Well,
   then, the Church must not make up the census paper, for she is the
   spouse. But He who is Head over all things to the Church, which is His
   body, He by whose name the whole family in Heaven and earth are named,
   He shall "Register the people." It were, indeed, impious for you or
   me--it would bring down upon our heads a penalty as heavy as that which
   fell on David--if we thought we could write up the people! We have
   said, perhaps, "There are only such-and-such people that shall be
   saved," and we have turned about, and said of another, "Lord, what
   shall this man do?" And like John, loving spirit though he was, we have
   been ready to call fire from Heaven upon some, and to say of others,
   "Master, forbid them, because they follow not with us." But, Brothers
   and Sisters, I hope we have done with all that now. We believe the Lord
   knows them who are His; they are a multitude who no man can number, and
   no man should ever attempt the task. They are more than bigotry would
   include; they are fewer than a latitudinarian charity would affirm; but
   be they more, or be they less, they are known only to the eternal mind,
   and this is a secret into which we must not pry! The angelic footstep
   treads not here. Let us not be rash and foolish to pry where angels
   stand back, and do not desire to look.

   I would give another reason why God and God alone, should make up this
   paper; had I not already anticipated myself. I meant to have said
   because He is the only wise God. You know it is said in Scripture that
   God is wise, but then it is added He is, "Only Wise." There is not
   another wise being upon the face of the earth! There is not another
   wise being, even in Heaven itself! God is Only Wise. Even the heathen
   knew this. You will remember when some fishermen had found a spoil, the
   old Greek legend says, "Not knowing how to divide it, they repaired to
   the Delphic oracle, which said, 'Let the wisest have it.'" They sent it
   to Thales, the Miletian; they sent it to Solon; it went the round of
   the wise men of Greece; but they all refused it. They said no,
   confessed they were not the wisest; till at last one of them advised to
   send it to the altar of the gods, for the gods were the wisest of all.
   What the heathen thus pictured in poetic fiction, we know to be true.
   We will not question this man or that, this denomination or that. It is
   not for us to use our fingers to count the brands plucked from the
   burning, but to use our hands to pluck them from the fire, and we will
   pass the roll to the Only Wise God, and He shall at the last decide
   whether they are His or not.

   V. I now come to my last point. May the Spirit of God bless it to us,
   and seal it on our hearts--WHY WILL THE CENSUS BE TAKEN AT ALL?

   Why should God register the people? We answer not that God may receive
   fresh information. He knows all things. Not that there is any fear of
   God's purposed number being incomplete. The Lord knows those who are
   His, and this is one of the stones on which the security of the Church
   is built. Why then? Of course we are dealing now with a noble picture,
   and you must view it as a picture, though within itself it bears a
   mighty fact. The Lord counts up His people, in the first place, to show
   His value of them. You remember that passage, "They shall be Mine, says
   the Lord, in that day when I make up My jewels," as though the jewels
   had to each be put into their proper place, and then the Divine eyes
   should run along them all and say "Yes, they are made up. Those in the
   basket tally in number with those in the inventory. They are made up.
   Neither ruby, nor emerald, nor pearl is lacking. They are all there."
   God makes up His jewels; it is impossible for the human mind to
   conceive how dear is the poorest Believer to the heart of his
   Father--dearer than the widow's only child to her soul--dearer than the
   new-made bridegroom to his bride--dearer than life to those who stand
   in peril--dearer than honor to those who could give life rather than
   sacrifice their integrity. We love, but we love not as God loves. Love
   with us may be an abiding passion, but with God it is an
   all-penetrating principle! Of us it may be said, that we are loving,
   but of God, that He is Love itself. And well does the idea of counting
   up the loved ones set forth the esteem and value which He sets upon
   them, and the intensity and deep-seatedness of that affection which He
   bears towards their persons. The Lord will make up His jewels; He will
   count His sheep; He will remember the children of His family, to see if
   they are there who were written in the register of old!

   Another thought strikes us. The last census shall be taken to show to
   Satan his entire defeat. They are all there, fiend of Hell; they are
   all there! What did you say, "I will pursue, I will overtake; I will
   divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them." What say you
   now, fiend of Hell? There is not one of them lacking! You greedy lion
   of the pit of Hell, have you torn one sheep? Has so much as a lamb been
   dragged to your infernal den? You legion hosts, who with cunning,
   sharpened by malice, sought to tear from the arms of Christ those whom
   He had sworn to save--has the Surety done His work or not? Have you
   defeated Him? You have nailed Him to the tree--have you broken His
   bones, and robbed Him of His members? You took away His life--could you
   keep it? Do they not live because He lives? You struggled through

   1,800 years and more; you grappled with these poor men and women who
   wrestled hard with you--did you overcome one of them? You were worsted
   when you fought with Job in the slippery standing of a dunghill! You
   were defeated when you fought with David on the pinnacle of the palace
   top, and brought him down! You won not the victory when you seemed to
   win it over Peter in the Hall of Pilate. You were defeated not once or
   twice, but many thousand times in the heirs of life, who fought with
   various success in time, but with sure success as time merged into
   eternity! Oh, all you hosts, look there and be ashamed, and let the
   songs of the white-robed be howls to you; let the shouts of the
   complete host of the redeemed sink into your ears like death-knells and
   re-begin your Hell, for you are defeated, you are cast down; the pride
   of your looks is lowered, and Jehovah alone is exalted in that day!

   Yet once more, I think the counting up of the redeemed will be
   performed for another reason--to let all men see that the great riddle
   which has distracted human intellect was no riddle but a fact--and
   facts are not riddles! What is the great mystery? It is that God
   decrees, that man acts; yet that God's decrees and man acts tally with
   one another! Of old, before the sockets of the eternal hills were
   carved out of the enduring granite, before the peaks lifted themselves
   white with snow to glitter in the sun, before stars had visited the
   mountain summit, and looked down upon a world that had fallen into
   sin--yes, when this world was not, when it was uncreated, sleeping in
   the womb of the Divine thought as yet unborn, when suns and stars, and
   this brave universe itself had not begun to be formed--THEN in His book
   His chosen were all written, and the members of Christ fixed and
   ordained! That book was closed and sealed; it has not been opened. Now
   what effect can a book, a clasped sealed book, have upon the deeds of
   men? "None," you say. "None," I say. The decree of God as such has no
   effect on any man. There it is; there it stands. But look! The world is
   all confusion. Never were the waves of the sea more wanton in their
   play. Man sins, rebels, revolts, revolts again; the checks of mercy
   hold him not, he breaks the bit, he scorns the yoke, and yet despite
   the hardness and the freedom of man to rebel against his God, I see at
   last through Grace Omnipotent a multitude come streaming slowly in,
   year after year, through the golden gates, and at last I hear the gate
   closed! I see it barred; and how strange shall it seem as that great
   sealed book is now unclasped, it is found that all who were written
   there have come! They come as they were written--come at the
   hourordained! They come in the place predestinated! They come by the
   means foreknown! They, come as God would have them come, and thus free
   agency did not defeat predestination, and man's will did not thwart the
   eternal will! God is glorified, and man free. Man--the man as he
   proudly calls himself--has obeyed God as truly as though he knew what
   was in God's book, and had studied to make the Decree of God the very
   rule and method of his life! Glorious shall it be when thus that book
   shall prove the mystic energy which went out from between the folded
   leaves--the mysterious Spirit that emanated from the eternal
   Throne--that unseen, unmanifested, sometimes unrecognized mysterious
   Power, which bowed the will, and led it in silken chains; which opened
   up the understanding, and led it from darkness into light, and melted
   the heart, and moved the spirit, and won the entire man to the
   obedience of the Truth as it was in Jesus!

   I will say no more except this. Shall I be there? Will you be there? I
   cannot put the question better than in the words of that solemn hymn--

   "When You, my righteous Judge, shall come To fetch Your ransomed people
   home--
   Shall I among them stand? Shall such a worthless worm as I, Who
   sometimes am afraid to die, Be found at Your right hand? I love to meet
   among them now, Before Your gracious feet to bow, Though vilest of them
   all-- But can I bear the piercing thought-- What if my name should be
   left out, When You for them shall call Prevent, prevent it by Your
   Grace! Be You, dear Lord, my hiding place, In this the accepted day--
   Your pardoning voice, O let me hear, To still my unbelieving fear!
   Nor let me fall, I pray;
   Let me among Your saints be found,
   Whenever the archangel's trump shall sound,
   To see Your smiling face;
   Then loudest of the crowd I'll sing,
   While Heaven's resounding mansions ring
   With shouts of Sovereign Grace."

   May that be your prayer and mine. May God hear it, and hear it He will,
   if to that prayer we add the obedience of faith! "He who believes and
   is baptized shall be saved; he who believes not shall be damned."
   "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved and your
   house." Sinner, believe! God help you to believe this morning for His
   name's sake.
     __________________________________________________________________

                      Exposition of the Doctrines of Grace

   Nos. 385-88.

   Thursday, April 11th, 1861.

   EDITOR'S NOTE: These messages are part of the inaugural ceremonies held
   at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, when it first opened. Spurgeon
   had already preached the first sermons there, beginning March 25, while
   the building was not yet quite finished. This, however, was the
   official opening ceremony, and Spurgeon presided, choosing several
   fellow pastors to expound the doctrines of Calvinism. This guide is
   offered the reader wishing to follow the familiar TULIP acronym:

   ? Total depravity--"Human Depravity," by Evan Probert (message 2).

   ? Unconditional Election--"Election", by John Bloomfield (message 1).

   ? Limited Atonement--"Particular Redemption," by J. A. Spurgeon
   (message 3).

   ? Irresistible Grace--"Effectual Calling," by James Smith (message 4).

   ? Perseverance of the Saints--"The Final Perseverance of Believers in
   Christ Jesus," by William O'Neill (message 5).

   The Rev. C. H. SPURGEON took the chair at 3 o'clock.

   The proceedings were commenced by singing the 21st Hymn--

   Saved from the damning power of sin,

   The law's tremendous curse,

   We'll now the sacred song begin

   Where God began with us.

   We'll sing the vast unmeasured grace

   Which, from the days of old,

   Did all his chosen sons embrace,

   As sheep within the fold.

   The basis of eternal love

   Shall mercy's frame sustain;

   Earth, hell, or sin, the same to move

   Shall all conspire in vain.

   Sing, O ye sinners bought with blood,

   Hail the Great Three in One;

   Tell how secure the cov'nant stood

   Ere time its race begun.

   Ne'er had ye felt the guilt of sin,

   Nor sweets of pard'ning love,

   Unless your worthless names had been

   Enroll'd to life above.

   O what a sweet exalted son

   Shall rend the vaulted skies,

   When, shouting, grace, the blood-wash'd throng

   Shall see the Top Stone rise.

   The Rev. George Wyard, of Deptford, offered prayer.

   The REV. C. H. Spurgeon in opening the proceedings said, we have met
   together beneath this roof already to set forth most of those truths in
   which consists the peculiarity of this Church. Last evening we
   endeavoured to show to the world, that we heartily recognised the
   essential union of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And now, this
   afternoon and evening, it is our intention, through the lips of our
   brethren, to set forth those things which are verily received among us,
   and especially those great points which have been so often attacked,
   but which are still upheld and maintained,--truths which we have proved
   in our experience to be full of grace and truth. My only business upon
   this occasion is to introduce the brethren who shall address you, and I
   shall do so as briefly as possible, making what I shall say a preface
   to their remarks.

   The controversy which has been carried on between the Calvinist and the
   Arminian is exceedingly important, but it does not so involve the vital
   point of personal godliness as to make eternal life depend upon our
   holding either system of theology. Between the Protestant and the
   Papist there is a controversy of such a character, that he who is saved
   on the one side by faith in Jesus, dare not allow that his opponent on
   the opposite side can be saved while depending on his own works. There
   the controversy is for life or death, because it hinges mainly upon the
   doctrine of justification by faith, which Luther so properly called the
   test doctrine, by which a Church either stands or falls. The
   controversy again between the believer in Christ and the Socinian, is
   one which affects a vital point. If the Socinian be right, we are most
   frightfully in error; we are, in fact, idolaters, and how dwelleth
   eternal life in us? and if we be right, our largest charity will not
   permit us to imagine that a man can enter heaven who does not believe
   the real divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are other
   controversies which thus cut at the very core, and touch the very
   essence of the whole subject. But, I think we are free to admit, that
   while John Wesley, for instance, in modern times zealously defended
   Arminianism, and on the other hand, George Whitfield with equal fervour
   fought for Calvinism, we should not be prepared either of us, on either
   side of the question, to deny the vital godliness of either the one or
   the other. We cannot shut our eyes to what we believe to be the gross
   mistakes of our opponents, and should think ourselves unworthy of the
   name of honest men, if we could admit that they are right in all things
   and ourselves right too. An honest man has an intellect which does not
   permit him to believe that "yes" and "no" can both subsist at the same
   hour and both be true. I cannot say, "It is," and my brother point
   blank say, "It is not," and yet both of us be right on that point. We
   are willing to admit, in fact, we dare not do otherwise, that opinion
   upon this controversy does not determine the future of even the present
   state of any man; but still, we think it to be so important, that in
   maintaining our views, we advance with all courage and fervency if
   spirit, believing that we are doing God's work and upholding most
   important truth. It may not be misunderstood, we only use the term for
   shortness. That doctrine which is called "Calvinism" did not spring
   from Calvin; we believe that it sprang from the great founder of all
   truth. Perhaps Calvin himself derived it mainly from the writings of
   Augustine. Augustine obtained his views, without doubt, through the
   Spirit of God, from the diligent study of the writings of Paul, and
   Paul received them of the Holy Ghost, from Jesus Christ the great
   founder of the Christian dispensation. We use the term then, not
   because we impute any extraordinary importance to Calvin's having
   taught these doctrines. We would be just as willing to call them by any
   other name, if we could find one which would be better understood, and
   which on the whole would be as consistent with fact. And then again,
   this afternoon, we shall have very likely to speak of Arminians, and by
   that, we would not for a moment insinuate that all who are in
   membership with the Arminian body, hold those particular views. There
   are Calvinists in connection with Calvinistic Churches, who are not
   Calvinistic, bearing the name but discarding the system. There are, on
   the other hand, not a few in the Methodist Churches, who, in most
   points perfectly agree with us, and I believe that if the matter came
   to be thoroughly sifted, it would be found that we are more agreed in
   our private opinions than in our public confessions, and our devotional
   religion is more uniform than our theology. For instance, Mr. Wesley's
   hymn-book, which may be looked upon as being the standard of his
   divinity, has in it upon some topics higher Calvinism than many books
   used by ourselves. I have been exceedingly struck with the very
   forcible expressions there used, some of which I might have hesitated
   to employ myself. I shall ask your attention while I quote verses from
   the hymns of Mr. Wesley, which we can all endorse as fully and plainly
   in harmony with the doctrines of grace, far more so than the preaching
   of some modern Calvinists. I do this because our low-doctrine Baptists
   and Morisonians ought to be aware of the vast difference between
   themselves and the Evangelical Arminians.

   HYMN 131, verses 1, 2, 3.

   "Lord, I despair myself to heal:

   I see my sin, but cannot feel;

   I cannot, till thy Spirit blow,

   And bid the obedient waters flow.

   'Tis thine a heart of flesh to give;

   Thy gifts I only can receive:

   Here, then, to thee I all resign;

   To draw, redeem, and seal,--is thine.

   With simple faith on thee I call,

   My Light, my Life, my Lord, my all:

   I wait the moving of the pool;

   I wait the word that speaks me whole."

   HYMN 133, verse 4.

   "Thy golden sceptre from above

   Reach forth; lo! my whole heart I bow;

   Say to my soul, Thou art my love;

   My chosen midst ten thousand, thou."

   This is very like election.

   HYMN 136, verses 8, 9, 10.

   "I cannot rest, till in thy blood

   I full redemption have:

   But thou, through whom I come to God,

   Canst to the utmost save.

   From sin, the guilt, the power, the pain,

   Thou wilt redeem my soul:

   Lord, I believe, and not in vain;

   My faith shall make me whole.

   I too, with thee, shall walk in white;

   With all thy saints shall prove,

   What is the length, and breadth, and height,

   And depth of perfect love."

   Brethren, is not this somewhat like final perseverance? and what is
   meant by the next quotation, if people of God can perish at all?

   HYMN 138, verses 6, 7.

   "Who, who shall in thy presence stand,

   And match Omnipotence?

   Ungrasp the hold of thy right hand,

   Or pluck the sinner thence?

   Sworn to destroy, let earth assail;

   Nearer to save thou art:

   Stronger than all the powers of hell,

   And greater than my heart."

   The following is remarkably strong, especially in the expression
   "force." I give it in full:--

   HYMN 158

   "O my God, what must I do?

   Thou alone the way canst show;

   Thou canst save me in this hour;

   I have neither will nor power:

   God, if over all thou art,

   Greater than my sinful heart,

   All thy power on me be shown,

   Take away the heart of stone.

   Take away my darling sin,

   Make me willing to be clean;

   Make me willing to receive

   All thy goodness waits to give.

   Force me, Lord, with all to part;

   Tear these idols from my heart;

   Now thy love almighty show,

   Make even me a creature new.

   Jesus, mighty to renew,

   Work in me to will and do;

   Turn my nature's rapid tide,

   Stem the torrent of my pride;

   Stop the whirlwind of my will;

   Speak, and bid the sun stand still;

   Now thy love almighty show,

   Make even me a creature new.

   Arm of God, thy strength put on;

   Bow the heavens, and come down;

   All my unbelief o'erthrow;

   Lay th' aspiring mountain low:

   Conquer thy worst foe in me,

   Get thyself the victory;

   Save the vilest of the race;

   Force me to be saved by grace."

   HYMN 206, verses 1, 2.

   "What am I, O thou glorious God!

   And what my father's house to thee,

   That thou such mercies hast bestow'd

   On me, the vilest reptile, me!

   I take the blessing from above,

   And wonder at the boundless love.

   Me in my blood the love pass'd by,

   And stopp'd, my ruin to retrieve;

   Wept o'er my soul thy pitying eye;

   Thy bowels yearn'd, and sounded, "Live!"

   Dying, I heard the welcome sound,

   And pardon in thy mercy found."

   Nor are these all, for such good things as these abound, and they
   constrain me to say, that in attacking Arminianism we have no hostility
   towards the men who bear the name rather than the nature of that error,
   and we are opposed not to any body of men, but to the notions which
   they have espoused.

   And now, having made these remarks upon terms used, we must observe
   that there is nothing upon which men need to be more instructed than
   upon the question of what Calvinism really is. The most infamous
   allegations have been brought against us, and sometime, I must fear, by
   men who knew them to be utterly untrue; and, to this day, there are
   many of our opponents, who, when they run short of matter, invent and
   make for themselves a man of straw, call that John Calvin, and then
   shoot all their arrows at it. We are not come here to defend your man
   of straw--shoot at it or burn it as you will, and, if it suit your
   convenience, still oppose doctrines which were never taught, and rail
   at fictions which, save in your own brain, were never in existence. We
   come here to state what our views really are, and we trust that any who
   do not agree with us will do us the justice of not misrepresenting us.
   If they can disprove our doctrines, let them state them fairly and then
   overthrow them, but why should they first caricature our opinions and
   then afterwards attempt to put them down? Among the gross falsehoods
   which have been uttered against the Calvinists proper, is the wicked
   calumny that we hold the damnation of little infants. A baser lie was
   never uttered. There may have existed somewhere, in some corner of the
   earth, a miscreant who would dare to say that there were infants in
   hell, but I have never met with him, nor have I met with a man who ever
   saw such a person. We say, with regard to infants, Scripture saith but
   little, and, therefore, where Scripture is confessedly scant, it is for
   no man to determine dogmatically. But I think I speak for the entire
   body, or certainly with exceedingly few exceptions, and those unknown
   to me, when I say, we hold that all infants are elect of God and are
   therefore saved, and we look to this as being the means by which Christ
   shall see of the travail of his soul to a great degree, and we do
   sometimes hope that thus the multitude of the saved shall be made to
   exceed the multitude of the lost. Whatever views our friends may hold
   upon the point, they are not necessarily connected with Calvinistic
   doctrine. I believe that the Lord Jesus, who said, "Of such is the
   kingdom of heaven," doth daily and constantly receive into his loving
   arms those tender ones who are only shown, and then snatched away to
   heaven. Our hymns are no ill witness to our faith on this point, and
   one of them runs thus:

   "Millions of infant souls compose

   The family above."

   "Toplady, one of the keenest of Calvinists, was of this number. "In my
   remarks," says he, "on Dr. Nowell, I testified my firm belief that the
   souls of all departed infants are with God in glory; that in the decree
   of predestination to life, God hath included all whom he decreed to
   take away in infancy, and that the decree of reprobation hath nothing
   to do with them." Nay, he proceeds farther, and asks, with reason, how
   the anti-Calvinistic system of conditional salvation and election, or
   good works foreseen, will suit with the salvation of infants? It is
   plain that Arminians and Pelagians must introduce a new principle of
   election; and in so far as the salvation of infants is concerned,
   become Calvinists. Is it not an argument in behalf of Calvinism, that
   its principle is uniform throughout, and that no change is needed on
   the ground on which man is saved, whether young or old? John Newton, of
   London, the friend of Cowper, noted for his Calvinism, holds that the
   children in heaven exceed its adult inhabitants in all their
   multitudinous array. Gill, a very champion of Calvinism, held the
   doctrine, that all dying in infancy are saved. An intelligent modern
   writer, (Dr. Russell, of Dundee,) also a Calvinist, maintains the same
   views; and when it is considered that nearly one-half of the human race
   die in early years, it is easy to see what a vast accession must be
   daily and hourly making to the blessed population of heaven."

   A more common charge, brought by more decent people,--for I must say
   that the last charge is never brought, except by disreputable
   persons,--a more common charge is, that we hold clear fatalism. Now,
   there may be Calvinists who are fatalists, but Calvinism and fatalism
   are two distinct things. Do not most Christians hold the doctrine of
   the providence of God? Do not all Christians, do not all believers in a
   God hold the doctrine of his foreknowledge? All the difficulties which
   are laid against the doctrine of predestination might, with equal
   force, be laid against that of Divine foreknowledge. We believe that
   God hath predestinated all things from the beginning, but there is a
   difference between the predestination of an intelligent, all-wise,
   all-bounteous God, and that blind fatalism which simple says, "It is
   because it is to be." Between the predestination of Scripture and the
   fate of the Koran, every sensible man must perceive a difference of the
   most essential character. We do not deny that the thing is so ordained
   that it must be, but why is it to be, but that the Father, God, whose
   name is love, ordained it; not because of any necessity in
   circumstances that such and such a thing should take place. Though the
   wheels of providence revolve with rigid exactness, yet not without
   purpose and wisdom. The wheels are full of eyes, and everything
   ordained is so ordained that it shall conduce to the grandest of all
   ends, the glory of God, and the next to that the good of his creatures.
   But we are next met by some who tell us that we preach the wicked and
   horrible doctrine of sovereign and unmerited reprobation. "Oh," say
   they, "you teach that men are damned because God made them to be
   damned, and that they go to hell, not because of sin, not because of
   unbelief, but because of some dark decree with which God has stamped
   their destiny." Brethren, this is an unfair charge again. Election does
   not involve reprobation. There may be some who hold unconditional
   reprobation. I stand not here as their defender, let them defend
   themselves as best they can; I hold God's election, but I testify just
   as clearly that if any man be lost he is lost for sin; and this has
   been the uniform statement of Calvinistic ministers. I might refer you
   to our standards, such as "The Westminster Assembly's Catechism," and
   to all our Confession, for they all distinctly state that man is lost
   for sin, and that there is no punishment put on any man except that
   which he richly and righteously deserves. If any of you have ever
   uttered that libel against us, do it not again, for we are as guiltless
   of that as you are yourselves. I am speaking personally--and I think in
   this I would command the suffrages of my brethren--I do know that the
   appointment of God extendeth to all things; but I stand not in this
   pulpit, nor in any other, to lay the damnation of any man anywhere but
   upon himself. If he be lost, damnation is all of man; but, if he be
   saved, still salvation is all of God. To state this important point yet
   more clearly and explicitly, I shall quote at large from an able
   Presbyterian divine:

   "The pious Methodist is taught that the Calvinist represents God as
   creating men in order to destroy them. He is taught that Calvinists
   hold that men are lost, not because they sin, but because they are
   nonelected. Believing this to be a true statement, it is not wonderful
   that the Methodist stops short, and declares himself, if not an
   Arminian, at least an AntiPredestinarian. But no statement can be more
   scandalously untrue. It is the uniform doctrine of Calvinism, that God
   creates all for his own glory; that he is infinitely righteous and
   benignant, and that where men perish it is only for their sins.

   In speaking of suffering, whether in this world or in the world to
   come; whether it respects angels or men, the Westminster standards
   (which may be considered as the most authoritative modern statement of
   the system) invariably connect the punishment with previous sin, and
   sin only. "As for those wicked and ungodly men whom God as a righteous
   judge FOR FORMER SINS doth blind and harden, from them he not only
   withholdeth his grace, whereby they might have been enlightened in
   their understandings and wrought upon in their hearts, but sometimes
   also with draweth the gifts which they had, and exposeth them to such
   objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin; and withal gives
   them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the world, and the
   power of Satan, whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves
   even under those means which God useth for the softening of others."
   The Larger Catechism, speaking of the unsaved among angels and men,
   says, "God according to his Sovereign power and the unsearchable
   counsel of his own will (whereby he extendeth or withholdeth favour as
   he pleaseth) hath passed by and fore-ordained the rest to dishonour and
   wrath, to be for their sin inflicted, to the praise of the glory of his
   justice." Again, "the end of God appointing this day (of the last
   judgment) is for the manifestation of the glory of his mercy, in the
   eternal salvation of the elect, and of his justice in the damnation of
   the reprobate who are wicked and disobedient." This is no more than
   what the Methodist and all other Evangelical bodies acknowledge--that
   where men perish it is in consequence of their sin. If it be asked, why
   sin which destroys, is permitted to enter the world, that is a question
   which bears not only on the Calvinist, but equally on all other
   parties. They are as much concerned and bound to answer it as he; nay,
   the question in not confined to Christians. All who believe in the
   existence of God--in his righteous character and perfect providence,
   are equally under obligation to answer it. Whatever may be the reply of
   others, that of the Calvinist may be regarded as given in the statement
   of the Confession of Faith, which declares that God's providence
   extendeth itself even to the first fall, and other sins of angels and
   men, &c.; "yet so as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the
   creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither
   is nor can be the author or approver of sin." It is difficult to see
   what more could be said upon the subject; and if such be the undoubted
   sentiments of Calvinists, then what misrepresentation can be more gross
   than that which describes them as holding that sinners perish
   irrespective of their sin, or that God is the author of their sin? What
   is the declaration of Calvin? "Every soul departs (at death) to that
   place which it has prepared for itself while in this world."

   It is hard to be charged with holding as sacred truth what one abhors
   as horrid blasphemy, and yet this is the treatment which has been
   perseveringly meted out to Calvinists in spite of the most solemn and
   indignant disclaimers. Against nothing have they more stoutly protested
   than the thought that the infinitely holy, and righteous, and amiable
   Jehovah is the author of sin; and yet how often do the supporters of
   rival systems charge them with this as an article of faith?

   A yet further charge against us is, that we dare not preach the gospel
   to the unregenerate, that, in fact, our theology is so narrow and
   cramped that we cannot preach to sinners. Gentlemen, if you dare to say
   this, I would take you to any library in the world where the old
   Puritan fathers are stored up, and I would let you take down any one
   volume and tell me if you ever read more telling exhortations and
   addresses to sinners in any of your own books. Did not Bunyan plead
   with sinners, and whoever classed him with any but the Calvinist? Did
   not Charnock, Goodwin, and Howe agonise for souls, and what were they
   but Calvinist? Did not Jonathan Edwards preach to sinners, and who more
   clear and explicit on these doctrinal matters. The works of our
   innumerable divines teem with passionate appeals to the unconverted.
   Oh, sirs, if I should begin the list, time should fail me. It is an
   indisputable fact that we have laboured more than they all for the
   winning of souls. Was George Whitfield any the less seraphic? Did his
   eyes weep the fewer tears or his bowels move with the less compassion
   because he believed in God's electing love and preached the sovereignty
   of the Most High? It is an unfounded calumny. Our souls are not stony;
   our bowels are not withdrawn the compassion which we ought to feel for
   our fellowmen; we can hold all our views firmly, and yet can weep as
   Christ did over a Jerusalem which was certainly to be destroyed. Again,
   I must say, I am not defending certain brethren who have exaggerated
   Calvinism. I speak of Calvinism proper, not that which has run to seed,
   and outgrown its beauty and verdure. I speak of it as I find it in
   Calvin's Institutes, and especially in his Expositions. I have read
   them carefully. I take not my views of Calvinism from common repute but
   from his books. Nor do I, in this speaking, even vindicate Calvinism as
   if I cared for the name, but I mean that glorious system which teaches
   that salvation is of grace from first to last. And again, then, I say
   it is an utterly unfounded charge that we dare not preach to sinners.

   And then further, that I may clear up these points and leave the less
   rubbish for my brethren to wheel away, we have sometimes heard it said,
   but those who say it ought to go to school to read the first book of
   history, that we who hold Calvinistic views are the enemies of
   revivals. Why, sirs, in the history of the Church, with but few
   exceptions, you could not find a revival at all that was not produced
   by the orthodox faith. What was the great work which was done by
   Augustine, when the Church suddenly woke up from the pestiferous and
   deadly sleep into which Pelagian doctrine had cast it? What was the
   Reformation itself but the waking up of men's minds to those old
   truths? However far modern Lutherans may have turned aside from their
   ancient doctrines, and I must confess some of them would not agree with
   what I now say, yet, at any rate, Luther and Calvin had no dispute
   about Predestination. Their views were identical, and Luther, "On the
   bondage of the will," is as strong a book upon the free grace of God as
   Calvin himself could have written. Hear that great thunderer while he
   cries in that book, "Let the Christian reader know then, that God
   foresees nothing in a contingent manner; but that he foresees,
   proposes, and acts, from his eternal and unchangeable will. This is the
   thunder stroke which breaks and overturns Free Will." Need I mention to
   you better names than Huss, Jerome of Prague, Farrel, John Knox,
   Wickliffe, Wishart, and Bradford? Need I do more than say that these
   held the same views, and that in their day anything like an Arminian
   revival was utterly unheard of and undreamed of. And then, to come to
   more modern times, there is the great exception, that wondrous revival
   under Mr. Wesley, in which the Wesleyan Methodists had so large a
   share; but permit me to say, that the strength of the doctrine of
   Wesleyan Methodism lay in its Calvinism. The great body of the
   Methodists disclaimed Palagianism, in whole and in part. They contended
   for man's entire depravity, the necessity of the direct agency of the
   Holy Spirit, and that the first step in the change proceeds not from
   the sinner, but from God. They denied at the time that they were
   Pelagians. Does not the Methodist hold as firmly as ever we do, that
   man is saved by the operation of the holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost
   alone? And are not many of Mr. Wesley's sermons full of that great
   truth, that the Holy Ghost is necessary to regeneration? Whatever
   mistakes he may have made, he continually preached the absolute
   necessity of the new birth by the Holy Ghost, and there are some other
   points of exceedingly close agreement; for instance, even that of human
   inability. It matters not how some may abuse us, when we say man could
   not of himself repent or believe; yet, the old Arminian standards said
   the same. True, they affirm that God has given grace to every man, but
   they do not dispute the fact, that apart from that grace there was no
   ability in man to do that which was good in his own salvation. And
   then, let me say, if you turn to the continent of America, how gross
   the falsehood, that Calvinistic doctrine is unfavourable to revivals.
   Look at that wondrous shaking under Jonathan Edwards, and others which
   we might quote. Or turn to Scotland--what shall we say of M'Cheyne?
   What shall we say of those renowned Calvinists, Dr. Chalmers, Dr.
   Wardlow, and before them Livingstone, Haldane, Erskine, and the like?
   What shall we say of the men of their school, but that, while they held
   and preached unflinchingly the great truths which we would propound
   to-day, yet God owned their word, and multitudes were saved. And if it
   were not perhaps too much like boasting of one's own work under God, I
   might say, personally I have never found the preaching of these
   doctrines lull this Church to sleep, but ever while they have loved to
   maintain these truths, they have agonised for the souls of men, and the
   1600 or more of whom I have myself baptized, upon profession of their
   faith, are living testimonies that these old truths in modern times
   have not lost their power to promote a revival of religion.

   I have thus cleared away these allegations at the outset; I shall now
   need a few minutes more to say, with regard to the Calvinistic system,
   that there are some things to be said in its favour, to which of course
   I attach but little comparative importance, but they ought not to be
   ignored. It is a fact that the system of doctrines called the
   Calvinistic, is so exceedingly simple and so readily learned, that as a
   system of Divinity it is more easily taught and more easily grasped by
   unlettered minds than any other. The poor have the Gospel preached to
   them in a style which assists their memories and commends itself to
   their judgments. It is a system which was practically acknowledged an
   high philosophic grounds by such men as Bacon, Leibnitz, and Newton,
   and yet it can charm the soul of a child and expand the intellect of a
   peasant. And then it has another virtue. I take it that the last is no
   mean one, but it has another--that when it is preached there is a
   something in it which excites thought. A man may hear sermons upon the
   other theory which shall glance over him as the swallow's wing gently
   sweeps the brook, but these old doctrines either make a man so angry
   that he goes home and cannot sleep for very hatred, or else they bring
   him down into lowliness of thought, feeling the immensity of the things
   which he has heard. Either way it excites and stirs him up not
   temporarily, but in a most lasting manner. These doctrines haunt him,
   he kicks against the pricks, and full often the word forces a way into
   his soul. And I think this is no small thing for any doctrine to do, in
   an age given to slumber, and with human hearts so indifferent to the
   truth of God. I know that many men have gained more good by being made
   angry under a sermon than by being pleased by it, for being angry they
   have turned the truth over and over again, and at last the truth has
   burned its way right into their hearts. They have played with
   edge-tools, but they have cut themselves at last.

   It has this singular virtue also--it is so coherent in all its parts.
   You cannot vanquish a Calvinist. You may think you can, but you cannot.
   The stones of the great doctrines so fit into each other, that the more
   pressure there is applied to remove them the more strenuously do they
   adhere. And you may mark, that you cannot receive one of these
   doctrines without believing all. Hold for instance that man is utterly
   depraved, and you draw the inference then that certainly if God has
   such a creature to deal with salvation must come from God alone, and if
   from him, the offended one, to an offending creature, then he has a
   right to give or withhold his mercy as he wills; you are this forced
   upon election, and when you have gotten that you have all: the others
   must follow. Some by putting the strain upon their judgments may manage
   to hold two or three points and not the rest, but sound logic I take it
   requires a man to hold the whole or reject the whole; the doctrines
   stand like soldiers in a square, presenting on every side a line of
   defence which it is hazardous to attack, but easy to maintain. And mark
   you, in these times when error is so rife and neology strives to be so
   rampant, it is no little thing to put into the hands of a young man a
   weapon which can slay his foe, which he can easily learn to handle,
   which he may grasp tenaciously, wield readily, and carry without
   fatigue; a weapon, I may add, which no rust can corrode and no blows
   can break, trenchant, and well annealed, a true Jerusalem blade of a
   temper fit for deeds of renown. The coherency of the parts, though it
   be of course but a trifle in comparison with other things, is not
   unimportant. And then, I add,--but this is the point my brethren will
   take up--it has this excellency, that it is scriptural, and that it is
   consistent with the experience of believers. Men generally grow more
   Calvinistic as they advance in years. Is not that a sign that the
   doctrine is right. As they are growing riper for heaven, as they are
   getting nearer to the rest that remaineth for the people of God, the
   soul longs to feed on the finest of the wheat, and abhors chaff and
   husks. And then, I add--and, in so doing, I would refute a calumny that
   has sometimes been urged,--this glorious truth has this excellency,
   that it produces the holiest of men. We can look back through all our
   annals, and say, to those who oppose us, you can mention no names of
   men more holy, more devoted, more loving, more generous than those
   which we can mention. The saints of our calendar, though uncanonized by
   Rome, rank first in the book of life. The names of Puritan needs only
   to be heard to constrain our reverence. Holiness had reached a height
   among them which is rare indeed, and well it might for they loved and
   lived the truth. And if you say that our doctrine is inimical to human
   liberty, we point you to Oliver Cromwell and to his brave Ironsides,
   Calvinists to a man. If you say, it leads to inaction, we point you to
   the Pilgrim Fathers and the wildernesses they subdued. We can put our
   finger upon every spot of land, the wide world o'er, and say, "Here was
   something done by a man who believed in God's decrees; and, inasmuch as
   he did this, it is proof it did not make him inactive, it did not lull
   him to sloth."

   The better way, however of proving this point is for each of us who
   hold these truths, to be more prayerful, more watchful, more holy, more
   active than we have ever been before, and by so doing, we shall put to
   silence the gainsaying of foolish men. A living argument, is an
   argument which tells upon every man; we cannot deny what we see and
   feel. Be it ours, if aspersed and calumniated, to disprove it by a
   blameless life, and it shall yet come to pass, that our Church and its
   sentiments too shall come forth "Fair as the moon, clear as the sun,
   and terrible as an army with banners."

                                    ELECTION

   BY THE

Rev. JOHN BLOOMFIELD,

   OF MEARD'S COURT, SOHO.

   My dear Christian friends, those who best know my cast of mind and
   ministry will readily believe me when I say I would rather have spoken
   on the majesty and mystery of the person of Christ, or I would rather
   have spoken on the perfection and intrinsic worth of the mediation of
   Christ, or on the great attraction of Christ as a gracious and
   omnipotent Saviour, than on the subject that has been assigned to me.
   The subject that has been given me is that of the doctrine of eternal
   and personal election; I have to prove that the doctrine of election is
   a scriptural truth; and, at the commencement of my few remarks on this
   profound subject, allow me to say that I hold and firmly believe the
   Bible to be revelation from God, that the revelations of God's mind are
   essentially and infallibly true, that its ancient historical records
   are of the greatest value, that its prophecies are to be studied and to
   be venerated, that the doctrines of the Bible are in harmony with the
   majesty, wisdom, holiness and goodness of their Author. Now it should
   not be a point with us whether a doctrine is like or disliked, whether
   it is believed or disbelieved, but whether it is a doctrine according
   to godliness, whether it is the doctrine of the Word of God. Truth has
   never been popular in this world: Jesus Christ when on earth was by no
   means popular. Truth never will be popular in this world while men are
   influenced by sin, and enmity against God. Perhaps no doctrine has met
   with such bitter opposition as the doctrine on which I have to speak.
   It has been fearfully misunderstood for a want of prayerful and
   independent study of the Holy Scriptures, or perhaps from the miserable
   misrepresentations that have been given of it by some public men. It is
   a truth which has been bitterly opposed; we may oppose a doctrine which
   we cannot with all our puny efforts depose. We may dispute in our
   blindness and enmity a doctrine which we cannot refute. We believe
   firmly that the doctrine of election to salvation in Jesus Christ is a
   doctrine of the Scriptures. We believe in sovereign love, but not in
   sovereign hatred. We believe in salvation by the grace of God without
   works, but not in damnation without sin. We believe firmly in election
   to salvation by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but we discard from our
   creed the miserable, wretched doctrine of reprobation without sin. Is
   the doctrine of election a Scriptural doctrine? Can we prove it from
   the word of God? It is one thing to believe it to be a doctrine of
   Divine revelation, and it is another thing to have the sanctifying
   grace and power of it in our hearts. The election we read of in the
   Scriptures is inseparably connected with holiness, and we believe in no
   election to salvation without faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He who
   has appointed salvation as an end has appointed the methods by which
   that end shall be accomplished. Perhaps no man possessed of his
   reasoning powers questions the truth that God has predestinated harvest
   as long as this world shall continue. But without sowing of seed,
   without the agricultural labour that is given to the land, we should
   have no harvest, because he who predestinated harvest predestinated the
   sowing of the seed as much. And God has appointed us not unto wrath,
   but to obtain salvation through Jesus Christ. I shall endeavour now to
   prove, from the quotation of a few Scriptures, that the doctrine of
   eternal and personal election is a Scriptural and Divine truth. Jesus
   Christ himself was said to be "chosen of God and precious." He is God's
   elect, for Jehovah himself says, "Behold my servant, mine elect in whom
   my soul delighteth." Angels that continue in their unfallen dignity and
   felicity are termed elect angels. Elect angels are employed as
   ministering spirits to those that shall be heirs of salvation. Elect
   angels will be employed in the gathering of God's elect into the
   heavenly world. The Jewish nation was a chosen nation, and as such they
   were privileged with the oracles of God, and stood as a representative
   people. They were chosen not because of their personal worth, they were
   chosen not because of their goodness, but they were chosen to be a
   separated people, a people that should be God's peculiar treasure, and
   should be holiness unto the Lord; of them it was said, "For thou art a
   holy people unto the Lord thy God--the Lord hath chosen thee to be a
   special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of
   the earth." Jesus Christ himself, in the 24th chapter of Matthew,
   speaks of certain days being shortened because of God's elect. The
   Psalmist craved to be remembered with the favour that God was pleased
   to bear towards his people, that he might see the good of his chosen.
   And Jesus Christ himself said to his disciples, "Ye have not chose me,
   but I have chosen you." And the Apostle Paul very often in his writings
   has brought out this great and profound doctrine. He says, "There is a
   remnant according to the election of grace." He speaks to the Ephesian
   Church, and says, "Ye are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the
   world that ye may be holy, and that ye may stand before God without
   blame in love." God hath in the exercise of his sovereignty chosen a
   people in Christ to salvation before time began--it was before the
   foundation of the world, here is its antiquity--it is in Christ
   according to the riches of God's grace, and it is to holiness and
   salvation. He, in his addresses to the Church at Thessalonica, said he
   could but thank God "that they were chosen to salvation through
   sanctification of the Spirit and the belief of the truth." Peter speaks
   of the people of God as a chosen generation and a royal priesthood. He
   wrote to the elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.
   More Scriptures might be given upon this subject, but I think they
   would be unnecessary. If we would only give our attention to the simple
   teachings of the Spirit of God by the prophets, by the Psalmist, by
   Christ, and by the Apostles, we could not have one moment's doubt as to
   the doctrine of Divine election being a Scriptural truth.

   My second point is to show that God has chosen his people to the
   highest possible relation to himself, and to the enjoyment of the most
   precious blessings in Christ. All spiritual relations stand in Christ;
   all spiritual relations originated in God's grace; and all spiritual
   relations are standing manifestations of the sovereignty of God's
   favour and of the immutability of God's love. If we are the sons of
   God, what has constituted us the sons of God? We are sons of God by
   God's sovereign love; it is by an act of adoption, it is by an act of
   Jehovah's will, that we are constituted his sons and his daughters.
   Adoption is relation established to which we have no natural right;
   adoption is one thing, and the spirit of adoption is another. Now
   Christ is God's first-born, and all the family are chose in him; Christ
   is the glorious Head of the Church, and all the family of God are
   chosen members in him; Christ is the everlasting Priest of his Church,
   and he represents all the family, just as the Jewish priest represented
   by his breast-plate and in the fulfilment of his office the whole of
   the Jewish nation. All relation to God then stands in Christ,
   originated in the sovereignty of Jehovah's will, and is expressive of
   the infinite love of Jehovah's heart. We are chose to salvation--that
   is the end; the means by which that end is accomplished is by the
   "sanctification of the Spirit, and the belief of the truth." We are
   chose to usefulness; every Christian should seek to be useful; every
   Christian in his right mind is a witness for God; every Christian, as
   he is influenced by Christian principles, bears testimony to the
   dignity of the relation that God has established, and bears testimony
   to the holiness of the principles by which his heart is influenced;
   every Christian should be a living gospel, his life should bear
   testimony to the holiness of that Christianity that he studies and is
   influenced by. We are chosen to eternal life, but it is eternal life
   through Christ. Without faith there is no evidence of interest in
   Christ, without faith there is no enjoyment of salvation by Christ.
   Without faith, a man has no evidence of interest in the Lamb's Book of
   Life; but he who believes in Christ, however weak and trembling his
   faith has evidence in his own heart that his name is written in the
   Lamb's Book of Life; and his conduct corresponding with the holiness of
   the gospel, he carries in his life a witness to his interest in all the
   purposes of heaven, and in all the redemptive excellency of the Lord
   Jesus Christ. The great evidence of interest in election is holiness. A
   man to talk of believing in election, and going to heaven, because he
   is one of God's elect, and yet living in sin, and in enmity to God,
   this can never, never be. We are chosen unto salvation, it is said,
   "through sanctification of the Spirit and the belief of the truth;"
   and, without this sanctification of the Spirit and the belief of the
   truth, there is no holiness; and, "without holiness, no man can see the
   Lord." Without holiness, no man would be capable of serving God in
   heaven; without holiness, no man would be capable of beholding the
   glories of Jesus Christ there; without holiness, no man can serve God
   with power and success here; without holiness, no man can have
   fellowship with God, and so have fellowship with us, for truly our
   fellowship is with the Father and with his son Jesus Christ. It is only
   by practical life of consistency with faith in Christ Jesus, that we
   have evidence of our interest in election. We are chosen, not because
   we are holy, but that we might be holy; we are chosen, not because we
   are good, but that by the principles of the everlasting Gospel, we
   might become so; we are chosen, not because we are saved, but that we
   may be saved through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I hold, dear
   friends, that the great doctrine of election should be preached. It
   should be preached, because it is part of a grand system of truth.
   Truth is not one doctrine, but it is a grand system, and you cannot
   leave out one part without impairing its beauty, nor leave out one part
   of this system without weakening its strength. The beauty of truth lies
   in its perfection, and in that harmony of its connection; the strength
   of truth lies in the unity of its parts, and it is like gold dust--it
   is all precious. If Election be not a truth inspired by the Spirit of
   the living God--if it be not a truth proclaimed by the prophets that
   were inspired--if it be not a truth published by the Apostles--if it be
   not a truth found in the teachings of the word of God, let us never say
   one word about it; but if it was truth in the days of the Apostles,
   then it is no less a truth now. What the Apostles preached, I hold, we
   ought to preach in the spirit of love, in the spirit of faith, in the
   spirit of meekness, entirely depending on the power of the Holy Spirit
   to give us success in the conversion of immortal souls. One moment
   longer, and I have done. There is nothing in the doctrine of election
   that is discouraging to a penitent, seeking sinner. There is everything
   in the Gospel to welcome the returning prodigal to his Father's house;
   there is everything to meet the necessities of an awakened conscience;
   there is everything in the Gospel to satisfy the longing of a penitent
   soul. I know some may say, "I fear, Sir, I shall not be saved because I
   am not one of God's elect." Art thou a sinner? art thou a penitent
   sinner? art thou a seeking sinner? If thou art a seeking, penitent
   sinner, you cannot imagine how welcome you are to the provisions of
   infinite love. Every truth in the Gospel is open to you; every promise
   in the Gospel is open to you; every invitation in Scripture speaks to
   you. If thou art a sinner seeking mercy, let this cheer thy heart--that
   God delighteth in mercy. If thou art seeking salvation, Jesus is a
   willing and an able Saviour, and he has said, "All that the Father
   giveth to me shall come to me, and him that cometh I will in no wise
   cast out." There is nothing, dear friends, in the doctrine of election
   as it stands in the Scriptures that should discourage any penitent in
   seeking after mercy through Jesus Christ. I know, in the miserable
   misrepresentation of this great and glorious truth, men might well be
   discouraged from seeking mercy through the Saviour. But see it in its
   Scriptural connection; see it in the simplicity of it as it is put
   before us by the great Apostles; see it in the teachings of the Saviour
   himself, and there is nothing in it but that which welcomes a penitent
   sinner. It is a great encouragement to a seeking soul. Does the farmer
   who sows his seed sow that seed with less or more encouragement because
   he knows that God has ordained that harvest shall be? He sows his seed
   with a heart brimfull with hope, because God has promised that a
   harvest shall be as long as the world continues. Only let the means be
   used according to the Holy Scriptures; only let the poor awakened,
   penitent sinner renounce everything but Christ and him crucified, mercy
   will roll into his troubled heart and fill his spirit with peace, and
   he shall come off more than conqueror, shouting, Victory through the
   blood of the Lamb--Victory, victory through Jesus Christ.

                                HUMAN DEPRAVITY

   BY THE

Rev. EVAN PROBERT,

   OF BRISTOL.

   My Christian friends, you are quite aware that the subject which is to
   engage our further attention this afternoon, is HUMAN DEPRAVITY--a
   subject about which there are different opinions, which I shall not
   attempt to examine at the present time, but I shall confine myself to
   the teachings of God's word, which is the only infallible rule of faith
   and practice, and from which we learn what man was when he came from
   the hands of his Maker, and what he is now as a fallen creature. It is
   explicitly declared by the sacred writers, that God made man upright,
   and therefore his condition was one of perfect innocence and high moral
   excellence. There was no tendency to evil in any part of his nature,
   nothing that deviated in the least from the rule of moral rectitude.
   Whatever his duty was, it was to him his invariable and delightful
   employment. But, alas! man in honour did not long continue. Through the
   insinuating wiles of the devil, our first parents were induced to
   violate the positive command of their Maker, the observance of which
   was the condition of their happiness, and, as punishment for their
   transgression, they were driven out of Paradise, and became liable to
   be cut off by the sentence of death, and consigned to everlasting
   misery; and, in consequence of our connection with Adam, as our federal
   head and representative, we became subject to the dreadful consequences
   of his fall. This is evident from the testimony of the Apostle Paul, in
   the fifth Chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. There we read, "By one
   man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so that death passed
   upon all men, for that all have sinned." And, again, "By the offence of
   one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, and by the
   disobedience of one, many were made sinners." It is evident from these
   passages that God viewed Adam in the covenant of works as the head and
   representative of his natural posterity, and consequently, when he fell
   we fell in him, and became subject to the tremendous consequences of
   his fall. Here it may be asked, what are the consequences of his fall?
   what were they to him, and what are they to us? To answer this
   question, we must ascertain what the Apostle means when he uses the
   words death, judgment, and condemnation. I think that he uses these
   words in opposition to the grace of God, to justification of life, and
   to the reign of the redeemed in life by Jesus Christ. These are the
   benefits which result from the grace of God through Christ, and which
   stand opposed to the evils which sin has introduced into our world;
   and, as it cannot be supposed that these benefits relate to temporal
   life, or solely to the resurrection of the body, it cannot be that the
   evils involved in the words, death, judgment, and condemnation, relate
   simply to temporal death, but they must be considered as including
   temporal, legal, and spiritual death.

   From the very hour that Adam transgressed, he became mortal,--the
   sentence of death was pronounced upon him, and the seeds of depravity
   were sown in his system; thus the fair and beautiful and glorious
   creature began to fade, wither, and die, and all his posterity became
   mortal in him, and have from that day to this come into the world
   dying. Whatever the case of man might have been if he had not sinned we
   cannot say. This however we know, that he would not have died; for
   death is the result of the federal failure of the father of our race.
   "Dust thou are," God said to him, "and unto dust shalt thou return."
   "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." "In Adam all
   died." So that it may be said to every one of Adam's sons and
   daughters, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

   But Adam by his transgression not only brought temporal death upon
   himself and his posterity, he also brought legal death. Having violated
   the law that was given him to observe, he became under the curse of
   that law, which involved not only temporal death and expulsion from
   Paradise, but an exposure to suffer the just demerits of his
   transgression; and, in consequence of our connection with him as our
   federal head, we are under the curse of the same law--"By one man's
   disobedience judgment came upon all men to condemnation;" and further,
   "By the offence of one many were made sinners." The very moment our
   progenitor transgressed, all his descendants became subject to the
   curse. The holy nature of God abhorred the apostate race; the curse of
   his holy and righteous law has ever rested upon that race; judgment has
   been given and recorded against us as a fallen world, in the court of
   Heaven, and unless it is reversed it must fall upon us with all its
   tremendous consequences.

   We are also, in consequence of Adam's transgression, become the
   subjects of spiritual death, which consists not merely in the
   deprivation of the principle of life; but in having become depraved
   creatures, all the faculties of our souls and members of our bodies are
   depraved, so that it may be said of us, as the prophet says of the
   Jewish nation, "The head is sick, the whole heart is faint; from the
   sole of the foot unto the head there is no soundness." What! no
   soundness in any part? nothing good in any part? nothing spiritually
   good? nothing if cherished and fostered that will not lead to God, to
   Heaven, and to happiness? Nothing whatever. Let no one mistake me. I do
   not mean to say for a single moment, that sin has destroyed any of the
   faculties of man's soul, for they are all there. They all exist as they
   did when they were produced; but I mean to say, that sin has deprived
   man of the principle of spiritual life, and made him a depraved and
   debased creature; and we believe that we can prove this from the word
   of God, as well as from observation.

   First,--From the conduct of little children. Children begin to sin very
   early in life. If there were any good in us, it would show itself in
   infancy, before good habits became corrupted, and evil principles were
   produced by our connection with the world. But do little children
   prefer good? Are they inclined to the good and the excellent? Do you
   see from the earliest period of their existence that they are desirous
   of good? On the contrary, I say, as soon as they begin to act, they
   prove by their action, that in them there is a depraved nature, from
   which they act. "Madness," says a wise man, "is bound up in the heart
   of a child," they go astray from the womb telling lies. But it may be
   said, in the way of objection, that this may arise from the
   unfavourable circumstance in which some children are placed. No doubt,
   unfavourable circumstances have a bad influence upon the minds of
   children; but it is not so with the whole race. Point out to me, one
   child who is disposed from infancy to seek that which is good, that
   which is holy. And surely, if the tendency of infants from their
   earliest history is to evil, it is a proof that it must arise from the
   evil propensities within them, which grow with their growth, and
   strengthen with their strength.

   Secondly,--We have further proof of human depravity from the aversion
   of sinners to come to Christ. They are invited to come, persuaded to
   come, and are assured that they shall find pardon, acceptance, and
   salvation. But they cannot be induced to come to him; and why will they
   not come? Is it because he is not willing to receive them, or because
   there is anything in him to prevent them? No, but it is because of the
   deep-rooted depravity in their hearts. The heart is averse to all that
   is good, and therefore rejects the Saviour and turns away from him.
   Hence he complained when in our world, "How often would I have gathered
   you, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would
   not." "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." What more
   needed to be added? Man turns away in proud disdain from all the
   blessings of the gospel, and the glories of heaven brought before him,
   and rushes on with steady purpose to damnation. "Light is come into the
   world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds
   are evil." Oh, to how many in this land may it be said, "They hate
   knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord; they would none of
   his counsel, they despised all his reproof."

   Thirdly,--We have further evidence of native depravity from the
   testimony of Scripture. In the first place, let me refer you to the
   fifth chapter of the Book of Genesis, and the third verse. There we
   read, that Adam, after he had lived one hundred and thirty years, begat
   a son in his own likeness after his image. Mind, the image in which
   Adam was created was the image of God, but that image he had lost
   before he begat Seth; therefore, the image in which Seth was born must
   have been the image of his progenitor, as a fallen and depraved
   creature. Let me refer you, in the second place, to the third chapter
   of the Gospel of John. "He that is born of the flesh," said the Saviour
   to Nicodemus, "is flesh, and he that is born of the Spirit is spirit."
   To be born of the flesh, according to the wisest interpretation of that
   passage, is to be born of a depraved nature; to be born of the Spirit
   is to be born of the Holy Spirit of God--which birth, the Saviour told
   Nicodemus he must experience before he could see the kingdom of God.
   And again, we have several passages in proof of this point. In the
   seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, at the fifth verse of
   that chapter, the Apostle says, "When we were in the flesh, the motions
   of sin by the law which worked in us to bring forth fruit unto death."
   "When we were in the flesh," means this--when we were in an unrenewed
   depraved state. In the same chapter he says, at the 14th verse, "We
   know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin;" as if
   he had said, "I am as a sinner, a depraved creature." In accordance
   with this the Apostle says, at the 18th verse of the same chapter, "In
   me--that is, in my flesh--there dwelleth no good thing." No love to
   God, no holy aspirations! No, none whatever. At the beginning of the
   eighth chapter the same Epistle, we find the terms "flesh" and "Spirit"
   placed in opposition to each other, "Who walk not after the flesh,'
   says the Apostle, describing Christians, "but after the Spirit." To be
   in the flesh is to be in a depraved state, to be in the Spirit is to be
   a partaker of his grace; to walk after the flesh is to walk after the
   dictates of corrupt principles and propensities, to walk after the
   Spirit is to be governed by spiritual principles and by the Holy Spirit
   of God; and the Apostle, in writing to the Galatians, says to them,
   "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh."
   These passages, I think, prove beyond all contradiction, that man as a
   fallen creature, is a depraved creature, destitute of any good. There
   are many other passages of Scripture that confirm this doctrine, such
   as the following, "Who can bring a clean thing out of a unclean." Not
   one. What is man that he should be clean, or the son of man that he
   should be just. "Behold," says a Psalmist, "I was shapen in iniquity,
   and in sin did my mother conceive me." Read the account of man before
   the deluge, and there we find that every imagination and the thought of
   his heart were only evil, and that continually. The same account is
   given of him after the flood. The deluge could not wipe away the stains
   of moral pollution, could not destroy in man the deep-rooted depravity
   of his heart. "The heart," says Jeremiah, "is deceitful above all
   things and desperately wicked, who can know it." I think that what our
   blessed Lord said to the Jews of old, is applicable to every
   unconverted man under heaven--"But I know you that ye have not the love
   of God in you." Some of you may be more humane that others, more
   benevolent than other, more compassionate than other, as men, and as
   women, but one has as much of the love of God in him as others. "The
   carnal mind is enmity against God," against the being of God, against
   the government of God, against the gospel of God, against the purposes
   of God. The enmity of the human heart is unconquerable by any human
   agency whatever. It is mortal enmity, it strikes at the being of God,
   and, therefore, as President Edwards, of America, justly observes,
   "that when it found God in our nature, in our world, it put him to
   death on the accursed tree." Such, my brethren, is the enmity of the
   heart of man, such is its deeprooted depravity, that in him there is no
   good thing. We can never speak too bad of what sin has done for us, and
   we can never speak too much, or too well, of what God has done for us,
   in the person of his Son, and in us, by the agency of his Holy Spirit.

   Fourthly--The doctrine of human depravity may be proved from those
   passages which assert the universal necessity of redemption by Jesus
   Christ. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus," said the angel, "because he
   shall save his people from their sins," "In him we have redemption
   through his blood," says St. Paul, "even the forgiveness of sin
   according to the riches of his grace." Now, the work of redemption
   pre-supposes the sinful state of man, and implies a deliverance from
   that state and from the punishment to which man is exposed. Hence it is
   said of Christ, that he came into the world to save sinners, to seek
   and to save that which was lost, and that he died--the just for the
   unjust--that he might bring us to God. Now, if redemption by Christ is
   necessary, it is evident that man is a sinner; and, if man is a sinner,
   it is evident that man has a depraved nature. You cannot make anything
   else of it. Say what you like about man and about his excellencies, you
   must come to this conclusion, that he is a condemned and a depraved
   creature, or else he would not need redemption through the blood of our
   Lord Jesus Christ.

   Fifthly,--The passages that assert the universal necessity of the new
   birth prove this very truth--"Except a man be born of water," said the
   Saviour, "and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Marvel
   not that I said unto you, ye must be born again." But if a man has some
   good in him, and if that good could be cherished, and be increased, and
   worked up so as to make men fit for heaven, what need of the new birth?
   what need of the Spirit of all grace to renew him in the spirit of his
   mind? Whenever, my brethren, you pray to God for the Spirit to change
   the human heart, whether you believe the doctrine or not, you imply it
   in your petition before the mercy-seat. They are represented by the
   sacred writers as having been called from darkness into light, as
   having an unction from the Holy One whereby they know all things, and
   those of them who have been called readily acknowledge that they were
   once foolish, once deceived and deceiving, once depraved -- very
   depraved; and not only so, but the very best of Christians in the world
   confess with humility the depravity of their hearts, and I believe that
   the man who knows himself best is the man who is most ready to confess
   this and to humble himself before God--"Oh wretched man that I am, who
   shall deliver me from the body of this death?" And while Christians
   feel this, their language is, "Create within me a clean heart, oh God!
   and renew a right spirit within me; purge me with hysop and I shall be
   clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." Apply the blood of
   sprinkling to my guilty conscience, and let the Spirit of all grace
   work in my polluted and depraved heart, and form me to the image of the
   Lord Jesus Christ, and meeten my immortal spirit for the inheritance of
   the saints in light, and of angels in glory. My dear friends, I need
   not say more. I should not think there is an individual here this
   afternoon who is not disposed to agree with me, when I say that man is
   fallen creature, is a depraved creature, is a condemned creature: he is
   under the curse of God's righteous law, and at the same time the
   subject of the reigning power of depravity, the subject of the effects
   of sin throughout his whole nature; and that, as a sinner, let it be
   recorded in high heaven there is no good in man's nature until God puts
   it there, and you will never be brought, by beloved hearers, into a
   right state of mind before God, until you are brought to feel that you
   have nothing, and that you must have all in the Lord Jesus Christ. "Oh!
   Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!" But here are blessed tidings,
   "But in me is their help found." Does not this subject, my hearers,
   teach us, in the first place, the amazing long suffering of God towards
   our race. God might, as soon as man sinned, without the least
   imputation of injustice to his character, have cut him down, because
   the fall was the result of his criminal choice, and attended by the
   most aggravating circumstances; but God has borne with us, and is
   bearing still, which shows that he has no pleasure in the death of the
   sinner, but rather that he should turn from his ways and live. "Turn
   ye, turn ye, for why will ye die, oh! house of Israel?" And does not
   the subject teach us also the helplessness of man as a sinner? He is
   unable to atone for his sins or to renew his heart. Many attempts have
   been made to atone for human transgression, and to cleans and purify
   the human heart, but they have all failed, not one has succeeded. No
   sacrifice, short of an infinite one, could satisfy Divine justice and
   magnify the broken law. No power, short of the omnipotent energy of the
   Eternal Spirit, can renew the human heart. But, while man is a helpless
   creature he is not a hopeless creature. We do not say to him there is
   no hope. Oh, no! I rejoice in that thought at this very moment. God has
   remembered us in our lowest state, he has laid help upon one that is
   mighty, one who, by his passive and active obedience, has magnified the
   law and made it honourable, satisfied the claims of Divine justice, so
   that God can be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in the
   Lord Jesus Christ; and while he made atonement for our transgressions,
   he has procured for us the Spirit of all grace to renew our nature, to
   transform us into the likeness of himself, and to prepare us in the use
   of means for the inheritance of the saints in light. Those of us who
   are made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and, I trust, most of us
   are--would to God that I could believe that we all are--let us pray for
   a larger measure of the Spirit, upon ourselves, individually, and upon
   the world around us. Surely, my hearers, my dear brother who has to
   occupy this platform, and who has to unfurl to you the banner of the
   cross, will need a large measure of the Holy Spirit. May He come upon
   his head, and upon his heart; and may he never ascend this platform but
   in His strength, and under His guidance, and in His light; may he never
   preach a sermon without its being blessed to the conversion of souls,
   and the building up of the Church; and may you, as a Christian Church,
   continue earnest in prayer for the Spirit to come, and it is the Spirit
   will reconcile us to each other, the Spirit will remove differences
   between Arminians and Calvinists, the Spirit will bring us to see,
   by-and-by, eye to eye, and this world will be filled with the glory of
   God. May the Lord command his blessing upon these remarks, for his
   name's sake. Amen.

   The Meeting then adjourned till half-past six. After the friends had
   assembled--

   The REV. C. H. SPURGEON said, I wish to make one or two observations
   before I introduce to you the speakers of this evening. Controversy is
   never a very happy element for the child of God: he would far rather be
   in communion than engaged in defence of the faith or in attack upon
   error. But the soldier of Christ knows no choice in his Master's
   commands. He may feel it to be better for him to lie upon the bed of
   rest than to stand covered with the sweat and dust of battle; but as a
   soldier he has learned to obey, and the rule of his obedience is not
   his personal comfort but his Lord's absolute command. The servant of
   God must endeavour to maintain all the truth which his Master has
   revealed to him, because, as a Christian soldier, this is part of his
   duty. But while he does so, he accords to others the liberty which he
   enjoys himself. In his own house of prayer he must and will maintain
   that which he believes to be true. He does not feel himself at all out
   of temper or angry when he hears that in other places there are some
   holding different views of what the truth is, who as honestly, and
   perhaps as forcibly, endeavour to maintain their views. To our own
   Master we stand or fall; we have no absolute judge of right or wrong
   incarnate in the flesh on earth to-day. Nor is even the human judgment
   itself an infallible evidence of our being, for since the fall, no
   powers of mortals are free from imperfection. Our judgment is not
   necessarily a fully enlightened one, and we ourselves therefore let
   another man's judgment also be his guide unto God; but we must not
   forget that every man is responsible to the Most High for the use of
   that judgment, for the use of that mental power which God has given
   him, by which he is to weigh and balance the arguments of either side.
   I have found commonly that, with regard to the doctrine of grace which
   we preach, there are a great many objections raised. One of the
   simplest trades in the world is the raising of objections. You never
   need, if you wish to set up in that line of business, to look abroad
   for capital or resources; however poor and penniless a man may be, even
   in wits, he can easily manufacture difficulties. It is said "that a
   fool may raise objections which a thousand wise men could not answer."
   I would not hesitate to say that I could bring objections to your
   existence to-night, which you could not disprove. I could sophisticate
   and mystify until I brought out the conclusion that you were blind, and
   deaf, and dumb, and I am not sure that by any process of logic you
   would be able to prove that you were not so. It might be clear enough
   to you that you could both speak, and see, and hear. The only evidence,
   however, I suppose that you could give, would be by speaking, and
   seeing, and hearing, which might be conclusive enough; but if it were
   left to be a mere matter of word-fighting for schoolmen, I question
   whether the caviller might not cavil against you to the judgment-day in
   order to dispute you out of the evidence of your very senses. The
   raising of difficulties is the easiest trade in all the world, and,
   permit me to add, it is not one of the most honourable. The raising of
   objections has been espoused, you know, by that great and mighty master
   of falsehood in the olden times, and it has been carried on full often
   by those whose doubts about the truth sprung rather from their hearts
   than from their heads. Some difficulties, however, ought to be met, and
   let me now remove one or two of them. There are some who say, "Provided
   the doctrines of grace be true, what is the use of our preaching?" Of
   course I can hardly resist a smile while I put this splendid
   difficulty--it is so huge a one. If there are so many who are to be
   saved, then why preach? You cannot diminish, you cannot increase the
   number, why preach the Gospel? Now, I thought my friend Mr. Bloomfield
   anticipated this difficulty well enough. There must be a harvest,--why
   sow, why plough? Simply because the harvest is ordained in the use of
   the means. The reason why we preach at all is because God has ordained
   to save some. If he had not, we could not see the good of preaching at
   all. Why! we should come indeed on a fool's errand if we came here
   without the Master's orders at our back. His elect shall be
   saved--every one of them,--and if not by my instrumentality or that of
   any brother here present, if not by any instrumentality, then would God
   sooner call them by his Holy Spirit, without the voice of the minister,
   than that they should perish. But this is the very reason why we
   preach, because we wish to have the honour of being the means, in the
   hand of God, of calling these elect ones to himself. The certainty of
   the result quickens us in our work, and surely it would stay none but a
   fool in his labour. Because God ordains that his word shall not return
   unto him void, therefore, we preach that word, because, "as the rain
   cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but
   watereth the earth and maketh it to bring forth and bud, even so doth
   the word of the Lord accomplish his purpose;" therefore, we would have
   our doctrine to drop as the rain and distil as the dew, and as the
   small rain upon the tender herb. But, there are some again who say, "To
   what purpose after all, is your inviting any to come, when the Spirit
   of God alone constrains them to come; and why, especially, preach to
   those whom believe to be so depraved that they cannot and will not
   come?" Ay, just so, this is a serious difficulty to everything except
   faith. Do you see Ezekiel yonder; he is about to preach a sermon. By
   his leave, we will stop him. "Ezekiel, where are you about to preach?"
   "I am about," saith he, "to preach to a strange congregation--dead, dry
   bones, lying in a mass in a valley." "But, Ezekiel, they have no power
   to live." "I know that," saith he. "To what purpose, then, is your
   preaching to them? If they have no power, and if the breath must come
   from the four winds, and they have no life in themselves, to what
   purpose do you preach?" "I am ordered to preach," saith he,
   "commanded;" and he does so. He prophesies, and afterward mounting to a
   yet higher stage of faith, he cries, "Come from the four winds, oh
   breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." And the wind
   comes, and the effect of his ministry is seen in their life. So preach
   we to dead sinners; so pray we for the living Spirit. So, by faith, do
   we expect his Divine influence, and it comes,--cometh not from man, nor
   of man, nor by blood, nor by the will of the flesh, but from the
   sovereign will of God. But not withstanding it comes instrumentally
   through the faith of the preacher while he pleads with man, "as though
   God did beseech them by us, we pray them in Christ's stead to be
   reconciled to God." But if ten thousand other objections were raised,
   my simple reply would be just this, "We can raise more objections
   against your theory, than you can against ours." We do not believe that
   our scheme is free from difficulties; it were uncandid if we were to
   say so. But we believe that we have not the tithe of the difficulties
   to contend with that they have on the opposite side of the question. It
   is not hard to find in those texts which appear to be most against us,
   a key, by which they are to be harmonized; and we believe it to be
   utterly impossible, without wresting Scripture, to turn those texts
   which teach our doctrine, to teach any other thing whatsoever. They are
   plain, pointed, pertinent. If the Calvinistic scheme were the whole sum
   and substance of all truth, why then surely, if it held everything
   within some five or six doctrines, you might begin to think that man
   were God, and that God's theology were less than infinite in its sweep.
   What are we, that we should grasp the infinite? We shall never measure
   the marches of eternity. Who shall compass with a span the Eternal God,
   and who shall think out anew his infinite thoughts? We pretend not that
   Calvinism is a plumb-line to fathom the deeps; but we do say, that it
   is a ship which can sail safely over its surface, and that every wave
   shall speed it onwards towards its destined haven. To fathom and to
   comprehend is neither your business nor mine, but to learn, and then,
   having learned, to teach to others, is the business of each Christian
   man; and thus would be do, God being our helper. One friend kindly
   suggests a difficulty to me, which, having just spoken of, I shall sit
   down. That amazing difficulty has to do with the next speaker's topic,
   and, therefore, I touch it. It says in the Scriptures, that Paul would
   not have us destroy him with our meat for whom Christ died. Therefore,
   the inference is--only mark, we don to endorse the logic--the inference
   is, that you may destroy some with your meat for whom Christ died. That
   inference I utterly deny. But then, let me put it thus. Do you know,
   that a man may be guilty of a sin which he cannot commit. Does that
   startle you? Every man is guilty of putting God out of existence, if he
   says in his heart, "No God." But he cannot put God out of existence;
   and yet, the guilt is there, because he would if he could. There be
   some who crucify the Son of God afresh. They cannot,--he is in heaven,
   he is beyond their reach. And yet, because their deeds would do that,
   unless some power restrained, they are guilty of doing what they can
   never do, because the end and aim of their doings would be to destroy
   Christ, if he were here. Now, then, it is quite consistent with the
   doctrine that no man can destroy any for whom Christ died, still to
   insist upon it that a man may be guilty of the blood of souls. He may
   do that which, unless God prevented it,--and that is no credit to
   him,--unless God prevented it, would destroy souls for whom Jesus
   Christ died. But, again I say, I have not come here to-night to
   anticipate and to answer all objections; I have only done that, that
   some troubled conscience might find peace. This was not a meeting of
   discussion, but for the explaining of our views, and the teaching them
   simply to the people. I now shall call upon my beloved brother to take
   up the point of particular redemption.

                             PARTICULAR REDEMPTION

   BY THE

Rev. J. A. SPURGEON,

   OF SOUTHAMPTON.

   I think it is well that the death of Christ and its consequent
   blessings should occupy one place in our discussion here to-night; for
   not only is it the central truth in the Calvinistic theory, but the
   death of Christ is the centre point of all history and of all time. The
   devout of all ages have stood and gazed with anxious glance into these
   deep mysteries, searching what, or what manner of things the Holy
   Spirit did by them testify and reveal; and we know that hereafter, in
   yon world of glory, the redeemed shall sing of these things for ever,
   and shall find in the Redeemer and in his work, fresh matter for love
   and for praise as eternity shall roll on. We take our stand between the
   two, and I think the language of our hearts to-night is akin to all
   ages of the Church of Christ,--"God forbid that we should glory save in
   the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

   Now the grand result of the death of our Lord--though not the only
   result--the grand result of that death, so far as man is concerned, is
   the redemption which it ultimately achieves; and, with regard to the
   extent of that redemption, we believe the Scriptures are plain and
   speak most clearly, when they tell of a final day of manifestation,
   when the redeemed from amongst men shall take their stand before the
   Redeemer, to sing of him who, as the good shepherd, hath laid down his
   life for his sheep, and has purchased unto himself a peculiar
   people--his body, the Church. Now, we believe that, in reaching that
   grand and final result there are many steps that must be taken, and we
   think that, from these preliminary steps, there are multitudes that
   gain rich handfuls of blessings who shall not however reap the full
   harvest of glory. We believe that the whole world is flooded with
   blessings, and that the stream rolls broad and clear from the hill-foot
   of Calvary, and laves the feet alike of the godly and of the ungodly,
   the thankful and the thankless. But from the riven side of Christ there
   comes forth one stream--the river of life, whose banks are trodden only
   by the feet of the multitude of believers, who wash and are clean, who
   drink and liver for evermore. We speak to-night of Christ's death in
   its various relations, so as to touch upon and include sundry things
   which cannot be properly classed under the title of particular
   redemption; but we feel we are driven to this course, so as to be able
   to do justice to ourselves and to our leading theme.

   Now, we have three sets of truths before us, and these three sets of
   truths we must deal with. (1.) We have, first of all, a God holy and
   righteous, loving and gracious, a God who has been most grievously
   wronged and injured, and a God who must be honoured alike by the giving
   him all the glory of which he has been robbed, and by the bearing of
   his just expression of holy indignation at the wrong that has been done
   unto him. We have a God jealous in the extreme, and yet, strange
   enough, declaring that he passes by iniquity and forgiveth
   transgression and sin. We have a God truthful, who has sworn "that the
   soul that sinneth it shall die," and who yet speaks to those souls, and
   says, "Turn ye, turn ye; for why will ye die." A God whom we know must
   be just, and must execute upon the ungodly that which they have justly
   merited, and who yet strangely says, "Come and let us plead together,
   and though your sins be as scarlet I will make them as wool, and though
   they be like crimson I will make them white as snow." That is one set
   of truths--strange, and apparently contradictory. Then we have another.
   (2.) We have a world lost, and yet swathed in an atmosphere of mercy.
   We have a world dark with the darkness of death, and yet everywhere we
   find it more or less under the influence of the beams of the Sun of
   Righteousness, which came a light unto darkness, that did not and could
   not comprehend it. And we have, moreover, a world rebellious, and
   serving another master than the right one, and yet nevertheless beneath
   the feet of him who has been made Head over all things for his body's
   sake, which is the Church. (3.) And then, once more, we have a Church
   peculiar in its unmerited privileges, chose from before all time to
   inherit the kingdom given to it before the world began--a kingdom that
   can never be trodden upon save by the spotless and the deathless; and
   yet the inheritors are by nature dead in trespasses and in sins--lost,
   ruined--without a God and without a hope in the world. How are all
   those strange and apparently contradictory things to be solved? One
   clue, we find, is in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The work
   involves its ultimate end, which is redemption, and of that work we are
   about to speak here to-night.

   We speak first of those blessings which come from the death of Christ,
   and are for all men; the whole world is under a mediatorial government,
   the whole spirit of which is a government of long-suffering,
   graciousness, tenderness, and mercy, such as could not have been
   exercised had Christ never died. A government there might have been,
   but it must be, we think, a government akin to that which is found in
   the place where those are found who make their bed in hell. We find,
   moreover, that the direct and indirect influences of the Cross of
   Christ have pervaded the whole world, and none can tell how full oft
   its gentle spirit has come like oil upon the troubled waters; or what
   man, with his wild passions, would have been without the ameliorating
   influence of the Cross. We possibly may be able to tell, when we look
   across the impassable gulf into a Gehenna beneath, and see sin
   unchecked working out its dire results; and, we believe that whatever
   comes short of that darkness, whose very light is darkness, is due to
   that light which radiates from the Cross of Christ, and whatever is
   short of hell streams from Calvary. And then, further still, we have a
   Bible, a revelation filled with the love and mercy of God to man--a
   Bible in which our Lord himself could show, beginning at Moses, and in
   all the prophets, that which did testify concerning himself; and, apart
   from Jesus Christ and his death, there could have been no such
   revelation of God's character unto the human race. A revelation there
   might have been, but it would have been a revelation of Sinai's horrors
   and terrors, without even the spark of hope which comes forth from that
   dispensation there set forth. There might have been a revelation, I
   say, but it would have been a revelation that would not have wound up
   as this does with a blessing. It would have ended like the Old
   Testament with a curse; it would have begun with the same. It would
   have been worse than Ezekiel's roll of woes which is filled all over
   with terrible lamentation, and with awful sorrow and woe. And again,
   there is a positive overture of mercy, a true and faithful declaration
   of good tidings unto every creature, and we do believe that it is our
   duty to preach the Gospel unto every creature; and the Gospel runs
   thus--"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, for he
   who believeth and is baptized shall be saved." That overture we hold to
   be no mockery, but made in good faith; and that overture is not the
   overture of a shadow, but the presentation of solid, substantial
   blessings; and for the rejection of that, not God, but man is
   answerable, and for the rejection of that he will be lost. "For this
   the condemnation, that they have not believed on him whom God hath
   sent." And, then, lastly, we find that as the purchase of the death of
   Christ there is a Church, and that Church is sent forth into the world
   with orders to bless it and to do good unto all men. It is bidden to go
   forth as a light in the midst of darkness; it is bidden so to live as
   to be the salt of the whole earth. Now, we say that each one of these
   blessings is no small gift from God to man--no mean result of the death
   of our Master; and, combined, we think they would form a boon worthy of
   a God; and, as we put our hand upon it, we think we can give a full and
   true expression, and with an emphasis surpassed by none, to that
   glorious text--"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
   Son." And we think, upon our system, and upon ours alone, we can give
   full truthfulness and emphasis to the remainder--"That whosoever
   believeth in him shall have everlasting life." Now, upon redemption
   proper, the latter part of our theme, we will pass on to speak. And,
   first, what do we mean by redemption? Most certainly we do not mean the
   POSSIBILITY OF REDEMPTION, for we have learned to distinguish between
   the possibility of a thing and a thing itself. We feel this, that we do
   not preach and cannot preach, gathering our teaching from the Bible, a
   possibility of redemption. We proclaim a redemption. Nor do we mean by
   redemption a contingency of redemption, which, again, is contingent
   upon a third thing. We have learned to distinguish between a
   contingency and a certainty. We proclaim a certain redemption, and we
   speak of that which is not possible but positive, not contingent but
   certain. Neither do we mean by redemption such an outgrowth of the
   man's own power or goodness as shall enable him to burst his way
   through every bondage and to get forth free; such an elevation of human
   nature, whether by the education of others, or by his own works, as to
   enable him at last to stand free. If we meant that, we should use the
   word escape, but not the word redemption. And again, if we meant, as
   some, alas! have seemed to mean, God's foregoing his claim upon man;
   God's waiving man's liabilities, and God's giving up that which we
   believe, as a holy God, he cannot surrender; if we meant that, we
   should speak of emancipation--of pure pardon and forgiveness. But we do
   not. We mean redemption. And then, again, we do not mean by redemption
   the meeting of the debts, either in prospective or in the present. We
   do not mean that the man shall, either in the present or in the future,
   bear any part of the penalty; and, by some goodness, either in the
   present or foreseen, satisfy God's claim upon him. If we meant that, I
   think we should use altogether another word than the word redemption.
   What do we mean by redemption? We mean, by redemption, the work of one
   being which is done for another, but generally a helpless one, in order
   to give him a perfect freedom. And when we speak of redemption, mark
   you, we speak of a thing that is the result of that work. We
   distinguish between redemption and redemption work. What we mean, by
   redemption, is just this--the grand result and end of the work of our
   Lord Jesus Christ; and we could as well speak of redemption apart from
   the redeemed, as we could speak of life apart from a living creature.
   Life and living creatures are co-extensive, and so is redemption and
   the redeemed. If you take down any book that will give you an
   explanation of the word "redemption," I think you will find three
   things put therein. It is a ransom, a rescue, and a release. Now, I
   take the whole three words to be the fulness of the meaning of one
   word. It is such a ransom, and such a rescue, as result in a complete
   and full release. Whatever stops short of that thing, is, of course,
   not the thing itself; the thing itself that we mean, is the positively
   being redeemed and made free. Now, just by way of simplifying the
   subject, let me speak of the Redeemer, and of the redemption work, and
   of those who are redeemed.

   First, the Redeemer, who is he? We believe him to be the Word that was
   with God, equal unto God, and was God,-- who became flesh and dwelt
   among us. At the same time, the flesh did not become, in any sense,
   Deity, neither did the Deity, in any sense, become carnal. They formed
   another person, and that person the God-man, Jesus Christ, our
   Redeemer. Now, what is he? And here I just ask that question, in order
   to meet some objections, and, if I can, to put on one side two or three
   theories that seem to fight against ours. I hear a voice, saying, in
   reply to that question, what is he? Why, he is God's idea of humanity;
   he is God, who has taken up humanity from its fallen state, raised it
   up not only to the place where he first put it, but, beyond, even to
   the height to which he hoped it would ascend, or possibly something
   beyond it. And, now, from henceforth, such is the union betwixt common
   humanity, that the lost, in their degradation, have but to look to
   their common humanity exalted, realize their identity with it, and to
   feel themselves, by that deed, raised to the same standard, and
   redeemed, and free for evermore. To which, we reply, there is enough of
   truth in that lie to keep it alive, and that is all. We do believe that
   our Master did lay hold of humanity; we do believe that he has honoured
   and dignified the human race, by taking that upon him, and by becoming
   flesh like unto ourselves. But we cannot see how that the gazing upon
   that can open blind eyes, unstop deaf ears, give live to the dead, and
   procure the discharge of our sins, any more than we can see how that
   the gazing upon an Olympic game would give to the physically lame,
   physical strength, or could give to those who were physically dead,
   life from their physical death.

   And, again, I hear other voices replying to that question. They say,
   "he is the great example of self-denial, and of the submission of the
   human will to the Divine. And what redemption is, is this--that man now
   can look to that great display of selfdenial, can catch of its spirit,
   and can imitate it, and by that deed of subjection, making the will to
   succumb to the will of the Divine, they may, at least, emancipate
   themselves, and go forth free." To which we reply, once more, there is
   enough of truth in that just to cement the error together, and to give
   it a plausible appearance to the sons of men, but there is nothing
   more. It is true that our Saviour was the Sent One of the Father. It is
   true, he came, saying, "Lo! I come to do thy will." He declares he was
   not doing his own will, but the will of him that sent him. And he winds
   up by saying, "Not my will, but thine be done." But, after all, we
   cannot, and dare not accept that submission of Christ's will to the
   Father, as being a satisfaction for sin; neither can we see, how, by
   the imitation of that, we can, in any sense, wipe away the sins of the
   past, or free ourselves from the penalty that is yet to come.

   But now to answer for ourselves. What is our Lord Jesus Christ? And we
   say, that in life he is the great example and copy; in death, he is the
   substitute; and in both, the federal head--the elder brother and
   kinsman of his Church.

   But now time warns me that I must pass on to the second thought--the
   work of redemption. First of all, we gaze at that part of the work
   which is Godward, and that we call atonement; and, when you ask
   me--What is the character of the atonement? I reply--It has a twofold
   nature, to correspond with the twofold character of sin. Sin is a
   transgression of the law, and a consequent insult to him who is the
   lawmaker. But it is something more than that: the power by which he has
   transgressed has been perverted; it was given to him to obey the law
   that he might glorify God. And to make, therefore, a satisfaction for
   sin, there must be a bringing to the law obedience; there must be the
   bearing of the sanction because of the disobedience; there must be the
   rendering to God the glory due to him; and there must be the bearing of
   his just displeasure and the expression of his holy wrath and
   indignation. That Christ has done: he came, and his whole life was
   obedience to the law, for he was obedient even unto death; and in that
   death he bore the sanction of the law--for he was made a curse, it
   being written, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." His whole
   life was spent to glorify God, and at its close he could say, "I have
   glorified thee, and I have finished the work which thou gavest me to
   do:" and his death was the bearing of the just displeasure of God
   towards the sinner, and in the agony of his heart he cried, "My God, my
   God, why hast thou forsaken me?" In these things we behold, therefore,
   the presentation of the obedience due, the giving to God the glory due,
   the bearing of God's displeasure, and the enduring of the curse of the
   law. And now the question would be put to me as to the value of
   atonement. We believe that its value depends not so much upon the Being
   appeased, nor upon the beings to be atoned for, as upon the Being who
   makes the atonement. The value of Christ's atonement is the value of
   himself. He gave himself for us. If he had stood as the surety for the
   whole world, he could not be more. He gave himself; what more could he
   bestow? The value of the atonement is the value of our Lord Jesus
   Christ. In his flesh he can take man's place, and by his Divinity he
   can give, and must give anyhow, an infinite value to the work that he,
   in mortal flesh, performs. For one soul, therefore, it must be
   infinite--for more or less it cannot be. Infinite it is, and infinite
   it must be, and we have no part or parcel with those who would say,
   that if Judas was to have been saved, Judas' amount of penalty would
   have had to have been paid, in addition to what has been borne and paid
   by Christ. He took the place, the room, and stead of the church, and
   then all that he was worth went in that church's place and stead. More
   he could not do, if he had taken the place of the whole world. But, you
   ask me, is there any limit to the atonement at all? I say I think there
   is; and the limit seems to be, not in the value, but in the purpose.
   The limit seems to be this theory--for whom did he die? in whose place
   and stead did he stand? If he stood in the place and stead of the whole
   world, then he made atonement for the sins of the whole world, and the
   whole world will be saved. If he stood in the place and stead of his
   Church, then he made atonement for his Church, and the whole Church
   will be saved. We believe that Christ took the place and stead of every
   believer, that the believer's sin was put on him, and thus the
   ex-sinner can go forth free. But I hear a voice saying, "I challenge
   substitution, and I object to that." So be it. I ask you, did Christ
   die for sin at all? It must be answered,--Yes. Then for whose sin did
   he die? If his own, then he suffered righteously. Did he die for the
   sins of the whole world? then justice cannot demand this again. Did he
   die for part of the sins of the whole world? then the rest of the sins
   will still condemn the world; then must have Christ died in vain. We
   believe that he took all the sins of some men. It was not a fictitious
   condemnation; it was not a fancy sin made for the occasion; it was a
   positive sin that had been committed by God's people, and is
   transferred from them to him who laid down his life for his sheep;
   loving us, and giving himself for and in the stead or in the place of
   his people.

   But, then, we say this work of redemption comprised something more than
   thus paying down the ransom, and the bearing of the penalty. It is,
   moreover, a rescue; for sin has not only made men this to have insulted
   God and broken God's law, it has transferred them unto bondage under
   the allegiance of one--"the strong man armed." They must be freed from
   that. Christ came, has destroyed death, and through death him also who
   has the power of death, even the devil; making an open show of them
   upon his cross, ascending up on high a victor, leading captivity
   captive. And then, I think, there is yet something further. Sin has
   affected the man himself, made him to need in his own person a
   releasing from the dominion, power, and corruption of sin. This Christ
   has secured by his covenant with the Father. But that which I take to
   comprise effectual calling and final perseverance, I shall leave to my
   brethren who shall speak afterwards. And now as to the persons
   redeemed--who are they? The Church, we say, whether you look at the
   Church as elect from all eternity, or the Church believing in time, or
   the Church as glorified hereafter. We look at them all as one, and we
   say these are the redeemed, these are they for whom redemption has been
   procured. We cannot add to their number, we cannot diminish them; for
   we believe that those whom God foreknew, he did predestinate; that
   those whom he did predestinate, he also called: for whom he calls he
   justifies, for whom he justifies he also glorifies; the whole are
   one,--and for these redemption has been made.

   Now, if I may be permitted the time, I will just touch upon one or two,
   objections, and then I will conclude. I hear some one saying, "But by
   that, sir, you surely must limit God's love." I reply, is God loving
   when he punishes any and doth not save all? Then is he loving also when
   he purposes to do that, for whatever justifies the deed justifies the
   purpose which gives the morality to the deed. And then I hear another
   objection--"How can you, sir, upon that theory, go to preach the Gospel
   unto every creature?" You have heard that answered--we have got the
   order; but, I reply yet further: I could not go and preach the Gospel
   upon any other theory, for I dare not go on that fool's errand of
   preaching a redemption that might not redeem, and declaring a salvation
   that might not save. I could not go and say to a man, "Believe on the
   Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." And he would answer me, "Do
   you think you are going to heaven?" "Yes." "Why?" "Because Christ died
   for me." "But he died for us all, and my chances therefore are as good
   as yours." And he might reply to me after he had accepted my
   declaration, and after he had believed, and begun to rejoice, after all
   he might say, "Is there any real reason why I should rejoice, some for
   whom Christ died are in hell, and I may also go there. I cannot begin
   to rejoice in your news till I feel myself in glory. It is rather a
   faulty piece of good news, because it is nothing positive; it is a
   grand uncertainty you have proclaimed to me." Now, what we preach, is
   the Gospel to every creature, and that we take to be this--If you
   believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you shall be saved; if you do not, you
   will be lost, and lost for ever. You are not redeemed--you are not
   saved,--there is not, in another word, salvation and redemption for
   those who are lost for ever. But we add, "We are what we are by Divine
   grace; we have believed; if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you
   will be as we are--will be able to boast as we do, humbly in the Lord
   our God;" or in other words--If you believe, and are baptized, you will
   be saved; if you do not believe, you will be lost, and lost for ever.

                               EFFECTUAL CALLING

   BY THE

Rev. JAMES SMITH

   OF CHELTENHAM.

   My Christian friends, our minds have been occupied to-day with some of
   the loftiest subjects that can engage the thoughts of man. Our
   attention has been directed to the infinitely wise and true God, and we
   have been endeavouring to conceive of him as the great, the infinite,
   the eternal; the great, the infinite, the eternal intellect, who, of
   himself, conceiveth the grandest schemes, and infallibly provides for
   their accomplishment, so that there can be no mistake, no failure. We
   know that every wise intellect forms its plan before it provides its
   mean, or attempts to carry out the idea conceived in the mind.

   And the great doctrine of election, to which our attention was directed
   this afternoon, answers to the formation of the plan in the infinite
   mind of God. He foresaw, clearly, that the whole human race,
   represented by the first man, would fall into sin, and left to
   themselves, would certainly perish. To prevent a catastrophe so
   fearful, he determined in his infinite mind, to have a people for
   himself, a people that would comprise the vast majority of the fallen
   inhabitants of this world. They were all present before his mind; their
   names were registered in his book, which book was delivered into the
   hands of the Lamb, the Son of God, who accepted the book at the hands
   of his Father, and, as it were, signed it with his own name, so that it
   has been designated, "The Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the
   foundation of the world." And Jesus looked upon this act as the
   committing of the people to himself, on purpose that he might take the
   charge of them, on purpose that he might carry out the Father's will
   respecting them, and gain eternal laurels and honours to himself, by
   placing them in splendor, majesty, and glory before his Father's face
   for ever. We therefore find him frequently when speaking with his
   Father, and referring to this act in the eternal counsels, saying,
   "Thine they were and thou gavest them me. Keep those whom thou hast
   given me by thine own name, that they may be one as we are." But
   election interferes not with man as standing in Adam, but with man as
   under sin the result of Adam's fall. It ensured their restoration, but
   it did not interfere with their fall, and consequently the elect, with
   the rest, all fell in the first man. The entire mass of human nature
   became depraved, polluted, rotten to the heart's core; so depraved, so
   polluted, so rotten, that nothing could effect a change but the
   omnipotent energy of the omnipotent God. There is that in depravity in
   every form, that defies the touch of any one but the Infinite; that
   refuses to succumb to anything but to Omnipotence itself. The heart of
   man is foul as the heart of Satan; the nature of man is foul as the
   nature of Satan; and the sin of man is worse than the sin of Satan.
   Satan, the great archangel, that fell from heaven, did a tremendous
   deed when he set mind in opposition to Deity; but man set not merely
   mind, but matter with mind, in opposition to the eternal God. God could
   once look upon the world and say, "Though mind is in rebellion, matter
   is not in opposition;" but after the fall of man, mind and matter alike
   were corrupt, were depraved, were in opposition to the Eternal. Every
   man's heart steams with enmity against God; every man's spirit rises in
   rebellion against God; and, as you have heard tonight, the verdict of
   every man's conscience in its fallen state is, "No God, no God;" and if
   the Eternal could be voted out of existence by the suffrages of his
   fallen creatures, every hand would be up, every heart would give its
   verdict, and every voice would vote for the annihilation of the Most
   High. The will of man strong, the will of man stern, the will of man
   determined, and opposed to the will of God, will yield to nothing but
   that which is superior to itself; it laughs at authority, it turns with
   disgust from holiness, it refuses to listen to invitation, and, in this
   state, man--universal man, is found. In this state, man, the entire
   mass of man, with the exception of those who had been saved on credit,
   and had been changed by the sacred influences of the Spirit--in this
   state man was found when Christ came into our world. He came and, as ye
   have heard, assumed humanity, and united it with Deity. The two natures
   constituted the one person of the glorious Mediator; that glorious
   Mediator stood the representative of his people; that Mediator stood
   the Surety of his family; that Mediator stood the Substitute of the
   multitude of his fallen ones. That Mediator came to be the sacrifice to
   which sin was to be transferred, by which sin was to expiated and
   removed out of the way, that God's mercy might freely flow, and from
   the sinner's conscience, that he might have peace and joy.

   But as the election of the Father did not interfere with the falling of
   man's nature, so the redemption of the Son did not change the nature
   that had fallen. It was therefore necessary, that as the Father sent
   the Son, the Son should send the Comforter; and as it required an
   infinite victim to atone for man's guilt, it required an infinite agent
   to change man's fallen nature. As to the Father, the atonement must be
   made as the moral governor, as the maintainer of the rights of the
   eternal throne; so from the Father, through the Son, must the Holy
   Spirit descend to renew, to transform, to remodel, to fit human nature
   to gaze upon the unveiled glories of Deity, and to render to God the
   homage due unto his name. And this just brings me to my
   point--EFFECTUAL CALLING. This implies, that there is a calling that
   may not be effectual. Yes, there is a call that extends to the whole
   human family. As it is written, "Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice
   is unto the sons of men." There is a call that refers to humanity as
   sinful, and to sinners as such, however fallen and depraved they may
   be. Repentance or a change of mind, repentance and remission of sins,
   are to be preached amongst all nations, and the disciples were to begin
   at Jerusalem; and, beginning at Jerusalem the slaughter-house of the
   Son of God, and the slaughter-house of the prophets, and of the
   saints,--beginning there, they said, "Repent and be converted, that
   your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come
   from the presence of the Lord." But the people were like the deaf adder
   that stoppeth her ear, and refuseth to hear the voice of the
   charmer--charm he never so wisely. The Baptist had come and cried,
   "Repent," and sternly, and impressively he preached, but they paid
   little regard,--at least, little regard that tended to life. And the
   Son of God, with all that was soft, and winning, and captivating, came
   and preached; but they turned away, and he said, "To whom shall I like
   the men of this generation--they are like unto children sitting in the
   markets, and calling to their fellows--We have piped unto you, but ye
   have not danced, and we have mourned unto you, but ye have not
   lamented." Now, this call must be given, because God commands it; this
   call must be given, because God works by it. In giving the general, the
   universal call to all that hear the gospel, we obey the high mandate of
   the Eternal God; we do honour and homage to the authority of the Lord
   Jesus Christ, and we employ an instrument--a weapon, if you please--by
   which the Spirit of God operates upon the human mind; for the weapons
   of our warfare are not carnal, but are mighty through God, to the
   pulling down of strongholds, and the casting down of imaginations, and
   every high thing, and the bringing into subjection every thought to the
   obedience of Christ. The general call leads to the special, to the
   particular, or what we designate, the "effectual call." We speak to me
   as men, and we reason with them; we speak to sinners as sinners, and we
   expostulate with them; but while we reason, and while we expostulate,
   we have the promise of the presence of the Master--"I am with you;" we
   have the promised presence of the Eternal Paraclete, who was sent to
   empower, sent to accompany, and sent to work by the Lord's servants;
   and, while we speak and give the call as we are commanded and
   commissioned, the Holy Spirit works--the infinite power of the Eternal
   Spirit comes into contact,--direct, immediate contact, with the mind of
   man. There is a power that goes with the word--distinct from the
   word--when it is accompanied by the energy of the Eternal Spirit; and
   that power produces in the heart, life--a spiritual, a Divine, an
   immortal life--a life that man dead in sin had not; a life which a man
   once having loseth not, for it is eternal; a life that was given us in
   Christ before the world was; a life preserved for us by Christ all
   through the past ages that have rolled away; a life that is
   communicated from the loving heart of Him who is the great depository
   of grace, and conducted by the Holy Ghost into the heart that is called
   by grace. Has the Spirit accompanying the word produced life? From that
   life springs conviction: not the cold conviction awakened occasionally
   in the mind of man, by the reasoning of man, by reflecting upon his
   past misconduct, or by the flashing of the forked lightnings of the
   law; but a conviction that is produced by the Holy Spirit bringing the
   law into contact with the conscience--the Gospel into contact with the
   heart. In the sinner's conscience God erects a tribunal, in the
   sinner's conscience God sits as judge, and to the tribunal, before the
   just judge, man is summoned to appear; and in the heart, in the soul,
   in the nature of man, there is a miniature of the judgment that is to
   take place at the completion and winding up of the present
   dispensation. The man is arraigned as a sinner, the man is convicted as
   a culprit, the man is condemned as a criminal; he stands before God,
   and he has nothing to say; every excuse has withered like the leaves of
   autumn, every excuse is carried away like the chaff from the summer's
   threshing-floor, every rag that the man boasted of is torn from him,
   and he stands, a naked sinner, before a heart-searching God. The
   penetrating eye of the Omniscient darts into the innermost recesses of
   his soul, and the gentle fingers of the Spirit turns over one fold of
   the heart after the other; the process may be long, or the operation
   may be quick, but sooner or later the man is brought to this.--"In me,
   that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." He had once started at
   the Scriptural representation of man's fallen and depraved nature; he
   had once wondered that from the lip of truth had proceeded the
   startling words, "From within, out of the heart, proceed murders,
   adulteries, blasphemies, false witnesses, and abominable idolatries."
   He never could have thought that evil so dreadful, he never could have
   thought that sins so fearful, he never could have thought that
   principles so diabolical, could have been found in a nature like his;
   but there they are, and he has nothing to object--but, under the power
   of the deep conviction that is produced, he is filled with terrible
   alarm. If he casts his eye back, there are the crimes of his life; if
   he casts his eye forward, there is the tremendous judgment; if he lifts
   up his eyes to Heaven, there is the pure and holy God that he has
   insulted; and if he turns his eyes within, all is dark and vain and
   wild. He is filled with alarm--alarm that perhaps keeps him awake by
   night, and haunts and harasses him by day, until he is prepared to do
   anything, prepared to go anywhere, if he may but escape the just
   judgment of his God. He is by this discipline prepared to submit to
   God's method of salvation; he is prepared to give up proposing
   conditions according to which he would be saved; he no longer goes
   about to work out a righteousness of his own, but he is ready to submit
   himself to the righteousness of God. Being, therefore, conscious of his
   criminality, burdened with his guilt, trembling at the prospect of his
   destiny, he falls prostrate before the high throne of the Eternal,
   smites upon his breast, and cries "God be merciful to me a sinner," as
   if no such a sinner had ever appealed to God's mercy, as if no such
   culprit had ever stood before God's throne; before God he says, "If
   there can be mercy in thy heart sufficient to reach a case so dismal
   and so desperate, God be merciful to me;" and after having pleaded with
   earnestness, after having supplicated with intense emotion, and after
   having, perhaps, become a little bold, he is startled at his own
   temerity, and receding, as it were, from the position that he had
   taken, he cries--

   "Depth of mercy, can there be

   Mercy in thy heart for me,

   O God of spotless purity?"

   And, perhaps, like David, he groans in his heart, and mourns in his
   soul, until his bones wax old, through his roaring all the day long.
   But, no relief, no help is found, until, at length, he begins to make
   confession of his sin, and, as he confesses, the Spirit of God unveils
   and unfolds the gospel mystery, and, as in the days of the law, when
   the victim was brought to the Priest, and the man placed his hand upon
   its head, between its horns, and pressed with his might and confessed
   over it all his transgressions, all his iniquities, and all his sins,
   so the man lays his hand of faith upon the victim's head, and there
   confesses his sin. As he confesses, a change takes place in his
   feelings, the burden begins to disperse, a little bright light in the
   cloud attracts his attention, and, as he looks upward, he seems to
   catch the loving Father's eye, and feels an encouragement within him to
   approach unto God; and, as he approaches, still confessing, still
   pleading, still deploring, still resting his hand upon the victim's
   head, and trusting in the atonement you have heard of, and on that
   alone, he seems to hear strange music, delightful melody, and that
   music is the commencement of the sound of the trump of the Jubilee,
   when the oppressed one is to go free, and as he listens to the sound
   the chains drop from his hands, and the burden from his shoulders, the
   trouble is removed from his heart, and he lifts up his eyes, streaming
   perhaps with tears, to heaven, and says, "Oh Lord, I will praise thee,
   for though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and
   thou comfortest me:" and looking around, on those about him, in the
   language of wonder, astonishment, and gratitude, he says, "Behold,
   behold a mystery, behold a miracle, behold one of the greatest wonders
   of the universe; behold, God is my salvation. I will trust, and not be
   afraid, for Jah Jehovah is my strength, and my song, he also is become
   my salvation." He has now peace flowing into his heart like a river, he
   has now a consciousness that God has accepted him in the beloved, and
   he now experimentally knows the truth, tastes the sweetness, and feels
   the power of the apostolic testimony, "Being justified by faith we have
   peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we have
   access into this grace, wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the
   glory of God." He has now experienced the effectual call. It has been a
   call from darkness into marvellous light, from bondage into glorious
   liberty; out of prison the man comes to reign; from the dunghill he is
   lifted up to sit among the princes, even among the princes of God's
   people. And, now, as I must conclude, just observe, the origin of this
   call is the free, the sovereign, the distinguishing grace of God. It
   originates, not in man's will, nor in man';s disposition, nor in man's
   station in society, but of His will, and of His will alone, who is the
   great sovereign ruler of the universe, is this change effected; of man
   it cannot be, for it includes a new creation; a resurrection; and the
   inhabitants of God. Generally speaking, the instrumentality by which
   God works is the gospel, but in every instance the agent that produces
   the change is the holy and eternal Spirit of God. He quickens the soul
   dead in trespasses and sins, he enlightens the understanding that was
   in the midnight darkness of nature, he disposes the will which before
   ran counter to the will of God; he teaches the understanding that was
   once averse to everything pure and holy, and then gently, and lovingly,
   and sweetly he leads the soul to the Cross to gaze upon the wondrous
   Sufferer, he then leads the soul to the Church to confess Christ and
   him crucified, and then leads it in the paths of righteousness for his
   own name's sake. The calling is high, for it is from the High and Holy
   One; it is heavenly, in contrast with the earthly calling of the
   descendants of Abraham of old; it is an evidence of distinguishing
   love; and thanks, eternal thanks to God, it is irreversible; for the
   gifts and the callings of God are without repentance. From death to
   life we pass; from darkness into light we come; out of bondage into
   liberty we spring; from sin to the knowledge and enjoyment of holiness
   we are introduced; then at last from earth to heaven. Into the grace of
   Christ we are called, and we stand in his favour. Into the fellowship
   of Christ we are called, and when Christ who is our life shall appear,
   we also shall appear with him in glory. The Father draws; the Spirit
   quickens; the Son receives; and when locked in the arms of the Son of
   God, our effectual calling is realized and enjoyed. Its author, is God;
   its subjects, are the elect; its nature, is holy; and its end, is
   glorious. Thus, you perceive, my friends, all originated in God's
   thought, which thought sprung into a perfect plan, to carry out which
   plan provision was made, and this plan will be perfectly carried out to
   the praise of the glory of his grace. Thus, whether you think of
   election, whether you think of redemption, or whether you think of
   effectual calling,

   >

   "Give all the glory to his holy name,

   For to him all the glory belongs;

   Be your's the high joy still to sound forth his praise

   And crown him in each of your songs."

   The REV. C. H. SPURGEON.--I think it was John Newton, who, speaking
   about good Calvinistic doctrine compared it to lumps of sugar; but he
   said, he did not so much give to his people the lumps of sugar, as
   diffuse the whole of it throughout his sermons; just as people do not
   eat sugar, but put it in their tea. Now, some of you have not yet grown
   patient enough to listen, I think, to a doctrine, however fully it may
   be brought out. Our people want anecdotes, illustrations, parables, and
   metaphors; even the best and sublimest things keep our minds on such a
   stretch when we listen to them, that there is good need that
   illustrations should yield us some relief. To-day was set apart that
   these doctrines might be fully brought out; this has been done, and
   there remains but one, and that my friend Mr O'Neil is to take, namely
   the final perseverance of the saints. Before he speaks, just one or two
   words. Has it never struck you that the scheme of doctrine which is
   called Calvinistic has much to say concerning God? It commences and
   ends with the Divine One. The angel of that system stands like Uriel in
   the sun; it dwells with God; he begins, he carries on, he perfects; it
   is for his glory and for his honour. Father, Son, and Spirit
   co-working, the whole Gospel scheme is carried out. Perhaps there may
   be this defect in our theology; we may perhaps too much forget man. I
   think that is a very small fault, compared with the fault of the
   opposite system, which begins with man, and all but ends with him. Man
   is a creature; how ought God to deal with him? That is the question
   some theologians seem to answer. The way we put it is--God is the
   Creator, he has a right to do as he wills; he is Sovereign, there is no
   law above him, he has a right to make and to unmake, and when man hath
   sinned, he has a right to save or to destroy. If he can save, and yet
   not impair his justice, heaven shall ring with songs; if he destroy,
   and yet his goodness be not marred, then hell itself with its deep bass
   of misery, shall swell the mighty rollings of his glorious praise. We
   hold that God should be most prominent in all our teachings; and we
   hold this to be a gauge by which to test the soundness of ministers. If
   they exalt God and sink the sinner to the very dust, it is all well;
   but if they lower the prerogatives of Deity, if he be less sovereign,
   less just, or less loving than the Scripture reveals him to be, and if
   man be puffed up with that fond notion that he is anything better than
   an unclean thing, then such theology is utterly unsound. Salvation is
   of the Lord, and let the Lord alone be glorified.

              THE FINAL PERSEVERANCE OF BELIEVERS IN CHRIST JESUS;

   BY THE

Rev. WILLIAM O'NEILL,

   MINISTER OF NEW BROAD STREET CHAPEL, LONDON.

   My dear Brethren and Friends.

   Most unexpectedly did the kind invitation of my esteemed brother, Mr
   Spurgeon, come to me, to take part in the present service of this
   beautiful house. And after I had engaged to come I sincerely wished
   that I had not. I felt, however, that it would not be proper to retire
   from the engagement, but seek to meet in a becoming spirit, both
   towards God's truth and God's people. I will now try to do this. I
   utter here, of course, my own sentiments. As I am not responsible for
   anything that has been or may be said by another speaker, so I alone am
   responsible for what I shall say. But though I am not the delegate or
   representative of any church, denomination, or community, I doubt not
   that my declaration of faith on the matter at hand will be, in all
   substantial points, that of a very large number who love Jesus and are
   living in His service. That I desire to believe what the Bible teaches,
   and that I am sincere in my convictions, I know to be true: but that
   there are thousands of excellent Christians on the other side admits of
   no doubt, and should not be questioned by any one. Of their deep
   sincerity, love to God and his Gospel, zeal and devotedness in holy
   things, self-denying labours in the Divine service, and the cultivation
   and manifestation of Christian graces, I would and do speak with the
   most earnest approval. I give them as much credit for sincerity as I
   claim for myself; and I do this not as a favour, but as a piece of
   simple justice. Yet we differ--differ as to what the Sacred Oracles
   teach on the doctrine now before us; and it is competent and right for
   all men to examine, each one for himself, which of our opinions is that
   which is taught in the Bible, for certainly both are not taught there.

   The question--Is it possible for sincere Christians, truly regenerated
   persons, to be finally separated from Jesus, to lose the favour of God
   their Father, and be eternally shut out from His smile and Home?--is
   one of no small moment. It involves issues of the most momentous
   nature, and cannot but be unspeakably interesting to every believer in
   Christ. We say, with unfaltering tongue, that of all the dead, every
   one who was ever renewed in heart is now in heaven; and that
   reconciliation with God on earth, through Christ Jesus, will, in every
   case, end in the everlasting salvation of the soul. Did God, then, tell
   us that all who are here now are His regenerated people, (would that
   they were!) we should believe that when the roll of the finally saved
   shall be called, every one of them would answer to that call by saying,
   "Here am I, Lord: Thy right arm, and the effectual operation of Thy
   Spirit and grace has done it all, and now I am to be for ever happy,
   for ever sinless, for ever safe." It is hardly necessary to say, that
   we believe this view of the case to be in entire harmony with the
   teaching of God's Book. To the law and to the testimony, if we, or
   others, speak not on this and on all other matters according to that
   Word, it is because there is no light in us or in them. (Isaiah viii.
   20.)

   Having called public attention to this doctrine lately in a small book,
   [1] in which I have sought to obey the Master's command,--"Search the
   scriptures,"--I will now, with your kind permission, direct attention
   to a few portions of the Divine Word that, we believe, fully establish
   the doctrine of the saints' final preservation and perseverance. On
   each of those texts my words must be few, as the time allotted to me is
   short.

   Hear then the Holy Spirit's teaching when speaking by the prophet
   Samuel:--"For the LORD will not forsake His people for His great name's
   sake; because it hath pleased the Lord to make you His people." (1 Sam.
   xii. 22) This, we think, is conclusive. What Christian does not know,
   and knowing, does not mourn over, the untrustworthiness of his own
   heart? And feeling fully assured that it is impossible for him to
   vanquish "the world, the flesh, and the devil," how welcome to his
   heart is the declaration, "The LORD will not forsake His people." No;
   He thought proper to renew their hearts, to quicken them into spiritual
   life, and He will mercifully continue to carry on His good work in
   their souls till it be perfected in glory. The reason why "He will not
   forsake His people" is stated here most explicitly; just as much so as
   is the declaration of His unchangeable love. It is not that they were
   less sinful by nature or practice than others; or because of any moral
   qualities that were found in them; but "because it pleased the Lord to
   make them His people." Hear another portion: God, speaking by his
   prophet Isaiah, says,--"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she
   should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may
   forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the
   palms of My hands." (Isaiah xlix. 15, 16.) This we regard as a most
   interesting, as well as a most consolatory portion of Scripture. "Zion
   said, the LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me." This
   was not only an error in creed,--it was also a dishonourable estimate
   of the Divine character, and to it the Gracious One replies in these
   words:--"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have
   compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will not I
   forget thee." The affection of a right-minded mother for her tender and
   helpless offspring is one of the strongest that is experienced by human
   beings. But, though strong, very strong, it may, alas! give way. It is,
   at best, only a creature's love, and therefore changeable; while that
   love which is exercised by God towards His believing children is, like
   Himself, unchangeable. These words prove, and were designed to prove,
   most conclusively, that the love of the Divine Father towards His
   adopted sons and daughters is not a fluctuating or changing thing. What
   other, or what lower interpretation can we put upon the words, "YET
   WILL NOT I FORGET THEE?" And not forgetting them is, in this case,
   equivalent to His continuing to care for, to keep, and tenderly regard
   them.

   Hear God again speaking by the same prophet:--"For a small moment have
   I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little
   wrath I hid My face form thee for a moment; but with everlasting
   kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer. For
   this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the
   waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I
   would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall
   depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from
   thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the LORD
   that hath mercy on thee." These words deserve to hold a prominent place
   among those which God has spoken for the comfort and joy of His people.
   Their obvious design is--to sustain believers under the chastening hand
   of God, and to do this by considerations drawn from His own character,
   and not from anything in themselves. Vain, brethren, is it to trust, or
   put confidence in our own false hearts. They are weak as helpless
   infancy. To lean on them will only be evidence of our folly and of our
   sin. We are not to find consolation in our gifts, in our graces, in our
   labours, in our resolutions, or in our experience, nor by the grace of
   God will we do so. But when chastised by the everloving and good
   Father,--when smarting under his parental and deserved stripes,--we may
   feast our souls on His blessed words--words that fire those souls with
   confidence, hope, and love.--"In a little wrath I hid my face from thee
   for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy upon
   thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My
   kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my
   peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee." Such,
   brethren, are GOD'S utterances! These are the words of One who is
   unchangeable in affection; of One who says,--Oh! blessed be his
   adorable name for that saying,--"For I am the LORD, I change not;
   therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." (Mal. iii. 6.)

   I name another passage:--"For there shall arise," says Jesus, "false
   Christ's, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders;
   insomuch, that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very
   elect." (Matt. xxiv. 24.) The plain and obvious meaning of this latter
   clause is, that it is not possible to deceive, or allure to their final
   ruin, the adopted sons and daughters of God, those whom He has chosen
   to be His. Nothing less, we believe, was intended by the Gracious
   Speaker, and we see not how any other meaning can be consistently given
   to the language which He here uses. The words, "If it were possible,"
   only say, in another form, "It is not possible."

   I now name such texts as connect faith, or believing in Christ, with
   salvation, of which the following are a few:--"God so loved the world,
   that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him
   should not perish, but have everlasting life." "Verily, verily, I say
   unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me,
   hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is
   passed from death unto life." "And this is the will of Him that sent
   Me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Me hath
   everlasting life. I am the bread which came down from heaven: if any
   man eat of this bread he shall live for ever." "The Gospel is the power
   of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." (John ii. 16, v.
   24, vi. 47, 50, 51, 57; Rom. i. 16.) The plain teaching of these, and
   many similar passages, is, that every believer in Jesus hath
   everlasting life. They teach this or they teach nothing. Is this be not
   their meaning, what is? But, can that which is everlasting cease to be?
   Can it come to an end? No words can more plainly assert than these do,
   that whosoever believeth in Jesus SHALL NOT COME INTO CONDEMNATION;
   that all believers in him shall enjoy "everlasting life." We take these
   gracious assurances as proving, to the fullest extent, the doctrine for
   which we plead. If the belief of the Gospel be not followed, in every
   instance, by eternal blessedness, what did Paul mean when he said, "The
   Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth?"
   (Rom. i. 16.) If, at the last day, a single one be unsaved of those who
   had believed the Gospel, who had been united to Christ by faith in His
   name--the apostle's words must needs be falsified--his teaching is not
   true. This, at least, is our opinion. No amount of adverse criticism
   can set aside the evidence that such verses as these furnish in support
   of the blessed doctrine which we now defend.

   Hear Christ again:--"My sheep," he says, "hear My voice, and I know
   them, and they follow Me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they
   shall never perish, neither shall any one pluck them out of My hand. My
   Father who gave them Me is greater than all; and no one is able to
   pluck them out of My Father's hand." We regard this entire passage as
   one of the most delightful and consoling in the Scriptures. It teaches
   most unequivocally,--in the plainest, strongest, and most conclusive
   terms,--that Christ's believing ones "SHALL NEVER PERISH;" that no
   enemy, human or hellish, shall be able to wrench them out of His or His
   Father's covenanted and secure grasp. Infinite power, no less than
   infinite love--both existing in their God and Saviour--stand guarantee
   for their security! Neither men nor demons shall be able to defeat or
   overturn the purpose of Divine grace concerning them! Difficulties,
   many and sharp, may surround them; and temptations, fierce and fiery,
   may assault their souls; but Divine love, wisdom, grace, and power
   shall be ever on their side. Jesus, the "faithful and true witness,"
   says, "THEY SHALL NEVER PERISH." Elsewhere He says, "Because I live, ye
   shall live also." (John xiv. 17) The spiritual life of believers is in
   HIS keeping, and He here declares that it is as secure as His own. If
   He dies, and continues not to be their "Advocate with the Father," (1
   John ii. 1) their Intercessor "at the right hand of God," (Rom. viii.
   34) then may they die also, but not otherwise. In perfect keeping with
   his Lord's words are those which Paul uses, when referring to the same
   subject. "For if," he says, "when we were enemies, we were reconciled
   to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall
   be saved by His life." (Rom. v. 10) That is, we shall be preserved in
   that state of reconciliation by Christ's intercessory life at God's
   right hand in heaven. He, the God-man, lives there as Mediator, for
   them: He holds and exercises "all power in heaven and on earth" for the
   welfare and safety of His church. And they cannot die while He lives.
   The power that is to destroy the spiritual life of the weakest saint
   must first destroy the life of that saint's Head. "Their life," as the
   Holy Spirit by Paul elsewhere teaches, "is hid with Christ in God"
   (Col. iii. 3). Where, brethren, could it be safer, or as safe? In whose
   care or keeping could it be so secure? It is "hid with Christ in God."
   Not only so, but the Apostle goes on to say, "When Christ, who is our
   life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him IN GLORY." This,
   to say the least of it, is a glorious statement and declaration. Can
   language, we ask, go beyond that which is used in these texts to
   guarantee the eternal salvation of every believer in Jesus? The Head
   and members shall never be separated. They are bound up in an
   inseparable and an unchanging union.

   Hear a Divine lesson given in another place:--"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" (Rom. viii.
   30).

   When it is said, "Whom He did predestinate, them He also called," we
   must interpret the word "called" to mean very much more than invited;
   for the Apostle goes on to say, "Whom He called, them He also
   justified." We know that this is only true of those who believe in
   Jesus--who are effectually called or drawn, by the combined operations
   of the Word and Spirit of God, into the blessed fellowship and joys of
   the Gospel (1 Cor. i. 9). That those, and only those, who believe in
   Christ are justified, is the uniform lesson of the Divine Word (John
   iii. 16, 36; Acts xiii. 39, 40; Rom. i. 16, iii. 22, 28). Let it be
   noted that Paul affirms three things here. The first is--"Whom He did
   predestinate, them He also called." The second is--"Whom He called,
   them He also justified." And the third is--"Whom He justified, them He
   also glorified." What, then, does he mean by the expression
   "glorified?" Does he, or can he mean anything less than the enjoyment
   of everlasting life? We say, then, that were only a single individual
   out of the whole number of those who have been, or shall be "justified"
   by faith in Jesus, to come short of heaven, the declaration would not
   be true that "Whom He justified, them He also glorified."

   Hear another Divine proclamation relative to the security of God's
   people:--"For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
   nor principalities, nor powers, 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" (Rom. viii. 38, 39).
   These, brethren, are notes of the most triumphant character, relative
   to the ultimate blessedness of believers in Jesus. The terms which are
   here used are such as leave no doubt as to what the Holy Spirit,
   speaking by Paul, meant to teach. We deliberately affirm that language
   has no power to assert the doctrine for which we contend more
   conclusively than is here done. Words have no meaning, nor are they of
   any use in communicating thought, if these words were not used by a man
   who believed as we do on the matter in hand. And we are entirely
   willing to believe or disbelieve with the Apostle Paul, neither more
   nor less.

   I quote him again. Hear what he wrote to the Church at
   Philippi:--"Being confident of this very thing, that He who hath begun
   a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." I
   well remember how greatly this strengthened my own soul when, in the
   morning of my religious life, I was passing through much mental
   conflict. And are not these words well calculated to comfort the hearts
   of those who, through grace, have believed in the Saviour? Is there any
   room for objecting criticism here, or is there any ambiguity in the
   language employed? No, there is none whatever: the Apostle was
   "confident of this very thing." What "very thing?" Why, that wherever
   the Divine Spirit had commenced this "good work" of grace in the soul,
   He would complete it. No other power could have begun it, and no other
   power is competent to carry it forward to completion. That He who
   commences that "good work" is able to finish it, no professing
   Christian will deny: that He will finish it, this verse most clearly
   teaches. The Apostle Paul was "confident of THIS VERY THING;" and so
   are we.

   Let us give attention to other words of the same sacred penman.
   Addressing one of the primitive Churches, he says:--"We are bound to
   give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord,
   because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation, through
   sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth" (2 Thes. ii. 13).
   This is a most important portion of Scripture in relation to the
   question--What is the end of election? In what does it, or is it to
   terminate? What does it secure? Are its subjects merely chosen to enjoy
   the light of the gospel, the means of grace, and no more? Or, are they
   chosen to enjoy, in its full measure, everlasting life; the priceless
   favour and blissful fellowship of God here and for ever? This question
   is definitely settled by the language of inspiration employed here. The
   Apostle declares that the choice is "to salvation;" or, in other words,
   which he also uses in this place, "to the obtaining of the glory of our
   Lord Jesus Christ." This means, of course, eternal life in heaven, as
   well as all that precedes and prepares for it on earth. But how can
   this be realized? How can it be said, they were "chosen to salvation,"
   if they may all apostatize finally from Jesus, fall out of the Divine
   favour, and be for ever numbered with the lost? The thing is, of
   course, impossible. If not saved,--fully and for ever,--it would not be
   true to say they were chosen "to salvation."

   I beg to name one passage more. Speaking of believers, a divinely
   inspired teacher says:--"Who are kept by the power of God through faith
   unto salvation" (1 Peter, i. 5). Here we are distinctly taught what the
   Divine Being is doing and will continue to do for His believing people.
   The Apostle asserts, that they are "kept by the power of God through
   faith unto salvation." If so, nothing is more certain than that they
   shall reach it, and enjoy it for ever. Had Peter believed that it was
   possible for any number of them to become outcasts from God, and die in
   their sins, he would never have employed the language which is found
   here. The declaration that believers are "kept" or garrisoned in (for
   such is the meaning of the term here employed) "by the power of GOD
   through faith unto salvation," settles the point with us, and leaves us
   nothing more to desire in the shape of statement or promise. This is,
   indeed, a glorious declaration. Fellow pilgrims, let it fill you with
   the highest joy, as it gives you the fullest assurance that you are
   safe in the grasp and guardianship of Jehovah of hosts.

   We hold and teach too, that the certain enjoyment of everlasting life
   is inseparably connected with continued faith in the Divine testimony
   concerning sin, Jesus, and His salvation. They shall be preserved in
   the exercise of faith in the Redeemer, until they shall enter upon the
   possession of the heavenly inheritance. This is clearly taught here,
   and nothing less.

   I have now referred to a few out of the many portions of God's word
   which teach the doctrine for which we contend. God's people shall be
   preserved, and will persevere to the end, for they were given to Christ
   in the everlasting covenant, that covenant which is "ordered in all
   things and sure:" the stability of which is as safe as the oath, and
   promise, and power of God can make it (Psalm lxxxix. 30, 34; Heb. vi.
   18, 19). They are "loved by Him with an everlasting love" (Jer. xxxi.
   3); they are "chosen to salvation" (Eph. i. 4; 2 Thes. ii. 13); and
   God, their gracious and reconciled Father, "will rest in His love"
   (Zeph. iii. 17). Their safety, as believers in Jesus, is secured by the
   word and promise of the "God that cannot lie." He has said that He will
   never leave them nor forsake them (Heb. xiii. 2); that they shall never
   perish" (John x. 28); and that He will confirm them unto the end" (1
   Cor. i. 8).

   For this purpose the ever-availing intercession of Jesus is employed.
   He is at the right hand of God as their Brother, Representative, and
   Advocate. He prays for them that their faith fail not (Luke xxii. 32).
   They are, each and all, borne on His heart, and pleaded for in His
   gracious and ever-successful intercession. "Father," says he, "I will
   that they also, whom thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, that
   they may behold My glory" (John xvii. 24). Oh, what priceless joy do
   these words afford to the believer's heart! No weapon that is formed
   against them shall prosper. Their Almighty King will vanquish all their
   spiritual foes. He will so aid them that they shall contend
   victoriously against "the world, the flesh, and the devil." They shall
   be more than conquerors through Him that loved them (Rom. viii. 37).
   They shall be the saved of His right arm, and the everlasting monuments
   and trophies of His grace, love, and power. They are "sealed with that
   Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of their inheritance, until
   the redemption of the purchased possession" (2 Cor. i. 21, 22; Eph. i.
   13, 14). Having received the "earnest," the pledge which guarantees the
   fulfilment of their Heavenly Father's covenant to save them, they are
   perfectly and for ever secure.

   We build our faith in this doctrine on God's plain teaching. We extort
   no meaning from His word which cannot be found there by the simple and
   ordinary reader of it. We take its statements in their plain and
   grammatical sense, just as they would be interpreted by any
   unprejudiced expounder of language. We should be content to abide by
   the interpretation of them which would be given by any man, infidel or
   other, who felt no interest in our controversy, and who was entirely
   careless relative to our differences of opinion. One unequivocal
   passage teaching this doctrine would be, or should be sufficient to
   establish it, and to bring our opinions into harmony with Divine
   teaching; but we are not confined to one, or five, or ten; we have line
   upon line, promise upon promise, assurance upon assurance, and
   declaration upon declaration to this effect. So that we would fain
   ask,--If the doctrine be not taught in the portions of Scripture that I
   have named, what is taught in them? What is their import? What do they
   teach? Or, what language or terms would be thought sufficient to teach
   it? It is our firm conviction that no doctrine of religion is more
   clearly taught in the Bible than is this. It is expressed as plainly as
   words can possibly do it.

   And are we, with these inspired declarations before us, to suppose it
   possible for wicked men or demons to say, when pointing to numbers of
   the lost,--"The Most High began to build up His kingdom in their souls,
   but He was not able to finish it! He quickened them into spiritual
   life,--renewed, pardoned, justified, and sanctified them; but now they
   are torn from His grasp, His enemies were able--contrary to the words
   of Jesus (1 John x. 21)--'to pluck them out of His hand,' and they have
   done it."

   This would, indeed, make short work of many plain and positive
   declarations found in the Bible: it would prove, beyond doubt, that its
   promises, and assurances, and declarations are of very little value.

   Let me, before I close, say--and say with the fullest emphasis
   possible--that we believe as firmly as any man living, as firmly as we
   believe any truth taught in the Bible, that "without holiness no man
   shall see the Lord" (Heb. xii. 14). We know no other evidence of being
   in Christ, or of being a Christian, than that which is furnished by a
   life and behaviour becoming the Gospel. And though holiness is not the
   cause of God's first or continued love to His people, it is the effect
   and fruit of that love, and a main part of the salvation which is in
   Christ Jesus--that salvation to which they are chosen (Eph. i. 4); and
   he who is satisfying himself with the notion that he is safe for
   eternity, while he is living in any known sin, is turning the grace of
   our God into licentiousness, and is a deadly enemy of the Cross of
   Christ. The blessed doctrine which the Bible teaches, and in which we
   glory, is--the doctrine of the saints' final perseverance, and that
   doctrine was never designed to comfort any man who is not living a life
   of faith in the Son of God, intensely anxious to please God in all
   things, and to be the holy and happy subject of that mind which was in
   Jesus.

   Very interesting, then, is the question, when asked in no wrong
   spirit--Are there few that be saved? If GOD does not hold up His
   people, if He does not keep them by His grace and power, they will be
   very few indeed--a child may count them, and, in fact, have none, not
   one, to count. But let no man charge our views with being "narrow," or
   "embracing only a few," or contemplating the eternal salvation of "a
   very limited number" of our race, for, according to the view which we
   hold and teach, they will be a numberless number. We believe, and our
   hearts swell with high and holy joy in believing, that every child of
   man who loved God,--every one of Adam's race who was renewed in
   heart,--all who were ever on the Lord's side,--will be found among the
   saved. Not one will be lost. Not one will be missed from the eternal
   banquet. Not one, will be outside the gates of the holy city. All, all
   shall be there, and there for ever, and ever, and ever!

   "The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,

   He will not, He cannot, give up to His foes;

   That soul, though all hell should endeavour to shake,

   He'll never! no, never! no, never forsake!"
     __________________________________________________________________

   [1] Unchanging Love. Tresidder, Ave Maria Lane, London. All the texts
   that are usually quoted in opposition to the doctrine now noticed are
   passed under calm review.
     __________________________________________________________________

                             The First Resurrection

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 5, 1861,

   BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "AndIsaw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto
   them: and/saw the souls of them who were beheaded for the witness of
   Jesus, and for the Word of God, and who had not worshipped the beast,
   neither his image, neither had received his mark on their foreheads, or
   on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand
   years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousandyears
   were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he
   who has part in the first resurrection; on such the second death has
   nopower, but they shall be priests of God, and of Christ and shall
   reign with Him a thousandyears." Revelation 20:4,5, 6.

   "AndIsaw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books
   were opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life.
   And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the
   books, according to their works." Revelation 20:12.

   You will bear me witness, my Friends, that it is exceedingly seldom I
   ever intrude into the mysteries of the future with regard either to the
   Second Advent, the millennial reign, or the First and Second
   Resurrection. As often as we come across it in our expositions, we do
   not turn aside from the point, but if guilty at all on this point, it
   is rather in being too silent than saying too much. And now, in
   bringing forward this question this morning, I would say I do not do it
   to amuse your curiosity by novelty, or that I may pretend to have the
   true key of the prophecies which are as yet unfulfilled. I scarcely
   think it would be justifiable for me to spend my time upon prophetic
   studies for which I have not the necessary talent, nor is it the
   vocation to which my Master has ordained me. I think some ministers
   would do far more for the profit of God's people if they would preach
   more about the First Advent and less about the Second. But I have
   chosen this topic because I believe it has practical bearings, and may
   be made useful, instructive, and awakening to us all. I find that the
   most earnest of the Puritan preachers did not forbear to dwell upon
   this mysterious subject. I turn to Charnock; and in his disquisition
   upon the Immutability of God, he does not hesitate to speak of the
   conflagration of the world, of the millennial reign, and the new
   heavens and new earth. I turn to Richard Baxter, a man who above all
   other men loved the souls of men; who more, perhaps, than any man with
   the exception of the Apostle Paul, travailed in birth for souls; and I
   find him making a barbed arrow out of the Doctrine of the coming of the
   Lord, and thrusting this great Truth into the very heart and conscience
   of unbelievers, as though it were Heaven's own sword! And John Bunyan
   too--plain, honest John--he who preached so simply that a child could
   comprehend him, and was certainly never guilty of having written upon
   his forehead the word, "Mystery"--he, too, speaks of the Advent of
   Christ, and of the glories which shall follow; and uses this Doctrine
   as a stimulus to the saints, and as a warning to the ungodly. I do not
   think therefore I need tremble very much if the charge should be
   brought against me of bringing before you an unprofitable subject. It
   shall profit if God shall bless the word; and if it is God's Word, we
   may expect His blessing if we preach it all, but He will withdraw it if
   we refrain from teaching any part of His Word because in our pretended
   wisdom we fancy that it would not have practical effect!

   Now, my dear Friends, in introducing again these texts to you, I shall
   just remark that in the first text which relates to the people of God,
   we have three great privileges. And in the second text, which relates
   to the ungodly who are not in covenant with Christ, we have three great
   and terrible things which may soon be perceived.

   I. First of all, we will take the first text with its THREE PRIVILEGES.
   "Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection; on such
   the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God, and of
   Christ and shall reign with Him a thousand years."

   Before I proceed to enter into these privileges, I must remark that two
   modes of understanding this verse have been proposed, both of which I
   think are untenable. I have been reading carefully through Albert
   Barnes. In his opinion, the First Resurrection here spoken of is a
   resurrection of principles--a resurrection of the patience, the
   undaunted courage, the holy boldness, and constancy of the ancient
   martyrs. He says these great principles have been forgotten, and, as it
   were, buried; and that during the spiritual reign of Christ which is to
   come, these great principles will have a resurrection. Now, I appeal to
   you, would you, in reading that passage, think this to be the meaning?
   Would any man believe that to be its meaning, if he had not some thesis
   to defend? The fact is, we sometimes read Scripture thinking of what it
   oughtto say, rather than what it does say. I do not hesitate to affirm
   that any simple-minded person who was intent upon discovering the mind
   of the Spirit, and not upon finding a method by which the words could
   be compelled to express his own mind, would say that the resurrection
   of principles, or the resurrection of doctrines, does not give the fair
   meaning of the words here stated! Brothers and Sisters, cannot you
   perceive at a glance that this is the resurrection of men? And is it
   not a literal resurrection, too? Does it not say, "I saw the souls of
   them who were beheaded for the witness of Jesus"? Is it not written,
   "The rest of the dead lived not?" Does this mean the rest of the dead
   principles The rest of the dead doctrines You cannot so translate it!
   It is--we have no doubt whatever--a literal resurrection of the saints
   of God, and not of principles nor of doctrines.

   But another interpretation has been proposed. I once had the misfortune
   to listen to an excellent friend of mine who was preaching upon this
   very text, and I must confess I did not attend with very great patience
   to his exposition. He said it meant blessed and holy is he who has been
   born-again, who has been regenerated, and so has had a resurrection
   from dead works by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. All the
   while he was preaching, I could not help but wish that I could propose
   to him the difficulty to make this metaphorical interpretation agree
   with the literal fact--that the rest of the dead lived not till the
   thousand years were finished! For if the First Resurrection here spoken
   of is a metaphorical, or spiritual, or typical resurrection--why the
   next, where it speaks of the resurrection of the dead, must be
   spiritual, and mystical, and metaphorical too! Now, no one would agree
   with this. When you read a Chapter, you are not to say, "This part is a
   symbol, and is to be read so, and the next part is to be read
   literally." Brothers and Sisters, the Holy Spirit does not jumble
   metaphors and facts together! A typical Book has plain indications that
   it is so intended, and when you come upon a literal passage in a
   typical Chapter, it is always attached to something else which is
   distinctly literal so that you cannot, without violence to common
   sense, make a typical meaning out of it! The fact is, in reading this
   passage with an unbiased judgment--having no purpose whatever to serve,
   having no theory to defend--and I confess I have none, for I know but
   very little about mysteries to come--I could not help seeing there are
   two literal resurrections here spoken of--one of the spirits of the
   just, and the other of the bodies of the wicked; one of the saints who
   sleep in Jesus, whom God shall bring with Him, and another of those who
   live and die impenitent, who perish in their sins.

   But this by way of preface to this first text. Let me now proceed.
   There are three privileges in the text.

   1. Now as to the first privilege, the priority of resurrection. I think
   Scripture is exceedingly plain and explicit upon this point. You have
   perhaps imagined that all men will rise at the same moment--that the
   trumpet of the archangel will break open every grave at the same
   instant, and sound in the ear of every sleeper at the identical moment.
   Such I do not think is the testimony of the Word of God! I think the
   Word of God teaches, and teaches indisputably, that the saints shall
   rise first. And be the interval of time whatever it may, whether the
   thousand years are literal years, or a very long period of time, I am
   not now about to determine! I have nothing to do except with the fact
   that there are two resurrections, a resurrection of the just, and
   afterwards of the unjust--a time when the saints of God shall rise, and
   a later time when the wicked shall rise to the resurrection of
   damnation. I shall now refer you to one or two passages in Scripture,
   and you will use your Bibles and follow me. First, let us look at the
   words of the Apostle in that Chapter which we use generally as a burial
   service, the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 15:20-24: "But now is
   Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them who
   slept. For since by man came death, by Man came also the resurrection
   of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be
   made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits;
   afterward they who are Christ's at His coming. Then comes the end, when
   He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when He
   shall have put down all rule and all authority and power." There has
   been an interval of two thousand years between "Christ the first
   fruits," and the "afterward they who are Christ's at His coming." Why
   not then a thousand years between that First Resurrection and "the
   end"? Here is a resurrection of those who are Christ's, and of them
   only. As for the wicked, one would scarcely know that they would rise
   at all from this passage, if it were not for the general statement,
   "All shall be made alive." And even this may not be so comprehensive as
   at first sight it seems. It is enough for me that there is here a
   particular and exclusive resurrection of those who are Christ's.

   Turn to another passage, which is perhaps still more plain, the First
   Epistle to the Thessalonians, 4:13-17-- "But I would not have you to be
   ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, that you
   sorrow not, even as others who have no hope. For if we believe that
   Jesus died, and rose again, even so they also who sleep in Jesus will
   God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the Word of the Lord,
   that we who are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall
   not prevent"--or have a preference beyond--"those who are asleep. For
   the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice
   of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ
   shall rise first: then we who are alive, and remain, shall be caught up
   together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air--and so
   shall we ever be with the Lord." Here is nothing said whatever about
   the resurrection of the wicked--it is only stated that the dead in
   Christ shall rise first. Our Apostle is evidently speaking of a first
   resurrection; and since we know that a first resurrection implies a
   second, and since we know that the wicked dead are to rise as well as
   the righteous dead, we draft the inference that the wicked dead shall
   rise at the Second Resurrection, after the interval between the two
   resurrections shall have been accomplished.

   Turn to Philippians 3, verses 8 and 10-11 and compare them. "Yes
   doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the
   knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of
   all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ." "That I
   may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of
   His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death, if by any means
   I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." What does he mean
   there? Everyone will rise, no orthodox Christian doubts that! The
   Doctrine of a General Resurrection is received by all the Christian
   Church. What, then, is this resurrection after which Paul was exerting
   himself, if by any means he might attain unto it? It could not be the
   general resurrection; he would attain unto that, live as he wish! It
   must have been some superior resurrection of which only those shall be
   partakers who have known Christ and the power of His resurrection,
   having been made conformable unto His death. I think you cannot
   interpret this passage or give it any force of meaning, unless you
   admit that there is to be a prior resurrection of the just before the
   resurrection of the unjust. If you will turn to a passage in Luke
   20:35-36, which probably is fresh upon your memories, you will find
   there something which I will venture to call a clear proof of a special
   resurrection! The Sadducees had proposed a difficulty as to the
   relationship of men and women in the future state and Jesus here says,
   "But they who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the
   resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:
   neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels, and
   are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Now,
   Brothers and Sisters, there is some worthiness necessary for this
   resurrection! Do you not perceive it? There is some distinction
   involved in being called the children of the resurrection. Now, again I
   say, you do not doubt but that all shall rise. In that sense, then,
   every man would be one of the children of the resurrection. In
   thatsense, no worthiness would be required for resurrection at all!
   There must be, then, a resurrection for which worthiness is needed, a
   resurrection which shall be a distinguished privilege, which, being
   obtained, shall confer upon its possessor the distinguished and
   honorable title of a "child of the resurrection." It seems to me that
   this is plain enough and can be put beyond all dispute.

   In Chapter 14 of the same Gospel, in verse 13-14, you have a promise
   made to those who, when they make a feast, do not do it with the
   intention of getting anything in return. "When you make a feast, call
   the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you shall be blessed,
   for they cannot recompense you; for you shall be recompensed at the
   resurrection of the just." I would not insist upon it, that this would
   prove that the just rose at a different time; but still there is to be
   a resurrection of the just, and on the other hand, there is to be a
   resurrection of the unjust; and the time of recompense for the
   righteous is to be the resurrection of the just, which is spoken of as
   being a particular period. He might just as well have said, "You shall
   be recompensed at the general resurrection." There was no need to have
   said, "At the resurrection of the just," if the two are to happen at
   the same time! The words "of the just" are superfluous in the passage
   unless they do refer to some era distinguished and distinct from the
   resurrection of the unjust. I will not say that this is any clear
   proof, but still, all these things put together, with other passages I
   might quote if time did not fail me, would, I think, establish upon a
   Scriptural basis the doctrine of the two resurrections. But I would
   refer to one more, which seems to me to be exceedingly clear, in John
   6:39, 40, 44, 54. In these verses the Savior four times over speaks of
   His own believing people, and promises them a resurrection. "I will
   raise him up at the last day." Now, is there any joy or beauty in this,
   to the people of God in particular, unless there is a specialty in it
   for them? It is the lot of all to rise, and yet we have here a
   privilege for the elect! Surely, Brothers and Sisters, there is a
   different resurrection. Besides, there is yet a passage which now
   springs to my memory in Hebrews 11:35, where the Apostle, speaking of
   the trials of the godly, and their noble endurance, speaks of them as,
   "not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better
   resurrection." The betterness was not in the later results of
   resurrection, but in the resurrection itself. How, then, could it be a
   better resurrection, unless there is some distinction between the
   resurrection of the saint, and the resurrection of the sinner? Let the
   one be a resurrection of splendor--let the other be a resurrection of
   gloom and horror--and let there be a marked division between the two,
   that as it was in the beginning it may be even to the end, the Lord has
   put a difference between him who fears God, and him who fears Him not.

   I am well aware that I have not been able to put the argument so well
   but that any antagonist may cavil at it. But I have been preaching to
   my own congregation rather than fighting with opponents, and I hope you
   will take these passages and weigh them for yourselves. If they do not
   teach you that the dead in Christ shall rise first, do not believe me
   if I say they do. If you cannot perceive the fact yourself, if the Holy
   Spirit does not show it to you, why then, read the passage again, and
   then find if you can find another and a better meaning. I have no
   purpose to serve except to make the Scripture as plain to you as
   possible. And I say it yet again--I have not a shadow of a doubt in my
   own soul that these passages do teach us that there shall first of all
   be a resurrection concerning which it shall be said, "Blessed and holy
   is he who has part in the first resurrection, on such the second death
   has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall
   reign with Him a thousand years."

   2. I now pass on to the second privilege here promised to the godly.
   The second death on them has no power This, too, is a literal
   death--none the less literal because its main terror is spiritual--for
   a spiritual death is as literal as a carnal death! The death which
   shall come upon the ungodly without exception can never touch the
   righteous. Oh, Brothers and Sisters, this is the best of all! As for
   the first resurrection, if Christ has granted that to His people, there
   must be something glorious in it if we cannot perceive it. "It does not
   yet appear what we shall be, but we know when He shall appear, we shall
   be like Hm." I think the glories of the first resurrection belong to
   the glories which shall be revealed in us rather than the glories that
   are revealed to us. What shall be the majesty of that form in which we
   shall rise? What is the distinguished happiness we shall then enjoy? We
   can but guess at a distance--we cannot know it fully. But on this point
   we can understand what Scripture states, and understand this much
   well--that damnation, the second death-- shall have no power on those
   who rise at the first resurrection! How could it? How can damnation
   fall on any but those who are sinners and are guilty of sin? And the
   saints are not guilty of sin. They have sinned like others, and they
   were by nature the children of wrath even as others. But their sin has
   been lifted from them--it was laid upon the Scapegoats' head of old!
   He, the Eternal Substitute, even our Lord Jesus, carried all their
   guilt and their iniquity into the wilderness of forgetfulness where it
   shall never be found against them forever! They wear the Savior's
   righteousness, even as they have been washed in His blood; and what
   wrath can lie on the man who is not only guiltless through the blood,
   but is meritorious through Imputed Righteousness? Oh, arm of Justice,
   you are nerveless to smite the blood-washed! Oh, you flames of Hell,
   how could even so much as the breath of your heat pass upon the man who
   is safely covered in the Savior's wounds? How is it possible for you, O
   Deaths, Destructions, Horrors, Glooms, Plagues, and Terrors, so much as
   to flit like a cloud over the serene sky of the spirit which has found
   peace with God through the blood of Christ? No, Brothers and Sisters--

   "Bold shall I stand in that great day! For who anything to my charge
   shall lay? While, through Your blood, absolved I am From sin's
   tremendous curse and shame."

   There shall be a second death; but over us it shall have no power. Do
   you understand the beauty of the picture? As if we might walk through
   the flames of Hell, and they should have no power t o devour us any
   more than when the holy children paced with ease over the hot coals of
   Nebuchadnezzar's seven-times heated furnace! Death may bend his bow and
   fit the arrow to the string--but we laugh at you, O Death! And you, O
   Hell, we will despise, for over both of you, enemies of man, we shall
   be more than conquerors through Him who has loved us! We shall stand
   invulnerable and invincible, defying and laughing to scorn our every
   foe. And all this because we are washed from sin, and covered with a
   spotless righteousness!

   But there is another reason why the second death can have no power on
   the Believer; because when the prince of this world comes against us,
   we shall be able to say what our Master did, "He has nothing in Me."
   When we shall rise again, we shall be freed from all corruption--no
   evil tendencies shall remain in us. "I will cleanse their blood that I
   have not cleansed; for the Lord dwells in Zion." "Without spot or
   wrinkle, or any such thing"--without even the shadow of a spot which
   the eyes of Omniscience could discover, we shall be as pure as Adam
   before his fall, as holy as the immaculate manhood when it first came
   from the Divine Hand! We shall be better than Adam, for Adam might sin,
   but we shall be so established in goodness, in truth, and in
   righteousness, that we shall not even be tempted again, much less shall
   we have any fear of falling! We shall stand spotless and faultless at
   the Last Great Day. Brothers and Sisters, lift up your heads--
   contending with sin, cast down with doubts--lift up your heads and wipe
   the tears from your eyes! There are days coming, the like of which
   angels have not seen--but you shall see them! There are times coming
   when your spirits shall no more fear the chain, nor shall you even
   remember the wormwood and the gall--

   "What, though your inbred sins require
   Your flesh to see the dust--
   Yet as the Lord your Savior rose
   So all His followers must!"

   And when they rise they shall leave the old Adam behind them. Blessed
   day! One of the most blessed parts of Heaven--of Heaven above or of
   Heaven below--will be freedom from the tendency to sin--a total death
   to that old nature which has been our plague and woe!

   3. There is yet a third privilege in the text, upon which I shall speak
   but briefly. I believe this to be also one of the glories that shall be
   revealed. The third privilege of the text is, "They shall reign with
   Him a thousand years.''" Here is another point upon which there has
   been a long and very vigorous contention. It was believed in the early
   Church--I do not know whether there is any Scriptural foundation for
   the precise date they fixed--that the seventh thousand years of the
   world's history would be a Sabbath; that as there were six days of toil
   in the week, and the seventh was a day of rest, so the world would have
   six thousand years of toil and sorrow, and the seventh thousand would
   be a thousand years of rest. I say I do not know that there is any
   Scripture for that; I do know that there is none against it. I believe
   the Lord Himself shall come, "but of that day, and of that hour knows
   no man, no not even the angels of God." And I think it is idle to
   attempt to fix the year or even the century when Christ shall come! Our
   business is to always expect Him, to be always looking for His
   appearing, watching for His coming; that whether He comes at cock-crow,
   or midnight, or at morning watch, we need be ready to go in with the
   wise virgins into the marriage feast, and to rejoice with our Beloved!
   If there have been any dates given, I am not able at present to find
   them. All these dates and mysteries I can leave to much more learned
   men, and men who give their whole time to it. The book of Revelation
   needs another expounder besides those who have loaded our shelves until
   they groan, for they have generally made confusion worse confounded!
   Their expositions have been rather "an obviation" than a revelation;
   they have rather darkened counsel by words without knowledge, than made
   the dark things plain. I am prepared to go about as far as my
   predecessor Dr. Gill went--as far as the old fathers of the Church
   went, as far as Baxter and Bunyan would have gone--but to go no further
   than that! Yet I think we may say this morning, there it in our text a
   distinct promise that the saints are to reign with Christ a thousand
   years, and I believe they are to reign with Him upon this earth.

   There are some passages which I think obtain a singular fullness of
   meaning if this is true. Turn to Psalm 37:10, 11. It is that Psalm
   where David has been fretting himself, because of the evildoers and
   their prosperity upon the earth. He says, "For yet a little while, and
   the wicked shall not be: yes, you shall diligently consider his place
   and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall
   delight themselves in the abundance of peace." You can interpret that
   to mean that the meek man shall enjoy much more of this world's goods
   than the sinner, and that he shall have abundance of peace. But I think
   you have given it a lean meaning, a very lean meaning, indeed. If it is
   true that these meek ones shall yet possess this very earth, and that
   here, in the abundance of peace through the Messiah's reign, they shall
   rejoice in it, I think you have found a fuller meaning, and one which
   has a God-like meaning. So it is that God's promises always have a
   wider meaning than we can conceive; now, in this case, if it only means
   that the meek are to have what they gain in this life, which is very
   little, indeed; if they are only to have what they enjoy here upon
   earth, which is so little, that I think if in this life only they have
   hope, they are of men the most miserable! If it only means that, then
   the promise means less than we might conceive it to mean! But if it
   means that they shall have glory even here, then you have given to it
   one of the widest meanings you can conceive--a meaning like the
   meanings usually given to the promises of God--wide, large, extensive,
   and worthy of Himself! Brothers and Sisters, the meek do not inherit
   the earth to any great degree at present, and we look for this in
   another age. Let me quote the language of Christ, lest you should think
   this passage peculiar to the Old Testament dispensation, "Blessed are
   the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." How? Where? When? Not now,
   certainly, not in Christ's days, not in Apostolic times by any means.
   What did the meek inherit, Brothers and Sisters? The stake, flames,
   racks, pincers, dungeons. Their inheritance indeed, was nothing! They
   were destitute, addicted, tormented. They wandered about in sheepskins
   and goatskins, and if the meek are ever to inherit the earth, certainly
   it must be in some age to come, for they have never inherited it yet!

   Turn again to a passage in Revelation 5:9, 10--"And they sung a new
   song." It is the very song we sang this morning, and it runs thus, "You
   are worthy to take the Book, and to open the seals thereof: for You
   were slain and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every
   kindred and tongue, and people and nation; and have made us unto our
   God, kings and priests--and we shall reign on the earth." Whether
   anyone disputes the genuineness of these words, I do not know; but if
   they mean anything at all--if the Holy Spirit meant to set forth any
   meaning--surely it must have been that the people of Christ shall reign
   on the earth. Besides, remember our Savior's words in Matthew 19:28-29,
   where in answer to a question which had been put by Peter as to what
   His saints should have as the result of their losses for His sake, He
   said unto them, "Verily I say unto you, that you which have followed
   Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the Throne of
   His Glory, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve
   tribes of Israel. And everyone who has forsaken houses, or brothers, or
   sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My
   name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit
   everlasting life." It seems that Christ here is to come in the
   regeneration, when in a newborn world there shall be joys fitted for
   the newborn spirits--and then there shall be splendors and glories for
   the Apostles first, and for all those who by any means have suffered
   any losses for Christ Jesus. You find such passages as these in the
   Word of God, "The Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in
   Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously." You find another like
   this in Zachariah, "My God shall come with the multitude of His
   saints." Indeed, I could not now take up your time by quoting many
   passages in which it seems to me that nothing but the triumph on the
   very spot where they have fought the battle, nothing but the glory in
   the very place where they have had the tug of war, will meet the
   meaning of God's Word. I do look forward to this with joy, that though
   I may sleep in Christ before my Master comes, and I know not whether
   that shall be or not, yet I shall rise at the day of His appearing, and
   shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just if I have truly
   and faithfully served Him; and that recompense shall be to be made like
   unto Him, and to partake of His glories before the eyes of men, and to
   reign with Him during the thousand years! Dr. Watts, I believe,
   understood that Christ is to come literally, for he says--

   "Nor does it yet appear
   How great we must be made;
   But when we see our Savior here,
   We shall be like our Head!
   A hope so much divine
   May trials well endure,
   May purge our souls from sense and sin
   As Christ the Lord is pure."

   But to gather up what I have said, and to make one other observation.
   This Doctrine which I have preached just now is not an unpractical one.
   For throughout the New Testament, whenever the Apostle wants to stir up
   men to patience, to labor, to hope, to endurance, to holiness--he
   generally says something about the Advent of Christ. "Be patient,
   Brethren," he says, "for the coming of the Lord draws near." "Let your
   moderation be known unto all men, the Lord is at hand." "Judge nothing
   before the time, till the Lord come." "When the great Shepherd shall
   appear, you also shall appear with Him in glory." Brothers and Sisters,
   I think we shall do wrong if we make too much of this; but we shall do
   equally wrong if we make too little of it! Let us give it a fair place
   in our thoughts, and especially let those of us who fear

   God, and believe in Jesus take this to be a window through which we can
   look when the house is dark, and our home is full of misery. Let us
   look to the time when we shall rise among the first, following Christ
   the First Fruits--when we shall reign with Christ, sharing in His
   glories--and when we shall know that the second death over us has no
   power.

   II. I shall now turn to the second part of the discourse briefly. To
   the ungodly THREE THINGS IN SIMPLICITY.

   Sinner, you have heard us speak of the resurrection of the righteous.
   To you the word "resurrection" has no music. There is no flash ofjoy in
   your spirit when you hear that the dead shall rise again. But oh, I
   pray you lend me your ears while I assure you in God's name that you
   shall rise! Not only shall your soul live--you have perhaps become so
   brutish that you forget you have a soul--but your body itself shall
   live! Those eyes that have been full of lust shall see sights of
   horror! Those ears which have listened to the temptations of the Evil
   One, shall hear the thunders of the Day of Judgment! Those very feet
   that bare you to the theater, shall attempt, but utterly fail to
   sustain you when Christ shall sit in judgment! Think not when your body
   is put into the soil, that you have done with it! It has been partner
   with your soul in sin; it shall be sharer with your soul in the
   punishment! He is able to cast both body and soul into Hell! The
   heathens believe in the immortality of the soul. We need not therefore
   prove what a heathen could conceive. It is the Doctrine of the
   Resurrection of the body which is peculiar to Christianity. I know you
   are not prepared to cast away the Revelation of God,. You receive that
   Book as being God's Book, and it tells me that the dead, both small and
   great, shall rise. When the archangel's trumpet shall sound, the whole
   of the old inhabitants of the world before the Flood shall rise out of
   the ocean! The buried palaces, the sunken homes shall all give up the
   multitude who once married, and were given in marriage until Noah
   entered into the ark. Up shall rise from the great deeps of the
   fathomless sea, thousands upon thousands of bodies ofmen and women who
   have slept now these three and four thousand years! Every churchyard,
   too, where men have been quietly buried with Christian rites, but yet
   were still unchristian, shall yield up its dead. The battlefield shall
   yield a mighty harvest--a harvest which was sown in blood--which shall
   be reaped in tempest. Every place where man has lived, and man has died
   shall see the dying quickened once again, and flesh and blood once more
   instinct with life! But the main thing with you is that you will be
   there. Living and dying as you now are, ungodly and unconverted, the
   most awful curse that could fall on you--with the exception of the
   damnation of your soul--is the sure and certain resurrection of your
   body!

   Go, now, and paint it if you will, and seek a beauty which the worm
   shall loathe. Go and pamper your body--drink the sweet, and eat the
   fat. Go and luxuriate and indulge it in ease. Oh, Sir, you may well
   pamper your bodies, for there is short enough time for your body to
   have mirth in; and when that short time is over, you shall drink
   another wine--the dregs of the cup of God's wrath which the wicked
   shall drain to the last drop! Satisfy your ears with music now--you
   shall soon hear nothing but the howling of the damned! Go your
   way--eat, drink and be merry; but for all these, the Lord shall bring
   you into judgment--sevenfold for all your sinful pleasures--yes,
   seventy times seven, for all your joys of lust and wickedness, and
   crime shall the Lord be avenged on you in the great and terrible day of
   His wrath! Sinner, think of this, and when you sin, think of the
   resurrection!

   But after the resurrection, according to the text, comes the judgment.
   You have cursed God. The oath died away. No, Sir, it did not--it
   imprinted itself upon the great Book of God's remembrance! You have
   entered the chamber of wantonness, or the hall of infidelity; you have
   walked through the stews of grime, and through the stench and filth of
   the brothel; you have wandered into sin, and plunged into it, thinking
   it would all die with the day--that as the night covers up the sights
   of the day, so the night of death should cover up the deeds of your day
   of life. Not so! The books shall be opened. I think I see your
   blanching cheeks--closing your eyes because you dare not look upon the
   Judge when He opens that page where stands your history! I hear yon
   sinner, boldest among you all! He is crying, "You rocks, fall on me."
   There they stand, sublime and dread, those granite rocks; he would
   rather be crushed than stand there before the avenging Eyes; but the
   mountains will not loosen, their flinty bowels feel no pangs of
   sympathy, they will not move! You stand while the fiery Eyes look you
   through and through, and the dread Voice reads on, and on, your every
   act, and word, and thought! I see you as the shameful crimes are read,
   and men and angels hear. I see your horror as a nameless deed is told
   in explicit terms, which none can misunderstand! I hear your thoughts
   brought out--that lust, that murder which was in the thought, but never
   grew into the deed. And you are all this while astonished like
   Belshazzar when he saw the writing on the wall, and his loins were
   loose, and he was terribly afraid. So shall it be with you; and yet
   again, and again, and again, shall you send up that awful shriek, "Hide
   us! Hide us from the face of Him who sits upon the Throne, and from the
   wrath of the Lamb!"

   But then comes the end, the last of all. After death the judgment;
   after judgment the damnation. If it is a dreadful thing to live again;
   if it is a still more dreadful thing to spend the first day of that
   life in the grand assize of God, how much more awful shall it be when
   the sentence is pronounced, and the terror of punishment shall begin!
   We believe that the soulsof the wicked are already tormented, but this
   judgment will cast both body andsoulinto the Lake of Fire! Men and
   women, you who fear not God, and have no faith in Jesus, I cannot
   picture to you the damnation! Across it let me draw a curtain. But
   though we must not picture it, I pray you realize it. When Martin has
   painted some of his sublime pictures, he has generally heightened the
   effect by masses of darkness. Surely this is the way in which God has
   painted Hell--rather by masses of darkness than by definiteness of
   light! This much we know--Hell is a place of absence from God--a place
   for the development of sin, where every passion is unbridled, every
   lust unrestrained; a place where God punishes night and day those who
   sin night and day--a place where there is never sleep, or rest or
   hope--a place where a drop of water is denied, though thirst shall burn
   the tongue! It is a place where pleasure never breathed, where light
   never dawned, where anything like consolation was never heard of--a
   place where the Gospel is denied, where mercy droops her wings and
   dies! Hell is a place where vengeance reigns, and shakes his head, and
   brandishes his sword--a place of fury, and of burning--a place, the
   like of which, imagination has not pictured! May God grant it may be a
   place which you shall never see, and whose dread you shall never feel.
   Sinner, instead of preaching it to you, let me bid you fly from it.
   Die, Sinner, and flight from Hell becomes impossible--you are lost
   eternally! Oh, while yet you are on praying ground, I pray you, think
   on your end. "Because she remembered not her latter end, she came down
   terribly." Let it not be said thus of you. Think! Think! This warning
   may be the last you shall ever hear. You may never be spared to come to
   a place of worship again. Perhaps, while you sit here, the last sands
   are dropping from the hour glass--and then no more warning can be
   given--because Redemption and escape shall be impossible to you!

   Soul, I lift up before you now, Christ the Crucified One--"Whoever
   believes on Him shall never perish, but have eternal life." As Moses
   lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so this morning the Son of Man
   is lifted up! Sinner, see His wounds. Look to His thorn-crowned head.
   See the nails of His hands, and of His feet. Do you perceive Him?
   Listen while He cries, "Why have you forsaken Me?" Listen again while
   He says, "It is finished! It is finished!" Salvation finished! And now,
   salvation is freely preached to you. Believe on Christ, and you shall
   be saved! Trust Him, and all the horrors of the future shall have no
   power over you; but the splendors of this prophecy shall be fulfilled,
   be they what they may! Oh that this morning some of you may trust my
   Master for the first time in your lives! And this done, you need not
   curiously enquire what the future shall be, but you may sit down
   calmly, and say, "Come when it will, my soul is on the Rock of Ages. It
   fears no ill; it fears no tempest; it defies all pain. Come quickly!
   Come quickly! Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!"
     __________________________________________________________________

                           Trust In God--True Wisdom

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 12, 1861,

   BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He who handles a matter wisely shall find good: and whoever trusts in
   the Lord, happy is he." Proverbs 16:20.

   WISDOM is man's true path--that which enables him to accomplish best
   the end of his being, and which, therefore, gives to him the richest
   enjoyment, and the fullest play for all his powers. Wisdom is the
   compass by which man is to steer across the trackless waste of life.
   Without wisdom man is as the wild asses' colt; he runs here and there,
   wasting strength which might be profitably employed. Without wisdom,
   man may be compared to a soil untilled which may yield some fair
   flowers, but can never field a harvest which shall repay the labor of
   the reaper, or even the toil of the gleaner. Give man wisdom--wisdom in
   the true sense of the term--and he rises to all the dignity that
   manhood can possibly know; he becomes a fit companion for the angels,
   and between him and God there is no creature; he stands next to the
   Eternal One, because Christ has espoused his nature, and so has linked
   humanity with Divinity! But where shall this wisdom be found? Many have
   dreamed that they discovered it, but they have not possessed it. Where
   shall we find it? It were worth while to pierce the deep of the earth,
   to scale the heights of Heaven, to traverse the deserts, to plow the
   sea, to fly through the illimitable fields of ether--all were too
   little if we might but find this precious thing at last! "But," the
   depth says, "It is not in me." And the sea says, "It is not with me."
   It cannot be had for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the
   price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the
   precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal
   it--and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No
   mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls--for the price of wisdom
   is above rubies! The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it--neither
   shall it be valued with pure gold. From where, then, comes wisdom? And
   where is the place of understanding, seeing it is hidden from the eyes
   of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air? Destruction
   and Death say, "We have heard the fame thereof with our ears. God
   understands the way thereof, and He knows the place thereof."

   Let us listen, then, to the voice of the Lord, for He has declared the
   secret; He has revealed to the sons of men wherein true wisdom lies,
   and we have it in the text, "Whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he;"
   and that sentence is put in conjunction with another which teaches us
   this Truth of God--that to handle a matter wisely is to find good, and
   the true way to handle a matter wisely is to trust God! This is the
   short and brief method of escaping the greatest difficulties-- this is
   the clue to the most intricate labyrinths; this is the lever which
   shall lift the most tremendous weights. He who trusts in the Lord has
   found out the way to handle matters wisely, and happy is he!

   I shall take the text this morning, by God's assistance, in two ways.
   First, we shall apply it to the wise handling of matters with regard to
   time and this present state; and then, secondly, with regard to the
   handling of the eternal matters relating to our destiny beyond the
   grave, and endeavor to show how trusting in the Lord is handling this
   matter wisely.

   I. First, then, my dear Friends, with regard to THE WISE HANDLING OF
   MATTERS OF TIME WHICH CONCERN OUR BODIES AND OUR SOULS, WHILE WE ARE
   HERE BELOW.

   A man must be prudent in such a world as this. He will soon cut his
   feet if he does not watch his steps. He will soon tear his garments
   with thorns and briars if he does not choose his way. This is a land
   full of enemies; we must be wise or the arrow will suddenly find out a
   vulnerable place in our armor. We must be cautious, for we are not
   traveling in noonday on the king's highway, but rather at night-fall,
   and we may, therefore, be attacked by robbers, and may lose our
   precious treasures. He who is in a wilderness, and in a wilderness
   infested with robbers, must handle matters wisely if he would find
   good.

   How shall we handle these matters wisely? Three or four come forward to
   instruct us, and the first lesson is one which Satan often teaches the
   young and foolish spirit. He says, "To handle a matter wisely is to
   make your own will your law, and to do that which seems to be the best
   for you, be it right or be it wrong." This was the lesson which he
   taught to Eve, when in the serpent's form he spoke the serpent's
   wisdom, "You shall be as gods." He said, "Mistrust the goodness of your
   Maker; believe that He is afraid lest you should attain to equal power,
   and dignity with Himself. Pluck the fruit. It is true He forbids, but
   who is Jehovah, that you should obey His voice? It is true He threatens
   to punish, but do not believe the threat, or if you believe it, dare
   it! He who cannot risk anything will never win; he who will not venture
   something, shall never make great gains. Do and dare, and you will be
   handling the matter wisely." She plucked the fruit, and the next
   instant she must have perceived somewhat of her folly; but before many
   hours had passed over man's head, he discovered nakedness, pains of
   body, weariness, toil, expulsion from Paradise, and tilling a
   thankless, thorny land, taught man that he had not handled the matter
   wisely, for he had not found good. And you, too, you sons and daughters
   of Eve, when the old serpent whispers in your ear, "Sin, and you shall
   escape from difficulty; be honest when you can afford to be so, but if
   you cannot live except by dishonesty, be dishonest; if you cannot
   prosper except by lies, then lie." Oh, listen not to his voice, I pray
   you! Hearken to a better wisdom than this! This is a deception which
   shall destroy you! You shall find no good, but you shall find much
   evil; you shall sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind! You think that
   you dive into these depths for pearls, but the jagged rocks shall break
   you, and from the deep waters you shall never rise--except your
   lifeless corpse swim on the surface of the pestilential waves. Be wise
   and learn of God, and close your ears to him who would have you destroy
   yourself, that he may gloat his malicious spirit over your eternal
   misery! It is never wise to sin, Brothers and Sisters, never. However
   it may seem to be the best thing you can do, it is always the worst.
   There never was a man in such a position that it would be really
   profitable to him to sin.

   "But," you say, "some men have become rich by it!" Sirs, they have had
   sorrow with their riches; they have inherited the blasting curse of
   God, and so they have been really poorer than poverty could have made
   them! "But," you say, "men have mounted to the throne by breaking their
   oaths." I know they have; but temporary success is no sure sign of
   constant happiness! The Emperor's career is not yet ended--should he
   escape in this life, the perjurer shall meet his Judge! He who measures
   what man gains by what he seems to gain, has taken a wrong standard.
   There was never yet--I will repeat it-- there was never yet any man who
   broke his word, who forfeited his oath, who turned aside from God's
   Word or God's Law--who in the end found it was profitable to him! He
   heaped up deceptions, he gathered together delusions--and when God
   awoke--and when that man awoke--as a dream when one awakes, so did he,
   or so shallhe, despise the image on which his soul had doted!

   But now the serpent moderates his hiss. "Do not sin," he says; "there
   is no necessity for downright dishonesty or theft; do not absolutely
   plunge yourself into vice, but be wise," he says, by which he means,
   "Be crafty; trim your sails when the wind changes--how can you reach
   your haven unless you learn to tack about? The straight road is
   thorny-- take the by-path--there will be another path which will bring
   you back after the thorns and flints are passed. Why," says he, "will
   you dash your head against a stone? If there is a mountain in your way,
   why not wind about the base--why climb the summit? Does not wisdom
   teach you that that which is easiest must be best, and that which is
   most consistent with the dictates of your own nature must, after all,
   be best for you?" Ah, slimy serpent! Ah, base deceiver--how many
   multitudes have been thus deceived! Why, Brothers and Sisters, the
   reason why we have not more men in this age whom one could trust, why
   we have not in our high places more men in whom we could place
   confidence, is because policy has been the law of individuals, and the
   law of nations, too, instead of that course of honesty which is like
   the flight of the arrow, certain and sure to reach its mark--not by
   tortuous windings--but by one onward straight line! Why do persons so
   frequently inquire what they ought to do in such a case--not meaning
   what God's Law would have them do--but what will bring the best result?
   The rules of modern craft and time-serving morality are difficult,
   because they are inconsistent, but honesty is simple and clear as the
   sunlight! It takes years to make a clever lawyer--Divine Grace,
   however, can make an honest man in an hour. Brethren, believe me,
   policy i s not wisdom, and craft is not understanding.

   Let me give you the case of another woman--Rebecca. Rebecca heard that
   God had decreed that her favorite son, Jacob, should be ruler of the
   two. "The elder shall serve the younger." She could not wait for God's
   Providence to fulfill God's purpose--but thought she must deceive her
   blind husband! She dresses up her son with skins of goats, and wool;
   provides the savory meat, and sends Jacob, who was, though a good man,
   the very picture of a political and prudent professor, to meet his
   father, and to deceive him. Ah, if Rebecca had been wise, she would not
   have done this! Little did she foresee that the effect of this
   stratagem would be to drive her favorite son away from her, give him
   years of toil under

   Laban, cause him to make the greatest mistake of his life--the
   commission of the error of polygamy--and make him a far more afflicted
   man than he might have been had he been like Abraham or Isaac, who
   leaned not to their own understandings, but trusted in God with all
   their hearts! Brothers and Sisters, you shall never find in any case
   that any turning aside from a straightforward course will be for your
   profit! After all, you may depend on it, that the way to be most
   renowned among men is to have the strange singularity of being a
   downright honest man. Say what you mean; mean what you say. Do what you
   believe to be right, and always hold it for a maxim. If the skies fall
   through your doing right, honest men will survive the ruin! How can the
   godly sin? If the earth should reel, would he fail? No, blessed be God,
   he would find himself in the honorable position of David of old, when
   he said, "The earth is removed; I bear up the pillars thereof."

   But now the serpent changes his tune, and he says, "Well, if you are
   not sinful or crafty, at any rate, to succeed in life you must be very
   careful. You must fret and worry, and think much about it. That is the
   way to handle a matter wisely. Why," he says, "look how many are ruined
   from want of thought, and want of care? Be you careful over it. Rise up
   early, sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness. Stint yourself,
   deny yourself. Do not give to the poor; be a miser, and you shall
   succeed. Take care. Watch--be thoughtful." And this is the path of
   wisdom according to him. My Brethren, it is a path which very many have
   tried, very many have persevered in it all their lives! But I must say
   to you this is not handling a matter wisely after all! God forbid we
   should say a single word against prudence and care, and necessary
   forethought, industry, and Providence. These are virtues; they are not
   only commendable, but a Christian's character would be sadly at fault
   if he had them not. But when these are looked upon as the
   foundations--the staple materials of success--men are desperately in
   error! It is vain for you in that sense to rise up early, and sit up
   late, and eat the bread of carefulness, for "so He gives His beloved
   sleep." Oh, there are many who have realized that picture of old Care,
   which old Spenser gives in his Fairy Queene--

   "Rude was his garment and to rags all rent;
   No better had he, nor for better cared;
   With blistered hands, among the cinders burnt,
   And fingers filthy, with long nails uncared
   Right fit to rend the food before which he fared--
   His name was Care--a blacksmith by his trade,
   That neither day nor night from working spared,
   But to small purpose iron wedges made--
   Those are unquiet thoughts that careful minds invade."

   Who wishes to have that picture come true of himself? I would
   infinitely rather that we could be photographed as being like Luther's
   birds, which ate upon the tree, and sang--

   "Mortal cease from care and sorrow,
   God provides for the morrow."

   Care is good, mark--if it is good care! But care is ill when it comes
   to be ill care, and it is ill care if I dare not cast it upon Him who
   cares for me! Cotton has well said of covetous earthworms, "After
   hypocrites, the greatest dupes the devil has are those who exhaust an
   anxious existence in the disappointments and vexations of business, and
   live miserably and meanly, only to die magnificent and rich. For, like
   the hypocrites, the only disinterested action these men can accuse
   themselves of is that of serving the devil without receiving his
   wages--he that stands every day of his life behind a counter until he
   drops from it into the grave, may negotiate many very profitable
   bargains; but he has made a single bad one, so bad indeed, that it
   counter-balances all the rest; for the empty foolery of dying rich he
   has paid down his health, his happiness, and his integrity."

   Once again--there is another way of handling a matter wisely which is
   often suggested to young men, and suggested, too, I am sorry to say, by
   Christians who little know that they are giving Satanic advice. "Well,"
   they say, "young man, if you will not be exceedingly careful, and watch
   night and day, at least be self-reliant. Go out and tell the world that
   you are a match for it, and that you know it; that you mean to carve
   your way to glory, and to build yet for yourself an edifice at which
   men shall gaze! Say to the little men round about you, 'I mean to tower
   above you all, and bestride this narrow world like a Colossus.' Be
   independent young men! Rest on yourselves! There is something wonderful
   in you--quit yourselves like men. Be strong!" Well, Brothers and
   Sisters, there are many who have tried this self-reliance, and their
   deception in this case has been fearful, too--for when the day of fiery
   trial has come, they have discovered that, "Cursed is he that trusts in
   man"--even though that man is himef--"and makes flesh his arm"--though
   it be his own flesh! Broken in pieces they have been left as wrecks
   upon the sand though they sailed out of the harbor with all their sails
   filled with the wind! They have come back like knights unhorsed and
   dishonored, though they went out with their lance in hand, and their
   proudly flaunting pennon--intending to push like the horns of
   unicorns--and drive the whole earth before them! No man was ever so
   much deceived by others as by himself! Be warned, Christians, that this
   is not handling a matter wisely!

   But what, then, is the way of wisdom? The text answers the
   question--"He who trusts in the Lord, happy is he." So, then, if I
   understand the text rightly, in temporal things, if we learn to trust
   in God, we shall be happy. We are not to be idle. That would show we
   did nottrust in God--who works up to now--but in the devil, who is the
   father of idleness! We are not to be impudent and rash; that were to
   trust chance, and not to trust God, for God is a God of economy and
   order. We are to trust God, acting in all prudence, and in all
   uprightness, we are to rely simply and entirely upon Him. Now I have no
   doubt there are many here who say, "Well, that is not the way to get on
   in the world! That can never be the path of success--simply trusting in
   God." Yes, but it is so--only one must have Divine Grace in the heart
   to do it. One must first be made a child of God, and then he can trust
   his affairs in his Father's hands. One must come to depend upon the
   Eternal One, because the Eternal One has enabled him to use this
   Christian Grace which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit! I am persuaded
   that faith is as much the rule of temporal, as of spiritual life, and
   that we ought to have faith in God for our shops as well as for our
   souls! Worldly men may sneer at this, but it is none the less true. At
   any rate, I pray that it may be my course as long as I live.

   My dear friends, let me commend to you a life of trust in God in
   temporal things by these few advantages among a great many others.
   First, trusting in God, you will not have to mourn because you have
   used sinful means to grow rich. Should you become poor through
   it--better to be poor with a clear conscience--than to be rich and
   guilty. You will always have this comfort should you come to the lowest
   position of nature, that you have come there through no fault of your
   own. You have served God with integrity, and what if some should say
   you have missed your mark, not achieved to success? At least there is
   no sin upon your conscience!

   And then, again, trusting God, you will not be guilty of
   self-contradiction. He who trusts in craft, sails this way today, and
   that way the next--like a vessel propelled by the fickle wind. But he
   who trusts in the Lord is like a vessel propelled by steam--she cuts
   through the waves, defies the wind--and makes one bright silvery track
   to her destined haven! Be you such a man as that--never bow to the
   varying customs of worldly wisdom. Let men see that the world has
   changed, not you--that man's opinions, and man's maxims have veered
   round to another quarter, but that you are still invincibly strong in
   the strength which trusting in God alone can confer! And then, dear
   Brothers and Sisters, let me say you will be delivered from care, you
   will not be troubled with evil tidings, your heart will be fixed
   trusting in the Lord. I have read a story of an old Doctor of the
   Church, who, going out one morning, met a beggar and said to him, "I
   wish you a good day." "Sir," he said, "I never had a bad day in any
   life." "But," said the Doctor, "your clothes are torn to rags, and your
   wallet seems to be exceedingly empty." Said he, "My clothes are as good
   as God wants them to be, and my wallet is as full as the Lord has been
   pleased to make it--and what pleases Him, pleases me." "But," said the
   Doctor, "suppose God should cast you into Hell?" "Indeed, Sir," he
   said, "but that could never be! But if it were, I would be contented,
   for I have two long and strong arms--faith and love--and I would throw
   these about the neck of my Savior, and I would never let Him go, so
   that if I went there, He would be with me, and it would be a Heaven to
   me!" Oh, those two strong arms of faith and love! If you can but hang
   about the Savior's neck, indeed, you may fear no ill weathers! No fatal
   shipwreck shall I fear, for Christ is in my vessel--He holds the helm
   and holds the winds, too--

   "Though winds and waves assault my keel,
   He does preserve it, He does steer,
   Even when the boat seems most to reel.
   Storms are the triumphs of His care,
   Sure He may close His eyes, but not His heart."

   The practical lesson from all this is--"trust in the Lord with all your
   heart, and lean not to your own understanding." Whatever your trouble
   is, take it to God this morning--do not bear it till the night!
   Whatever your difficulty and pecu- liar exercise of mind, tell it unto
   the Lord, your God. He is as able as He is willing, and as willing as
   He is able. Having sent the trial, He will surely make a way of escape
   for you!

   II. But now I turn to the second part of our discourse. IN SPIRITUAL
   MATTERS, HE WHO HANDLES A MATTER WISELY SHALL FIND GOOD.

   But what is the right way of handling this dread matter which stands
   between our soul and God? We have immortal spirits, and spirits that
   are responsible. The Day of Judgment draws near, and with it Heaven's
   happiness, or Hell's torment. What, my Brothers and Sisters, shall we
   do to handle this matter wisely? And here comes up the old serpent
   again, and he says, "Young man, the easiest way to handle this matter
   is to let it alone altogether! You are young as yet--there is plenty of
   time--why put old heads on young shoulders? You will have need enough
   to think of religion, by-and-by, but at present, you see, it will be
   much in your way. Better leave it alone. It is only these ministers
   that try and make you thoughtful--but they only bother you and trouble
   you--so drop it! You can think of it, if there is anything in it,
   by-and-by, but for the present, rejoice in your youth, and let your joy
   be in the morning of your days--for the evil days come--and then let
   your thoughtfulness come with them."

   Well now, young man, young woman, does this strike you, after all, as
   being the wisest course? I will tell you one thing--whatever you may
   think of it--such a course as that is the direct road to Hell! Do you
   know the road to Heaven? Well, it might take us some little time to
   tell you about that, but if you want to go to Hell, we will tell you
   that in one moment! You need not go and swear; you need not be drunk;
   you need not become a monster in iniquity, or a fiend in cruelty. No,
   no, it is easier than that! It is just a little neglect--that is
   all--and your soul is lost for sure! Remember how the Apostle puts it,
   "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation?" Now, can
   that which is the surest road to Hell be a wise way? I think I may
   leave it with your reason. Certainly I may leave it with your
   conscience; you know it is not the right way! Yes, and I have noticed
   this--that men and women who laugh most at religion when they are well
   and are most careless--are the most frightened when they meet with a
   little accident! If they have a little illness, oh, how bad they feel!
   It is an awful thing for them to be ill! They know it is--they are
   dreadfully shaken; and the strangest thing is that the minister they
   hated most when they were well--becomes the very man they have the most
   faith in--and most long to see when they become sick! I know when the
   cholera was here last, there was a certain man for whom no word in the
   English language could be found that was bad enough to describe me! But
   in the cholera, when he lay sick, who did he send for? The clergyman of
   the parish? No, certainly not! Who did he send for? Some minister of
   good repute? No-- send for the man whom he had before cursed; and until
   that man should come and speak to him, and offer prayer, he could not
   even indulge a hope--though, alas, poor soul, I fear he had no hope
   even then! Yet, so it is. God will honor His ministers; He will prove
   the utter futility of man's brag and boast. You may be careless, Sir,
   while you are well; you may neglect this great salvation, but a little
   sickness shall make you tremble, and your knees shall shake, and you
   shall be convulsed with agony, and find that this is not handling the
   matter wisely! You are something like a bankrupt who knows that his
   accounts are going wrong, and fears that he is insolvent, so he does
   not look at his books. He does not like to look at them, for there is
   no very pleasant reading there; there may be a few assets, but the
   entries are mostly on the other side--and so at last he does not keep
   any books at all--it would be troublesome to him to know where he was!
   So is it with you. It is because things are not right, you do not like
   to sift them and try them--lest you should find out the black reality!
   Be wise, I pray you, and look a little beyond you. Why shut your eyes
   and perish? Man, I charge you by the living God, awake, or Hell shall
   wake you! Look, man, or eternity shall soon amaze you.

   But Satan comes to some, and he says, "If you won't be careless, the
   next easiest thing is to be credulous. There," he says, "is a man over
   there with a shaved head who says he'd manage the thing for you. Now,
   he ought to know! Does not he belong to a church that has an infallible
   head? Give yourself up to him," he says, "and it will be all right!
   Or," says he, "I hate popery, but there is a clergyman, let him give
   you the sacrament--rely upon him, and it will be all safe! Or," says
   he, "if you could but join the church and be baptized; there, that will
   do--take it for granted that it is all right. Why should you trouble
   yourself with theological squabbles? Let these things alone! Be
   credulous; don't search into the root of the matter; be content as long
   as you swim on the surface, and do not care whether there are rocks
   down deep at the bottom of the sea." And is this the way--is this the
   way to handle this matter wisely? Assuredly not, Sir! Better trust a
   lawyer with your property, than a priest with your soul! Better hand
   your purse to a highwayman upon the heath, than commit your soul to a
   Romish priest! What will he do for you but make his penny of you, and
   your soul may be penniless for him? So shall it be with the best of men
   if you make saviors of them. Go, lean upon a reed! Go, build a throne
   of bubbles! Go, sleep in a powder magazine with your candle burning in
   a bag of gunpowder--but do not trust even a good man with your soul!
   See to it that you handle this matter wisely, and you cannot do it
   thus.

   "Ah, well," says Satan, "if this will not do, then try the way of
   working out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Do good," he
   says, "say a great many prayers, perform a great many good works, and
   this is handling the matter wisely." Now, I will take you to
   Switzerland for a minute, to give you a picture. There was a poor women
   who lived in one of those sweet villages under the Alps, where the
   fountains are always pouring out their streams of water into the great
   stone tanks, and the huge overhanging roofs cover the peasant homes.
   She had been accustomed to climb the mountain to gather fodder for her
   cows, and she had driven her goats to the wild crags, and the sheer
   solitudes, where no sound is heard except the tinkling of the bell.
   She, good soul, had read nothing but the Bible, and her dreams and
   thoughts were all of heavenly things, and she dreamed thus--that she
   was walking along a smooth meadow--where there were many fair flowers,
   and much soft grass. The pathway was smooth, and there were thousands
   wending their way along it, but they took no notice of her. She seemed
   alone. Suddenly the thought crossed her, that this was the path to
   destruction, and these were selfish sinners. She sought another way,
   for she feared to meet their doom. She saw a path up the mountain-side
   exceedingly steep and rugged, as mountain paths are, but up this she
   saw men and women carrying tremendous burdens, as some of us have seen
   them carry them, till they stoop right down under the tremendous
   weight, as they climb the stony staircase. Here there was a tree across
   the road, and there a bramble, and there a brook was gushing down the
   mountain-side, and the path was lined with stones and she slipped. So
   she turned aside again. But those who went up the hill looked at her
   with such sorrow, that she turned back again, and began to climb once
   more--only to find the way rough and impossible.

   She turned aside again into the green meadow, but the climbers seemed
   to be very sad. Though they pitied her, she did not pity them, for
   their toil made them wet with perspiration and faint with fatigue. She
   dreamed she went along the green meadow till she came to a fair house
   out of which looked a bright spirit. The side of the house where she
   was, was all windows without a door, and the spirit said to her, "You
   have come the wrong road; you cannot come in this way; there is no
   entrance here," and she woke. She told a Christian woman who visited
   her of this dream, and said, "I am sorely troubled, for I cannot go up
   that mountain path, I know. I understand that to be the way of
   holiness, but I cannot climb it--and I fear that I shall choose the
   green meadow--and when I come at last to the gates of Heaven, they will
   tell me that is not the way, and I cannot enter there." So her kind
   instructress said to her, "I have not dreamed, but I have read in my
   Bible this morning, that one day when the corn was ripening, and the
   sun was shining brightly, there went three men out of a city called
   Jerusalem. One of them was the Savior of the world, and the other two
   were thieves. One of the thieves, as he hung upon the cross, found his
   way to the bright city of Heaven. And it was said, 'Today shall you be
   with Me in Paradise.' Did he go up that hilly path, do you think?"
   "No," said the poor woman, "he believed, and was saved." "Ah," said her
   friend, "and this is yourway to Heaven! That hilly path you cannot
   climb--those who were ascending it with so much labor--perished before
   they reached the summit! Tottering from some dizzy height, they were
   dashed to pieces upon some jagged rock. Believe, and this shall be the
   path of salvation for you." And so I come to the poor soul and I
   say--if you would handle matters rightly, happy is he who trusts in the
   Lord. You have done the right thing for eternity, with all its
   solemnities, when you have cast your soul, just as it is, on Him who is
   "able to save to the uttermost them who come unto God by Him."

   And let me now tell you what are the excellencies of so doing. That man
   who believes in Christ, and can say, "Salvation is finished. All is of
   Christ, and all is free! My faith is in Jesus Christ, and in Him
   alone"--that man is freed from fears! He is not afraid to die--Christ
   has finished the work for him; he is not afraid to live, he shall not
   perish--for his soul is in Jesus Christ! And he is not afraid of trial,
   or of trouble, for He who bought him with His blood, shall keep him
   with His arm. He is free from present fears, and he is free from
   present cares, too. He has no need to toil and labor, to fret and
   strive, to do this or to do that. He feels no more the whip of the
   slave driver on his back. His life is happy, and his service light; the
   yoke he wears, he scarcely knows to be a yoke. The road is pleasant,
   and the path is peace--no climbing upwards except as angel hands assist
   him to climb the road which else no mortal feet could traverse! He is
   free, too, from all fatal delusion. He is not a deceived man; he shall
   never open his eyes to find himself mistaken; he has something which
   shall last him as long as life shall last--which shall be with him when
   he wakes from his bed of clay, to conduct him joy- ously to realms of
   light and endless day! This man is such a man that if I compared him
   with the very angels, I should not do amiss. He is on earth, but his
   heart is in Heaven; he is here below, but he sits together with Christ
   in heavenly places. He has his troubles, but they work his lasting
   good; he has his trials, but they are only the precursors of victory;
   he has weakness, but he glories in infirmity because the power of
   Christ does rest upon him! He is sometimes cast down, but he is not
   destroyed. He is perplexed--he is not in despair. He does not grovel,
   but he walks upright; his feet may be in the mire, but his eyes are
   above the stars! His body may be covered with rags, but his soul his
   robed in the Light of God. He may go to a miserable pallet to find an
   uneasy rest--but his soul sleeps in the bosom of his Beloved, and he
   has a perfect peace--"a peace which passes all understanding, which
   keeps his heart and mind through Jesus Christ." Christians, I would
   that you and I could believe God better, and get rid of these wicked
   fears of ours!

   Gracious Father, I do today cast all I have on You, and all I have not,
   too, I would cast on You. My cares, my sorrows, my labors, my joys, my
   present, my past, my future--take You and manage all. I will be
   nothing, You my All--

   "O God, I cast my care on You,
   I triumph and adore,
   Henceforth my chief concern shall be.
   To love and serve You more."

   Brothers and Sisters, believers in Jesus, do the same, and you shall
   find that happy is the man who trusts in the Lord! As for you who fear
   not the Lord Jesus--may His Holy Spirit visit you this morning! May He
   quicken you, for you are dead in sin! May He give you power, for you
   have no strength of yourselves! Remember, the way of salvation is
   simple, and plain before you--"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and
   you shall be saved." Trust my Master's blood, depend upon His finished
   righteousness, and you must, you shallbe saved; you cannot, you will
   not be lost--

   "Oh believe the promise true God to you His Son has given." Depend on
   His Son, and you shall thus escape from Hell, and find your path to
   Heaven. The Lord add now His own best blessing for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                    The Church--Conservative And Aggressive

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 19, 1861,

   BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the Truth." 1
   Timothy 3:15.
   YOU will remember it was announced last Sunday that a collection would
   be made today in behalf of our institution for training young men for
   the ministry. It has been thought desirable that I should state a few
   particulars relative to the institution. Some of them will appear in
   the course of the sermon. It may suffice for me to say now that some
   five or six years ago one of the young men of the Church gave promise
   of being a successful minister if he could but have a good education.
   With the assistance of a friend in the Church, I undertook to take him
   under my charge, put him under a suitable tutor, and train him for the
   ministry. So successful, by God's grace, was that work, that I was
   induced to take another, and another, and another. Up to now I have
   been myself the committee, secretary, treasurer, and subscriber. I have
   not, except in one or two instances, even mentioned the matter to
   anyone, but have been content to provide everything that I could out of
   my own income, besides that which is necessary for the support of my
   household, in order to educate any young men who might become ministers
   of the Cross of Christ. There are now seven settled out, all of whom
   have been eminently successful. They are probably not men who will
   become great or brilliant, but they have been good and useful
   preachers. I think there are not another seven in the whole Baptist
   denomination who have had so many converts during the years that they
   have been settled! They have been the means, most of them, in the hands
   of God, of adding a very considerable number every year to the churches
   where they have settled. Those are churches not in provincial towns but
   in villages. I have therefore been led still further to increase my
   number, and I think I have now about 16 young men wholly to support and
   maintain. Besides these, there is a very considerable number who
   receive their education in the evening, though they still remain in
   their own callings. With the enlarged sphere we now occupy as a Church,
   I have proposed so to enlarge my scheme that all the members of this
   Church and congregation who happen to be deficient in the plain
   rudiments of knowledge, can get an education--a common English
   education for themselves. Then, if they display any ability for
   speaking--without giving up their daily avocations--they shall have
   classes provided for higher branches of instruction. But should they
   feel that God has called them to the ministry, I am then prepared after
   the use of my own judgment, and the judgment of my friends, as to
   whether they are fit persons to give them two years' special tutorship
   that they may go forth to the work of the Cross, thoroughly trained so
   far as we can effect it in so short a time. I know I am called to this
   work, and I have had some most singular interpositions of Providence in
   providing funds for it.
   At the Day of Judgment the world shall know that there has never lived
   a man upon the face of the earth who has less deserved the slander of
   seeking to enrich himself than I have! I shall say no more upon that.
   Let the world scandalize me if it will. I need the money today, not for
   myself in any respect. I give my services and my work freely, and of my
   own income all that I can spare. I only want my friends who feel
   interested in this work to assist me, that we may provide men who shall
   preach the Gospel to multitudes who are longing to hear it fully and
   faithfully proclaimed! Permit me to say there was held in Westminster
   Abbey last Thursday a grand choral festival, at which there were
   singers from the various choirs of London--St. Page, the Abbey, the
   Temple, and the Foundling, and some from Windsor. Several
   ecclesiastical dignitaries graced the assembly. Anthem and cantatas,
   and I know not what else, were performed on a most classic scale! The
   sermon was preached by a Provost of some college in which the claims of
   the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts were
   eloquently advocated, and the whole collection amounted to 70 pounds!
   "A very poor result for so sublime a service," said the Times report.
   Last Friday evening there was held a little meeting in one of the rooms
   here of about 40 or 50 of the seat holders in this congregation. There
   were no bishops present. There were only a few street preachers, and my
   poor students. They addressed that little meeting, and though no
   collection was called for or even contemplated, those friends
   spontaneously subscribed 180 pounds as an earnest of what they were
   sure the congre- gation would give to this work today! I think this
   just shows that when people have a mind for Christ's cause, they do not
   need to have the State to support their religion, but can support it
   out of the generosity of loving hearts without the elaborate parade of
   gorgeous rituals!
   I shall now invite your attention to the subject of this morning's
   discourse which has a very strong bearing upon this point.
   "The Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the Truth"--
   Timothy 3:15.
   The word "Church" has suffered very much from the hands of men.
   Strangely, but frequently, has it been used to designate a mass of
   bricks and mortar. Ecclesia, a chosen assembly, has actually, by the
   natural debasement of the tongue of priests, come down to mean a
   building. By no possible construction can it mean any such a thing! A
   more debasing use of a divine word than that can scarcely be found! The
   word "Church" has also been used by many to signify the clergy. A young
   man is to enter the Church--that is, he is to take holy orders, to
   become a preacher, and an authorized dispenser of the "sacraments," as
   they are called. He is to aspire after an incumbency, and is to be
   recognized as an ordained minister of the Word of God. Now, the word
   "Church" in Scripture means nothing like that! Such a use of terms is
   but confusion; it is taking God's Words, making and destroying their
   sense, and then using them for our own purpose. The "Church of Christ"
   according to the Scripture, is an assembly of faithful men. Ecclesia
   originally signified assembly. Not a mob, but an assembly of persons
   who were called together on account of their special right to meet for
   the discussion of certain subjects. They were a called-out assembly.
   The "Church of God" itself, in its full sense, is a company of persons
   called out by the Holy Spirit from among the rest of mankind, banded
   together for the holy purpose of the defense, and the propagation of
   the Truth of God. If there are but three or four, yet if they are so
   banded together in the fear of God, they are, to all intents and
   purposes, a Church; and if they should happen to number thousands, they
   are no more a Church on account of their numbers--a Church being a
   company of faithful men! To our minds, the Scripture seems very
   explicit as to how this Church should be ordered. We believe that every
   Church member should have equal rights and privileges. We believe that
   there is no power in Church officers to execute anything unless they
   have the full authorization of the members of the Church. We believe,
   however, that the Church should choose its pastor, and having chosen
   him, they should love him and respect him for his work's sake; that
   with him should be associated the deacons of the Church to take the
   oversight of pecuniary matters; and the Elders of the Church to assist
   in all the works of the pastorate in the fear of God, being overseers
   of the flock. Such a Church we believe to be Scripturally ordered; and
   if it abides in the faith--rooted, grounded, and settled--such a Church
   may expect the benediction of Heaven, and so it shall become the
   pillar, and ground of the Truth.
   But what is intended in our text by saying that the Church of God is
   the pillar and ground of the Truth? When you go outside this building
   you may observe the use of a pillar; and that part of it which forms a
   basement upon which the circular stone rests, exactly answers to what
   the Apostle means by the ground of the Truth! It is the business of the
   Church, of course, to uphold the Truth of God in its deep foundations;
   to conserve and preserve it intact--thus it is the ground. To lift it
   up and bear it aloft in beauty, and in all its fair proportions, in
   this the Church, of course, is the pillar of the Truth. Some
   commentators say that as pillars were used of old to bear inscriptions,
   as upon pillars even the bronze decrees of the Roman Senate were
   exhibited to the people, so the Church of Christ is intended to be a
   pillar bearing the inscription of the Truth, so that it not only
   maintains it, and upholds it, but sets it forth! At any rate, I think
   you will perceive in a moment that the simple meaning of my text is
   just this--it is the business of the Church of God to maintain, to
   propagate, to uphold, to spread, and to defend the Truth as it is in
   Jesus--wherever that Church may be placed!
   I shall use the text, this morning, in four ways. First, to correct
   certain mistakes;'secondly, to convince judgments of the excellency of
   God's ordinance in this matter; thirdly, to awake reflections upon the
   subject; and fourthly, to suggest some ways of making this Church, and
   every Church, the pillar and ground of the Truth
   I. First, then, my Brothers and Sisters, LET US CORRECT SOME FEW
   MISTAKES.
   We are all deeply impressed with the importance of maintaining the
   Doctrines of the Gospel, and the Truths of Christ, pure and simple as
   we find them in the New Testament. There are brethren who in their
   extreme anxiety to accomplish this end, suggest methods which are not
   warranted by the text; for the rule here laid down is that the Church
   is itself to maintain, and to be the guardian of the Truth. But these
   brethren, in their great anxiety to maintain it, have suggested other
   ways. One of the first has been the drawing up of a creed. The articles
   of the faith shall be written out clearly and unmistakably. At a
   general synod every word of these articles shall be argued--any
   discrepancy shall be removed--and the articles shall, as nearly as
   possible, express the orthodox creed. It is done. The ministers
   assembled go home, and say that creed will be the pillar and ground of
   the Truth; as long as ever the name of the Westminster Assembly
   Confession shall be known, the Truth will be safe! As long as the 39
   articles of the Church of England shall stand, that Church must be free
   from error! Ah, how signally they have failed! Especially let us take
   the glaring instance of the Church of England. The articles of the
   Church of England are Calvinistic. No person who is not deluded, or
   dishonest, can read them without seeing that the pen was dipped in
   Geneva ink which wrote those articles! And yet how many Church of
   England clergy are as far from anything like Calvinism, as the wildest
   Pelagian could be supposed to be? There are, it is true, and God be
   glorified for it, many Brothers who do believe these articles, and
   preach them faithfully, too. We love them, and honor them for the
   Truth's sake. But is there one in ten? No, is there one in 10 who
   really receives those articles in their pure and simple meaning? If
   this were all, it were not so bad; but men have had the impudence to
   subscribe to those articles of the Church, when they have not believed
   a single one of them--and have been infidels! You have had of late, and
   it is not necessary for me to allude to the matter, a glaring proof
   that no articles whatever can conserve and maintain the Truth of God;
   for men will sign them when they do not believe a word they set forth!
   We have been led to think we have grown a little wiser, and we have
   tried to maintain the Truth by our trust deeds. Our friends have, as
   they thought, put the Truth in the trust deeds; and it is enacted that
   if a minister does not preach the doctrines, the trustees shall see
   that he is dismissed! Ah, a very poor pillar and ground of Truth this
   is! Our strict Baptist Brothers--I am not now about to enter into the
   question whether they are right or wrong, but supposing they are right
   for the moment--they have been exceedingly wise in putting the strict
   Baptist clause into their trust deed! I am not now about to dispute the
   verdicts of the judges, but their clauses have been broken, and their
   bands have been like green twigs! I know a Chapel now in Norfolk which
   has on the forefront over the door, these words printed in stone, "For
   the strict Baptists forever." Really there is something fine and heroic
   in that--but equally ridiculous and absurd! The place will not be for
   the strict Baptists forever; nor will any trust deed ever be so written
   but that you may drive a coach and horses through, just as surely as
   you can through an Act of Parliament! That never was and never will be
   the way to maintain the Truths of God! Let it be done if you like, but
   do not imagine that your trust deed is a pillar and ground of the
   Truth!
   We have fallen into a similar mistake with regard to the diffusion of
   the Truth. In order to spread the Doctrines of the Gospel, we have
   formed societies. There are missionary societies appended to every
   denomination. These societies are to be pillars and grounds of the
   Truth, not so much in the maintenance of the Truth as in the spreading
   of it. To become a member of a missionary society, you have only to
   subscribe to it. If you were a very infidel and subscribed, you would
   become a member! Nothing whatever is required of you, but that you
   should simply give a certain amount of money, and you become a member
   of that society. We have been wondering why our societies have not
   greater success. I believe the reason is because there is not a single
   word in the Book of God about anything of the kind! The Church of God
   is the pillar and ground of the Truth--not a society! The Church of God
   never ought to have delegated to any society whatever, a work which it
   behooved her to have done herself. Instead of sending our subscriptions
   to associations, we ought to have picked our own men out of our own
   midst, and found the means to send them forth to preach the Truth as it
   is in Jesus, ourselves! We have given up the work of the education of
   our young men to our colleges. I will not say they have done it ill.
   But I do dare say they have not done it well! The reason, I think, has
   been because there is nothing in the Word of God that could warrant
   their accepting the trust! The Church of God, not a college, is the
   pillar and ground of the Truth! Every Church should itself see to the
   education of its own young men. It should look out for its own
   evangelism--should train its own soldiers, and send them forth to the
   fight. The Church of God will never see things done rightly, if
   shirking her own responsibility, she tries to cast it upon other men!
   Yes, even if those men could be the best of men, if they were angelic,
   if you could find superhuman beings--yet if God never called them to
   the work, He will not, therefore, honor them in it! The Church, the
   Church, the Church of God, the assembly of Believers is, according to
   God's Word, to hold forth His Truth, and to be the pillar and ground of
   the Truth!
   Many have thought, however, that the Truth would be quite safe in the
   hands of ministers. If we could not leave its preaching to the society,
   at least let the minister, so intimately connected with the Church,
   become the pillar and ground of the Truth! It is a melancholy fact that
   heresy never began with the people yet--but with the minister. And I
   speak what I know--the hearts of the people of our denomination are
   more sound in the Truth than the hearts of the preachers. There is not
   a denomination under Heaven which has a more sincere love to all
   Calvinistic Doctrines than our own. Yet how many of our ministers there
   are who, while they do not preach against them, and I hope secretly
   believe them, are, nevertheless silent upon the subject? They keep it
   back, perhaps imagining it would not be profitable to their hearers.
   But there is scarcely a Church in London in which there are not men and
   women grumbling, groaning and murmuring, because the full Truth is not
   preached to them, and they do not hear the Word by which alone they
   live! There are Churches in London where the Truth is fully preached,
   praised be God, and there you will find none who are groaning because
   they are famished. But there is not a Church of the other sort in which
   there are not many disaffected persons who are thoroughly ready to come
   out at any moment, and leave their minister if he will not give them
   the whole Truth, instead of keeping part of it back! You must not trust
   the ministry, Brothers and Sisters! If you rely upon us, you will rely
   upon broken reeds! However honest we may be, yet we have not to deal so
   much with the world, and with its cares, and troubles as you. And I
   think your dealing with the world casts you back very often upon the
   old, solid realities-- because in the hard daily struggle which you
   have to carry on, you need to have the finest of the wheat to sustain
   your strength! Let us uplift, this morning, as a great Truth which the
   Church has too much forgotten, the words of the text, "The Church of
   the living God is the pillar and ground to maintain the Truth." Not
   trust deeds, nor Church articles! And the Church of the living God is
   the pillar to set forth and proclaim the Truth. Not the ministry, not
   societies, not authors, not any set of men to whom it can be delegated,
   but the Church of God--and the Church of God alone!
   Now do not misunderstand me. I would not say a single word against any
   society for the spread of God's Truth. But I must repeat again, that
   all societies of that sort spring from an irregular and unscriptural
   position of the Church. THE Church, if she were in her right state,
   would do the whole of the work herself! The city missionary would be a
   member of the Church sent out and supported by the Church itself. The
   missionary to foreign lands would have the Church at his back to whom
   he would look for support, both in prayers and in subscriptions. Every
   work would be performed--not through this secretary or that--but
   through the Church itself! This, I believe, is the principle which will
   work a radical cure in all the errors that have been made, and bring
   back the state and system of evangelization into a proper and healthy
   condition. I may be wrong, but this has deeply laid upon my soul; and I
   shall never be satisfied till I see in this Church an organization so
   complete that it does not need a supplement--able to do every good
   work, and fulfill every necessary office of itself and by
   itself--welcoming always the cooperation of others--but never needing
   to depend upon a society for the accomplishment of any purpose to which
   the Lord God has been pleased to call it.
   II. I shall now pass on to my second point. Let us note THE WISDOM OF
   GOD IN MAKING THIS MATTER
   SO--presuming, of course--that we have thus far rightly interpreted the
   will of God concerning us.
   The Church of God in Scripture is called a mother. What is a mother's
   business? What is a mother's duty? A mother's duty is to feed her own
   child from her own bosom. She loses a joy herself, and inflicts a
   serious injury upon her offspring when, if having the ability, she
   lacks the affection which would compel her to support her own child
   from the fountains which God Himself has opened. And as the Church of
   Christ is a mother, she shall lack the greatest joy, and lose the
   sweetest privilege unless she herself trains her own children, and
   gives them the unadulterated milk of the Word of God. She has no right
   to put her children out to nurse. How shall they love her? What
   affection shall they bear towards her? No, let her do as she should,
   and keep her children at home, and supply them herself. It is a
   mother's business, as that child grows up, to train and teach it. Let
   her teach it the first letters of the alphabet. Let it gather its first
   knowledge of Christ from a mother's lips. Who so fit to teach as she
   that brought it forth? None can teach so sweetly and none so
   effectually as she. Let her not give up the training of her child to
   another. And why should we, the Church of Christ, give up our children
   when we first taught them to speak in Christ's name, to be trained and
   to be taught by others? No, by every motherly feeling that remains
   within the bosom of Christ's Church, let us see her children brought up
   at her own knees, dandled there in her own lap, and not give up the
   work of training her sons and daughters to others! And who so fit as
   the mother of the family to inspire her son with holy ardor when at
   last he goes forward to the battle of life? Who shall give him the
   affectionate advice? Who shall give him the cheering word which shall
   sustain him in the hour of difficulty so well as a mother whom he
   loves? And let the Church of God, when her young men go forth to her
   battles, put her hand upon their shoulders and say, "Be strong, young
   man, be strong. Dishonor not the mother who bore you; but go forth, and
   like the son of a Spartan mother, return not but in glory! Go forth to
   conquer or to die.
   Come back on your shield, or with it--a hero or a martyr." Who can
   speak the words so well, and sing at home so powerfully as the mother
   to her son, or the Church to her child? The Church, then, has no right
   to delegate to another her own work! Let her bring forth her own
   children; let her give them nourishment; let her train them up; let her
   send them forth to do the Master's work!
   But, then, my Brothers and Sisters, the Church is often compared to a
   city. Christians are the citizens. Who so fit to fight the battles of a
   country as the countrymen themselves? Shall we give up to a tribe of
   mercenaries the defense of this stalwart island? Shall we hire
   foreigners from afar, and say to them, "Dash the invader from our own
   shores"? No, my Brothers and Sisters, Britain's true hearts would wake
   up, and Britain's strong arms would wield the weapon if invasion should
   ever take place! The liberties of a country are not safe with an army,
   but with the citizens themselves. We must be our own defenders if the
   land is to be preserved. No body of troops more fit than those who
   fight for their own children, their own wives, their own hearths, and
   the altars of their own land! Shall we, then, the Church of God, seek
   out others besides our own citizens? Shall we give the command of our
   armies to those who belong not to us? Shall we send our sons and
   daughters out to be enrolled in other armies? No! In the name of the
   living God, let the Church of Christ train her own citizens for the
   battle of Christ! Let her bring up her own young warriors for the
   defense and maintenance of the Truth. Besides, who is there who will
   naturally care for this matter like the Church? My dear Brothers and
   Sisters, if I were the minister of a society, I would be in a miserable
   plight. What would the society care for me? What would they care about
   what I did if there could be but a smart report sent in at the end of
   the year to be read at the public meeting amid the clapping of hands
   and so forth? The secretary would smile upon me, but what would they
   care for me? What prayers would I have from the subscribers? How would
   I be likely to be carried on the heart of the secretary? Good man, he
   has 20 other agents to think of--how should he be thinking of me? But I
   am a minister of a Church, and there is not one member of this Church
   but what prays for me! I know that as often as you bow your knees at
   the family altar, you mention my name as you mention the name of your
   son and your daughter! Many a proof have I had from you that I am as
   much loved by you as if I were your brother according to the flesh!
   Your prayers make me strong! Your sympathies make me blest! They cheer
   my heart, and bear me up amidst the waves of calumny! And who shall
   care for anything when God and the Church are with him? So, then, if it
   is so with a minister, it must be very much more so with a missionary
   in the foreign land. "Why," he says, "who will pray for me? The
   Missionary Society has sent me out. The secretary knows about me. He
   reads my letters when I send them to him; they are put in the
   magazine." But suppose some young man from these galleries was sent out
   to preach the Word--why we should all notice him! When the letter came
   from John So-and-So at Canton, and we read it at the Prayer Meeting,
   how we would pray for him! We would feel he was one of ourselves! And
   when we made the collection for his support, we would give far more
   liberally than for another whom we never saw, who had no connection
   with us and--however good the man might be--was not a personal friend
   of ours!
   The Church of God can naturally care for the state of her own ministers
   and her own missionaries--and a minister, a missionary, cannot hope to
   be greatly blest till they are under the Church--and not under a
   society! Just so with the young men for the ministry. When they go to
   college, they do not, I suppose, expect many people to care about them
   there. But with regard to those we have in our midst, why there is
   nothing that any of you would not cheerfully do for them! As soon as
   there is a new face seen among them, some of the Elders of the Church
   are sure to get him into their houses--are sure to speak kindly with
   him till I fall into another difficulty. Sometimes my friends take them
   away too much, are too kind to them, get them away from their studies
   in order to be with them--when they ought rather to be sticking fast by
   their books! I find no lack of sympathy, and I know the men are
   happier; and I believe they have greater motives to be holy because
   they are more watched, more observed by the members of the Church!
   Anything which they do ill would reflect discredit upon the whole of
   us, and when they do that which is right and honorable, there is a sort
   of esprit de corps which makes them long to distinguish
   themselves--that the whole Church may share in the honor of their
   connection! I am persuaded that this is a right principle, and I shall
   not cease to advocate it unless I find arguments by which it can be
   disproved. And after all, my Brothers and Sisters, who should care for
   the cause of Christ like the Church? Oh what reason you and I have for
   loving Christ's cause! Dear have been the places where we have
   worshipped, some of us, for there we first found a Savior. Some of you,
   not long ago, were the servants of sin and Satan--you were at a
   distance from God--and you loved that distance well! Could we not cast
   our eyes around, and remember how some of you were drunks and swearers,
   and such like? But you are washed, you are sanctified! And now you
   rejoice in Him who loved you, for He has washed you in His own blood!
   Now you can sing of pardoning Grace and dying love. Who, like you, my
   Brothers, to propagate the Gospel? Who makes such preachers as these
   Pauls, who preach the faith which they once destroyed? Who will stand
   so well at the back of every agent for Christ as those who have
   themselves tasted and felt and handled the good Word of Life? Truly the
   Word of God is safe in the hands of the Church, when the Church lives
   near to God! When you are sensible of your gratitude to Christ; when
   you are conscious of your obligations to eternal and Sovereign Mercy,
   then it is that you will be pillars of the Truth! And you will maintain
   and uphold it, not shunning to declare the whole counsel of God, not
   hesitating to support those who endeavor to do it in your names. Thus
   the Church is made the salt of the earth, and the light of the
   world--irrespective of any society whatever--"The Church of God is the
   pillar and ground of the Truth."

   III. Thirdly, this topic AWAKENS REFLECTION.

   "Well," says one, "I am afraid it would not work." That is it, my
   Brethren; that is just the hitch in the whole matter; it would not
   work. "We have got a machinery," said a Brother to me once, "we have
   got a machinery in our Church which will go on just as well, whatever
   the characters of the members may be." "Then," I said to him, "depend
   upon it, yours is not that which God has ordained." For it seems to me
   that the most Scriptural system of Church government is that which
   requires the most prayer, the most faith, and the most piety to keep it
   going! The Church of God was never meant to be an automaton. If it
   were, the wheels would all act of themselves. The Church was meant to
   be a livingthing, a living person, and as the person cannot be
   supported if life is absent, or if food is kept back, or if breath is
   suspended-- so should it be with the Church! There should be certain
   solemn necessities without which she ceases to be a Church-- certain
   things which she must have, and without which she cannot do her work. I
   am glad that this difficulty is suggested at all, for it seems to me
   that if there were not this difficulty, it would not be God's plan.
   "Well," says one, "if you believe the Church is to do all this work,
   then the Churches cannot yet be what they should." I am glad you draw
   that inference, my Brother, I am glad you do. "Why," says one, "our
   Churches could not support a missionary, some of them hardly support
   their minister!" Just so, Brethren, but that is just because they are
   in a wrong state. There is hardly a Church anywhere, but if the Spirit
   of God were poured upon it, might not do ten times as much for Christ
   as it is now doing! The fact is there may be some few Churches that are
   walking in the right road, but they are very few indeed. And the
   objection which you bring ought to be an objection against the state of
   the Church, and not against the plan itself--for it is possible for the
   Churches to maintain missionaries and minister--if they want to do it!

   "Well," says one, "but a Church must be very watchful to find out young
   men for the ministry." Just so, I am glad you say that, for a Church
   ought to be very watchful. "But the minister must have a good deal to
   do," you say. Just so, and he ought to have a great deal to do! What is
   the use of a lazy minister? He is no good either to the world, to the
   Church, or to himself; he is a dishonor to the noblest profession that
   can be bestowed upon the sons of men! Let him have plenty to do; it
   will keep him out of mischief, and it would do him good. Too much to do
   may be an evil, but too little to do is a curse! Let him have much to
   do. "But," says another, "the minister ought to be a holy man, because
   if the young persons who associate with him learn ill manners, what
   then?" Just so, I am glad you say that. And so he should be a holy man.
   Amongst the Swiss, the Vaudois, and the Waldenses, every minister
   trains one young man. Those pastors or shepherds always have a younger
   Brother to travel with them wherever they go. He watches the elder
   pastor, observes his ways, listens to his holy prayers. He is inspired
   with his spirit, learns to tread the craggy mountains with him, learns
   to defy the enemy through the courage which he sees in his elder
   Brother. He learns lessons of wisdom which are not to be learned from
   books, lessons of practical pastoral training which are not to be
   gathered from the best professors of the best colleges in the world!
   And thus the Swiss have always maintained a succession of men, perhaps
   not brilliant, but always useful--perhaps not popular, but always
   sound, and valiant in their defense of the Truths of God! And should it
   not be so with the Church? If to carry it out, it needs a laborious
   ministry, so much the better; if it needs a holy and wise ministry, so
   much the better; no other man should be a minister at all! If it needs
   a watchful Church, and a prayerful Church, and a Church which
   consecrates liberally of its substance to the Lord, I say so much the
   better--for so ought every Church be!

   The only question is, are we in the right state, now, to accomplish all
   the Lord's purposes? If we are not, let us make it a matter of prayer
   that we may be brought into this state--for we are never healthy unless
   we are prepared to do whatever God calls us to do! We will be losing in
   our own spiritual enjoyment if we fail to have strength to carry out
   all the work which the Lord imposes upon us. The Lord never gives us
   more to do than we can do. We had the work of building this place, and
   many thought we could not do it--at last we thought we could--and by
   God's Grace we did it. If we had 50 more such places to build, and the
   Lord laid it to our heart to build them, we could do it if we were in a
   right state. Our only lack of power is lack of Grace. Give the Church,
   Grace, and she does not need a new banker! Give her Grace, she does not
   need then to have new ministers! Give her more Grace, she will not need
   the world's pitiful gold to endow her and make her rich. Give her
   Grace, and you have given her all she needs! In that one word, you
   shall have successful ministers, you shall have laborious agencies, you
   shall have benevolence pouring out its floods, and piety consecrating
   all its activities for Christ!

   IV. Now I shall come to my last point. The last point is BY WAY OF
   SUGGESTION.

   What can we do practically to carry out this plan? Brothers and
   Sisters, before I answer that question, let me say there are some
   things we must take care of or else we cannot carry it out at all. We
   must watch lest the Church be adulterated by additions which are not an
   increase to her strength. We must be very careful that no thought of
   strife, no symptom of envy, no feeling of jealousy creep in. Up to now
   you have been as one man--undivided and indivisible. This is absolutely
   necessary in the Church for the carrying out of any of her purposes!
   Divided we should utterly fail! I remember a somewhat ludicrous
   incident which occurred to a Church in which there were great
   quarreling and bickerings. The minister and the deacons, and his
   people, were all at arm's length and daggers drawn. It was determined
   at last, that the matter should come to a settlement, and it was by
   mutual consent given up to the judgment of a good Christian farmer, who
   lived in the neighborhood. He was to hear the case, and write an answer
   to be read at the next Church Meeting. Our friend, the farmer, sat down
   to write his letter--at the same time he had a letter from a steward or
   tenant asking advice about his farm--and by a mistake, or rather by a
   blessed Providence as God would have it, he put the wrong letters into
   the envelopes, so that the letter which was intended for the Church
   went to the steward, and that which was intended for the steward went
   to the Church! At the Church Meeting, when they were all assembled,
   this letter was read to the Church; it ran thus--"Dear Friend, mind you
   see to the hedges well. Keep them up as best you can, and take special
   care of the old black bull." Now that was a most extraordinary letter
   to write to a Church! It had been sent by mistake, but the minister
   thinking it was a bona fide piece of advice, said he could not
   understand it. Some Brother got up and said it was plain enough--it was
   meant that they must be very watchful as to whom they should receive
   into the Church. They must keep their hedges up, and see there were no
   gaps. "And," he said, "by the 'old black bull' I have no doubt he means
   that spirit of Satan that would get in and trouble, and divide us." So
   understanding it in that sense, they made up their differences,
   repaired their hedges, and were careful of "the old black bull." Every
   Church must do the same, for before we can do anything for Christ, we
   must first be right at home! We must have peace within our borders. We
   must be filled with the finest wheat, or else He will not send forth
   His Word and make it to run very swiftly. This, I hope, will be well
   seen to.

   What, then, are we to do? If the Church is to do all this, Brothers and
   Sisters, what are you and I to do? As for me, I must take heed unto
   myself. I am to be the leader of this people, constantly ministering to
   them in the Word of Life. I must take care that my dedication of
   myself, and all I have, to my Lord be so perfectly complete that I
   would not have an objection to them knowing what I do with all I have.
   I must so live that they can see right through me that I desire to
   serve my Master and serve Him alone. Then one and all of you must say,
   "What must I do?" Let each man finding his own proper niche, each
   seaman on board the vessel finding which rope he can best handle, or
   what part of the tackling he best understands, take his place. Then
   come rocking tempests, let the ship reel; she is safe, for she is in
   the hands of God, and in the hands of faithful men, who know how to
   manage her right well.

   The battle is to be fought, Brethren. It is to be fought by Christ's
   army, not by hirelings. What are you and I to do? I must stand at the
   front of the line, and wave my sword, and say, "Come on, comrades!" And
   you, with steady step advancing, with firm bold front maintaining every
   inch of the ground you take, and at last--rushing in one tremendous
   phalanx straightway to the thick of the fight--you must carry
   everything before you, and win the crown for King Jesus! England
   expects every man to do his duty, but the Church of God expects it
   more, and must and shall have it! By Him who shall judge the quick and
   the dead; by Him who bought you with His blood, I adjure you, Christian
   men and women, see to it that you stand, each of you in your place. Do,
   each of you, your own appointed work! And so shall Christ's Kingdom
   come, and His will be done on earth even as it is in Heaven.

   I think I hear a little murmuring going round the gallery, and
   especially stopping at some few of the pews. I will not indicate the
   Brethren. They are saying, "I do not belong to the Church--what am I to
   do?" My Brethren, the first thing you ought to do is to join the
   Church! You say you love the Lord Jesus Christ. Very well. If you
   neglect one duty, that does not excuse you from another! You are dying
   in a state of sin, as a Christian, if you omit the duty of joining
   yourself with the people of God! May I ask you, when the Church goes to
   the fight, will you tarry at home? "No," you say, "I will follow with
   you. I will do my work. I will go as one of the camp-followers." Yes,
   but somehow or other, those camp-followers are in a very unsatisfactory
   state because they are not under the discipline of the officers! And
   though some of them can fight well, a sort of guerilla warfare, yet we
   would be much stronger if we could have them in the ranks! Brethren,
   don't you think sometimes that the world may imagine that you mean to
   hold hard till you see which will win? Had you not better cast in your
   lot with us while the battle rages? Besides, what does the Master
   say?--"He that confesses Me before men, him will I confess." And what
   does He say to those who do notconfess? "He that denies Me before men,
   him shall be denied of My Father which is in Heaven." You do not wish
   for that, surely! Enlist, then! Put on your Lord's regimentals. True,
   you can fight His battle without them, but I think you will be more in
   the path of obedience, and the path of safety, if you put on the
   garments of Christ, and the garments of His salvation. Come! Whoever is
   on the Lord's side, let him join with the Lord's hosts! If you are not,
   stand back and do not dare to come! But if you are, the standard is
   lifted, the trumpets sound! Come, comrades! Who is for Christ?
   Soldiers, who is for the Lord God Omnipotent? Unfurl the standard
   afresh today! Jehovah-Nissi, the Lord is our banner, and who will stand
   back? Let us enroll ourselves beneath Him and say, "O Lord, go forth
   with our armies, and grant success, for the battle is great and without
   You we shall utterly fail, but with You we shall surely get the
   victory!"

   I have preached, as you will perceive, then, to the Church only. I have
   said nothing to the unconverted. We cannot do 20 things at a time. But
   I would say this word before I sit down. Remember, my dear Hearers, if
   you are not numbered with the friends of Christ, you are numbered with
   His enemies! Will you remember that? I do not mean, if you are not
   numbered with the visible Church--I mean this--if you do not love and
   serve Christ. He who is not with Him, is against Him--he who gathers
   not with Him, scatters abroad. You say you take neither side--it is
   impossible--you must be on one side or the other! Clear the field!
   There is no room here except for the two armies. Whoever is not with
   Christ is with Satan, and shall surely be trod down when the enemies of
   God are trod like straw for the dunghill! Sinner, be aware of
   this--that Godis against you--and the hosts of God are against you! The
   Lord give you repentance! The Lord give you faith! And come to the
   Captain of Salvation and ask Him to have mercy on you! Run down the old
   flag! Thank God it is not nailed to the mast! Let the black flag come
   down, and let the blood-red flag run up! Spirit of God, compel them to
   change masters! May they no more serve the black prince, Satan; but may
   they, by Your Grace, serve under His banner whose service is perfect
   freedom, and whose reward is everlasting life!

   May the Lord bless each one of you, for Christ's sake!
     __________________________________________________________________

                               "Even So, Father!"

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 26, 1861,

   BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank You, Father, Lord
   ofHeaven and earth, that You have hidden these thing from the wise and
   prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it
   seemed good in Your sight." Matthew 11:25,26.

   THAT is a singular way with which to commence a verse--"At that time
   Jesus answered." If you will look at the context you will not perceive
   that anybody had asked Him a question, or that He was indeed in
   conversation with any human being. Yet it says, "Jesus answered and
   said, I thank You, Father." Now when a man answers, he answers a person
   who has been speaking to him! Who, then, had been speaking to Jesus?
   Why, His Father! Yet there is no record of it; which should teach us
   that Christ had constant fellowship with His Father, and often did His
   Father silently speak into His ear. As we are in this world even as
   Christ was, let us imitate this lesson. May we likewise have silent
   fellowship with the Father, so that we may often answer Him. And when
   the world knows not to whom we speak, may we speak to God, and respond
   to that secret voice which no other ear has heard--while our own
   ear--opened by the Spirit of God has attended to it with joy! I like
   the Christian to sometimes find himself obliged to speak out, or if not
   to speak out, to feel an almost irrepressible desire to say something
   though no one is near, because a thought has been brought to him by the
   Holy Spirit--a suggestion has been cast into the midst of his soul by
   the Holy Spirit--and he answers it. God has spoken to him, and he longs
   to speak to God--either to set to his seal that God is true in matter
   of Revelation, or to confess some sin of which the Spirit of God has
   convinced him, or to acknowledge some mercy which God's Providence has
   given, or to express assent to some great Truth which God the Holy
   Spirit has then opened to his understanding. Keep your hearts, my
   Brothers and Sisters, in such a state that when God speaks to you, you
   may be ready to answer in spite of whatever troubles may ruffle you, or
   whatever trials may disturb you. Jesus Christ had just had a time of
   weeping, and it was succeeded by a season of grateful communion! Like
   He, maintain a ready ear to listen to the voice of God, and at that
   time answer thankfully, and bless the Lord your God!

   Now it seems to me, in looking through these two verses, that the
   Savior would teach us three things. When we have learned these three
   things, I shall endeavor to turn them to practical account. He will
   have us first of all seek after an enlightened apprehension of the
   Character of God as Father, and yet Lord ofHeaven and earth. He would
   have us next observe carefully, the manifest discrimination of His
   Grace--"You have hid these things from the wise and prudent, and have
   revealed them unto babes." He would have us, thirdly, cultivate a
   spirit entirely in harmony with the Divine Will, thanking Him that He
   has done all things according to His own purpose--"Even so, Father, for
   so it seemed good in Your sight."

   I. First of all, then, THE SAVIOR WOULD HAVE US ATTAIN TO AN
   ENLIGHTENED APPREHENSION OF THE CHARACTER OF GOD.

   What gross mistakes men make concerning the Character of God! I believe
   it is a mistake about God Himself which has been the root and
   foundation of all the mistakes in theology. Our conviction is that
   Arminian theology, to a great extent, makes God to be less than He is.
   The professors of that system have come to receive its doctrines
   because they have not a clear understanding, either of the Omnipotence,
   the Immutability, or the Sovereignty of God. They seem to always ask
   the question, "What ought God to do to man, who is His creature?" We
   hold that that is a question that is never to be put, for it infringes
   on the Sovereignty of God who has absolute right to do just as He
   wills! They ask the question, "What will God do with His promises if
   man changes his habit or his life?" We consider that to be a question
   not to be asked. Whatever man does, God remains the same, and abides
   faithful though even we should not believe Him! They ask the question,
   "What will be done for men who resist God's Grace, if in the struggle,
   man's will should be triumphant over the mercy of God?" We never ask
   that question--we think it is blasphemous! We believe God to be
   Omnipotent and when He comes to strive with the soul of man, none can
   stay His hand! He breaks the iron sinew, and dashes the adamantine
   heart to shivers, and rules in the heart of man as surely as in the
   army of the skies. A right clear apprehension of the

   Character of God, we believe, would put an end to the Arminian mistake!
   We think, too, that ultra-Calvinism, which goes vastly beyond what the
   authoritative teaching of Christ, or the enlightened ministry of Calvin
   could warrant, gets some of its support from a wrong view of God. To
   the ultra-Calvinist, His absolute Sovereignty is delightfully
   conspicuous. He is awe-stricken with the great and glorious attributes
   of the Most High. His Omnipotence appalls him, and His Sovereignty
   astonishes him, and he at once submits as if by a stern necessity to
   the will of God. He, however, too much forgets that God is Love. He
   does not make prominent enough the benevolent Character of the Divine
   Being. He annuls to some extent the fact that while God is not amenable
   to anything external from Himself, yet His own attributes are so
   blessedly in harmony that His Sovereignty never inflicted a punishment
   which was not just--nor did it ever bestow a mercy until justice had
   first been satisfied! To see the Holiness, the Love, the Justice, the
   Faithfulness, the Immutability, the Omnipotence, and the Sovereignty of
   God--all shining like a bright corona of eternal, and ineffable
   light--has never been given perfectly to any human being! And inasmuch
   as we have not seen all these, and as we hope yet to see them, our
   faulty vision has been the ground of many mistakes. Hence has arisen
   many of the heresies which vex the Church of Christ!

   Now, my Brothers and Sisters, I would have you this morning look at the
   way in which our Lord Jesus Christ regards God--"Father, Lord of Heaven
   and earth." If you and I cannot know the Almighty to perfection because
   of His greatness, and of our s hallowness, nevertheless let us try to
   apprehend these two claims upon our adoration, in which we owe to God
   the reverence of children, and the homage of subjects. Father!--Oh what
   a precious word is that! Here is authority. "If I am a Father, where is
   My honor?" If you are sons, where is your obedience? But here is
   affection mingled with Authority, an authority which does not provoke
   rebellion, an obedience demanded which is most cheerfully
   rendered--which would not be withheld even if it might. Father!--here
   is a kingly attribute so sweetly veiled in love that the King's crown
   is forgotten in the King's face, and His scepter becomes not a rod of
   iron, but a silver scepter of mercy--the scepter indeed seems to be
   forgotten in the tender hand of Him that wields it. Father!--here is
   honor and afec-tionateness. What is a father's heart to his children?
   That which friendship cannot do, and mere benevolence will not attempt
   to do, a father's heart and hand must do! They are his offspring, he
   must bless them. They are his children, they spring from his own
   loins--he must show himself strong in their defense. Oh get that
   thought of God, that while you obey Him as Father, yet you love Him as
   Father! Do not go about the service of God as slaves about the
   taskmaster's toil, but run in the way of His commands because it is
   your Father's way! Yield yourselves up to be the instruments of
   righteousness, because righteousness is your Father's will, and His
   will is the will of His child. In a father, then, you will observe
   there is mingled authority with affection, and there is also mingled
   origination with relationship. The man is not father to everything he
   produces. He may make the vessel--he may spend much skill upon it as he
   turns it upon the wheel, but he is not its father. Even so God made the
   stars, but He is not their Father. He made the very angels, but I know
   not that He said unto them at any time, "You are My sons."

   It is true in the sense of origination, we are all His offspring, for
   He made us all. But oh, again we repeat the sweet word--Father! Father!
   There is relationship here as well as origination. We are like He that
   made us--we, His chosen, are the next of kin to the King of kings, His
   children; then heirs--heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ Jesus--a
   relationship which never can be dissolved! A child can never be
   anything but the son of his own father--a relationship which no sin can
   ever break, and no pains can ever loosen. The father is a father still,
   though his child is dragged in the mire-- although he spits in his very
   father's face. The relationship is not to be removed by any act, either
   of father or of son. So stands it with the people of God! They are not
   only His creatures, but doubly His creatures, for He has created them
   anew in Christ Jesus! They have a relationship, for they are partakers
   of the Divine Nature, having escaped the corruption which is in the
   world through lust. They are so near to Him that none can stand between
   the sons of God, and God their Father, save Jesus Christ, the
   only-begotten Son who is the link of union between the two! Father! He
   who can lisp that word upon his knees has uttered more eloquence than
   Demosthenes or Cicero ever knew! Abba, Father! He who can say that has
   uttered better music than cherubim or seraphim can reach! Abba, Father!
   There is Heaven in the depth of that word! Father! There is all I need;
   all I can ask; all my necessities can demand; all my wishes can
   contrive. I have all-in-all to all eternity when I can say, "Father."
   Oh, do not, I pray you, look upon God as a great King unless you can
   also regard Him as your Father! Do not dare to come into the intense
   brightness of His Sovereignty, or it will be to you thick darkness
   unless you can call Him Father! While you stand amazed at Him, dare not
   to look at the sun till you have the eagle eye of the spirit of
   adoption, lest it blind you! Launch not upon the sea of Sovereignty
   till you have Fatherhood at the helm--but then your little vessel may
   go from the shallows to the great deeps, and the deeper the sea shall
   be, the farther shall you be from the rocks, and the higher shall you
   be lifted above the quicksand! You may go as for as you can in having
   Him to be Lord of Heaven and earth, if you can first recognize Him as
   being Father to your soul!

   Permit me here, however, to remark that many Christians are effeminate
   in their theology. They are weak in their faith, because while they can
   say, "Father," they do not know God as being Lord of Heaven and earth.
   I take it that Jesus meant by this expression that the Father was by
   power and by right, Lord of Heaven and earth. We all concede that He is
   Lord of Heaven and earth by power From the dazzling wings of the angel
   down to the painted wings of the fly--all flights of beings are
   controlled by Him. From the roar of earth's direst convulsions down to
   the gentle falling of a rain drop--all sounds that break on mortal ears
   are modulated by Him! From the flash of lightning down to the glimmer
   of the glow-worm's lamp--there is no light or spark that His power does
   not kindle! He does as He wills. Fools see men doing--wise men discern
   God doing all! In the loftiest emperor we see Jehovah's tool, and
   nothing more. In the mightiest patriot we see but an instrument in the
   hands of God. In all that man has done, whether it is perverse or
   excellent, we have learned to look beyond the material agents! While we
   award to one man curses, and to another honor, yet we see God working
   all things after the counsels of His will. I am verily persuaded that
   the wildest fury of the storm is ordered in the eye of God. I am
   convinced that He has a bit in the mouth of the tempest to rein in the
   winds. And so it is when battle is let loose, and war rages abroad, and
   nations are broken as with a rod of iron--as though they were but
   potters' vessels--in every catastrophe and calamity there is the
   reigning God, stalking victoriously over the battlefield to whichever
   side triumph may turn! He walks among cabinets, and makes their folly
   serve His wisdom! He enters the heart of man, and makes its very
   stubbornness the pliant slave of His superior might! He rules
   everywhere by power.

   There are some Christians who, not knowingly perhaps, but unwittingly,
   deny the fact that Jehovah is Lord of Heaven and earth by right.
   Brothers and Sisters, I pray you learn this. You have not the key of a
   solid theology till you know this Great God you have has absolute right
   to do whatever He wills with His own creatures! And especially since
   man has fallen, does He have a right to utterly destroy him or to save
   him as seems good in His sight. No man has any right to anything from
   God! Whatever right he had as a creature, he forfeited when he sinned.
   Now God declares, and we must acknowledge it to be a declaration of
   unimpeachable right--"I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I
   will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." "So, then, it is
   not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.
   What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known,
   endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to
   destruction, so that He might make known the riches of His Glory on the
   vessels of mercy which He had afore prepared unto Glory?" Who shall
   find fault, or who shall dispute His will? I would that the Christian
   Church did not think so lightly of God's Sovereignty. I grant you it is
   an awesome Doctrine. All great Truths of God must produce awe upon
   little minds like ours! I grant you it is a Doctrine which the boasted
   freedom of man's thoughts will not readily receive. Be it so; it is the
   more true to me, for what is this freedom of men's thoughts in modern
   times, but licentiousness? What is it but a sort of mental
   dissoluteness by which they say, "We will cast off the yoke of God; we
   will break His bands in sunder, and cast away His Words from us"? Oh,
   be wise! Kiss the Son for He is your King; bow down before your
   God--for dispute it as you may--He is your Lord! Yield to His
   Sovereignty, for He will be Sovereign even if you will not meekly
   yield! Confess that He has a right to do as He wills, for He will do as
   He wills whether you confess it or not! Do not seek to deny His right
   to reign, but rather say, "The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice, let
   the multitudes of the isles be glad." Where could power be better
   placed--who better could be trusted with all strength than the
   infinitely Wise, the boundlessly Good? Great God! It were a calamity
   indeed if You had not an absolute right to do Your own will when that
   will is always good, and always right, and always kind, and always best
   for the sons of men!

   II. Well now, Brothers and Sisters, if you have a clear and enlightened
   apprehension of God's relationship as Father, and as Sovereign Lord, I
   am not afraid to trust you with the study of Doctrine; you will not go
   far wrong. But next, Christ would have us carefully observe THE
   DISCRIMINATING CHARACTER OF GOD'S GRACE. "You have hid these things
   from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes."

   Is it not, my dear Friends, a notorious fact that the things of God are
   hidden from the wise and prudent? Cast your eyes around now upon the
   great men in the literature of today--how very few of them are willing
   to receive the things of God! And though in the past, we can number
   among reasoners such men as Locke and Bacon, and among poetic minds
   such men as Cowper and Milton--and though we can go back and find some
   men of wisdom, and some men of great mental caliber who have received
   the Truth as it is in Jesus--yet still it is to be confessed that they
   make but a very small part of the great whole. They are but the
   exception which proves the rule. It is true of ancient and modern, the
   past and the present--"These things are hidden from the wise and
   prudent." See what the wise and prudent do. A large number of them will
   disdain to listen to the things of God. "Pooh," they say, "religion for
   the mob--it suits very well the poor, we dare say--but we are
   intelligent, we are instructed--we do not need to go and hear such mere
   simplicities and elementary teaching as that." So they turn upon their
   heels, and go and speak against the thing which they have never heard,
   or which, if they have heard, they have not understood! Then those who
   will hear--do you not perceive how they laugh? Where the poor
   simple-minded man walks right straight into Heaven's gate--these men
   have raised objections to the manner in which the nails are put in the
   gate--or to certain stones that pave the way, and they cannot go in
   until they know the precise pattern of everything in the heavenly
   place! They raise objections where we should see none. While we take
   the provisions of Truth and sit down, and feed at the table, they are
   objecting to the way in which the flesh is carved or the wine poured
   out!

   And then there are others of them who not only raise objections, but
   set themselves willfully to oppose. Mark you this--I do not believe
   there is a single honest man living who, having heard the Gospel simply
   preached--does not in his conscience believe it to be true! I am
   persuaded that the Light of God will penetrate! There is such force,
   such energy in Christ--the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God--it must
   and will pierce through some crevice, and convince at least a natural
   conscience. But this is the very reason why men oppose it--they do not
   want it to be true! It would be unpleasant for them if it were true;
   they would be compelled to live more strictly than they do. They feel
   it would cut against their previous notions, and pull down their old
   prejudices. They love darkness. What they do not want to be true, they
   try to prove not to be true, and that is the easiest thing in the
   world! I could prove by syllogism any lie which I wanted to believe,
   and so could you. You can either bid the Truth be quiet, because its
   shrill note awakens you out of a sleep which you love--or else you can
   set up a counter-noise which shall drown the unwelcome sound, so that
   you cannot hear the celestial voice. I know why men brag; we well
   understand why they speak loud words of blasphemy. As sure as ever a
   man is too bold, there is an unquiet conscience to prompt him! Do not
   set down the blasphemies of Voltaire to any real doubts; that man was
   as firm a believer as you and I, but he was not honest. Do not put
   down, I pray you, the blatant blasphemy of Tom Paine to a conviction
   that Christianity was not true--he knew it was true and he, perhaps, of
   all men was the grossest of liars to his own soul--for he fought
   against a Truth which his own conscience acknowledged to be taught of
   God! Oh, let us see to it that while these wise and prudent men are
   discussing and disputing, and objecting and dividing--let us see to it
   that we do not imitate them, lest haply these things should be hidden
   from us, and not revealed to us though we are babes.

   But while these wise and prudent ones are passed by, how graciously God
   has revealed His Truth to babes, to men of simple minds! In the eyes of
   the wise, they might be credulous; in the judgment of the prudent, they
   might be superstitious; but they heard the Gospel. It fitted their
   case; it was just the thing they needed. They were guilty--it offered
   them pardon! They were lost--it provided them a Savior! They were cast
   away--it found them a Shepherd who had come to seek and to save that
   which was lost! They took it--they laid hold of it. They found it gave
   them joy and comfort, peace and rest. They went on; they found their
   experience tallied with what they had learned. They examined more and
   more. They never found a flaw or discrepancy between the feelings
   within, and the teaching without. And they, though they were but babes,
   and could not argue; though they were but children, and could not
   discuss; though they were fools and did not pretend to be wise--they
   entered into the Kingdom of God, and attained to the enjoyment of the
   peace which Jesus gives to them who trust Him!

   Do you ask why is it God has not been pleased to call by His Grace the
   wise and prudent? Albert Barnes says as a reason why the wise and
   prudent do not come, "Because they have peculiar mental temptations;
   because they think the Gospel to be beneath their consideration;
   because it does not flatter their pride, and because again they are so
   occupied with their wisdom, that they have no time for the things of
   God." Now these are very good reasons why they do not accept the
   Gospel, but not the reason why God does not call them! God's reason for
   calling or not calling a man is not in man, but in Himself! So we are
   told in the text--"Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your
   sight." Why, then, did He not ask them? You may ask Gabriel before the
   Throne, but he cannot tell you! You may ask all the people of God
   everywhere--but they cannot tell you, either--for the reason is that
   God willed it, and there we must let it rest! "Even so, Father, for so
   it seemed good in Your sight." He could have converted emperors upon
   their thrones; He could have made the philosopher a preacher; He could,
   if He would, have subdued the loftiest mind to His service! If He chose
   the fishermen, and the unenlightened peasants of the Lake of Galilee,
   He did so because He would. There we must leave it--ask no account of
   His affairs--but tremble and be still!

   III. Yet when we come to our last point, which we shall now do, I think
   we shall see some reason why we can in our very hearts most truly
   acquiesce, and admire the wisdom and graciousness of the Divine Choice.
   I come, then, to this third point, THE SAVIOR WOULD HAVE HIS PEOPLES'
   HEARTS IN PERFECT AGREEMENT WITH THE WILL AND ACTION OF GOD. "Father,"
   said Jesus, "I thank You that You have hid these things from the wise
   and prudent and have revealed them unto babes."

   Brothers and Sisters, can you say, "I thank You, Father," too? Many of
   you can for personal reasons, for you were babes. Ah, we were each of
   us but babes. He who stands before you, if he is chosen of God, as he
   trusts he is, certainly never belonged to the wise and prudent! When I
   have sometimes had it flung in my teeth--"This man was never educated
   at college! This man came into the ministry in literary attainments
   totally unprepared for it; he is only fit to address the poor--his
   ministry is not polite and polished--he has but little classical
   instruction; he cannot read forty languages," I say to them, "Precisely
   so; every word of it is true, and a great deal more. I would not stop
   you if you would go on; if you will just show me more of my folly; if
   you will just point out to me yet more of my lack of prudence!" If the
   wise man would say, "This man takes a daring project in hand, and does
   not consult any man, does not tell anybody about it, but goes and does
   it like a madman"--just so, precisely so! I will agree to the whole of
   it! But when I have said this, I will remind you, "God has chosen the
   base things of this world to confuse the mighty, and the things that
   are not, to bring to nothing, the things that are." On this wise I will
   put it, in this thing I will become a fool in glorying--What have your
   college men done that is comparable to this work? What have the wisest
   and most instructed of modern ministers done in the conversion of souls
   compared with the work of this unlettered boy? It was God'swork, and
   Godchose the most unfitting instrument so that He might have the more
   Glory. And He shallhave the Glory--I will not take any of it myself by
   pretending to an education I have not received, or an attainment I do
   not possess, or an eloquence which I never coveted! I speak God's
   Words, and God, I know, speaks through me, and works through me, and
   unto Him be the Glory! I can join with many of you personally for
   thanking Him, that He has "revealed these things to babes, which have
   been hidden from the wise and prudent."

   But don't you understand, my Brothers and Sisters, that if the Lord in
   His Sovereignty had taken another course, it would still have been our
   duty to be thankful? Ah, you who boast your pedigrees! He has dashed
   them! You who flaunt your golden eagles--you lack the splendor of His
   smile! You who are clothed in purple, and you who fare sumptuously
   every day--what cares He for your greatness? Let the crowd stand and
   gape at you; let the fool bow down in admiration, but the King of
   kings, the Lord of lords, regards you no more then menials that serve
   His will, but are not of His council, and know not His secret. He has
   put a stain upon proud distinctions! See, too, how He spits upon the
   boastfulness of human learning! And you who have the key of Heaven, and
   will not enter yourselves, neither suffer the poor and ignorant to
   enter--how has He laughed at your pretensions! "The scribes and
   Pharisees sit in Moses' seat, and they say, 'We are the men, and wisdom
   will die with us.'" They come forth flaunting their degrees, and
   boasting their high and lofty credentials, but He casts dust into your
   faces, and leaves you all to your blind confusion! Then, stooping down
   from His mightiness, He takes up the babe. Though it is a learned babe,
   if it is a babe, He takes it. I mean, though it has riches, though it
   has skill, though it has credentials, He does not cast it away from Him
   for that reason, but He does not choose it for that reason, either! He
   takes it, it is a babe. It is willing to be nothing; it is willing to
   be a fool. The prince may be as willing to be saved as the pauper is.
   The great man may be willing to stoop, and to lie at the feet of Jesus
   as though he were nobody. He takes these, these are the men who God has
   chosen--humble and contrite--they who tremble at His Word. Oh, because
   He has thus stained the pride of all glory, let His people rejoice! Let
   all His saints be glad!

   I wish, my dear Friends, that those who are so afraid of the Doctrine
   of Election would remember that it is the only lasting source ofjoy to
   a Christian. You say, "How is that? Surely we ought to rejoice most in
   our usefulness." No, note the 12 Apostles went out to preach, and they
   were so successful that Christ said, "I saw Satan as light fall from
   Heaven," but He said to them, "Nevertheless, rejoice not in this, but
   rather rejoice because your names are written in Heaven." Our election
   is a perennial spring! When other streams are dry, the fact that our
   names are written in Heaven shall still yield us comfort. And you will
   remark, as I have before observed, Christ had just been exceedingly
   sorrowful because Capernaum and Bethsaida had rejected His Word, but He
   finds comfort and begins to thank His God because there was a remnant,
   after all, according to the Election of Grace. People of God! Do not
   stand afraid of this precious Truth, but love it, feed upon it, rejoice
   in it, and it shall be as oil to your bones; it shall supply them with
   marrow and give strength to your very being!

   IV. Having thus explained the text as best I could, I want your earnest
   attention while I try to make some practical use of it. Three or four
   things to three or four characters.

   A word to those Christians who are downcast, trodden, afflicted. You
   have lost a friend; you have had losses in your business; you have been
   tried in body; you have been afflicted by the calumnies of your
   enemies. Very well, but you have still something to rejoice about!
   Come, dry those eyes; take that harp from the willow. Come now, sit no
   longer on the dunghill; take off that sackcloth, remove those ashes;
   take the oil of joy, and put on the garment of praise, and say this
   morning, "Father, I thank You, that You have hid these things from the
   wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes." At least you have
   this to thank God for--although you were a simpleton, a very fool in
   your own estimation-- yet you have received the Truth as it is in
   Jesus, and you have been saved thereby! Let all the chosen seed be
   glad, and take heart, and rejoice in God!

   The next piece of practical instruction is this--let us learn, my
   Brothers and Sisters, the wicked folly of those professed Christians
   who despise the poor. There is growing up, even in our Dissenting
   Churches, an evil which I greatly deplore--a despising of the poor! I
   frequently hear in conversation such remarks as this, "Oh, it is no use
   trying in such a place as this, you could never raise a self-supporting
   cause; there are none but poor living in the neighborhood." If there is
   a site to be chosen for a Chapel, it is said, "Well, there is such a
   lot of poor people round about, you would never be able to keep a
   minister. It is no use trying; they are all poor." You know that in the
   City of London itself, there is now scarcely a Dissenting place of
   worship! The reason for giving most of them up, and moving them into
   the suburbs is that all the respectable people live out of town, and of
   course, they are the people to look after! They will not stop in
   London--they will go out and take villas--and live in the suburbs! And
   therefore, the best thing is to take the endowment which belonged to
   the old Chapel, and go and build a new Chapel somewhere in the suburbs
   where it may be maintained. "No doubt," it is said, "the poor ought to
   be looked after, but we had better leave them to another order, an
   inferior order--the City Missionaries will do for them--send them a few
   street preachers." And as to the idea of raising a cause where they are
   allpoor people, why there is hardly a minister that would attempt it!
   Now my experience of poor people convinces me that all this talk is
   folly! If there are any people who love the cause of God better than
   others, I believe it is the poor--when the Grace of God takes real
   possession of their heart. In this place, for instance, I believe we
   have but very few who could be put down among the rich. There have been
   some who have cast in their lot among us just now, but still, the
   masses who did the work of building this house, and who have stood side
   by side with me in the battle of the last seven years must be reckoned
   among the poor of this world! They have been a peaceable people, a
   happy people, a working people, a plain people, and I say, "God bless
   the poor!"

   I would fear no difficulties whatever in commencing a cause of Christ,
   even though the masses were poor. I am persuaded that the rich who are
   truly the people of God, love to come and assist where there are poor.
   If you were to cast out the poor, you would cast out the Church's
   strength--you would give up that which is, after all, the backbone of
   the Church of Christ! I think we have been doing wrong in neglecting
   the City of London itself. It is true, I do not believe some ministers
   could get congregations in London--it is a pity they have them
   anywhere--men who cannot call a spade a spade, or a loaf of bread, a
   loaf of bread! They are so refined, and speak such fine and polished
   language, that you would think they were not natives of England, and
   had never heard the people speak their own homely brogue. May the Lord
   raise up among us men who speak market language, who have sympathy with
   the people, and who speak the people's tongue, and we shall prove that
   it is an infamous lie, that the causes cannot be maintained in poor
   neighborhoods! They can be and they shallbe. Why, Brothers and Sisters,
   are we to say that we will give up the poor merely to the missionary?
   We complain that the artisan will not come to hear; that the coarse
   jacket will not listen. It is not true! The coarse jacket is as ready
   to listen as is the broadcloth, if he has something to listen to! If it
   is the Gospel, they who walk are as ready to come as they who ride, if
   they could but understand! I think that those who are gifted with this
   world's goods, or with this world's wisdom, will do right well if
   instead of looking out for respectable positions, they will look out
   for the poorest positions, for there they will find the most of those
   whom God has chosen--the poor in this world, rich in faith, heirs of
   the Kingdom!

   I would not say a word to set class against class; for I suppose that
   the soul of a rich man is of no less worth than the soul of the
   poorest; all stand alike in the sight of God! But I do enter my solemn
   protest against men who say that the religion of Christ is not fit for
   the poor neighborhoods, and only meant for our respectable suburbs. It
   is not true, Brothers and Sisters! It is a great and gross heresy
   against the goodness of God, and against the adaptation of the Gospel
   of Christ to the needs of the poor! They can sustain Churches! Look at
   the ragged churches in Glasgow and Edinburgh. They call them ragged,
   but you see as clean faces, and as intellectual countenances there, as
   you would anywhere! If they find a man who can preach, who they can
   hear, they will maintain and support him! The Gospel of Christ will
   find as ready and faithful adherents among the poorest of the poor, as
   amongst the richest of the rich, and far more so in proportion.

   Another homily, which you will think rather strange, is this--How wrong
   the Church of Christ is when it neglects the rich. "Well," you say,
   "that is not in the text! It says these things were hidden from the
   wise and prudent." Yes, I know they were, but Christ thanked God they
   were. "I thank You," He said, "that You have hid these things." What
   then? If I preach to the rich, to the wise, to the prudent, and they
   reject it, have I lost my toil? No, no--there is cause for thankfulness
   even then! We are to preach the Gospel to every creature without any
   distinction whatever--high or low-- great or small. "Well, but the wise
   and prudent will not hear it." We know. But if they reject it, still
   there is matter for thankfulness that they heardit. "Why?" you ask. Why
   because we are unto God a sweet smelling savor both in them who are
   saved, and in them who perish. To the one we are a savor of life unto
   life, and to the other a savor of death unto death, but to God, still,
   a sweet smelling savor! What? Is God glorified in the damnation of the
   wise and prudent? Yes, tremendous fact! At the winding up of this
   world's drama, God will be glorified in the men who shut their eyes
   against His Grace, as well as in the men whose eyes are opened to
   receive it! The yells of Hell shall be but the deep bass of the
   everlasting music of which the songs in Heaven are the air. God, the
   Terrible One, shall have praise from the wise and prudent when their
   folly shall be discovered; when their wisdom shall be dashed in pieces
   or torn to shreds. God, the terrible avenger of His own Gospel, shall
   be glorified when those are cast out, who having heard the Gospel, were
   too wise to believe it, and having listened to it, were too prudent to
   give their praise to it. In either case God is glorified, and in either
   case Christ gives thanks, and devoutly gives thanks! To the rich, then,
   as well as to the poor; to the hopeless case as well as to the hopeful;
   to the wise as well as to the babe, we should preach Christ--because
   even if they are not saved, still, God is glorified! He got honor even
   upon Pharaoh, His enemy, when he perished in the midst of the sea!

   And now, last of all, you who are babes, you who perhaps, "know and
   know no more than the Bible true," you who never read a word of Greek
   or Latin, and sometimes cannot spell the hard words of English--you
   say, "I do not go to a place of worship, I am so ignorant." Do you not
   perceive your own wickedness in staying away? God has revealed these
   things unto babes, and if there are any men or women who ought to come,
   certainly it is you! When the poor man says, "Oh, a place of worship is
   not for me," he is without excuse, because the Scripture expressly
   says, "God has chosen the base things, and the things that are not, to
   bring to nothing the things that are." I invite any man and every man
   to listen to the Gospel, and if you do not come, you certainly do
   despise a very precious promise! You think the Gospel is not meant for
   hard-working men, but it is meant for you--for you above all others.
   You say, "Christ is a gentleman's Christ." No, He is the
   peop/e'sChrist! "I have exalted One chosen out of the people." Do you
   think our religion is meant for the learned? Not so--it is meant for
   the most foolish, and most ignorant! We rejoice to know that the poor
   have the Gospel preached to them. But if they will not come and hear
   it, their guilt shall be sevenfold--seeing there were special words of
   comfort for them, there were choice sentences of invitation for them.
   If they do not come and listen, they must perish miserably, without the
   pretense of a shadow of a dream of an excuse! Ah, you who are so poor
   that you scarcely know where to lay your heads; you who are so
   ignorant, that a ragged school might perhaps be your best academy,
   "Come you, come buy wine and milk, without money and without price."
   Come you as you are to the great Teacher of your souls! Trust Him as
   you are! Trust His precious blood, His glorious Cross, His intercession
   before the Eternal Throne--and you shall have reason to say in the
   words of the Master, "Father, I thank You that You have hid these
   things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes.
   Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight."
     __________________________________________________________________

                  Jehovah Tsidkenu: The Lord Our Righteousness

   A Sermon

   (No. 395)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, June 2nd, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our
   Righteousness.--Jeremiah 23:6.

   MAN BY THE FALL sustained an infinite loss in the matter of
   righteousness. He suffered the loss of a righteous nature, and then a
   two-fold loss of legal righteousness in the sight of God. Man sinned;
   he was therefore no longer innocent of transgression. Man did not keep
   the command; he therefore was guilty of the sin of omission. In that
   which he committed, and in that which he omitted, his original
   character for uprightness was completely wrecked. Jesus Christ came to
   undo the mischief of the fall for his people. So far as their sin
   concerned their breach of the command, that he has removed by his
   precious blood. His agony and bloody sweat have for ever taken away the
   consequences of sin from believers, seeing Christ did by his one
   sacrifice bear the penalty of that sin in his flesh. He, his own self,
   bare our sins in his own body on the tree. Still it is not enough for a
   man to be pardoned. He, of course, is then in the eye of God without
   sin. But it was required of man that he should actually keep the
   command. It was not enough that he did not break it, or that he is
   regarded through the blood as though he did not break it. He must keep
   it, he must continue in all things that are written in the book of the
   law to do them. How is this necessity supplied? Man must have a
   righteousness, or God cannot accept him. Man must have a perfect
   obedience, or else God cannot reward him. Should He give heaven to a
   soul that has not perfectly kept the law; that were to give the reward
   where the service is not done, and that before God would be an act
   which might impeach his justice. Where, then, is the righteousness with
   which the pardoned man shall be completely covered, so that God can
   regard him as having kept the law, and reward him for so doing? Surely,
   my brethren, none of you are so besotted as to think that this
   righteousness can be wrought out by yourselves. You must despair of
   ever being able to keep the law perfectly. Each day you sin. Since you
   have passed from death unto life, the old Adam still struggles for
   dominion within you. And by the force of the lusts of the flesh you are
   brought into captivity to the law of sin which is in your members. The
   good you would do, you do not, and the evil you would not, that you too
   often do. Some have thought the works of the Holy Spirit in us would
   give us a righteousness in which we might stand. I am sure, my
   brethren, we would not say a word derogatory to the cork of the Holy
   Spirit. It is divine. But we hold it to be a great cardinal point in
   divinity that the work of the Spirit never meant to supplant the merits
   of the Son. We could not depreciate the Lord Jesus Christ in order to
   exalt the office of the Holy Spirit of God. We know that each
   particular branch of the divine salvation which was espoused by the
   persons of the Trinity has been carried out by each one to perfection.
   Now as we are accepted in the Beloved, it must be by a something that
   the Beloved did; as we are justified in Christ it must be by a
   something not that the Spirit has done, but which Christ has done. We
   must believe, then,--for there is no other alternative--that the
   righteousness in which we must be clothed, and through which we must be
   accepted, and by which we are made meet to inherit eternal life, can be
   no other than the work of Jesus Christ. We, therefore, assert,
   believing that Scripture fully warrants us, that the life of Christ
   constitutes the righteousness in which his people are to be clothed.
   His death washed away their sins, his life covered them from head to
   foot; his death the sneaky to God, his life was the gift to man, by
   which man satisfies the demands of the law. Herein the law is honored
   and the soul is accepted. I find that many young Christians who are
   very clear about being saved by the merits of Christ's death, do not
   seem to understand the merits of his life. Remember, young believers,
   that from the first moment when Christ did lie in the cradle until the
   time when he ascended up on high, he was at work for his people; and
   from the moment when he was seen in Mary's arms, till the instant when
   in the arms of death he "bowed his head and gave up the ghost," he was
   at work for your salvation and mine. He completed the work of obedience
   in his life, and said to his Father, "I have finished the work which
   thou gavest me to do." Then he completed the work of atonement in his
   death, and knowing that all things were accomplished, he cried, "It is
   finished." He was through his life spinning the web for making the
   royal garment, and in his death he dipped that garment in his blood. In
   his life he was gathering together the precious gold, in his death he
   hammered it out to make for us a garment which is of wrought gold. You
   have as much to thank Christ for loving as for dying, and you should be
   as reverently and devoutly grateful for his spotless life as for his
   terrible and fearful death. The text speaking of Christ, the son of
   David, the branch out of the root of Jesse, styles him THE LORD OUR
   RIGHTEOUSNESS.

   Having introduced the doctrine of imputed righteousness, I proofed to
   map out my subject. First, by way of affirmation; we say of the
   text--it is so--Christ is the Lord or righteousness; secondly, I shall
   exhort you to do him homage; let us call him so: for this is the name
   whereby he shall be called; and thirdly, I shall appeal to your
   gratitude; let us wonder at the reigning grace, which has caused us to
   fulfill the promise, for have been sweetly compelled to call him the
   Lord our righteousness.

   First, then, He is so. Jesus Christ is the Lord our righteousness.
   There are but three words, "JEHOVAH"--for so it is in the
   original,--"OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.' He is Jehovah. Read that verse, and you
   will clearly perceive that the Messias of the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth
   the Saviour of the Gentiles, is certainly Jehovah. He hath the
   incommunicable title of the Most High God. "Behold, the days come,
   saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a
   king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in
   the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell
   safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR
   RIGHTEOUSNESS." Oh, ye Arians and Socinians, who monstrously deny the
   Lord who bought you and put him to open shame by denying his divinity,
   read you that verse and let your blasphemous tongues be silent, and let
   your obdurate hearts melt in penitence because ye have so foully sinned
   against him. He is Jehovah, or, mark you, the whole of God's word is
   false, and there is no noun for a sinner's hope. We know, and this day
   we testify in his name, that the very Christ who did lie in the manger
   as an infant was infinite even then; that he who cried, cried for very
   pain as a child, was nevertheless saluted at that very moment as God by
   the songs of the creatures that his hands had made. He who walked in
   pain over the flinty acres of Palestine, was at the same time possessor
   of heaven and earth. He who had not where to lay his head, and was
   despised and rejected of men, was at the same instant God over all,
   blessed for evermore. He that sweat great drops of blood did bear the
   earth upon his shoulders. He who was flagellated in Pilate's hall was
   adored by spirits of the just made perfect. He who did hang upon the
   tree had the oration hanging upon him. He who died on the cross was the
   ever living, the everlasting One. As a man he died, as God he lives. As
   Mary's son he bled, as the son of the Eternal God he had the sway and
   the dominion over all the world. In nature Christ proves himself to be
   universal God. Without him was not anything made that was made. By him
   all things consist. Who less than God could make the heavens and the
   earth? Bow before him, bow before him, for he made you, and should not
   the creatures acknowledge their Creator?

   Providence attests his Godhead. He upholdeth all things by the word of
   his power Creatures that are animate have their breath from his
   nostrils; inanimate creatures that are strong and mighty stand only by
   his strength. He can say concerning the earth, "I bear the pillars
   thereof." In the deep foundations of the sea his power is felt, and in
   the towering arches of the starry heavens his might is recognized to
   the full. And as for Grace, we claim for Christ that he is Jehovah in
   the great kingdom of his grace. Who less than God could have carried
   your sins and mine and cast them all away? Who less than God could have
   interposed to deliver us from the jaws of hell's lions, and bring us up
   from the pit, having found a ransom? On whom less than God could we
   rely to keep us from the innumerable temptations that beset us? How can
   he be less than God, when he says, "Lo, I am with you always, unto the
   end of the world?" How could he be omnipresent if he were not God! How
   could he hear our prayers, the prayers of millions, scattered through
   the leagues of earth, and attend to them all, and give acceptance to
   all, if he were not infinite in understanding and infinite in merit?
   How were this if he were less than God? Let Atheists scoff, let Deists
   sneer, let the vain Socinian boast, let the Arian lift up his puny
   voice, but we will glory in this fact, that he that bought us with his
   blood is Jehovah--very God of very God. At his footstool we bow and pay
   him the very homage that we pay to his Father and to the Spirit.

   "Blessings more than we can give,

   Be Lord for ever thine."

   But the text speaks about righteousness too--"Jehovah our
   righteousness." And he is so. Christ in his life was so righteous, that
   we may say of the life, taken as a vehicle, that it is righteousness
   itself. Christ is the law incarnate Understand me. He lived out the law
   of God to the very full, and while you see God's precepts written in
   fire on Sinai's brow, you see them written in flesh in the person of
   Christ.

   "My dear Redeemer and my Lord,

   I read my duty in thy word,

   But in thy life the law appears

   Drawn out in living characters."

   He never offended against the commands of the Just One. From his eye
   there never flashed the fire of unhallowed anger. On his lip there did
   never hang the unjust of licentious word. His heart was never stirred
   by the breath of sin or the taint of iniquity. In the secret of his
   reins no fault was hidden. In his understanding was no defect; in his
   judgment no error. In his miracles there was no ostentation. In him
   there was indeed no guile. His powers being ruled by his understanding,
   all of them acted and co-acted to perfection's very self, so that never
   was there any flaw of omission or stain of commission. The law consists
   in this first, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart."
   He did so. It was his meat and his drink to do the will of him that
   sent him. Never man spent himself as he did. Hunger and thirst and
   nakedness were nothing to him, nor death itself if he might so be
   baptised with the baptism wherewith he must be baptized, and drink the
   cup which his Father had set before him. The law consists also in this,
   "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." In all he did, and in all he
   suffered he more than fulfilled the precept, for "he saved others
   himself he could not save." He exhausted the utmost resources of love
   in the deep devotion and self-sacrifice of loving. He loved man better
   than his own life. He would sooner be spit upon than that man should be
   cast into the flames of hell and sooner yield up the ghost in agonies
   that cannot be described than that the souls his Father gave him should
   be cast away. He carried out the law, then, I say to the very letter he
   spelt out its mystic syllables, and verily he magnified it, and made it
   honorable. He loved the Lord his God, with all his heart, and soul, and
   mind, and he loved his neighbors as himself. Jesus Christ was
   righteousness impersonated. "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" he
   might well say. One thousand eight hundred years have passed since
   then, and blasphemy itself has not been able to charge him with a
   fault. Strange as it may appear, the most perverted judges have
   nevertheless acknowledged the awful dignity of his character. They have
   railed at his miracles; they have denied his Godhead; but his righteous
   character I know not that they have dared to impugn. They have hatched
   jokes about his generation; they have made his poverty a jest, and his
   death has been the theme of ribald song; but his life has staggered
   even the most unbelieving, and made the careless wonder how such a
   character could have been conceived even if it be a fiction, and much
   more, how it could have been executed if it be a fact. No one that I
   know of has dared to charge Christ with unrighteousness to man, or with
   a want of devotedness to God. See then, it is so. We do not stay to
   prove his righteousness any more than we did to prove his Godhead. The
   day is coming when men shall acknowledge him to be Jehovah, and when
   looking upon all his life while he was incarnate here, they shall be
   compelled to say that his life was righteousness itself. The pith,
   however, of the title, lies in the little word "our,"--"Jehovah our
   righteousness." This is the grappling iron with which we get a hold on
   him--this is the anchor which dives into the bottom of this great deep
   of his immaculate righteousness. This is the saved rivet by which our
   souls are joined to him. This is the blessed hand with which our soul
   toucheth him, and he becometh to us all in all, "Jehovah our
   Righteousness"

   You will now observe that there is a most precious doctrine unfolded in
   this title of our Lord and Saviour. I think we may take it thus: When
   we believe in Christ, by faith we receive our justification. As the
   merit of his blood takes away our sin, so the merit of his obedience is
   imputed to us for righteousness. We are considered, as soon as we
   believe, as though the works of Christ here our works. God looks upon
   us as though that perfect obedience, of which I have just now spoken,
   had been performed by ourselves,--as though our hands had been bony at
   the loom, an though the fabric and the stuff which have been worked up
   into the fine linen, which is the righteousness of the saints, had been
   grown in our own fields. God considers us as though we were
   Christ--looks upon us as though his life had been our life--and
   accepts, blesses, and rewards us as though all that he did had been
   done by us, his believing people. Accordingly, if you will turn to the
   thirty-third chapter of this same prophet Jeremiah, and look at the
   sixteenth verse, you will see it written, "This is the name wherewith
   she shall be called, the Lord our righteousness." I know that Socinus
   in his day used to call this an execrable, detectable, and licentious
   doctrine: probably it was, because he was an execrable, detectable, and
   licentious man. Many men use their own names when they are applying
   names to other persons; they are so well acquainted with their own
   characters, and so suspicious of themselves, that they think it best,
   before another can express the suspicion, to attach the very same
   accusation to someone else. Now we hold, you know, that this doctrine
   is not execrable, but most delightful, that it is not abominable, but
   Godlike, that it is not licentious, but holy: and let others say what
   they will of it, we will repeat the praise which we have been
   singing,--

   "Jesus, thy perfect righteousness

   My beauty is, my glorious dress;"

   and we will day when all things shall be tried by fire, for we feel
   confident that--

   "Bold shall we stand in that great day,

   For who aught to our charge shall lay,"

   when we are clothed with the righteousness divine?

   Imputation, so far from being an exceptional case with regard to the
   righteousness of Christ, lies at the very bottom of the entire teaching
   of Scripture. How did we fall, my brethren? We fell by the imputation
   of Adam's sin to us. Adam was our federal head; he represented us; and
   when he sinned, we sinned representatively in him, and what he did was
   imputed to us. You say that you never agreed to the imputation. Nay,
   but I would not have you say thus, for as by representation we fell, it
   is by the representative system that we rise. The angels fell
   personally and individually, and they never rise, but we fell in
   another, and we have therefore the power given by divine grace to rise
   in another. The root of the fall is found in the federal relationship
   of Adam to his seed; thus we fell by imputation. Is it any wonder that
   we should rise by imputation? Deny this doctrine, and I ask you--How
   are men pardoned at all? Are they not pardoned because satisfaction has
   been offered for sin by Christ? Very well then, but that satisfaction
   must be imputed to them, or else how is God just in giving to them the
   results of the death of another, unless that death of the other be
   fire? of all imputed to them? When we say that the righteousness of
   Christ is imputed to an believing souls, we do not hold forth an
   exceptional theory, but we expound a grand truth, which is so
   consistent with the theory of the fall and the plan of pardon, that it
   must be maintained in order to make the gospel clear. I think it was
   this doctrine which Martin Luther called the article of standing or
   falling of the Church. I find a passage in his works which seems to me
   to refer to this doctrine rather than to justification by faith. He
   ought certainly to have said, "Justification by faith is the doctrine
   of standing or falling of the Church." But in Luther's mind, imputed
   righteousness we, so interwoven with justification by faith, that he
   could not see any distinction between the two. And I must confess, in
   trying to observe a difference, I do not see much. I must give up
   justification by faith if I give up imputed righteousness. True
   justification by faith is the surface soil, but then imputed
   righteousness is the granite rock which lies underneath it; and if you
   dig down through the great truth of a sinners being justified by faith
   in Christ, you must, as I believe, inevitably come to the doctrine of
   the imputed righteousness of Christ as the basis and foundation on
   which that simple doctrine rests.

   And now let us stop a moment and think over this whole title--"The Lord
   our righteousness." Brethren, the Law-giver has himself obeyed the law
   Do you not think that his obedience will be sufficient? Jehovah has
   himself become man that so he may do man's work: think you that he has
   done it imperfectly? Jehovah--he who girds the angels that excel in
   strength--has taken upon him the form of a servant that he may become
   obedient: think you that his service will be incomplete? Let the fact
   that the Saviour is Jehovah strengthen your confidence. Be ye bold. Be
   ye very courageous. Face heaven, and earth, and hell with the challenge
   of the apostle. "Who shall say anything to the charge of God's elect?
   "Look back upon your past sins, look upon your present infirmities, and
   all your future errors, and while you weep the tears of repentance, let
   no fear of damnation blanch your cheek. You stand before God to-day
   robed in your Saviour's garments, "with his spotless vestments on, holy
   as the Holy One." Not Adam when he walked in Eden's bowers was more
   accepted than you are,--not more pleasing to the eye of the
   all-judging, the sin-hating God than you are if clothed in Jesus'
   righteousness and sprinkled with his blood. You have a better
   righteousness than Adam had. He had a human righteousness; your
   garments are divine. He had a robe complete, it is true, but the earth
   had woven it. You have a garment as complete, but heaven has made it
   for you to wear. Go up and down in the strength of this great truth and
   boast exceedingly, and glory in your God; and let this be on the top
   and summit of your heart and soul: "Jehovah, the Lord our
   righteousness."

   You will remember that in Scripture, Christ's righteousness is compared
   to fair white linen; then I am, if I wear it, without spot. It is
   compared to wrought gold; then I am, if I wear it, dignified and
   beautiful, and worthy to sit at the wedding feast of the King of kings.
   It is compared, in the parable of the prodigal son, to the best robe;
   then I wear a better robe than angels have, full they have not the
   best; but I, poor prodigal, once clothed in rage, companion to the
   nobility of the stye,--I, fresh from the husks that swine do eat, am
   nevertheless clothed in the best robe, and am so accepted in the
   Beloved.

   Moreover, it is also everlasting righteousness. Oh! this is, perhaps,
   the fairest point of it--that the robe be shall never be worn out; no
   thread of it shall ever give way. It shall never hang in tatters upon
   the sinner's back. He shall live, and even though it were a
   Methusaleh's life, the robe shall be as if it were woven yesterday. He
   shall pass through the stream of death, and the black stream shall not
   foul it. He shall climb the hills of heaven, and the angels shall
   wonder what this whiteness is which the sinner wears, and think that
   some new star is coming up from earth to thine in heaven. He shall wear
   it among principalities and powers, and find himself no whit inferior
   to them all. Cherubic garments and seraphic mantles shall not be so
   lordly so priestly, so divine, as this robe of righteousness this
   everlasting perfection which Christ has wrought out, and brought in and
   given to all his people. Glory unto thee, O Jesus, glory unto thee!
   Unto thee be hallels for ever; Hallelu--jah! Thou art you--"Jehovah,
   the Lord our righteousness."

   II. Having thus expounded and vindicated this title of our Saviour, I
   would now APPEAL TO YOUR FAITH.

   Let us call him so. "This is the name whereby he shall be called, the
   Lord our righteousness." Let us call him by this great name, which the
   mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath named. Let us call him--poor
   sinners!--even we, who are today smitten down with grief on account of
   sin. I want this text to be fulfilled in your ears and in your case
   to-day. You are guilty. Your own conscience acknowledges that the law
   condemns you, and you dread the penalty. Soul! he that trusteth Christ
   Jesus is saved, and he that believeth on him is not condemned. To every
   trustful spirit Christ is "the Lord our righteousness." Call him so, I
   pray thee. "I have no good thing of my own," sayest thou? Here is every
   good thing in him. "I have broken the law," sayest thou? There is his
   blood for thee. Believe in him, he will wash thee. "But then I have not
   kept the law. "There is his keeping of the law for thee. Take it,
   sinner, take it. Believe on him. "Oh, but I dare not," saith one. Do
   him the honor to dare it. "Oh, but it seems impossible." Honour him by
   believing the impossibility then. "Oh, but how can he save such a
   wretch as I am?" Soul! Christ is glorified in saving wretches. As I
   told you the other day, Christ cures incurable sinners; so I say now he
   accepts unacceptable sinners. He receives sinners that think they are
   not fit to be received. Only do thou trust him and say, "He shall be my
   righteousness to-day." "But suppose I should do it and be presumptuous?
   It is impossible. He bids you, he commands you. Let that be your
   warrant. "This is the commandment, that ye believe on Jesus Christ whom
   he hath sent." If you cannot say it with a loud voice, yet with the
   trembling silence of your soul let heaven hear it. Yes, Jesus, "All
   unholy and unclean, I am nothing else but sin, yet I dare with fervent
   venture of these quivering lips to call thee, and to call upon thee
   now, as the Lord my righteousness."

   And you who have passed from a state of trembling hope into that of
   lively faith, I beseech you call him so. Let your faith say, as you see
   him suffering, bleeding, dying, "Thus my sins were washed away." But
   let not your faith stay there. As you see him sweating, toiling, living
   a self-denying laborious life, say, "Thus the law was kept for me."
   Come up to the foot of Sinai now, and if you see its lightnings flash,
   and hear its thunders roar, be brave, and say like Moses, "I will
   ascend above those thunders, I will stand enwrapped within the
   storm-cloud, and I will talk with God, for I have no cause for fear,
   there are no thunderbolts for me; for me no lightning flash can spend
   its arrow, I am perfectly, completely justified in the sight of God,
   through the righteousness of Jesus Christ." Say that, child of God!
   Does yesterday's sin make thee stammer? In the teeth of all thy sins
   believe that he is thy righteousness still. Thy good works do not
   improve his righteousness; thy bad works do not sully it. This is a
   robe which thy best deeds cannot mend and thy worst deeds cannot mar.
   Thou standest in him, not in thyself. Whatever, then, thy doubts and
   fears may have been, do now, poor troubled, distressed, distracted
   believer, say again, "Yes, he is the Lord my righteousness."

   And some of us can say it yet better than that: for we can say it not
   merely by faith, but by fruition. We remember well the day when we
   first called him "the Lord our righteousness." Oh, the peace it
   brought, the joy, the gladness, the transport! Since then we have
   proved it to he true, for we have had privileges we could not have had
   if he had not been our righteousness. We have had the privilege of
   reconciliation with God; and He could not be reconciled to one that had
   not a perfect righteousness, we have had access with boldness to God
   himself, and He would never have suffered us to have access if we had
   not worn our brother's garments. We have had adoption into the family,
   and the Spirit of adoption, and God could not have adopted into his
   family any but righteous ones. How should the righteous Father be God
   of an unrighteous family? Our prayers have been heard, and we have had
   gracious answers, and that could not have been--for he could not heal
   the prayer of the wicked; he could not have heard us--if it had not
   been that he seemed to hear Christ crying through us, and to have seen
   Christ's merits in us. And therefore granted the desire of our hearts.
   We have had in daily rich and sweet experience such manifestations of
   fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, that to us it
   is a matter of fact as well as a matter of faith, a matter of praise as
   well as a matter of profession, that Jesus Christ is "the Lord our
   righteousness."

   Brethren, your divinity must be experimental or it will not profit you.
   I would not give a straw for your theology if you learned it merely out
   of a pollee, or out of a system of man's teaching. No, no, we must
   prove these things to be true in our lives. I can say it, and I must
   say it--the testimony is not egotistical--I know there is a comfort in
   the faith of Christ's imputed righteousness which no other doctrine can
   yield. There is something that a man can sleep on and wake on, can live
   on and die on, in the firm conviction that he is received by God as
   though the deeds of Christ were his deeds, and the righteousness of
   Christ his righteousness. Take away his filthy garments from him, set a
   fair mitre on his head, array him in fine linen. O, Joshua, priest of
   the Most High, thou man greatly beloved, come thou forth now in thy
   garments and offer acceptable sacrifice, seeing, thou wearest the
   garments of Jesus, our great High Priest." Let us, then, call upon his
   name and extol him in our worship as "the Lord our righteousness."

   And now let the whole universal Church of Christ, in one glad song,
   call Jesus Christ the Lord their righteousness. Wake up, ye isles of
   the sea; shout, thou wilderness that Kedar doth inhabit; ye people of
   God, scattered and peeled, banished among the heathen, vexed with the
   filthy conversation of the idolaters, from your huts, from the
   destitute places that ye inhabit, sing, "The Lord our righteousness!"
   Let no heir of heaven be silent at this hour; let every soul be
   stirred. Though tempest-tossed and half a wreck, yet, mariner in
   Christ, say, "Thou art the Lord my righteousness." Though cast down
   into the deep dungeon, thou despairing soul, yet say, "The Lord my
   righteousness." Let no one of the entire believing family keel; back
   his song but together let us sing, "The Lord our righteousness." And
   you, ye spirits that walk in white, ye glorious ones that "day without
   night circle his throne rejoicing," ye saints that ere his day beheld
   him, and died, not having received the promise, but having beheld it
   afar off,--Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and Samuel, and
   Jephthah, and David, and Solomon, and all the mighty host, sing ye,
   sing ye, sing ye unto him to-day; and let this be the summit of your
   song, "The Lord our righteousness." Our spirit bows before him now.
   Sweet fellowship beyond the stream! Me clasp our hands with those that
   went before; and while the cherubim can only say, "Holy, holy, holy; he
   is righteous," we lift up a higher note, and say, "yes, thrice holy,
   but the Lord our righteousness is he." Let none, then, of all his
   saints in heaven and in earth, refuse to call him "the Lord our
   righteousness"

   III. I now conclude, in the third place, by appealing to your
   GRATITUDE. Let us admire that wonderful and reigning grace which has
   led you and me to call him, "The Lord our righteousness."

   When I look back some ten or twelve years upon a foolish boy, who cared
   little for the things of God, who was burdened with an awful sense of
   sin, and thought that he never could be pardoned--clad so often driven
   to the borders of despair that he was fain to make away with his own
   life, because he thought there was no happiness on earth for him--I can
   only say for my own self. O the riches of the grace of God in Christ,
   that ever I should stand not only conscious that he is the Lord my
   righteousness, but to preach him to you! O God, thou hast done
   wonderful things! Thou saidst by the mouth of Jeremy, "This is the name
   whereby he shall be called." I call him so this day from my inmost
   soul. Jesus of Nazareth! suffering man! glorious God! thou art the Lord
   my righteousness! If I were to pass this question round these
   galleries, and down below oh, what hundreds of responses would there be
   from such as joyously obey the summons of gratitude! And among those
   about to be added to the Church (I am sure they would permit me to
   tell, for the honor of the glorious grace of God), there are very many
   who are special instances of that grace which has sweetly constrained
   them to call Christ their righteousness. Some of them, according to
   their own concession before us at the Church meeting, were not only
   revelling in drunkenness, one until he had well nigh drank away his
   reason by thirty years of habitual intoxication; but others of them
   were unclean and unchaste, till they had rioted in debauchery, and gone
   to the utmost lengths of crime. There be many in this place to-day, who
   would not, though they would blush for the past, refuse to tell, to the
   honor of redeeming grace, that once they had committed every crime in
   the catalogue except murder; and if they have not committed that, it
   was nothing but the sovereign grace of God that restrained them. Some
   members of this Church have sinned in every part of the world--have
   sinned in every quarter of the globe--have committed every form of lust
   and vice--and if you had asked them ten years ago whether they should
   ever be in a place of worship, they would have repelled with an oath
   what they would have thought an insult, and would have cursed you for
   supposing that they should so degrade themselves as to profess the
   faith of Christ. Brothers and sisters, I should not be surprised if you
   were to stand up now and say, "Yes, still Jehovah Jesus is the Lord our
   righteousness." Oh!--

   "Wonders of grace to God belong;

   Repeat his mercies in your song."

   Who would have thought that the lip of the blasphemer should fulfill
   that very prophecy--that the tongue that could scarce move without an
   oath should, nevertheless, glorify Christ,--that the heart that was
   black with accumulated lust,--the mouth which must have become a very
   sepulcher, breathing forth deadly miasma, has now become a place for
   song, and the heart a house for music, while heart and tongue say,
   "Yes, he is the Lord my righteousness this very day!"

   It would be a wonder if God should vow that the devils should yet sing
   his praise; but I do not think it would be a greater wonder than when
   he makes some of us sing his glorious praise. Brethren, you and I know
   that there is nothing in freewill doctrine; for in our case, at any
   rate, it was not true. Left to ourselves, where should we have been?
   What could Arminianism have done for us? Oh, no! it was irresistible
   grace that brought us to call him "the Lord our righteousness." It was
   that divine shall that broke in pieces our will. It was that strong arm
   that broke the iron sinew of our proud neck, and made us bow, even us,
   who would not have this man to reign over as. It was his finger that
   opened the blind eye; for once we could see now beauty in him. It was
   his breath that thawed our icy heart; for once we felt no love to
   him;--

   "But now, subdued by sovereign grace,

   Our spirit longs for his embrace;

   Our beauty this our glorious dress,

   Jesus the Lord our righteousness."

   And this shall be our glory here, and our song forever--"The Lord our
   righteousness."
     __________________________________________________________________

                             Climbing the Mountain

   A Sermon

   (No. 396)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, June the 16th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?"--Psalm 24:3.

   THERE IS little doubt that this Psalm has a primary reference to the
   Lord Jesus Christ. He it is who alone ascended up on high by his own
   merits, and by virtue of a perfect obedience stands in God's holy
   place. He alone of mortal race hath clean hands and a pure heart; he
   hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor hath he sworn deceitfully
   therefore hath he received the blessing and righteousness from the God
   of his salvation. At his ascension the glorified spirits flooded heaven
   with music while they sang the language of the seventh verse, "Lift up
   your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and
   the King of glory shall come in." It would be a delightful theme for
   Christian meditation to consider the ascension of Christ, in relation
   to his work, what we obtain by it, and the glories with which it was
   accompanied, when, with a shout of saved joy, he returned to his own
   throne and sat down for ever having finished the labor which he had
   undertaken to perform. But, this morning, I must take the text apart
   from its connection, for I desire to make it the basis of a set of
   parables or illustrations with regard to Christian life. I think we may
   fairly compare the life of a Christian to the ascent of a mountain, and
   we may then ask the question, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the
   Lord?" This has been, in fact, a favorite metaphor, and even that
   mighty master of allegory, John Bunyan, who needed never to borrow from
   another, must have the Hill Difficulty somewhere or other to make his
   story complete; he must tell how the pilgrim "fell from running to
   going, and from going to clambering upon his hands and knees because of
   the steepness of the place." Without putting any strain upon the text,
   I conceive I may use it as a most serious question, while I picture our
   course to heaven as an ascent into the hill of the Lord.

   Behold, then, before your eyes believer, the hill of God; it is a high
   hill even as the hill of Bashan, on the top thereof is that Jerusalem
   which is from above, the mother of us all; that rest

   "To which our laboring souls aspire,

   With fervent pangs of strong desire."

   This mount of which we speak is not Mount Sinai, but the chosen hill
   whereon are gathered the glorious company of angels, the spirit of the
   just made perfect, the Church of the first-born, whose names are
   written in heaven. And we are the pilgrims, full often joyous with
   faith, but sometimes weary and footsore, making the best of our way to
   the top of this mountain of God, where we shall see his face, and
   rejoice in him for evermore.

   I, your fellow pilgrim, propose the question, "Who shall ascend into
   the hill of the Lord?" No sooner does the question escape my lips, than
   I hear a jubilant shout from a company yonder who cry, "We shall;
   assuredly we shall; there is no doubt about our eternal safety. We
   shall most certainly attain the summit, rest our wearied feet thereon,
   and dwell with God for ever." Well, confidence is good if it be good,
   but if it be presumption, nothing can be more ill. Let us, then, look
   at those who are so sure that they shall ascend into the hill of the
   Lord.

   I notice, first, that some who speak thus are young beginners; they
   have not yet trodden the rough part of the mountain; they have only as
   yet danced upon the green knolls which are at the base of it; no wonder
   that their untried sinews find it easy work to ascend an easy pathway.
   Their limbs are supple, their muscles strong, and the marrow in their
   bones is as yet not dried up. They laugh at difficulty and they defy
   danger. "Ah!" they say, "whatever the danger may be, we can brave it;
   and however stern the toil, we are sufficient to surmount it." Ah!
   young man, but be thou warned; if thou speakest thus in thine own
   strength, thou shalt soon find it fail that for the boastful man who
   journeys in his own strength is like the snail which, though it doth
   but crawl, yet spendeth its own life and wasteth itself, whilst it
   maketh but sorry way. Thy strength is perfect weakness; and thy
   weakness such that difficulties shall soon subdue thee, and terror
   shall cow thy spirit. Oh! dost thou not know there are troubles to
   come, and thou hast not endured them yet; there are attacks of Satan;
   there are temptations from without and from within? Thou wilt find it
   go hard with thee if thou hast nothing but thine own strength; thou
   wilt he down to die of despair before thou hast reached one-tenth of
   the way, and the summit thou shalt never see. Oh, young man! there are
   rocks most sharp and steep which mortal strength can never chub, and
   there are rugged ravines so tangled with briars and so bestrewn with
   flint stones that they shall cut thy feet, nay, cut thy very heart and
   make it bleed, if thou hast not something better to trust to than thine
   own strength. How much of our early courage in the Christian life is
   the courage of the flesh; and though it be a sorrowful thing to lose
   this, yet it is a blessed loss. To be weak is to be strong, but to be
   strong is to be weak. It may seem a paradox, but we are never really so
   mighty as when our might has fled, and never so truly weak as when we
   are filled with our own strength, and are reckonings upon ease and
   security. Be not so bold; take warning and look thou to a superior arm.

   "For they that trust their native strength

   Shall melt away and droop, and die;"

   whilst those who trust in the Lord,

   "Swift as the eagle cuts the air,

   Shall mount aloft to his abode;

   On wings of love their souls shall fly

   Nor tire amidst the heavenly road."

   In looking upon this group who are so confident that they shall ascend
   the hill of the Lord, I detect some others who speak out of sheer
   ignorance. "Oh," say they, "it is not far to heaven, it is little
   matter to be a Christian, you have but to say, God be merciful to me,'
   and the thing is done, it is but a mere trifle. As for the new birth,"
   say they, "no doubt it is a great mystery, but possibly it may be of
   very little importance. It will be, no doubt, found after all, that
   ministers and Christians make much ado about nothing, for it is a mere
   run to the mountain summit." Ah, poor ignorant soul, your folly is too
   common. To the unaccustomed traveler there is nothing more deceptive
   than a lofty Alp. You say, "I could reach the mountain-top in
   half-an-hour," and you find it to be a day's full journey, for its
   twisting roads, and rugged--sides, and precipitous acclivities come not
   into the reckoning of a distant observer. And so is it with religion;
   men think it so simple, so easy, but when they once begin to ascend,
   they find it stern work to climb to glory. The young soldier gets on
   his armor, and says, "One rush and I will win the battle," but when his
   banner is torn, and his armor is indented and battered with the heavy
   blows of the adversary, he finds it quite another thing. I beseech you,
   count the cost, you who say that you can ascend into the hill of the
   Lord. I tell you, sirs, that it is so hard a thing, that the righteous
   scarcely are saved; and where shall the ungodly and the wicked appear?
   It is by the skin of their teeth, and often so as by fire that many who
   are saved, enter into the eternal rest. I will not merely say it is
   hard, but I will say it is impossible. It is as easy for a camel to go
   through the eye of a needle, as for any man to enter into the kingdom
   of heaven, if he rely in any degree upon his own strength, or think
   that the passage thereto is easy, and he needeth no help that he may
   pass through it. Be thou persuaded, O ignorant man, that the hill of
   God is higher than thou dreamest. That is not the summit which thou
   seest, the mountains brow is far beyond thine eyesight. It is higher
   than thine understanding, it is loftier than thy grovelling
   conceptions; the eagle's wing hath not reached it, man hath his eye
   beheld it; to the spiritual only is it manifest, and they know that it
   is higher than the clouds. Be not thou so ignorantly brave, but learn
   the read from the lips, of Jesus, and then ask him to help thee to run
   therein.

   But amongst this very presumptuous group I perceive others who say, "We
   shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, "for in their hearts they
   imagine that they have found out a smooth grassy icy which they shall
   avoid all the roughness of the road. Some new prophet has preached to
   them a new salvation. Some modern impostor has declared to them another
   way besides the good old path, and they think that they shall now,
   without wearying their limbs and blistering their feet, be able to
   ascend to the summit Take care, take care, presumptuous soul, for rest
   assured the greener the path may look the more is the danger of it. On
   the sloping sides of the lofty mountains there are verdant splits, so
   deliciously green that one never saw the grass itself after the shower
   look like them, but only put your foot upon them for a moment, only
   venture your weight, and you will be swallowed up, unless there be some
   one nigh at hand to lay hold upon you. The green mantle covers a
   tremulous mass of mire, the verdant carpet is only a coverlet for a
   deadly bed of bottomless bog, for the bogs and quagmires are deceptive
   enough. And so these new systems of divinity, these new schemes of
   getting to heaven by some universal fatherhood, or by part-obedience,
   or gorgeous ceremonies,--I tell you, sirs, these are but quagmires
   which shall swallow up your souls, green deceptions, they may seem to
   be like velvet beneath your feet, but they shall be as hell if you dare
   to trust them. Still to this day, "Strait is the gate and narrow is the
   way, and few there be that find it." Still as there is no royal road to
   learning, there is no royal road to heaven, no way by which you can
   pamper your sins and yet be saved, indulge the flesh and yet inherit
   eternal life. There is no way by which you can avoid the new birth and
   still escape from the wrath to come, no way by which you may enter into
   heaven with iniquity hidden in your soul. Corruptions must be taken
   away. Lust must be denied. The right arm must be cut off and the right
   eye must be plucked out. There is no new, no easier path to heaven, and
   you who think you have found it are mistaken in very deed.

   Some few others I mark in this group who say, "We shall ascend into the
   hill of the Lord," and why, sirs? You look as if you had a heavy load
   to carry. "Ay! Ay!" say they, "but these are necessaries for the
   journey. We have half a dozen staves under our arm, that if one of them
   should break we may take another and we have bottles of rich wine that
   we may refresh ourselves, we have food wherewith, when we grow weary,
   we may recruit our strength. We have excellent garments that when a
   storm comes on we may cover ourselves from it. We are fully provided
   for the journey--we shall certainly ascend the mountain." This is just
   the way in which the worldly-wise and self-sufficient talk; and those
   who are rich and lumbered with much serving in this world. "Ah!" say
   they, "we shall readily ascend to heaven; we are not poor--we are not
   ignorant--we are not led away by the depraved vices of the vulgar mass;
   we shall be able to climb certainly, for we have all things and
   abound." Yes, but this is what makes your climbing difficult. You have
   a load to carry, you would ascend better if you had it not; one staff
   is good for a traveler, a competence you may seek for, but a bundle of
   staves must be heavy to carry; and multiplied riches make it hard to
   climb the narrow way of life, for they brine many cares and many
   sorrows, and thus they cause the feet to slip when they might stand
   fast. Say not because of your wit, and your wisdom, and your own moral
   strength, that you are the better equipped for the journey; these are
   your dangers; your confidences are your weaknesses; that on which you
   rest shall give you no rest, and that on which you depend, if it be
   anything but God, shall pierce you try the very soul. O sirs, if you
   can say, "I shall ascend into the hill of God," if with your hand upon
   your heart you can appeal to heaven and say, "The ground-work of my
   confidence is not in myself, but in the promise, not in the flesh, but
   in the spirit; not in man but in God, not in what I am but in what God
   has promised to do for me;" then be as confident as you will, then let
   no stammering stop you of your boasting, for the joy of the Lord is
   your strength. But if this confidence springs from anything short of a
   firm fixed, simple, unmingled faith in Christ, I pray you give it up,
   for it is a deadly snare, and will certainly destroy your soul.

   We have thus paused to listen to the group who are so sure of ascending
   the hill of the Lord. But hark! I can hear groans, and sobs, and moans,
   I look around, and certainly, my eyes are gladdened with the aspect of
   these men who seem to be so sad. Why mourn you, brethren. Why are you
   sad? "Oh," say they, "we shall never ascend the hill of God, we shall
   never reach the topmost height." Brethren, if I had been allowed to
   judge I should have thought you the very men who would ascend, and yet
   you say you shall not. And if I had looked at the other group, I should
   have thought they never would gain the top, and yet they say they
   shall. How singular it is! Men so often misjudge their own state, that
   the most unlikely think themselves sure, while the most holy are the
   most afraid. Come, only brethren, I would stop your mourning, and wipe
   your eyes; I would put a song into your mouths instead of the notes of
   lamentation. Let me have your reasons think you shall never ascend the
   hill of God. The first reply is, "I shall never get there, for I am
   weak, and the hill is exceeding high; and, sir, you have told us that
   godliness is a great steep, and that true religion is a towering up,
   and I am so weak; to will is present with me, but how to perform I find
   not. I can do nothing, I am emptied entirely, I know that this can
   never be performed by me. To perfect holiness and perfect rest I can
   never come, for I am the weakest of the entire family, and that steep
   is too lofty to be attained by tottering feet like mine. My bones ache,
   my knees bend, hot sweat drenches my garments, my head is giddy, and I
   drag my bleeding feet with anguish from crag to crag." Oh! my dear
   brother, be of good cheer; if that be thine only cause of mourning, lay
   it aside, for remember, whilst thou art weak, it is not thy strength
   which is to carry thee there, but God's, if nature had undertaken to
   ascend into the celestial mountain, indeed, you might despair but it is
   grace, all-conquering grace that is to do it.

   "Weak as you are, yet through his might,

   You all things shall perform."

   It is true the hill is steep, but then God is omnipotent, it is certain
   that the Alp is high, but higher still is the love and grace of God. He
   hath borne you, he hath carried you, and he will carry you even to the
   end: when you cannot walk he will take you in his arms, and when the
   road is so rough that you cannot even creep along it, he will hear you
   as on eagles' wings, till he bring you to his promised rest. Again, I
   say, if it were yourself that you had to look to, it would be right in
   you to mourn, but you are not to look to self. Trust thou in the Lord
   for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. "Ah! but,"
   says a second, "my difficulty is this--not only am I weak, but I am so
   sore tried, the road is very rough to me, you spoke of grass just now,
   there is none where I am, I have looked at that promise, He maketh me
   to lay down in green pastures,' and I cannot say it is true of me.
   Instead of it I must say he leadeth me by the rough torrents, and
   suffereth me not to lie down at all, but upon the steep ascents, where
   the stones cut my feet, he leads my weary and sorrowful way. I am the
   man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath, all his waves
   and his billows have gone over me. If the road be rough like this, I
   shall never ascend into the hill of God." O Christian, Christian! I
   beseech thee take down thy harp from the willow now; for if this be all
   thy fear, it is a foolish fear indeed. Why, man, "the road is rough:"
   is this a new thing? The road to heaven never was anything else but
   rough, and so thou mayest be the better assured that this is the right
   way. If your road were smooth, you might fear that you were like the
   wicked who stand in slippery places. Because your pathway is rough, the
   better foothold for a mountain-climber. There is nothing MO much to be
   feared as that smooth glass-faced rock on which the foot slips back and
   slides. No, those stones and flints give foothold. Stand then, strong
   in the strength of God, and be of good courage. Your afflictions are
   proofs of your sonship. Bastards may escape the rod, but the tree-born
   child of God must not--would not if he might. You know too, that these
   afflictions are working for your good. They are rough waves, but the;
   are driving your ship into port, they are blustering winds, but they
   make your ship scud over the briny deep into the eternal rest which
   remaineth for your soul. Your troubles, I tell you, are your best
   Mercies. Where did the Israelites get their jewels, their ear-rings,
   and necklaces? Why, from Egypt, from Egypt only; and so you, too,
   though you have lien among the pots, shall yet be as the dove whose
   wings are covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold. Let
   not the roughness of the road dismay thee--it is the better proof that
   it is the right road to heaven. Why, you will have a worse trouble yet,
   perhaps. That is poor consolation, say you; but, then, save your tears
   till you get to it. Cease your weeping now, and if this be poor
   comfort, yet methinks it is true common sense. You will come to places
   soon where you will have to crawl on your hands and knees, and when you
   think to grasp the root of some tree to drag you up you will grasp a
   thorn, and every thorn shall pierce your flesh; but even then those
   thorns shall be heavenly lancets to let out your bad blood; and that
   roughest part of the road shall be the speediest way to heaven, for the
   steeper the road, the sooner we shawl be at the summit. So be of good
   cheer and mourn not, until thou comest where there is more cause to
   mourn; and then mourn not, for thou shalt come to a place where there
   is more cause for joy. The more sorrow, the more consolation. Therefore
   up, thou poor dispirited one; thou shalt yet ascend into the hill of
   God!

   "But I," saith another--"I have been sorely tempted. Across my path
   there is a torrent--a swollen torrent; and I cannot wade it through,
   fear the deep waters would carry me down and dash me from the rocks. I
   shall never be able to ascend." During last sleek, while in one of the
   wild valleys of Cumberland, we were rained up for two or three days, so
   that we could not get home; and I feared I should not be able to arrive
   in town to preach to-day; for across a high mountain-pass which we had
   to traverse, the little brooks had been swollen by the heavy rains,
   till they roared like thundering rivers, and it would have been
   impossible for any creature to pass without great danger of being swept
   away. So it sometimes happens in the Christian's career. Temptation
   gets swollen to its brim, nay, bursts its banks, and roaring like an
   angry torrent, it bears all before it. Ah, well, Christian, the Lord
   knows how to deliver thee out of thy trouble. He never did yet send
   temptation without making a way of escape. I was pleased to notice but
   last Thursday, how, across these brooks, the sheep which fed upon the
   mountain side could spring from stone to stone, rest a moment in the
   middle, while the angry flood roared on either side; and then leap and
   spring again you would think they must be drowned; but yet their feet
   were fast and firm. I thought then of that text, "He maketh my feet
   like hind's feet, and maketh me to stand on my high places." Do not you
   know, tried Christians, that others have gone through as much
   temptation as you, and they did not perish?--nor will you. Job was
   sorely tried--the brook was swollen indeed, but it did not carry him
   away. He was safe, for he could say, "Though he stay me, yet will I
   trust in him." Come, now there are stepping-stones across the brook, if
   you have but faith enough to find them you shall leap from statue to
   stone; though they be wide apart, they shall not be too wide for thee;
   and though they shall seem as though they would be moved yet they shall
   never be, till you have safely passed by the swelling danger.

   "Ah," saith another, "but my trouble is worse than that, I have lost my
   way altogether. I cannot see a step before me; a thick fog of doubt and
   fear hangs over me, I shall never ascend into the hill of the Lord."
   And we, too, have passed through the damp and clinging mists. The dense
   masts on the mountain summit wet you through very speedily, ruin the
   prospect, and cause alarm to the timed. The descent on the loft hand
   seems bottomless, and the ascent on the right appears to be lost in
   cloud. Mist is the mother of exaggeration, all things loom out in
   indefinite greatness. The little brook magnified by the haze swells
   into a river, and the tarn enlarges into a tremendous lake; while the
   mountain tops are in the seventh heavens. Every stone becomes a rock in
   the mist--such is the exaggeration which an imagination can perform
   when nature wears her veil. So when a poor Christian gem into doubts
   and fears, everything looks bad and black against him. "Oh," says he,
   "I shall surely fall by the hand of the enemy." It is only a cart-rut,
   he is sure he will be drowned in it. It is only a stone, which he might
   put into a sung and throw at some Goliath but he fears it is a
   tremendous rock, and shall never be able to pass it by. He is in a mist
   and sees no light, and knows not his way. Well, Christian, so you say
   you shall never get to the top because of this. Why, man, there have
   been tens of thousands who have been in quite as thick a mist as you,
   and yet they have found their way. Many a Christian has had quite as
   black doubts and fears as you, and yet has come light at last Doubts
   and fears never kill the Christian. They are like the tooth-ache, they
   are very painful, but they are never mortal. So doubts and fears are
   very grievous to a believer, but a myriad doubts and fears will not
   suffice to kill him, or deprive his soul of his interest in Christ.
   Come, man, do you not know what the text says? "If any man walk in
   darkness and see no light, let him"--do what? Let him despair? No, "let
   him trust in the Lord! "Now is the season for faith. When you have
   nothing else to trust to, put your hand within the hand of the Eternal
   God, and he will wisely lead, and powerfully sustain and bring you on
   your way to the promised rest. Let not these doubts fret you, nor
   distress you, nor cast you down. It is this very mist through which
   David passed, and an God's people have been surrounded with more or
   less of it, and it does not prove that you are out of the way.

   "But," saith another, "my woe is worse. I have been going down hill. My
   faith is not so strong as it was: I am afraid my love has grown cold; I
   never felt so much of the blackness of my nature as I do now. I think I
   have grown worse; my depravity has broken up like the floods in the
   days of Noah. I am sure now it is all over with me. I thought I was
   vile when I begun; but I know I am depraved now. I shall never ascend
   to the hill of God." And so, believer, you have been going down hill,
   have you? Allow you not that most men who have to go up had must
   sometimes descend? You say, "How is that?" Well, in climbing a
   mountain, it often occurs that the path winds downward for a season, to
   enable the traveler to avoid a precipice, or comb a beetling crag, or
   reach another peak of the range. Part of the road to Mont Blanc, the
   king of the Alps, is a descent, and on the great mountain passes there
   are frequent spots where the load runs readily at the horse's heels.
   "But how can going down help me to get up?" you say. It is a strange
   paradox, but I do not believe Christians ever mount better than when
   they descend. When they find out more of the baseness of their hearts,
   when they are taken from chamber to chamber and shown the idolatry and
   blasphemy of their hearts, it is then they are growing in grace. "Oh,"
   say they, "it is all over with me now." It would have been all over
   with you if you had not come here. "Ah," say they, "the Lord is about
   to slay me now." No, no,--only to slay your pride. He is putting you in
   your proper place.

   "If to-day he deign to bless us,

   With a sense of pardoned sin;

   He to-morrow may distress us,

   Make us feel the plague within.

   All to make us

   Sick of self, and fond of him."

   It is all up hill, brethren, even when it is down hill. It is all
   towards God, even when sometimes it seems to be away from him. And when
   we are discovering most our own baseness and vileness, it is only that
   our eyes washed with tears, may be like the eyes of doves washed with
   milk and fitly set, that we may behold the King in his beauty, seeing,
   less of self and more of him.

   I will not keep you much longer on that point, for I fear by the aspect
   of some of your countenances that I weary you; and yet I know not why I
   should; for surely this is a question which is important to each of us,
   and I seek to put it in as comely a parable as I can. I hear yet
   another groan. "Ah," saith one, "I shall never ascend into the hill of
   God." Why? "Oh," saith he, "because, though I have come up a little
   way, I feel in such danger." Brethren, do you know when a Christian man
   looks down it is enough to make his head swim? The Christian life is
   very much like the walk of Blondin upon his lofty rope. There he is
   high up in the air; if he look down he must perish. Sometimes
   Christians with a little faith think of liking down--and what a cold
   shudder thrills them! The hypocrite has fallen; I may fall;
   such-and-such a professor has come down, I may come down too. There is
   the roar of a tumultuous crowd beneath, who are expecting that we may
   fall, nay, they are longing to say, "Aha! aha! The eyes of Samson are
   put out, and the mighty are destroyed." Now Little-faith, what business
   have you with looking down? Look up, man; look up! The Scripture does
   not say, "Let us run with trembling the race that is set before us,
   looking to our own tottering legs;" no; but it says, "Let us run with
   patience the race that inset before us, looking unto Jesus." What if
   the crag be steep, and the precipice be grim; what is that to thee? You
   will never fall while your faith is fixed on your God! What if the jaws
   of death be open wide, and his teeth be sharp as knives--what is that
   to you? Because Christ lives, you shall live also. What if the fires of
   hell be hot, and the flames of Tophet vehement, what is that to you?
   There is no damnation to him that is in Christ Jesus, who walks not
   after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Up man! look up! As the poor sea
   boy, climbing the giddy mast, dares not look down upon the awful deep,
   but upward to the calm blue sky, where shines the bright unclouded sun;
   so must you look up to the Father of lights, with whom there is no
   variableness, neither shadow of turning; or if it be dark with you, up
   to yon star of Bethlehem, who shineth still calmly, lovingly above your
   head; he bids you silently look unto him, and stand securely. Look up,
   poor Little-faith, and thou Much-afraid, for thou shalt ascend into the
   hill of the Lord.

   I shall crave your attention a moment or two, while I now, in the third
   place,--having listened to those who said they could climb, and to
   those who said they could not climb,--picture to you the man who is
   able to ascend into the hill of the Lord. Methinks I see him. He has
   nothing in himself; but he has everything in his God. Let us look at
   him from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. You notice,
   first, that he has put on shoes of iron and of brass; his feet are shod
   with the preparation of the gospel of peace. You will want those shoes,
   O heavenly pilgrim! When the Lord said he would give you those shoes of
   iron, you thought they would be too heavy for you, but you will find
   out that you have to tread on stones that are hard as iron. When he
   said he would give you show that were made of brass, you thought they
   would be too strong. You will find it a long way, and a stew stiff
   ascent, and anything else than brass would be worn out. Young
   Christian, have you had your feet shod yet? You are of no use for
   climbing unless you have. Unless you have peace with God through Jesus
   Christ our Lord, which is the preparation of the gospel of peace, you
   can never ascend into the hill of Lord. But observe that the pilgrim is
   girt about his loins to keep his garment from tripping him up, he is
   girt with the girdle of truth and sincerity. You, too, my hearer, must
   be sincere in your profession, your heart must be right in the sight of
   God, or else climbing will be fatal work to you, because you climb
   presumptuously, and you shall come down desperately. I observe that the
   pilgrim has in his hand a strong staff, it is cut from the tree of
   life, it is called the Staff of Promise. And he knows how to thrust his
   Alpenstock deep into the ground, and to draw himself up thereby, or
   stop himself as he is going down a crag, lest, his foot slipping, he
   fall. He has a staff of promise. See to it that you get it. Get a
   promise every day. Don't be content when you pray, unless you can plead
   the promise of God, or else you will be like a man going to the bankers
   without a cheque. You must take the promise when you go to God, and you
   will get that bestowed upon you which the promise guarantees. Go not up
   the mountain, pilgrim, without this staff.

   Take warning once more. If yonder pilgrim is ever to ascend the summit,
   his shoes of iron and of brass will not be enough--his girdle not
   enough, his staff not enough--he must have a guide. He that travels
   without a guide will lose his way in this ascent to the hill of God. It
   reminds me of the old story of the man who said to his advocate when he
   was about to be tried--"I'll be hanged if I don't plead for myself."
   "You will be banged if you do," said the lawyer. So there be some men
   who say they will try for themselves, they will be their own guide,
   they will find their own way. Ay, but they will be lost if they try it.
   If they put their souls into their own keeping, and rely upon their own
   wisdom, they shall find their wisdom to be fully full blown. Christian,
   rely upon your Guide, your Comforter--the Holy Spirit. Go not one step
   of the way apart from his monitions and his promptings, wait on him, be
   of good courage, saying, "I waited patiently for the Lord, for he will
   assuredly direct me in the path of peace."

   But even with a guide, that man will never gain the summit unless he
   marks the way. And what is the way? The way to the hill of God, you
   know, as well as I can tell you, is Christ himself. "I am," saith he,
   "the way." We begin in Christ, we must go on with Christ, we must end
   with Christ. As guilty sinners we come to Christ for pardon, as needy
   sinners we must come to him to receive of his fullness day by day, and
   at the last, when with joyful spring we shall leap to the flowery
   summit and be safe, that last spring must still be taken in the one
   blood-besprinkled way--the open side, the pierced hands and feet of
   Christ, for other way to the summit of the hill of God there is none,
   and he that thinks there may be shall be mistaken now, and fatally
   deluded at the last. Be thou wise, then, pilgrim, and with thy shoe
   upon thy foot with thy staff in thy hand, thy girdle about thy loins,
   thy guide by thy side, and the loving Lord before thee, climb with
   patience into the hill of God. But take care that thou lay aside every
   weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset thee, or the road will be
   painful to thee, and thy end shall not be such as thou wouldst desire.

   I come, in the last place to complete the picture, to end the allegory
   and to stimulate the exertions of every climber of this heavenly
   mountain, by describing what is to be seen and to be enjoyed upon the
   summit. He who shall ever climb the hill of God, and come to heaven at
   last, will find, first of all, that all his toil is done--

   "Servant of God, well done

   Rest from thy lov'd employ,

   The battle's fought, the victory's won,

   Enter thy rest of joy."

   No crags, no slippery places now; no roaring torrents, nor ascending or
   descending paths--

   "Jerusalem, my happy home,

   Name ever dear to me,

   Now shall my labors have an end,

   In joy and peace and thee."

   Brethren, do you and I think enough of heaven? Do we not think too much
   of earth? Do we not think too much of the toil, and too little of the
   time when it shall all be over? A few more days and you and I,
   believers, shall have dolls fighting with Satan, have done with
   temptations, have done with cares, have done with woes. An hour's work
   and an eternity of rest! One day's toil; and when I shall have
   accomplished as an hireling my day, then thou comest, O sweet and
   gentle rest! "For they rest from their labors, and their works do
   follow them "Courage, pilgrim courage! Up that crag, man! Now put hand
   and knee to it--up!--for when you have climbed a little higher, ay, but
   a very little, you shall lie down to rest, and then no more fatigue or
   sorrow. And there too, when we come to the top of the hill of God, we
   shall be above all the clouds of worldly care, and sin, and temptation.
   Oh! how deep is the rest of the people of God above! How calm is their
   sky!

   "No vain discourse shall tempt my soul,

   Nor trifles vex my ear."

   No need to go out to a business which distracts my longing spirit. No
   need to toil at a labor which fags my body, and thus puts my soul into
   an in state for prayer; no need to mix with worldly-minded men, who
   make a jest of my solemnities, and would engage my mind with trifles
   unworthy of notice. No, above the world, above its distractions and
   attractions, my soul shall rise when it shall ascend into the hill of
   God. And, brethren, what a prospect there shall be from the summit!
   When we shall mount to the hill of God, what sights we shall see! You
   know from lofty mountains you can look on that side and see the lakes
   and the rivers; and on this side the green and laughing valleys, and
   far away, the wild black forest. The view is wide, but what a view is
   that which we shall have in heaven! There shall I know even as I am
   known. "Here we see through a glass darkly, but there face to face."
   And chief and foremost, best of all, my eyes shall see the King in his
   beauty. We shall behold his face; we shall look into his eyes, we shall
   drink love from the fountain of his heart, and hear the music of his
   love from the sweet organ of his lips; we shall be entranced in his
   society, emparadised on his bosom. Up, Christian, up, Christ waits for
   thee! Come, man, tread thou the thorny way and climb, for Christ stands
   on the summit stretching out his hands, and saying, "Come up hither, to
   him that overcometh will I give to sit upon my throne, even as I have
   overcome, and am set down with my Father upon his throne."

   And there is this sweet reflection to close with--all that we shall see
   upon the top of the hill of God thou be ours. We look from earthly
   mountains and we see, but we do not possess. That mansion yonder is not
   ours; that crystal abeam belongs not to us, those wide-spread lawns are
   beautiful, but they are not in our possession. But on the hill-tops of
   heaven, all that we are we shall possess. We shall possess the streets
   of gold, the harps of harmony, the palms of victory, the shouts of
   angels, the songs of cherubim, the joy of the Divine Trinity, and the
   song of God as he rears in his love, and rejoices over us with singing,
   nay, God the Eternal One himself shall be ours, and ours for ever and
   for ever. What better encouragement can I give to you poor tired,
   fagged, wearied, and all-but-despairing Christians? Take courage. The
   last six days have tired you very much. Put away your trials to-day,
   you have had enough to cast you down, but is not the reflection of
   to-day enough to lift you up? Oh! remember the summit will repay you
   for the toil in climbing it. Though rough may be the road, it is but
   short at the longest, and the rest, the rest, will make amends. O man!
   men will suffer more to get rich than you do to be found in Christ. Go
   on, go on, stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved, and having done
   all, still stand.

   Would that some here who have never tried to climb that mountain would
   remember that if they climb it not now, they will have to descend for
   ever! If now they turn not their faces to the steep ascent and go up it
   like men, they must fall eternally. Good God, what a fall! On what
   slippery places do they stand! I see them reeling even now! what a
   desperate dash was that! They fall, they fall, on through darkness,
   through blackest darkness, black as death and hell: on, on they fall,
   for the pit is bottomless! No feat shall they ever reach, down, down
   descending from the lower depths to the lowest depths, from hell to
   hell's profounder deep, from eternity of woe, on, on, on to woe
   trebled, multiplied sevenfold! May God grant that we, having faith in
   Christ, may tread the blood-marked way, and outer into "the rest which
   remaineth for the people of God!"
     __________________________________________________________________

                               Fire! Fire! Fire!

   A Sermon

   (No. 397)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, June 23rd, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither
   shall the flame kindle upon thee."--Isaiah 43:2.

   BEFORE we explain the metaphor of the text, it may be well for us to
   remark that we are not sufficiently grateful, I fear, for the
   preservation which God affords to us from fire. To be startled at the
   dead of night with the alarming cry, and to find one's self and
   children and goods in danger of being immediately consumed, must be no
   small trial. I have felt myself extreme gratitude to God that while
   both on the right hand and on the left the flames have raged, he has
   been pleased to spare to us this temple of our solemnities, this place
   where we delight to worship. And is it not meet that we should each and
   all render to him our hearty thanks for sparing our habitations
   preserving the roof under which we rest, enabling us to go out and to
   come in in perfect safety? Or, probably, I may be addressing some this
   morning who have had escaped from the very midst of the fires. Let such
   not only bless God for preservation in the past, but let them celebrate
   his goodness in plucking them as brands out of the burning. Let them be
   extremely grateful to God that while others this day are dying as a
   black heap of ashes who but yesterday were living men, we are still in
   the land of the dying unburned and unsinged. It was at least the trap
   of many of you, during the past week, and again last night, to witness
   a conflagration of awful grandeur, in which tongues of flame, mountains
   of fire, and pillars of smoke, made a spectacle to be gazed at with
   interest while it produced terrors and apprehensions that could awe the
   wildest mob into silence. With you and me it is a common mercy to be
   preserved day by day, and night by night from the devouring element.
   Yet when the dreadful catastrophe is within view--when those we know
   personally or by repute are sufferers--and when at the same time we
   look on with a sense of our own present security--then surely we ought
   to give more than a common expression of gratitude to God for mercies
   that at other times we are too apt to paste over unheeded as but the
   effects of a common Providence. Never was a truer sentence uttered than
   when one said, "These mercies are not valued until they are lost, and
   these preservations are not esteemed until they are withdrawn." Let us
   thank God while we have the mercies, lest he be provoked by our
   ingratitude and take forth his rod and scourge us. Then, indeed, might
   we cry out under the smart, and wish and desire that we had our mercies
   back again. Thus much I could not in my conscience withhold at a time
   when there are judgments around us enough to make us tremble, and
   mercies enough in the little circles of home to make us exceedingly
   grateful. Let us now take the text in its real signification. Of course
   the walking through the fire here is put for the severest form of
   trouble: You have, in the commencement of the verse, trouble described
   as passing through the water. This represents the overwhelming
   influence of trial in which the soul is sometimes so covered that it
   becomes like a man sinking in the waves. "When thou goest through the
   rivers,"--those mountain torrents which with terrific force are often
   sufficient to carry a man away. This expresses the force of trouble,
   the power with which it sometimes lifts a man from the foothold of his
   stability, and carries him before it. "When thou passest through the
   rivers they shall not overflow thee." But going through the fire
   expresses not so much the overwhelming character and the upsetting
   power of trouble as the actual consuming and destructive power of
   trouble and temptation. The metaphor is more vivid, not to, say more
   terrific, than that which is employed in the first sentence, and yet
   vivid and awful though it be, it is certainly not too strong a figure
   to be used as the emblem of the tribulations, temptations and
   afflictions, through which the Church and people of God have been
   called to pass. We may apprise the richness of the promise in
   proportion to the astonishing character of the metaphor, and we ought
   to value the privilege which it confers in the precise ratio of the
   dreadful character of the danger against which it preserves us. "When
   thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall
   the flame kindle upon thee."

   We shall talk of three things, this morning, as the Holy Ghost may
   enable us; first of all, a terrible pathway,--walking around the fire;
   secondly, an awful danger,--the danger of being burned and utterly
   consumed; and thirdly, a double insurance,--"Thou shalt not be burned,
   neither shall the fire kindle upon thee."

   I. First, then, let us speak a little upon this TERRIBLE PATHWAY.

   The sacramental host of God's elect has never had an easy road along
   which to journey. I see the fields on fire, the prairie is in a blaze,
   the very heavens are like a furnace, and the clouds seem rather to be
   made of fire than water. Across that prairie lies the pathway to
   heaven, beneath that blazing sky the whole Church of God must make its
   perpetual journey. It started at the first in fire, and its very glory
   at the last shall take place in the midst of the fiery passing away of
   all things. When first there was a Church of God on earth, in the
   person of Abel it was persecuted, Cain lifted up his cruel club to slay
   his brother; and when the children of Seth were the representatives of
   God's chosen, they were without doubt the subject of the jeer and gibe
   of the descendants of Cain. Noah, the preacher of righteousness endured
   during his one hundred and twenty years, the hardness of heart and
   carelessness of an unthinking world; he and his family, who were the
   remnant of the Church in the latter part of those days, were constantly
   exposed to the laughter and persecution of men. When God had destroyed
   the earth with water, and the whole race of man was contained within
   the ark, you would think that then, certainly, the Church within the
   ark would be secure from molestation. But no, we find him ready to
   detect the failings of his parents, and no doubt a ringleader of
   everything that was vile and vicious, just as we have reason to hope
   that some of his brethren adhered to the most true God. From that day
   forward, whether you read through the life of Abraham, or Isaac, or
   Jacob, it still standeth true, "He that is born after the flesh
   persecuteth him that is born after the Spirit." Whether we refer you to
   the history of Israel by the side of the brick-kilns of Egypt, or to
   the host of God constantly beset by the marauders of the Amalekites,
   you find it still to be true that through much tribulation the people
   of God must wade their way to Canaan. And if you look further on in
   history, between David and Saul, between Hezekiah and Sennacherib,
   between the faithful followers of God after the captivity who would
   rebuild the temple, and Sanballat the Horonite; between the Maccabees
   and Antiochus Epiphanes, there must always be preserved a deadly feud,
   to let it be seen that the world must hate God's people, and must
   harass them and seek to hunt them out, while they, on the other hand,
   must steadily pursue their onward march through the midst of billows of
   fire till they come at last to their eternal rest. Find me the abode of
   the Church of God and I can smell the furnace not far off. Show me the
   follower of the God of Abraham and I shall soon find the host of
   enemies ready for the attack. Up till the days of the Saviour the
   kingdom of heaven suffered violence, not only from its friends who
   would take it, but from those enemies who world assault it. From the
   blood of Abel down to the blood of Zecharias the son of Barachias, the
   pathway of the Church hath been a blood-besprinkled time. Since that
   day, what tongue can tell the sufferings of the people of God? Since
   Christ became martyr as well as Redeemer, has there been a season in
   which God's people have not somewhere or other been made to feel that
   they are not of the world, and that the world does not love them
   because they are not of the world? In apostolic times, Stephen expires
   beneath a shower of stones, James is killed with a sword, certain
   others of the saints are vexed; believers are scattered abroad. The
   Roman lion takes up the fight, Herod delights in the gore of the
   Christians, and smears the confessors of that holy faith with pitch and
   sets them in his gardens that they might be literally, as they were
   spiritually, the lights of the world. Let the catacombs of Rome witness
   to their sorrowful lives and let the Capitol witness to their terrible
   deaths. Let the old dungeons, some of which still remain, testify to
   the places where they wore out their dreary lives, and let the
   blood-stained Campus Martius still show where they cheerfully
   surrendered those lives for Christ. Oh! if the lands could speak, if
   the Earth could vomit forth her blood what stories could still be told
   of the way they were slain. Some of them were tortured, others sawn
   asunder, some stoned, and others burnt to death; though of them the
   world was not worthy. All the Roman Emperors, with but few exceptions,
   were persecutors; and the Christian emperors were as bad as the Pagan,
   for the Christian emperors were not Christians, nor were they members,
   as I believe, of a Christian Church. The Christian Church, and
   especially that Church of which we are still members, which has never
   defiled its garments, but which, never having had any alliance with the
   Church of Rome, has never needed to be reformed,--that Church under its
   different names, Paulitians, Novations, Albigenses, Lollards,
   Wyckliffites, Anabaptists, Baptists, has always suffered. It matters
   not what state, what Church, may have been dominant, whether it has
   been Christian or anti-Christian, the pure Church of Christ has always
   been the victim of persecution, and though she has persecuted never,
   but has always maintained inviolate, disunion from the state, and an
   utter hatred of all laws which would bind the conscience of man, yet
   has she been especially destitute, afflicted, tormented, and if she
   hath to-day a little breathing time, perhaps it is rather owing to the
   timidity which has made us keep back our sentiments, than to any
   charity towards ourselves. Find the Church of Christ wherever you will,
   and you shall find her scorned and despised of man. Find her in
   Scotland, and her Covenanters have to hide themselves in the midst of
   the mountain, and read the Word of God by the lightning flash, to
   escape from the dragoons of Claverhouse. Find her in England and where
   was she? Not in the cathedrals of her cities, but in the dungeons of
   her rural towns like Bedford with John Bunyan; not among the great and
   noble who were the persecutors, but among the poor and conscientious
   who were the persecuted. "If you want to find the drunkards and sinners
   of the worst dye," said one of our preachers at or before Cromwell's
   time, "you can find them in Church and state, but if you wish to find
   the men who are holy and who serve God, you must look into the felon's
   dungeons for them, for that is where they have been cast by the powers
   that be." Everywhere from the first day until now, it is not
   respectable to be a follower of Christ. If we follow Christ fully and
   faithfully before God, it is not equitable and praiseworthy before men.
   To take up his cross and to perform the ceremonies which he ordains,
   man hates. To adhere to truths which never were and never can be
   palatable to the carnal mind of man, is, and ever has been to excite
   animosity. The pathway of the Church, then, has been one of fire and
   flame. As it has been so with the Church, we may suspect there is some
   reason for it, and that reason has to be found in the great fact that
   the Church is in an enemy's country. She is not among her friends, she
   is a pilgrim and a stranger upon the earth. She is a bird that has lost
   her place, and all the birds round about her are against her, because
   she is a speckled one and belongs not to the common flock. If we were
   of the world, the world would love its own, but "because," said Christ,
   "ye are not of the world but I have chosen you out of the world,
   therefore the world hateth you." "We know," said he, "it hated me
   before it hated you." True Christians are aliens, foreigners, men that
   speak another speech, men who are actuated by different motives, men
   who live for different ends, who are governed by different maxima from
   the rest of the men of this world, therefore it is that their pathway
   must be one of trial and opposition. All things the Christian teaches
   are so dead against the pleasures of the worldling and his gain, that
   it is no wonder he opposes us. Men hate the gospel because the gospel
   does not like them. That Church is never true to her Christ, nor true
   to herself which does not draw upon herself the hatred of ungodly men,
   by a faithful testimony against their sins.

   It hath fared well with the Church when she hath been persecuted, and
   her pathway hath been through fire. Her feet are shod with iron and
   brass. She ought not to tread on paths strewed with flowers; it is her
   proper place to suffer. Christ redeemed the world with agonies, and the
   Church must teach the world by the example of her anguish. First of
   all, the blood of Christ was shed meritoriously, and afterwards the
   blood of his Church is shed testimonially, to will the world by
   suffering. When you hear of the massacre of Christians in Madagascar,
   weep for their death, but do not be utterly cast down. This is a good
   work. This is the way the Church grows. There is no loss in the army of
   Christ when the best preachers fall and the mightiest evangelists are
   put to death. They are not lost, the blood is well shed and gloriously
   well spent. It is buying victory. It is procuring crowns for Jesus
   Christ. It is after all accomplishing higher results by dying than
   could have been effected by doing. It is under the heaviest fire of
   artillery that the loyal, the brave, and the true do the most daring
   feats of prowess. When one hero falls, from his ashes other heroes
   arise. The post of danger is the post of honor, therefore fresh
   aspirants will be found ready to lead the brigade. Moreover, my
   friends, if the path of fire be always a path of terror, it is often a
   path of progress. Melancholy as it is to mark the ruins of a
   conflagration, while the dying embers smoulder, how often you must have
   observed more majestic edifices raised to replace the structures that
   have been consumed! Thus fearful disasters are made to stimulate
   industry and nourish enterprise.

   No doubt the sufferings of the Church, and the fact that she has to
   pass through the fire, must be ascribed to the great truth that thus
   her God is glorified.

   Brethren, you and I do not glorify God much; for we have very little to
   suffer. The blood red crown of martyrdom is such an object of ambition,
   or it should be, to the believer that he might almost regret that it is
   not in his power to coin it. We! what do we suffer? Somebody slanders
   our character. What is that? Somebody abuses us in the newspaper, what
   is that? We are accused of one crime and another. What can it signify
   to a man who knows his conscience is right in the sight of God? What
   does he care if all the babbling tongues of all the liars in earth and
   hell should be let loose against him; he can bear all that and endure
   it quietly. It is nothing. When I read the stories of the Book of
   Martyrs, and note how our great reformers fought for Christ, and
   manfully won the victory, I blush for ourselves. Why, brethren, we live
   in such silken times that glory is scarce possible to us. We have much
   to do, but we have nothing to suffer. We cannot prove our love to
   Christ as they did. They indeed were a highly honored people who were
   permitted to glorify Christ even in the very fires. Look at it in this
   light, and the light afflictions you have to endure, will seem to be as
   nothing at all, when you think of the weight of glory which they shall
   bring to your Lord and to yourself. But as history confirms the
   statement that the Church of Christ must walk through the fire, so does
   the history of each individual Christian teach him that he must walk
   through the fire too.

   "The path of sorrow and that path alone,

   Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."

   Through much tribulation we must inherit the kingdom. Think it no
   strange thing when the fiery trial shall happen to you. If you have the
   common afflictions of the world do not wonder. You must have them. The
   same thing happeneth both to the evil and to the good. You lose in
   business, you have reverses and disappointments, do not stagger at
   these in the way to heaven. You must have these, they are necessary to
   your spiritual health. Worse than that, you have strange temptations,
   you are placed in a position where you are constantly exposed to sin.
   It must be so. This too, is the pathway of God's people, you must have
   these fiery temptations, that you, being tried in the fire, may come
   forth as "gold seven times purified." You have mental anxieties.
   Neither let these seem a wonder to you. They fall to the lot of all the
   saints of the Most High. Moreover, you will have to endure the attacks
   of Satan, you must go through the valley of the shadow of death, and
   fight with Apollyon as Christian did, you are not to be exempted from
   the hardness of Christian warfare. If you will mount the hill, you must
   climb; if you are to win the crown, you must win it by sheer might.
   Think not this a strange thing. And if in doing good you meet with
   difficulties, let not that stagger you. It is but right and natural. I
   tell you again, if there be any pathway in which there be not fire,
   tremble, but if your lot be hard, thank God for it. If your sufferings
   be great, bless the Lord for them, and if the difficulties in your
   pathway be many, surmount them by faith, but let them not cast you
   down. Be of good courage, and wait on the Lord, setting this constantly
   in your minds that he has not promised to keep you from trouble, but to
   preserve you in it. It is not written, "I will save thee from the
   fire," but "I will save thee in the fire," not "I will quench the
   coals," but "they shall not burn thee," not "I will put out the
   furnace," but "the flames shall not kindle upon thee." Write it down
   and expect it to come true, that in this world thou shalt have
   tribulation. Only follow thy glorious leader, be it through flood or
   flame.

   II. We will now turn to our second point--there is AN AWFUL DANGER.

   The promise of the text is based on a prophecy that follows it. As I
   glance my eye down the chapter, I see that it tells us how God taught
   his people by terrible things in the past; and how he hath terrible
   lessons to teach them in the future. If the judgment of Egypt, and of
   Ethiopia, and Seba, are behind us, we have startling destinies that
   rise up to view before us. There is a people to be gathered in, and we
   are to be the agents in gathering them. Fear not, saith the Lord,
   though thou walkest through the fire in fulfilling my mission. God
   speaks to the north, "Give up;" and to the south, "Keep not back. Bring
   my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth." But the
   manner of Egypt is repeated again. The monarch said, "I will not let
   them go." Jealousy is stirred. The fire burns: the coals thereof have a
   vehement flame. And they that come forth from the bondage of this world
   must walk through the fire, even as those that came forth from Egypt
   had to pass through water. The fire of prophecy is no poetic fiction,
   it is real fire. It will burn. If it doth not burn the believer, it is
   not for want of energy, it is because some supernatural restraint is
   laid on it, or some supernatural protection vouchsafed to the saint. My
   brethren, the Church has had very painful experience that persecution
   is a fire which does burn. How many ministers of Christ, when the day
   of tribulation came, forsook their flocks and fled. When King Edward
   the Sixth was on the throne, there were many who professed to be
   Protestants and preached justification by faith. When Mary returned the
   vicar of Bray was but a specimen of a great class, his principles being
   to keep his living. When again Elizabeth was upon the throne, there
   were plenty who found it to be profitable to profess the reformed
   faith. But when acts of conformity were passed afterwards by which
   those who had hitherto used a Christian freedom in the Church of
   England, were driven out, there were some who said they did not love
   prelacy but hated it, while others who had heretofore professed the old
   Puritanical doctrines, finding that their livings were to be lost
   thereby, held fast to this world, and let the things of the next world
   shift for themselves. Too many have forsaken the Church as Demas
   forsook Paul. Their piety would not stand the fire, they could walk
   with Christ in silvery slippers, but they could not go barefoot; they
   had no objection whatever to accompany him to his throne, but they had
   some slight difficulties about going with him to his cross; they would
   not mind bearing the weight of his glory, but the weight of the cross
   of tribulation was much too great for their constitutions. Persecution
   is a fire which does burn.

   Again: I see iniquity raging on every side. Its flames are fanned by
   every wind of fashion. And fresh victims are being constantly drawn in.
   It spreads to every class. Not the palace nor the hovel are safe. Not
   the lofty piles that are raised for merchandise, nor the graceful
   edifice that is constructed for worship. Iniquity, whose contagion is
   fearful as fire, spreads and preys upon all things that are homely and
   comely, things useful and things sacred are not exempt. We must walk
   through the fire. We who are God's witnesses must stand in its very
   midst, to pour the streams of living water upon the burning fuel, and
   if not able to quench it, at least we must strive to prevent its
   spread. There are young men whose youthful lusts, inflammable as they
   are, have not yet ignited. They are in imminent danger. "Fire! fire!"
   we may well cry. We may give the alarm this morning to you, young man
   who are in the midst of ribald companions. I may cry "fire!" to you who
   are compelled to live in a house where you are perpetual tempted to
   evil, I may cry, "fire!" to you who are marked each day, and have to
   bear the sneer of the ungodly--"fire!" to you who are losing your
   property and suffering in the flesh, for many have perished thereby.
   Oh! may God grant you never may! I see today before my mind's eye the
   blackened skeletons of hundreds of fair professions.
   Multitudes--multitudes have perished in the valley of temptation who
   once, to all human judgment, had bid fair for heaven and made a show in
   the flesh! How many, too, have fallen under the attacks of Satan! This
   is a fire that does burn. Many a man has said, "I will be a pilgrim;"
   but he has met Apollyon on the road and he has turned back. Many a man
   has put on the harness, but he has given up the battle soon,--put his
   hand to the plough and looked back. There are more pillars of salt than
   one. If Lot's wife were a solitary specimen, it were well, but there
   have been tens of thousands who, like her, have looked back to the
   plains of Sodom, and like her, as they are in their spirit, have stood
   for ever what they were,--lost souls. We ought not to look upon our
   dangers with contempt. They are dangers, they are trials, we ought to
   look upon our temptations as fires. Oh, they are fires! If you think
   they are not fires you are mistaken. If you enter then, in your own
   strength, saying "Oh I could bear them," you will find that they are
   real fires, which, with forked tongues, shall lick up your blood,
   consume it in an instant, if you have not some better guard than your
   own creature power.

   III. I will not tarry longer here, because I want to get to the pith
   and marrow of the promise. "Though thou walkest through the fire thou
   shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee." Here is
   A DOUBLE INSURANCE.

   Dr. Alexander, an eminent and most admirable American commentator says
   there appears to be some mistake in the translation here, because he
   thinks the two sentences are an anti-climax. "Thou shalt not be
   burned;" and then follows, "neither shall the flame kindle upon thee."
   It strikes me, however, that in the second clause we have the higher
   gradation of a climax. "Thou shalt not be burned," to the destruction
   of thy life, nor even scorched to give thee the most superficial
   injury, for "the flames shall not kindle upon thee." Just as when the
   three holy children came out of the fiery furnace; it is said, "upon
   their bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their head
   singed; neither were their coats changed, nor had the smell of fire
   passed on them. "So the text seems to me to teach that the Christian
   Church under all its trials has not been consumed, but more than
   that--it has not lost anything by its trials. The Lord's Church has
   never been destroyed yet by her persecutors and her trials. They have
   thought they crushed her, but she lives still. They had imagined that
   they had taken away her life, but she sprang up more vigorous than
   before. I suppose there is not a nation out of which Christ's Church
   has ever been utterly driven. Even Spain, which seemed at last to have
   accomplished it by the most persevering barbarities, finds still a few
   believers to be a thorn in the side of her bigotry; and as for our own
   denomination, in the very country, where by the most frightful
   massacres, it was believed that the sect of Anabaptists had been
   utterly extinguished, our good and esteemed brother Mr. Oncken has been
   the means of reviving it, so that throughout all Germany, and in parts
   of Denmark, and Prussia, and Poland, and even Russia itself, we have
   sprung up into a new, vigorous, and even wonderful existence. And in
   Sweden where, under Lutheran government, the most persecuting edicts
   had been passed against us, we have been astonished to find within ten
   years three hundred churches suddenly spring up, for the truth has in
   it a living seed which is not to be destroyed.

   But I have said that the Church not only does not lose her existence,
   but she does not lose anything at all. The Church has never lost her
   numbers. Persecutions have winnowed her and driven away the chaff; but
   not one grain of wheat has been taken away from the heap. Nay, not even
   in visible fellowship has the Church been decreased by persecution. She
   is like Israel in Egypt; the more they were afflicted the more they
   multiplied. Was a bishop put to death to-day? Ten young men came the
   next morning before the Roman proctor and offered themselves to die,
   having that very night been baptised for the dead bishop, having made
   their confession of faith that they might occupy his position. "I fill
   up the vacancy in the Church, and then die as he did." Was a woman
   strangled or tortured publicly? Twenty women appeared the next day and
   craved to suffer as she suffered, that they might honor Christ. Did the
   Church of Rome in more modern times burn one of our glorious
   reformers--John Huss--yet did not Martin Luther come forward as if the
   ashes of Huss had begotten Luther? When Wycliffe had passed away, did
   not the very feet of Wycliffe being persecuted help to spread his
   doctrines, and were there not found hundreds of young men who in every
   market-town in England read the Lollard's Scriptures and proclaimed the
   Lollard's faith? And so depend upon it, it shall ever be. Give a dog a
   bad name and you hang him, give a Christian a bad name and you honor
   him. Do but give to any Christian some ill name and before long a
   Christian denomination will take that name to itself, and it will
   become a title of honor. When George Fox was called "Quaker" it was a
   strange name, one to laugh at, but those men of God who followed him,
   called themselves Quakers too and so it lost its reproach. They called
   the followers of Whitfield and Wesley "Methodists," they took the title
   of Methodists and it became a respectful designation. When many of our
   Baptist forefathers, persecuted in England, went over to America to
   find shelter, they imagined that among the Puritans they would have a
   perfect rest, but Puritan liberty of conscience meant, "The right and
   liberty to think as they did, but no toleration to those who differed."
   The Puritans of New England as soon as ever a Baptist made his
   appearance amongst them, persecuted him with as little compunction as
   the Episcopalians had the Puritans. No sooner was there a Baptist, than
   he was hunted up and brought before his own Christian brethren. Mark
   you, he was brought up for fine, for imprisonment, confiscation and
   banishment before the very men who had themselves suffered persecution.
   And what was the effect of this? The effect has been that in America
   where we were persecuted, we are the largest body of Christians. Where
   the fire burnt the most furiously, there the good old Calvinistic
   doctrine was taught, and the Baptist became the more decidedly a
   Baptist than anywhere else, with the most purity and the least dross.
   Nor have we ever lost the firmness of our grip upon the fundamental
   doctrine, for which our forefathers stained the baptismal pool with
   blood, by all the trials and persecutions that have been laid upon us,
   and never shall we.

   Upon the entire Church, at the last, there shall not be even the smell
   of fire. I see her come out of the furnace. I see her advance up the
   hill towards her final glory with her Lord and Master, and the angels
   look at her garments; they are not tattered. Nay, the fangs of her
   enemies have not been able to make a single rent therein. They draw
   near to her, they look upon her flowing ringlets, and they are not
   crisp with heat: they look upon her very feet, and though she has
   trodden the coals they are not blistered, and her eyes have not been
   dried up by the furiousness of the seven times heated flame. She has
   been made more beautiful, more fair, more glorious, by the fires, but
   hurt she has not been, nor can she be. Turn, then, to the individual
   Christian, and remember, that the promise stands alike firm and fast
   with each believer. Christian, if you be truly a child of God, your
   trials cannot destroy you, and what is better still, you can lose
   nothing by them. You may seem to lose for to-day, but when the account
   comes to be settled, you shall not be found to be a farthing the loser
   by all the temptations of the world, of all the attacks of Satan which
   you have endured. Nay, more, you shall be wondrously the gainer. Your
   trials having worked patience and experience, shall make you rich. Your
   temptations have taught you your weakness, and shown you where your
   strength lieth, shall make you strong.

   From your first trouble, till the last enemy shall be destroyed, you
   shall not lose a fraction, jot, or tittle, by anything or every thing
   which God in his providence, or the world in its fury, of Satan in his
   craftiness, shall ever be able to lay upon you. Upon you, not the smell
   of fire shall have passed. You shall not be burned, neither shall your
   hosen, nor your hats, but like the men that you read of in Daniel, you
   shall be wholly preserved intact from the flame.

   I shall close now, having spoken the general truth by making some
   particular applications of this precious promise. There is a brother
   here who during the last three or four months has had wave upon wave of
   affliction: everything goes against him. He is an upright, honest,
   indefatigable merchant, yet, let him do what he will, his substance
   wastes away like snow before the sun. It appears that for every ship of
   his the wind blows the wrong way, and where others will by the venture
   he loses all.

   "He sees each day new straights attend,

   And wonders when the scene shall end."

   When I spoke of walking through the fire just now, he said, "Ah! that
   is what I have been doing, I have been walking through it these months,
   to God and my own soul alone is it known how hot the furnace is."
   Brother, will you take home my text this morning. Perhaps God sent you
   here not for the sermon, but for the text. Perhaps you strolled here
   to-day, not being a regular attendant, on purpose that this text might
   comfort you. "When thou goest through the fire, thou shalt not be
   burned." When your troubles are all over, you shall still be left, and
   what is more, "neither the flame shall kindle upon you." When the
   winding up time comes, you shall not be any the loser. While you think
   you have lost substance, you shall find when you read Scripture, that
   you only lose shadows. Your substance was always safe, being laid up in
   the keeping of Christ in Heaven. You shall discover in the issue, that
   these trials of yours were the best things that could happen to you.
   The day shall come when you will say with David, "I will sing of
   judgment and mercy." "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I
   have kept thy word." Or perhaps there is some young woman here,--and
   the case I am about to paint is a very common one--alas, too common in
   this city. You love the Saviour my sister, but you are very poor, and
   you have to earn your living by that sorriest of all means. When the
   sun rises in the morning he sees you with that needle in your hand,

   "Sewing at once with a double thread

   A shroud as well as a shirt."

   and all day long you have scarcely time to rest for meals, and at
   eventime, when the fingers are worn and the eyes are heavy, you shall
   have need to refrain from sleep because the pittance is so small that
   you can scarcely live upon it. We know hundreds of that class who
   always constrain our pity, because they work go hard for so little
   wage. Peradventure your mother is dead, and your father does not care
   about you. He is a drunken sot, and you would be sorry to meet him
   perhaps in the street. You have no helper, no friends. You do not care
   to tell anybody, you would not like to take anything if charity should
   offer it to you; you feel it the hardest thing all is to be tempted as
   you are. There seems to you to be by the path open the road to plenty,
   and in some degree to delight. But you have said, "No, no," and you
   have loathed the temptation, and you have stood--and I have known how
   year after year some of you have fought with temptation, and struggled
   on, when sometimes you were well nigh starved; but you would not do
   this great wickedness against God.

   My sister, I pray you take the encouragement of this text to strengthen
   you for the future battles. You have been going through the fires. But
   you are not consumed yet, and I bless God, upon your garments the smell
   of fire has not passed. Hold on my sister, hold on, through all the
   sorrow thou hast, and all the bitterness which is heavy enough to crush
   thy spirit; hold on, for thy Master sees thee. He will encourage and
   strengthen thee, and bring thee more than conqueror through it all in
   the end. I address, too, this morning, some youthful minds. Young men
   who love Christ, and as soon as they get home after attending the house
   of prayer, the taunting enquiry made by their fellow-workmen is--"You
   have been to some meeting-house, I dare say." How cruel sometimes
   worldly young men are to Christian young men! Cruel, for when there are
   a dozen worldlings and only one Christian they consider it to be
   honorable for the dozen to set upon one. Twelve big tall fellows will
   sometimes think it a fine game to pass from hand to hand some little
   lad of fifteen, and make sport and mockery of him. There is honor, it
   is said, among thieves, but there seems to be no honor at all among
   worldlings when they get a young Christian in this way. Well, young
   man, you have borne with it; you have said, "I will hold my tongue and
   won't say a word," "though your heart was hot within you, and while you
   were musing the fire burned." Remember what I have often said to you,
   the anvil does not get broken even if you keep on striking it, but it
   breaks all the hammers. Do you do the same. Only hold on, and these
   fires shall not consume you. If the fires should burn up your piety, it
   would only prove that your piety was not worth having. If you cannot
   stand a few jokes and jeers, why, you are not builded together in that
   habitation of God which he hath made fire-proof. Bear up and in the end
   you will find that this hard lot of yours, this severe discipline, did
   you a deal of good, and made you a better man than you ever would have
   been if you had been dandled on the lap of piety, and kept from the
   battle. In after years your high and eminent post of usefulness may be,
   perhaps, owing to the severe and harsh discipline to which you were put
   in your younger days. "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in
   his youth. "Or, mayhap, I am speaking to some one who has met with
   opposition from his own ungodly relations. Remember how Jesus said, "I
   am come to send fire on the earth, and what will I, if it be already
   kindled? From henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, two
   against three and three against two." Perhaps your father has
   threatened you, or what is more bitter still, your husband has
   threatened to discard you. Now indeed you are walking through the
   fires. He rails at your godliness, makes a mock of everything you love,
   and does his best by cruelty to break your heart. My dear sister in
   Christ, you shall not be burned by the fire. If grace be in your heart
   the devil can't drive it out, much less your husband. If the Lord has
   called you by his grace, all the men on earth, and all the fiends in
   hell can reverse the calling, and you shall find in the end that you
   have not suffered any loss; the flame has not kindled upon you. You
   shall go through the fire and bless God for it. From a dying bed, or at
   least through the gates of Paradise you shall look back upon the dark
   path of the way and say it was well, it was well for me that I had to
   carry that cross, and that now I am permitted to wear this crown. Who
   is on the Lord's side this morning of this congregation? While Jehovah
   speaks on high in the thunder, let us speak on earth in tones of
   earnestness. Who is on the Lord's side among you? You that are not, be
   warned. "Tophet is ordained of old. He hath made it deep and large. The
   pile thereof is fire and much wood. The breath of the Lord, like a
   stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." You that are on his side, set up
   your banners to-day. He saith, "Fear not, I am with thee; when thou
   walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the
   flame kindle upon thee." May the Lord bless the words we have spoken.
   Though hastily suggested to our minds, and weakly delivered to you, the
   Lord bless them for Christ's sake.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 The New Nature

   A Sermon

   (No. 398)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, June the 30th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by
   the word of God, which liveth and abideth for over. For all flesh is as
   grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass
   withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the
   Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is
   preached unto you."--1 Peter 1:23-25.

   PETER HAD earnestly exhorted the scattered saints to love each other
   "with a pure heart fervently," and he wised fetches his argument, not
   from the law, nor from nature, nor from philosophy, but from that high
   and divine nature which God hath implanted in his people. Love each
   other with a pure heart fervently, for ye have been born again, not
   with corruptible seed, but with incorruptible. I might compare Peter to
   some judicious tutor of the princes of the blood, who labors to beget
   and foster a kingly spirit in the king's sons. From their position and
   descent he brings argument for a dignified behavior: "Do not act
   foolishly, it would be unseemly in a king; speak not so, ribald
   language would be unbecoming to a prince; indulge not in these
   vanities, such folk would be degrading to the illustrious of the
   earth." So looking upon God's people, as being heirs of glory, princes
   of the blood royal, descendants of the King of kings, earth's true and
   only real aristocracy, Peter saith to them, "See that ye love one
   another, because of your noble birth, being born of incorruptible seed;
   because of your pedigree, being descended from God, the Creator of all
   things; and because of your immortal destiny, for you shall never pass
   away, though the glory of flesh shall fade, and even its very existence
   shall cease. I think it would be well, my brethren, if in a spirit of
   humility, you and I recognized the free dignity of our regenerated
   nature, and lived up to it. Oh! what is a Christian? If you compare him
   with a king, he adds priestly sanctity to royal dignity. The king's
   royalty often lieth only in his crown, but with a Christian it is
   infused into his very nature. Compare him with a senator, with a mighty
   warrior, or a master of wisdom, and he far excelleth them all. He is of
   another race than those who are only born of woman. He is as much above
   his fellows through his new birth, as man is above the beast that
   perisheth. As humanity towers in dignity high above the grovelling
   brute, so doth the regenerate man o'ertop the best of human once-born
   mortals. Surely he ought to bear himself, and act as one who is not of
   the multitude, one who has been chosen out of the world, distinguished
   by sovereign grace, written among "the peculiar people," and who
   therefore cannot grovel as others grovel, nor own think as others
   think. Let the dignity of your nature, and the brightness of your
   prospects, O believers in Christ, make you cleave to holiness, and hate
   the very appearance of evil.

   In the text there are three points which, I think, will well repay our
   very serious attention. The apostle evidently speaks of two lives, the
   one, the life which is natural, born, matured, and perfected only by
   the flesh; the other, the life which is spiritual, born of the spirit,
   in antagonism with the flesh, surviving it and triumphantly rising to
   celestial glory. Now, in speaking of these two lives, the apostle
   brings out, first of all, a comparison and a contrast between the two
   births, for each life hath its own birth. Then he brings out a contrast
   between the manifest existence of the two lives; and then lastly,
   between the glory of the two lives, for each life hath its glory, but
   the glory of the spiritual life far excelleth the glory of the natural.

   I. First, then, the apostle Peter draws A COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
   BETWEEN THE TWO BIRTHS WHICH ARE THE DOORWAYS OF THE TWO LIVES.

   First, we have said that every life is prefaced by rib birth. It is so
   naturally--we are born; it is so spiritually--we are born again. Except
   a man be born he cannot enter into the kingdom of nature; except a man
   be born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. Birth is the
   lowly gateway by which we enter into life, and the lofty portal by
   which we are admitted into the kingdom of heaven.

   Now there is a comparison between the two births; in both there is a
   solemn mystery. I have read, I have even heard sermons, in which the
   minister seemed to me rather to play the part of a physician than of a
   divine, exposing and explaining the mysteries of our natural birth,
   across which both God in nature and the good man in delicacy must ever
   throw a veil. It is a hallowed thing to be born, as surely as it is a
   solemnity to die. Birthdays and deathdays are days of awe. Birth is
   very frequently used in Scripture as one of the most graphic pictures
   of solemn mystery. Into this, no man may idly pry, and Science herself,
   when she has dared to look within the veil, has turned back
   awestricken, from those "lower parts of the earth" in which David
   declares us to be "curiously wrought." Greater still is the mystery of
   the new birth. That we are born again we know, but how, we cannot tell.
   How the Spirit of God openeth upon the mind, how it is that he renews
   the faculties and imparts fresh desires by which those faculties shout
   be guided, how it is that he enlightens the understanding, subdues the
   will, purifies the intellect, reverses the desire, lifts up the hope,
   and puts the fear in its right channel, we cannot tell, we must leave
   this among the secret things which belong unto God. The Holy Ghost
   worketh, but the manner of his operation is not to be comprehended.
   "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof,
   but thou canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth, so is
   every one that is born of the Spirit." Oh! my hearers, have you felt
   this mystery? Explain it you cannot, nor can I, nor ought we to attempt
   an explanation, for where God is silent it is perhaps profanity, and
   certainly impertinence for us to speak. The two births then are alike
   in their solemn mystery.

   But, then, we know this much of our natural birth, that in birth there
   is a life created. Yonder infant is beginning his being, another
   creature has lifted up its feeble cry to heaven, another mortal has
   come to tread this theater of action, to breathe, to live, to die. And
   so in the new birth, there is an absolute creation, we are made new
   creatures in Christ Jesus, there is another spirit born to pray, to
   believe in Christ to love him here, and to rejoice in him hereafter. As
   no one doubts but that birth is the manifestation of a creation, so let
   no one doubt but that regeneration is the manifestation of a creation
   of God, as divine, as much beyond the power of man, as the creation of
   the human mind itself.

   But we know also that in birth there is not only a life created, but a
   life communicated. Each child hath its parent. The very flowers trace
   themselves back to a parental seed. We spring, not from our own loins,
   we are not self-created, there is a life communicated. We have links
   between the son and the father, and back till we come to father Adam.
   So in regeneration there is a life, not merely created, but
   communicated, even the very life of God, who hath begotten us again
   unto a lively hope. As truly as the father lives in the child, so truly
   doth the every life and nature of God live in every Swiss born heir of
   heaven. We are as certainly partakers of the divine nature by the new
   birth as we were partakers of the human nature by the old birth: so far
   the comparison holds good.

   Equally certain is it, that in the natural and in the spiritual birth
   there is life entailed. There are certain propensities which we
   inherit, from which this side the grave we shall not be free. Our
   temperament brave or gay, our passions slow or hasty, our propensities
   sensual or aspiring, our faculties contracted or expansive are to a
   great measure an entailed inheritance as much linked to our future
   portion as are wings to an eagle or a shed to a snail. No doubt much of
   our history is born within us, and the infant hath within himself germ
   of his future actions. If I may so speak, there are those qualities,
   that composition and disposition of nature which will naturally, if
   circumstances assist, work out in full development certain results. So
   is it with us when we are born again: a heavenly nature is entailed
   upon us. We cannot but be holy; the new nature cannot but serve God, it
   must, it will pant to be neater to Christ, and more like him. It hath
   aspirations which time cannot satisfy, desires which earth cannot
   surfeit, longings which heaven itself alone can gratify. There is a
   life entailed upon us in the moment when we pass from death unto life
   in the solemn mystery of regeneration.

   In the old birth, and in the new birth also, a life is also brought
   forth which is complete in all its parts and only needs to be
   developed. Yon infant in the oracle shall never have another limb, or
   another eye. Its limb hardens, it grows, it gathers strength, its brain
   also enlarges its sphere, but the faculties are there already, they are
   not implanted afterward. Verily, so is it in the new-born child of God.
   Faith love, hope, and every grace are there the moment he believes in
   Christ. They grow tis true, but they were all there in the instant of
   regeneration. The babe in grace who is just now born to God, hath every
   part of the spiritual man, it only needs to grow till he becomes a
   perfect man in Christ Jesus.

   Thus far, you perceive, that the two births have a very close
   resemblance to one another. I pray you, now that I have introduced the
   subject, do not turn from it till you have thought of the reality of
   the new birth, as you must of the reality of the first. You were not
   here if you had not been born, you shall never he in heaven unless you
   are born again, you had not been able to-day to hear, or think, or see,
   if you had not been born. You are not to-day able to pray or to believe
   in Christ, unless you are born again. The enjoyments of this world you
   could never have known, if it had not been for birth, the saved delight
   of God you do not know to-day, and you never shall know unless you be
   born again. Do not look upon regeneration as though it were a fancy or
   a fiction. I do assure you, my hearers, it is as real as is the natural
   birth; for spiritual is not the same as fanciful, but the spiritual is
   as real as even nature itself. To be born again is as much a matter of
   fact to be realised, to be discerned, and to be discovered, as to be
   born for the first time into this vale of tears.

   But now comes the contrast--"being born not of corruptible seed, but of
   incorruptible." Herein lieth the contrast between the two. That child
   which has just experienced the first birth has been made partaker of
   corruptible seed. The depravity of his parent lieth sleeping within
   him. Could he speak, he might say so. David did,--"Behold, I was born
   in sin and shaped in iniquity." He receiveth the evil virus which was
   first infused into us by the fall. Not so, however, is it when we are
   born again. No sin is then sown within us. This sin of the old flesh
   remains but there is no sin in the newborn nature, it cannot sin
   because it is born of God himself; it is as impossible for that new
   nature to sin as for the Deity itself to be defiled. It is a part of
   the divine nature--a spark struck off from the rental orb of light and
   life, and dead or dark it cannot be, because it would be contrary to
   its nature to be either the one or the other. Oh, what a difference! In
   the first birth--born to sin, in the next--born to holiness; in the
   first--partakers of corruption, in the next--heirs of incorruption in
   the first--depravity, in the second--perfection. What broader contrast
   could there be! What should make us more thoroughly long for this new
   birth than the glorious fact that we are by its means consciously
   lifted up from the ruins of the fall, and made perfect in Christ Jesus.

   In the birth of the flesh too, what dread uncertainties attend it! What
   shall become of yonder child? It may live to curse the day in which it
   was born, as did the poor troubled patriarch of old. What sorrow may
   drive its ploughshares along its yet unwrinkled brow? Ah! child, thou
   shalt be gray-headed one day, but ere that comes thou shalt have felt a
   thousand storms beating about thine heart and head. Little dost thou
   know thy destiny, but assuredly thou shalt be of few days and full of
   trouble. Not so in the regeneration, we shall never rue the day in
   which we are born again, never look back upon that with sorrow, but
   always with ecstasy and delight, for we are ushered then, not into the
   hovel of humanity, but into the palace of Deity. We are not then born
   into a valley of tears, but into an inheritance in the Canaan of God.

   That child too, so fondly the object of its mother's love may one day
   vex or break its parent's heart. Are not children doubtful mercies?
   Bring they not with them sad forebodings of what they yet may be? Alas
   for the pretty prattlers who have grown up to be convicted criminals!
   But blessed be God, they who are sons of God shalt never break their
   father's heart. Their new nature shall be worthy of Him that gave it
   existence. They shall live to honor him, they shall die to be perfectly
   like him, and shall rise to glorify him for ever. We have sometimes
   said that God her a very naughty family, but surely the naughtiness is
   in the old Adam nature, and not in Jehovah's gracious work. There is no
   naughtiness in the new creature. In that new creature there is no taint
   of sin. God's child as descended from his loins, can never sin. The new
   nature which God hath put into it doth never wander, death never
   transgress. It were not the new nature if it did, it were not God's
   offspring, if it all, for that which cometh of God is like Him, holy,
   pure, and undefiled, separate from sin. In this indeed lieth a strange
   difference. We know not to what that first nature tendeth, who can tell
   what bitterness it shall bring forth? But we know whither the new
   nature tendeth, for it ripeneth towards the perfect image of Him that
   created us in Christ Jesus.

   Perhaps without my endeavoring to enlarge further you could yourselves
   muse upon this theme. It remains but for me upon this first head to
   return with earnestness to that point upon which I fear the greatest
   difficulty lies--the realisation of this birth--for we repeat it, we
   are speaking of a fact and not a dream, a reality and not metaphor.

   Some tell you that the child is regenerated when the drops fall from
   priestly fingers. My brethren, a more fond and foul delusion was never
   perpetrated upon earth. Rome itself did never discourse upon a wilder
   error than this. Dream not of it. O think not that it is so. "Except a
   man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." The Lord himself
   addresses this sentence not to an infant but to a fullgrown man.
   Nicodemus--one who was circumcised according to the Jewish law, but who
   yet, though he had received the seal of that covenant, needed as a man
   to be born again. We all without exception must know this change. Your
   life may have been moral, but it will not suffice. The most moralised
   human nature can never attain to the divine nature. You may cleanse and
   purge the fruit of the first birth, but still the inevitable decree
   demands the second birth for all. If from your youth up you have been
   so trained that you have scarcely known the vices of the people; so
   tended, hedged in, and kept from contamination with sin, that you have
   not known temptation, yet you must be born again, and this birth, I
   repeat it, must be as much a, fact, as true, as real, and as sure as
   was that first birth in which you were ushered into this world. What do
   you know of this, my hearer? What do you know of this? It is a thing
   you cannot perform for yourself. You cannot regenerate yourself any
   more than you could cause yourself to be born. It is a matter out of
   the range of human power it is supernatural, it is divine. Have you
   partaken of it? Do not merely look back to some hour in which you felt
   mysterious feelings. No, but judge by the fruits. Have your fears and
   hopes changed places? Do you love the things you once hated, and hate
   the things you once loved? Are old things passed away? Have all things
   become new? Christian brethren, I put the query to you as well as to
   the rest. It is so easy to be deceived here. We shall find it no trifle
   to be born again. It is a solemn, it is a momentous matter. Let us not
   take it for granted because we have given up drunkenness that we are
   therefore converted, because we do not swear, because now we attend a
   place of worship. There is more wanted than this. Do not think you are
   saved because you have some good feelings, some good thoughts. There is
   more required than this--ye must be born again. And oh, Christian
   parents, train up your children in the fear of God, but do not be
   content with your training--they must be born again. And Christian
   husbands, and Christian wives, be not satisfied with merely praying
   that your partner's characters may become moral and honest; ask that
   something may be done for them which they cannot do for themselves. And
   you, philanthropists, who think that building new cottages, using fresh
   plans for drainage, teaching the poor economy, will be the means of
   emparadising the world; I pray you go further than such schemes as
   these. You must change the heart. It is but little use to alter the
   outward till you have renewed the inward. It is not the bark of the
   tree that is wrong so much as the sap. It is not the skin--it is the
   blood--nay, deeper than the blood--the very essence of the nature must
   be altered. The man must be as much made anew as if he never had an
   existence. Nay, a greater miracle than this, these most be two miracles
   combined--the old things must pass away, and new things must be cleated
   by the Holy Ghost. I tremble while I speak upon this theme, lest I,
   your minister, should know in theory but not in experience a mystery so
   sublime as this. What shall we do but together offer a prayer like
   this--"O God, if we be not regenerate let us know the worst of our
   state, and if we be, let us never cease to plead and pray for others
   till they too shall be renewed by the Holy Ghost." That which is born
   of the flesh is flesh; its best endeavors go no higher than flesh, and
   the flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of God. That which is born of the
   Spirit alone is spirit, and only the Spirit can enter into spiritual
   things, inherit the spiritual portion which God has provided for his
   people. I have thus passed through the somewhat delicate and extremely
   difficult task of bringing out the apostle's meaning--the comparison
   between the two births, which are the door-steps of the two lives.

   II. I now come to the second point--THE MANIFEST DIFFERENCE OF THE TWO
   LIVES RESULTING FROM THE TWO BIRTHS.

   Brethren, look around you. To what shall we compare this immense
   assembly? As I look upon the many colors, and the varied faces, even if
   it were not in the text, I am certain that a meadow thickly besprinkled
   with flowers would rise up before my imagination. Look at the mass of
   people gathered together, and doth it not remind you of the field in
   its full summer glory, when the king-cups, daisies, cloves, and grass
   blooms, are sunning themselves in countless varieties of beauty? Ay,
   but not only in the poet's eye is there a resemblance, but in the mind
   of God, and in the experience of man. "All flesh is grass;" all that is
   born of the first birth, if we compare it to grass in poetry, may be
   compared to it also in fact, from the frailty and shortness of its
   existence. We passed the meadows but a month ago, and they were moved
   in verdant billows by the breeze like waves of ocean when they are
   softly stirred with the evening gale. We looked upon the whole scene,
   and it was exceeding fair. We passed it yesterday and the mower's
   scythe had cut asunder beauty from its roots, and there it lay in heaps
   ready to be gathered when fully dry. The grass is cut down so soon, but
   if it stood, it would wither, and handfuls of dust would take the place
   of the green and coloured leaves, for doth not the grass wither and the
   flowers thereof fall avidly? Such is mortal life. We are not living,
   brethren, we are dying. We begin to breathe, and we make the number of
   our breaths the less. Our pulse is "beating funeral marches to the
   tomb." The sand runs down from the upper bulb of the glass, and it is
   emptying fast. Death is written upon every brow. Man, know that thou
   art mortal, for thou all art born of woman. Thy first birth gave thee
   life and death together. Thou dost only breathe awhile to keep thee
   from the jaws of the grave, when that breath is spent, into the dust of
   death thou tallest there and then. Everything, especially during the
   last few weeks, has taught us the frailty of human life. The senator
   who guided the affairs of nations and beheld the rise of a free
   kingdom, lived not to see it fully organized, but expired with many a
   weighty secret unspoken. The judge who has sentenced many, receives his
   own sentence at the last. From this earth, since last we met together,
   master-minds have been taken away, and even the monarch on his throne
   has owned the monarchy of Death. How many of the masses too have
   fallen, and have been carried to their long home! There have been
   funerals, some of them funerals of honored men who perished doing their
   Master's will in saving human life, and alas, there have been
   unhonoured burials of others who did the will of Satan, and have
   inherited the flame. There have been deaths abundant on the right hand
   and on the left, and well have Peter's words been proved--"All flesh is
   grass, and all the glory thereof is as the flower of the field; the
   grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away."

   Now, brethren, let us look at the other side of the question. The
   second birth gave us a nature too--Will that also die? Is it like
   grass, and its glory like the flower of the field? No, most certainly
   not. The first nature dies because the seed was corruptible. But the
   second nature was not created by corruptible seed, but with
   incorruptible, even the Word of God into which God has infused his own
   life, so that it quickens us by the Spirit. That incorruptible word
   produces an incorruptible life. The child of God in his new nature
   never dies. He can never see death. Christ, who is in him, is the
   immortality and the life. "He that liveth and believeth in Christ shall
   never die." And yet again, "Though he were dead yet shall he live."
   When we are born again, we receive a nature which is indestructible by
   accident, which is not to be consumed by fire, drowned by riveter,
   weakened by old age, or smitten down by blast of pestilence; a nature
   invulnerable to poison; a nature which shall not be destroyed by the
   sword; a nature which can never die till the God that gave it should
   himself expire and Deity die out. Think of this, my brethren, and
   surely you will find reason to rejoice. But perhaps, you ask me, why it
   is the new nature can never die? I am sure the text teaches it never
   can. "But not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, even of the
   Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever." If that does not teach
   that the spiritual nature which is given us by the new birth never
   dies, it does not teach anything at all; and if it does teach that,
   where goes Arminian doctrine of falling from grace; where go your
   Arminian fears of perishing after all? But let me show you why it is
   that this nature never dies. First, from the fact of its nature. It is
   in itself incorruptible. Every like produces in like. Man, dying man,
   produces dying man; God, eternal God, produces everlasting nature when
   he begets again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Christ from
   the dead. "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy:" the
   earthy dies, we who are earthy die too. "As is the heavenly, such are
   they also that are heavenly," the heavenly never dies, and if we are
   born as the heavenly, the heavenly nature dieth neither. "The first
   Adam was made a living soul." We are made living souls too, but that
   soul at last is separated from the body. "The second Adam is made a
   quickening spirit," and that spirit is not only alive but quickening.
   Do you not perceive it?--the first was a quickened soul--quickened,
   receiving life full a season; the second is a quickening spirit, giving
   out life, rather than receiving it; like that angel whom some poet
   pictures, who perpetually shot forth sparklers of fire, having within
   himself an undying flame, the fountain of perpetual floods of light and
   heat. So is it with the new nature within us, it is not merely a
   quickened thing which may die, but a quickening thing which cannot die,
   being Snide like unto Christ the quickening Spirit. But then, more than
   this, the new nature cannot die, because the Holy Spirit perpetually
   supplies it with life. "He giveth more grace"--grace upon grace. You
   know the apostle puts it thus: "If when we were enemies we were
   reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled
   we shall be saved by his life." Is not the Holy Spirit the divine agent
   by whom the life of Christ is infused into us? Now, the life-floods
   which the Holy Spirit sends into us, co-work with the immortality of
   the new-born spirit, and so doubly preserve the eternity of our bliss.
   But then, again, we are in vital union with Christ, and to suppose that
   the new nature could die out, were to imagine that a member of Christ
   would die, that a finger, a hand, an arm, could rot from the person of
   Jesus, that he could be maimed and divided. Doth not the apostle say,
   "Is Christ divided?" And was it not written, "Not a bone of him shall
   be broken?" and how were this true, if we were broken from him, or
   rolled from his body? My brethren, we receive the divine sap through
   Christ the stem that divine sap keeps us alive but more the very fact
   that we are joined to Christ preserves our life, "Because I live ye
   shall live also." The new life cannot die, because God is pledged to
   keep it alive. "I give unto my sheep eternal life, and they shall never
   perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand." "My Father which
   gave them me is greater than all, and none shall pluck them out of my
   Father's hand." And yet again, "The water which I shall give him shall
   be in him a well of water, springing up unto everlasting life." And yet
   again, "He that believeth in me shall never hunger and never thirst."
   And so might we repeat multitudes of passages where the divine promise
   engages omnipotence and divine wisdom, to preserve the new life. So
   then, let us gather these all up in one. As a man born of the flesh, I
   shall die, as a new man born of the Spirit, I shall never die. Thou. O
   flesh, the offspring of flesh thou shalt see corruption. Thou, O
   spirit, new-created spirit, offspring of the Lord corruption thou shalt
   never see. With our glorious Covenant Head we may exclaim "Thou wilt
   not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see
   corruption." I shall die, yet never die. My life shall flee, yet never
   flee. I shall pass away, and yet abide; I shall be carried to the tomb,
   and yet, soaring upward, the tomb can ne'er contain the quickened
   Spirit. Oh, children of God, I know not any subject that ought more
   thoroughly to lift you out of yourselves than this. Now let the divine
   nature live in you; come, put down the animal for a moment, put down
   the mere mental faculty; let the living spark blaze up; come, let the
   divine element, the newborn nature that God has given to you, let that
   now speak, and let its voice be praise; let it look up and let it
   breathe its own atmosphere, the heaven of God, in which it shall
   shortly rejoice. O God, our Father, help us to walk not after the
   flesh, but after the Spirit, seeing that we have by thine own self been
   quickened to an immortal life.

   III. I now come to the last, and perhaps the most interesting point of
   all. THE GLORY OF THE TWO NATURES IS CONTRASTED. Every nature has its
   glory. Brethren, look at the field again. There is not only the grass
   but there is the flower which is the glory of the field. Sometimes many
   coloured hues begem the pastures with beauty. Now, the painted flower
   is the glory of the verdant field. It conies up later than the grass,
   and it dies sooner, for the grass is up a long while before the flower
   blooms, and when the flower is dead, the stalk of the grass still
   retains vitality. It is precisely so with us. Our nature has its glory,
   but that glory does not arrive for years. The babe has not yet the
   glory of full manhood, and when that glory does come, it dies before
   our nature dies, for "they that look out of the windows are darkened,
   the grinders cease because they are few." The man loses his glory and
   becomes a tottering imbecile before life becomes extinct. The flower
   comes up last and dies first, our glory comes last and dies first, too.
   O flesh! O flesh! what contempt is passed upon thee! Thy very existence
   is frail and feeble, but thy glory more frail and feeble still. It
   grows but late and then it dies, alas how soon! But what is the glory
   of the flesh? Give me your attention for a moment while I tell you
   briefly. In some, the glory of the flesh is BEAUTY. Their face is fair
   to look upon, and as the handiwork of the Great Worker, it should be
   admired. When a person becometh vain of it, beauty becomes shame; but
   to have well-proportioned features is, doubtless, no mean endowment.
   There is a glory in the beauty of the flesh, but how late it is
   developed, and how soon it fades! How soon do the cheeks become hollow!
   how frequently does the complexion grow sallow, and the bright eyes are
   dimmed, and the comely visage is marred! A part, too, of the glory of
   the flesh is physical strength. To be a strong man, to have the bones
   well set and the muscles well braced,--to have good muscular vigor is
   no small thing. Many men take delight in the legs of a man, and in the
   strength of his arm. Well, as God made him, he is a wonderful creature,
   and twere wrong for us not to admire the masterpiece of God. But how
   late does muscular strength arrive! There are the days of infancy, and
   there are the days of youth, when as yet the strong man is but feeble;
   and then, when he has had his little hey-day of strength, how doth the
   stalwart frame begin to rock and reel! and the rotting teeth and the
   whitened hair show that death has begun to claim the heriot clay, and
   will soon take possession of it for himself "The glory thereof falleth
   away." To others, the glory of the flesh lies rather in the mind. They
   have eloquence, they can so speak as to enchant the ears of the
   multitude. The bees of eloquence have made their hives between the lips
   of the orator, and honey distils with every word. Yes, but how late is
   this a coming! How many years before the child speaks articulately, and
   before the young man is able to deliver himself with courage! And then,
   how soon it goes!--till, mumbling from between his toothless jaws, the
   poor man would speak the words of wisdom, but the lips of age deny him
   utterance. Or, let the glory be wisdom. There is a man whose glory is
   his masterly power over others. He can foresee and look further than
   other men, he can match craft by craft: he is so wise that his fellows
   put confidence in him. This is the glory of the flesh; how late is it
   in coming!--from the puking child, what a distance up to the wise man!
   And then how soon it is gone! How often, while yet the man himself in
   his flesh is in vigor has the mind strewn symptoms of decay! Well, take
   what ye will to be the glory of the flesh, I will still pronounce over
   it "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." If the flesh be frail, the
   glory of the flesh is frailer still, if the grass wither, certainly the
   flower of the grass withereth before it.

   But is this true of the new nature? Brethren, is this true of that
   which was implanted at the second birth? I have just shown you, I
   think, that the existence of the new nature is eternal, because it was
   not born of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible. I have tried to
   show that it can never perish and can never die. But your unbelief
   suggests, "Perhaps its glory may." No, its glory never can. And what is
   the glory of the new-born nature? Why, its glory first of all is
   beauty. But what is its beauty? It is to be like the Lord Jesus. We
   are, when we shall see him as he is, to be like him. But that beauty
   shall never fade, eternity itself shall not hollow the cheeks of this
   seraphic comeliness, nor dim the brilliant eye of this celestial
   radiance. We shall be like Christ, but the likeness shall ne'er be
   marred by time, nor consumed by decay. I said just now that the glory
   of the flesh consisted sometimes in its strength, so does the glory of
   the Spirit consist in its vigor, but then it is a force that never
   shall be expended. The strength of the new-born nature is the Holy
   Ghost himself, and while Deity remains omnipotent, our new nature shall
   go on increasing in vigor till we come first to the stature of perfect
   men in Christ Jesus, and next come to be glorified men standing before
   his throne. The flower of the new nature you cannot see much of yet,
   you see through a glass darkly. That flower of glory consists perhaps,
   too, in eloquence. "Eloquence," say you, "how can that be?" I said the
   glory of the old nature might be eloquence, so with the new, but this
   is the eloquence--"Abba Father." This is an eloquence you can use now.
   It is one which when you cannot speak a word which might move an
   audience, shall still remain upon your tongue to move the courts of
   heaven. You shall be able to say, "Abba Father," in the very pangs of
   death, and waking from your beds of dust and silent clay, more eloquent
   still you shall cry, "Hallelujah," you shall join the eternal chorus,
   swell the divine symphony of cherubim and seraphim, and through
   eternity your glory shall never part awry. And then, if wisdom be
   glory, your wisdom, the wisdom which you inherit in the new nature,
   which is none other than Christ's who is made of God unto us, wisdom
   shall never fade, in fact it shall grow, for there you shall know even
   as you are known. While here you see through a glass darkly, there you
   shall see face to face. You sip the brook to-day, you shall bathe in
   the ocean tomorrow; you see afar off now, you shall lie in the arms of
   wisdom by-and-bye; for the glory of the Spirit never dies, but
   throughout eternity expanding, enlarging, blazing, gloryfying itself
   through God, it shall go on never, never to fail. Brethren, whatever it
   may be which you are expecting as the glory of your new nature, you
   have not yet an idea of what it will be. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear
   heard, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." But
   though he hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit, yet, I fear we have
   not fully learned them. However, we will say of this glory, whatever it
   may be, it is incorruptible, undefiled, and it fadeth not away. The
   only question we have to ask, and with that we wish, is--are we born
   again? Brethren, it is impossible for you to possess the existence of
   the new life without the new birth, and the glory of the new birth you
   cannot know without the new heart. I say--are you born again? Do not
   stand up and say, "I am a Churchman, I was baptized and confirmed."
   That you may be, and yet not be born again. Do not say, "I am a
   Baptist, I have professed my faith and was immersed." That you may be,
   and not be born again Do not any, "I am of Christian parents." That you
   may be, and yet be an heir of wrath, even as others. Are you born again
   be Oh! souls, may God the Holy Ghost reveal Christ to you, and when you
   come to see Christ with the tearful eyes of a penitential faith, then
   be it known unto you that you are born again and that you have passed
   from death unto life, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be
   saved, he that believeth not shall be damned." God help you to believe!
     __________________________________________________________________

                                A Peal of Bells

   A Sermon

   (No. 399)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, July the 7th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO
   THE LORD."--Zechariah 14:20.

   THERE ARE MANY days already past which we might well have wished to
   see. Who would not have rejoiced to have beheld the day when God smote
   Rabab and broke the dragon in the deep waters, when Miriam took the
   timbrel and went forth with the daughters of Israel, saying, "Sing unto
   the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider
   hath he thrown into the sea?" Who might not have wished to have
   witnessed the glorious victories of the judges when they put to rout
   the oppressors of Israel, or that day when David returned from the
   slaughter of Goliath, or that auspicious morn when Solomon's temple,
   glittering in unrivalled magnificence, was dedicated by a vast
   concourse of people with generous sacrifice to the worship of the true
   God? Many days there were in the chronicles of the Jewish Church which
   are never to be forgotten earth's red letter days when God made bare
   his arm and showed forth his might. Days there were, too, in Christ's
   history which it was a high privilege to see. The day of his
   birth--would that we had been among the shepherds on the plain when
   they heard the angels sing "Glory to God in the highest and on earth
   peace, good will toward men, "or the day of his death when he cried,
   "It is finished," and yielded up be ghost, or, better still, the day of
   his resurrection, when he routed all our foes by rising again for our
   justification, or the day of his ascension, when he led captivity
   captive and ascended up on high, or even that day of Pentecost, when
   the Spirit of God fell on the disciples, and when they, preaching with
   other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance multitudes being added
   to the Church of these who were ordained unto eternal life. Those days
   are gone, we look back upon them with faith, and as Abraham rejoiced in
   prospect, so would we do in retrospect. But there are days yet to come
   for whose advent we may well be eager. There is the day when Ephraim
   shall not envy Judah nor Judah vex Ephraim, for all the Church of
   Christ shall be one in spirit. There is the day when the knowledge of
   the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. There is
   the day, too, when Israel shall be restored to its own land, when its
   country shall be called no more desolate, but Beulah, and no more
   forsaken, but Hepzibah shall its name be, for the Lord delighteth in
   it. There is specially the day of the Second Advent, that day of days
   for which methinks all other days that went before were made, that day
   which shall be the summing up, the total of all ages, for the fullness
   of time shall come, and Christ in the fullness of his glory shall reign
   among the sons of men. I think I may with your permission add to the
   test of days which we might desire to see that which is spoken of in
   the text--"In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses,
   Holiness unto the Lord." What connection there may be between that day
   and others which I have mentioned it is not my purpose this morning to
   explain. I would that this were to us personally the day when it should
   be fulfilled in us as individuals, and may the Lord hasten the happy
   day when universally throughout the Church this text has be fulfilled,
   and upon the bells of the horses there shall be "Holiness unto the
   Lord!"

   The text, as you perceive, deals with horses which were unclean under
   the Jewish law yet, in the day spoken of in the text, the horses
   themselves shall be purged from commonness or uncleanness, and their
   harness shall be dedicated to God as certainly as the vestments of the
   High Priest himself. It will be a happy day indeed when the men who
   deal with horses, too often a race anything but honest and upbeat shall
   exhibit in their common transactions a consecration to God, so that on
   the horses' furniture shall be written. Holiness to the Lord. The
   original Hebrew word translated "bells" is a very singular one, because
   nobody knows precisely what it means. The fact is, the Hebrews knew so
   little of horses from being interdicted from their use that they had
   not a very large vocabulary to describe the harness and other
   equipments of the horse. The word is translated by some critics,
   "bells," by others, "bits," by some, "frontlets," by others, "collars,"
   by some, and by Calvin especially, "blinkers," and Calvin also hints
   that the word may mean "stables." The words must then mean--"The
   furniture of the horses shall be, Holiness to the Lord," and there is
   no doubt a comparison between the horses and the High Priest: if it be
   the frontier--just as the High Priest upon his brow the Hebrew letters
   in gold "Holiness to the Lord," so on the frontlet of the horses shall
   be Holiness to the Lord, and as the High Priest wore bells about his
   garments, so the horses are decorated with their silver bells, there
   shall be on the bells, Holiness to the Lord, and if it signify any
   other kind of vestment, even as on the very ornaments of the Priest, on
   his ephod and breastplate holiness was written, so in every article
   that shall be by the horse shall holiness to God be most clearly
   manifest, yea, even the stables, unconsecrated as one could suppose
   they must always remain, shall be consecrated to God. The commonest
   buildings, set apart to meanest uses, being frequented by worshippers
   of the Lord, shall become temples of him dwelleth in humble and
   contrite hearts.

   The simple meaning of the text is just this, that the day shall come
   when in common life holiness shall be the guiding star, when the
   ordinary actions of human existence shall be as much the worship of God
   as the sacrifice of the altar or the mission of the high priest when he
   went within the vail. Everything, that which was most despised--the
   horses, the places seemed the least likely to be consecrated--the
   stables, and those things which seemed the least holy, even the horses'
   harness,--all shall be so thoroughly used in obedience to God's will
   that everywhere there shall be, "Holiness unto Jehovah." Common things,
   then, in the day spoken of by Zechariah, are to be dedicated to God and
   used in his service.

   I shall work out this great thought in a somewhat novel manner. First,
   let us hear the horses' bells; secondly, let us commend their music;
   and then, thirdly, let us go home and tune our bells, that they may be
   in harmony with this sacred chime--"Holiness unto the Lord!"

   I. First of all, let us HEAR THESE HORSES BELLS, which, according to
   the text are to be tuned to the heavenly note of "Holiness unto the
   Lord."

   First, let us mark the trappings of the steed as he goeth forth to war.
   "He champs his bit and is eager for the fray: his snortings are
   terrible, his neck is clothed with lightning, and he crieth in the
   midst of the battle, "Aha! Aha! Aha!" War is to our minds the most
   difficult thing to sanctify to God. The genius of the Christian
   religion is altogether contrary to everything like strife of any kind,
   much more to the deadly clash of arms. Yet it may be possible that
   occasions may arise in which war itself might become hallowed; and
   certainly we must not deny that many of those who have to deal with war
   are at this day consecrated men, like Cornelius' devout soldier, and as
   truly servants of Christ in the arm as though they were civilians. Now
   I say again, I am no apologist for war, from my soul I loathe it, and I
   do not understand the position of a Christian man as a warrior, but
   still I greatly rejoice that there are to be found at this present day
   in the ranks many of those who fear God and adorn the doctrine of God
   their Saviour. I may almost venture to say that the war against the
   tyrant, Charles I., was a consecrated fight. The people of God had been
   hunted like partridges upon the mountains, in the reigns of Elizabeth,
   and James, and Charles. At last their lion-like spirits turned at bay,
   and their enemies driven back before their gallant fury; Cromwell, the
   Christian hero, mounted his charger, and bade his saintly warriors,
   with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other, fight for
   England's liberty. I think in those valiant charges when they shouted
   their battle-cry--"The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is
   our refuge"--there was, as if ever there was, upon the frontlets of the
   horses, their collars, and their bits, "Holiness unto the Lord." May
   such a war never rise again, but honor to the ashes of the consecrated
   brave! If I could believe that there were in America a sincere desire
   on the part of the Northerners to set free every slave, I would say,
   "God speed their swords and bless their arms." If I could believe that
   the chain would be broken, and that it was their intent to do it,--if I
   did not fear that they will yet compromise and make terms with the
   bloodhound's master, and let him still hold his blood-stained property
   in the souls and bodies of men, I would say that that might be, if war
   ever could be, a consecrated war, and the bits of the horses would be
   "Holiness unto the Lord." But since that is a difficult point to speak
   of, since, as I have said before, the very genius and spirit of
   Christianity go against war altogether, though I must believe there
   have been occasions in which the bells of war-horses have been Holiness
   unto the Lord, yet I would rather speak of individuals. If there ever
   lived a man who, disinterested in spirit, and without any desire of
   aggrandizement or selfish honor, held in his hand a consecrated sword,
   it is Garibaldi. I think of him, for his speeches make me believe it,
   not only as a hero, but as a Christian, as the scourge of Popery and
   the enemy of all despotism, it might be said that his war-garments are
   Holiness to the Lord. The like might we say of Hedley Vicars, whose
   history, so well-written, you have all so often read and of Havelock,
   our own true Havelock, who for the deliverance of our own wives and
   sisters, in silence rushed upon his prey, and delivered women and
   children out of the fierce jaws of the blood-loving tiger. These men
   preached Christ wherever they went. I love not their trade, but I love
   them. I would wish them to put up their swords into their scabbards,
   but when they did draw them, I am sure they did it in the full
   conviction that they were doing their duty, and though even that may
   not justify the error, yet it must prevent any of us from condemning
   them. I believe that they did it as in the sight of God, and what they
   did was to them Holiness unto the Lord Oh! may there never be war
   again! may peace reign! but if there must be wars, may they all be just
   ones! if there must be fighting may it ever be for the freedom of the
   slave and the deliverance of the helpless! and in all this may Jehovah,
   even in the battle in the garments rolled in blood, and in the fire and
   vapor of smoke, still be acknowledged and across the field of fire may
   there be written, "Holiness to the Lord!"

   We turn aside awhile, for other horses are coming, and their bells are
   ringing forth Holiness unto the Lord. Horses are used in state. In
   splendor, kinds, princes, and judges of the land ride through the
   crowd. The text says, "Upon the bells of the horses shall be, Holiness
   unto the Lord." Drawn by noble steeds, glittering with rich caparisons,
   an exalted personage passes through the thronging mass, it is a
   sovereign and oh! when the sovereign of a nation hath a heart which
   boweth before God, and hath a hope of an immortal and an imperishable
   crown, then regal state is sanctified and the bells upon the horses are
   Holiness unto the Lord. When a Sir Matthew Hale rode in the judge's
   chariot to distribute justice, surely the state which attended the Lord
   Chief Justice of the land was holiness to God, and when a Sir Thomas
   Abney even on the night of the Lord Mayor's banquet, retired awhile
   that he might have prayer with his family and his servants, surely then
   the too gaudy show of civic pomp was for that once Holiness unto the
   Lord. And, I think, when Wilberforce went to the House of Commons,
   however he might ride, the bit of his horse was Holiness to the Lord.
   Since we cannot dispense with the ceremonial honor which surrounds
   governors, we must consecrate it, as long as kingdoms remain, it must
   be the prayer of Christians that the state may be a holy state, and
   that its officers and governors may be devout and upright men. Little
   do we know, my brethren, what mischief would soon be done in the high
   places of the land, if we had back again upon the throne a George the
   Fourth, if once again our eminent men were found indulging in the
   lowest pastimes of the very scum of this city, if again unblushing
   bribery defiled the judgment-seat; if a bloody Jeffreys could browbeat
   the saints of God once more--then we should consider it a matter of
   importance to pray to God for kings and those in authority. Had we not,
   my brethren, better think it a matter of importance now, and pray daily
   to God that he would cause the state to be more and more consecrated to
   him, so that the very bells upon the horses, as they walk in solemn
   pomp, may be Holiness unto the Lord?

   But I hear the tinkling of other bells. The day is to come when, not
   only war and the states shall be consecrated to Christ, but even
   pleasure and recreation shall become Holiness to the Lord. When you are
   travelling in Alpine regions, you will be amused by the ringing of the
   little bells upon the horses. You are there for rest, to recruit the
   body, but let that rest be taken in the spirit of holiness. I fear that
   many leave their religion behind them when they go to the sea-side, or
   to continental countries. It ought not to be so, in our pleasures as
   well as in everything else, on the very berms of the horses there
   should be, Holiness unto the Lord. A Christian man needs recreation as
   well as another man, the bow must be unstrung, for the soul always bent
   to work shall soon lose the energy to labor. There must be times for
   breathing the fresh country air, and looking upon the meadows and the
   fields. I wish such days came oftener to the poor toiling population of
   this huge labyrinth of bricks; would that you could oftener see the
   laughing face of the verdant earth, and the smokeless heavens! But mark
   this, let us as Christian men see to it that we carry the spirit of
   this text with us wherever we go; that the bells of the horses be,
   Holiness to the Lord, and our very recreations be done as sacredly and
   as much in the sight of God as our sacraments and our solemn feast
   days. Does recreation mean sin? Then, indeed, you have nothing to do
   with it. Does pleasure mean iniquity? Deny, deny yourselves. But there
   are pleasures which mean no such thing. As you traverse Alpine regions,
   let your thoughts stand on the mountain-tops and talk with God, or if
   you walk the fair lanes of England, let the cool retreat become an
   oratory for your soul. Why everything that your eye looks upon, from
   the king-cup in the meadow to the cedar upon the mountain may make you
   praise God, and when it is so, then the bells upon the horses are
   Holiness to the Lord. If in seeking rest you are really desiring to get
   strength that you may spend it in his service, if you take rest not for
   your pleasure's sake, but that stringing your muscles once more and
   getting your soul into tune, you may with greater vigor serve him in
   days to come; then, again, the bells of the horses are Holiness to the
   Lord. And if you avail yourself of any opportunities which your
   recreation throws in your way, to speak a kind word and a word for
   Christ to those whom you pass or with whom you have chance communion in
   your travellings, then, again, the bells of the horses are Holiness to
   the Lord. It is greatly to be regretted that the mass of our people who
   go to the sea-side, and especially who go to Paris, leave their
   godliness behind them. One of the Ministers of the Church at L'Oratoire
   told me, the manner in which English Christians spend their Sabbath
   days in Paris is a very serious impediment to the growth of religion in
   France. Men think that when they are abroad they may leave their habits
   which they practiced at home behind them. Full often have I known that
   at the sea-side, Christians knowingly and wilfully keep the proprietors
   of the houses where they lodge from places of worship, to prepare their
   sumptuous repasts on the Sabbath day, and so virtually prevent them
   from hearing the Word of God for six or nine months in the year. There
   may be some of you who are going out by-and-bye, I beg you in your
   recreation not to leave your religion behind you. You will put on your
   black coat and put on your tourist's suit, but take your Christian
   character with you I beseech you. Why should it be thought of you that
   your religion is a local thing, and that out of the way of society,
   which is a sort of check upon you, you may be free to sin as others do.

   Listen to the bells again. Horses are used for journeying. We must all
   journey sometimes, and when we do, the bells upon the horses and the
   shrill scream of the steam-engine should still be--"Holiness unto the
   Lord." The missionary is crossing the sea; perhaps at this very hour
   while we are sitting quietly here, his boat is leaping the billows and
   springing from mountain-wave to mountain-wave. I believe that every
   motion of the paddles is holiness to the Lord, because the ship is
   carrying forth God's appointed messenger to proclaim the gospel among
   the heathen. There are Christian men on board who are not giving forth
   to preach, but to emigrate and settle down now if they intend in
   emigrating to establish a Church of Christ where they are to live and
   to preach the gospel where they may be called to go, every motion of
   the vessel is Holiness unto the Lord. Perhaps she carries merchants who
   go abroad to trade and return again, but if they are about to trade as
   Christians, and then consecrate their substance unto God, that vessel,
   though when she leaves a black trail across the sky in her cloud of
   smoke, is as accepted as the smoke of sacrifice--is Holiness unto the
   Lord. Where there is a true heart, the horse that bears it is a
   consecrated one. Let our goings out be in the Lord's night. We are
   lights: if the light is moved, it should be to illuminate other places.
   We are salt: if the salt be scattered, it should be that the conserving
   influence should be felt the more widely. Do not go from home unless
   you feel that you can take your Master with you; and when you are from
   home, ever seek to be doing something for your Master, that when you
   are gone, you may leave a fragrance behind you. How much good might
   some do who are called to travel continually! There are some few in
   this Church, for instance, who travel as commercial gentlemen; I know
   one or two of them who scarcely ever go into a town without preaching
   the Word there, and I know others of them who, in the commercial room
   where they meet with some who despise the religion of Christ, speak
   boldly for the truth as it is in Jesus, and are as useful in their
   daily journeyings as any Christian men could be who filled up a place
   in the Sabbath-school, or officiated as deacons in the Church at home.
   Let your journeyings, then, always be with the ringing of these bells,
   "Holiness until the Lord!"

   But horses of old were also used for merchandise, and when the
   pack-horses went in long strings, the fore-horses always had bells that
   the others might be guided in the darkness. I think there is an
   allusion to that in the text, for such may have been the custom of the
   Eastern caravans, as indeed it was, and the text means, then, that
   merchandise and our common trade should be Holiness unto the Lord. O
   sirs! when you take down your shutters in the morning, let it be with a
   prayer that your business of the day may be as much a sacrifice to God
   as the business which I may have to transact as the pastor of the
   Church, and when you stand behind the counter ask of God, that in your
   dealings, though they be common to the eyes of men, there may be an
   inward spirituality which God shall discover, that thus there may be
   Holiness to the Lord. Sometimes when some of you have been stored up by
   a sermon, you have come to me and said, "Mr. Spurgeon, could I go to
   China? Could I become a missionary? Could I become a minister?" In very
   many cases the brethren who offer are exceedingly unfit for any service
   of the kind, for they have very little gift of expression, very little
   natural genius, and no adaptation for such a work, and I have
   constantly and frequently to say, "My dear brother, be consecrated to
   Christ in your daily calling; do not seek to take a spiritual office,
   but spiritualise your common office." Why, the cobbler can consecrate
   his lapstone while many a minister has desecrated his pulpit. The
   ploughman can put his hand to the plough in as holy a manner as ever
   did minister to the sacramental bread. In dealing with your ribbons and
   your groceries, in handling your bricks and your jackplanes, you can be
   as truly priests to God as were those who slew the bullocks and burned
   them with the holy fire in the days of yore. This old fact needs to be
   brought out again. We do not so much want great preachers as good
   upright traders, it is not so much deacons and elders we long for as it
   is to have men who are deacons for Christ in common life, and are
   really elders of the Church in their ordinary conversation. Sirs,
   Christ did not come into the world to take all fishermen from their
   nets though he did take some, nor to call all publicans from the
   receipt of custom though he did call one, he did not come to make every
   Martha into a Mary though he did bless a Martha and a Mary too. He
   would have you be housewives still, be sisters of mercy in your own
   habitations. He would have you be traders, buyers, and sellers, workers
   and toilers still, for the end of Christianity is not to make
   preachers, but to make holy men, the preacher is but the tool; he may
   be sometimes but the scaffold of the house; but ye are God's husbandry;
   ye are God's building; ye, in your common acts and your common deeds,
   are they who are to serve God. That wicked fiction of the Church of
   Rome, that her cathedrals are holy, has made us think that our houses
   are not holy. Why, my friends, our houses are as holy, or ought to be,
   as ever church or chapel. Some seem to think that there is some
   peculiar sanctity about aisles and oak seats, stone pillars and gothic
   arches. Holiness cannot belong to stones, holiness has to do with
   nothing except the acts and thoughts of intelligent subjects, and if
   holiness can by metaphor belong to places or substances, it must be
   through the Christian holy minds that are in contact with them. I will
   not have it that yonder parish church or that this place is one who
   more holy than that room where you live if you there offer prayer and
   praise. Oh! brethren, you must not think that the table, and the font,
   and the baptistry are holy; no, no, if there be holiness in them so may
   there be in your own table, in your own labors, and in your own tools
   which you handle, at least, there will be as much in one as in the
   other if with a holy mind you serve God in both. Not confined
   holiness--that is superstition; universal holiness--that is
   Christianity, not the bowls upon the altar holy--that is Judaism, but
   the bells upon the horses holy--that is true living godliness and vital
   Christianity. See to it, then, Christian friends, in your common daily
   doings, that the bells upon the horses are Holiness unto the Lord.

   But horses were also used, as they still are, for toil, and toil though
   I have already anticipated the subject, toil is to be holiness to the
   Lord. The horse is turning over the furrow with the plough, and if it
   be held by a godly husbandman, the bells upon that horse are Holiness
   unto the Lord. And now it is time when the hay should be cut down and
   carted, if with gratitude in his bosom, the husbandman takes home the
   fruit of the earth, the carting is Holiness to the Lord. And when
   harvest-time comes round, and all the country is glad, every shout of
   harvest-time ought to be a holy shout, every smile that is on the brow
   of the tiller of the soil should be a holy smile; and when he has
   consecrated his wave-sheaf unto his God, when he has given a part of
   his increase to the poor and needy, and when he has bowed his knee and
   thanked the Universal Giver of all good, then the farmer's toil is
   Holiness to the Lord. I would, my dear brethren, that you would make
   your common toils Holiness unto the Lord. Come to look upon your meals
   as though they were sacraments, your clothes as though they were
   priestly vestments; your common words as though you were preaching
   daily sermons; and your every-day thoughts as though you were thinking
   for the Sabbath of holy things. It is not to be always talking
   religion, but to be talking religiously that makes the Christian; it is
   not to be performing outward symbols, it is to be possessing the inward
   spirit. I do believe that there is more piety in going to visit the
   poor and needy and scattering your substance among them; more piety in
   teaching the poor ignorant ragged child, more piety in seeking to help
   some poor struggling tradesman, than there is in many a long prayer,
   and many a sanctimonious whine, ay and in many a long and eloquent
   discourse. That common piety which like common sense is oftenest the
   uncommonest of all, is what we need to have, and if I could make one
   man among you become thus consecrated, I should think I had, under God,
   done as much as though I poured you out in scores upon the plain of
   Hindostan, or sent you to edify the Chinese, or to instruct the
   Ethiopian. We want you as missionaries here; we want you as
   missionaries in daily life, and we must have you too, or else the
   Church will not increase, nor will the name of Christ be magnified. I
   have thus sought to make you listen to the ringing of these bells.

   II. Now for the second point; let us COMMEND THE MUSIC of the bells
   upon the horses.

   The religion of common life I must commend, first of all, for its
   loudness. These are many men who do not hear the Church bell, who will
   hear the bells upon the horses, by which I mean that preach as
   frequently as we may, some people will never believe us, but they
   cannot help believing what they see in your lives. We may extol Christ,
   and they will say, "It is his office and duty," but if your actions are
   what they should be, if your lives are saturated with the spirit of
   Jesus, they cannot help hearing them. They may put their fingers in
   their ears and not hear our sermons, but they must hear your sermons,
   for they can hear them through their eyes as well as through their
   ears, if you in your daily walk act as becometh the gospel of Christ.

   Then, again, I commend the music of these horses' bells, not only for
   loudness, but for clearness. Many people cannot understand our sermons.
   There are words we use that they do not try to comprehend, and some
   which the carnal mind cannot receive but they can understand your
   sermons, if they cannot mine. If you have traded honourably, if you,
   instead of taking undue advantage, have only taken that which is your
   due, if they have seen you refuse to tell a lie though you might have
   gained much by it, if they have known you to stand firm in your
   integrity, while others laughed at you as a fool and a madman, they can
   understand it. My sermons may be mistifying, but yours would not be.
   The church bell may sometimes have a cracked note, but the bells upon
   the horses will be so clear that they will be compelled in their
   consciences to believe what you teach.

   Again, I commend the music of these bells for its constancy. The church
   bell rings but once a week; I am preaching to you some three or four
   sermons in a week, but you if you consecrate your common things, will
   be preaching all day long. You will keep the bells upon the horses
   ringing every time the horses nod their heads. Every time they move
   there will be a fresh peal, and that is the advantage of putting the
   bells not on the steeple, but on the horse, so that they must always
   ring. This place is shut up a great portion of the week, and only
   opened occasionally for worship, but you ought to keep your preaching
   places open always. There, behind the counter, should be your pulpit,
   or in the Corn Exchange, or the Market, or in the family; you should be
   always preaching. Your life should be always one continual sacrament,
   always one constant service of God. I commend this music, then, for its
   constancy as well as for its loudness and for its clearness.

   Again, we must praise it for its universality. My church bell can only
   ring in one place, and the bells in the parish church only ring in the
   steeples where they hang; but the bells upon the horses ring wherever
   the horses go; and so with your piety, it will ring wherever you go.
   You can preach in the lodging-house, you can preach in the backroom
   yonder, where poverty has found a haunt, you can preach wherever God in
   his providence has cast you; at the Boardroom table, in the midst of
   the Corporation, in the Senate, in the House of Commons, you can preach
   wherever God calls you. I say again, the bells upon the horses ring
   wherever the horses go, and so must your piety ring wherever you are.
   This universal preaching in every court, and lane, and alley, is better
   far for effect than our preaching ever can be.

   Once more, I commend the bells upon the horses for their harmony. You
   know our church bells ring different notes. You go into one, you hear
   Puseyism; you go into another, and you hear sound evangelical doctrine,
   you enter another and you hear all but infidelity. Church bells run
   through the octave of tone. Among true Christians, our bells often ring
   a little differently. My Wesleyan brothers' bell does not ring quite
   the same as mine, nor mine exactly the same as the Independents'; but,
   mark, the bells on the horses all are alike. One Christian man's life
   is like another Christian man's life. There is nothing contradictory in
   the practical sermon, if there be in the doctrinal. If the vocal
   testimony of the Church should be somewhat divided, yet the loving
   testimony of the Church is always one, if it be always holiness,
   holiness, holiness unto the Lord. See to it, then, that you ring these
   bells upon the horses for their lovely harmony, and the absence of all
   discord.

   And then once more. I commend the bells upon the horses, for they ring
   out a divine note. Our church bells do not always do that. Sometimes
   our sermons are a little to the honor and glory of the speaker, a
   little to the honor and glory of a particular Church, but the bells on
   the horses ring out not the glory of man, but holiness to the Lord, to
   the Lord, to the Lord. And so if you consecrate your whole life, the
   testimony of that life may be to your credit, but still it will be far
   more to the honor and glory of God. There will be no fear that man
   shall take the honor of your pious consecration, of your holy
   watchfulness, of your humble integrity, of your industry, your
   perseverance, and your constancy in the path of right. The bells upon
   your horses shall ring a diviner note than I fear will yet be rung from
   the bells of our pulpit. I have thus sought to commend the music.

   III. And now I close, by asking you to go home and TUNE YOUR BELLS TO
   THIS NOTE.

   You have many bells in your house, go home and tune first of all the
   chamber bell. It is an ill thing when a Christian husband is a worse
   husband than a wordly one; it is an evil thing when the husband and
   wife do not live together as partakers of the grace of Christ. Perhaps
   you will say this is a very homely remark, but I think it is a very
   necessary one, for if a man cannot conduct himself well in his own
   family, what is he in the Church? I fear there have been many who have
   been mighty men in the Church who, if their private affairs had been a
   little examined, might have come out a little scarred and marred in the
   ordeal. Should I have a Christian man here who is not acting according
   to the Christian mandate, should I have a Christian woman here who
   pulleth her house down with her own hands, through idleness and
   carelessness, let me speak to them. How can the husband think of
   edifying others at the prayer-meeting until first he is what he should
   be before his own house? The husband is to love his wife, even as
   Christ loved the Church, the wife must see that she reverence her
   husband, the children must be obedient, and the household affairs must
   be ordered with discretion, or else your bells are not Holiness unto
   the Lord.

   Then when you have looked at that, look at the kitchen-bell; see that
   it sounds forth Holiness to the Lord. Let the servant, not with
   eye-service, as a man pleaser, serve her master, and let the master
   take care that he giveth unto his servant that which is just and equal.
   Oh! it is a blessed thing when there is piety in the kitchen, and when
   the whole household is a Church. Indeed, my brethren, I can speak the
   joy of one who has servants that fear God, very often have my eyes been
   filled with tears through the peace, and joy, and rest of spirit that I
   have had in my own household since God has given me those that fear his
   name. See to it, that the kitchen-bell does not ring a contrary note to
   your parlour-bell, for if the kitchen can say, "My master is pious
   abroad, but he is wicked at home; he can talk very well in the pulpit,
   and pray very nicely at the prayer-meeting, but he neglects us; he is
   harsh, over-bearing, and passionate, it will spoil all my sermons. If
   you say to the servants "Come and hear our minister," she will say, "I
   do not want to hear him, if he is not a better man than you are, he
   will not do much good to me." Mark then, if the bells of the horses are
   to be holy, certainly the bells of the kitchen should be holy too.

   Then some of you have got a shop bell, a little bell which rings as
   soon as ever any one comes in. Now take care that this is Holiness to
   the Lord. If people get cheated at other shops, do not let them get
   cheated at yours, or they still be sure to say, "Ah!" you hear
   Spurgeon; that is your religion, is it?" They shall be sure to throw
   the blame on your religion and not on you. If there be a place where
   they get short-weight, let it never be at yours; if there be a place
   where there is a want of integrity, or civility, or attention, let it
   not be yours, but seek so to act that you do not make your religion
   help your trade, yet you keep your trade always in subservience to your
   religion, and seek to glorify God in all that you do. Some of you have
   got a factory bell, that bell rings at certain hours, and I see your
   men come streaming down the street to work. Now make that bell Holiness
   to the Lord. When will the time come when all these quarrellings shall
   be done with between master and man? When shall the day come when both
   of them shall seek to have perfect peace and harmony? For it is to
   their mutual interest, let them know. Oh! when shall it be that the
   workman shall feel that he has all that which is just and equal? And on
   the other hand when shall the master feel that he has not to deal with
   men who when given an inch will take an ell, but who are content to
   deal as fairly with him as he would with them. If I have any of your
   great cotton lords here, if I have any men who have many servants, let
   them take care that their religion turns their factory-bell, or else I
   would not give a farthing for all their religion, let them give what
   they may towards the maintenance of it. Then some of you have got
   visiting-bell, for I have seen it marked over, "visitors." And what are
   visits among the higher classes? It was my misfortune once to sit in
   the corner of a drawing-room, and listen to the conversation during a
   visit. If it had been condensed into the sense or usefulness it
   contained, it might have been spoken in something like the thousandth
   part of a second. But there it went on, talk, talk, talk, about nothing
   at all and when it was done they went away I have no doubt greatly
   refreshed. Now I think the visits of Christian people should never be
   of that kind. If you go to see anybody, know what you are going for and
   have a message to go with, and go with some intention. If God had meant
   you and me to waste our time in flying visits he would have made us
   butterflies and not men. He would have made us so that we might sip the
   nectar from the flowers like bees instead of which he has made men
   whose time is precious and whose hours cannot be weighed in the scale
   with diamonds. Let your visits be rather to the sick to give them
   comfort, to the poor to give them help, to your friends to show
   yourself friendly, and to the godly to get godly refreshment, than to
   the frivolous to waste an hour or to the fashionable to maintain a
   fancied dignity. Let everything, whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever
   we do be done to the glory of God. Physician, there is a bell at your
   door, let that be holiness to the Lord. Let those kind acts of yours to
   the distressed poor, let those divine acts of stooping down to the poor
   wayfarer in his suffering, consecrate your practice. Let your bell be
   Holiness to the Lord. Let each of you, whatever his calling may be,
   seek to find some special way in which that calling may conduce to the
   glory of Christ. You are a little star in the Pleiades, do not wish to
   be the pole-star, if you were taken out of the Pleiades, the
   constellation would not be what it now is. Keep where you are, but shed
   your special rays upon the earth; and if you be but a little star, do
   not the little stars together shed much light, and earth were dark if
   they all were quenched? I have tried to preach a plain homely sermon,
   but, perhaps I have not hit the mark, perhaps I have not made you feel
   what I want you to feel. Why, I would have every dustman's bell
   Holiness unto the Lord. Whatever your business is, though you are a
   scavenger, though you sweep a crossing, though you black
   shoes--whatever you have to do, let everything be done to the glory of
   God. And, if any say it cannot be done, do you show them the way, for
   the best practical proof is the proof of fact. I may preach to-day, and
   preach twenty days about making the bells upon the horses holiness to
   the Lord, but if you do not tune your own private conversation, the
   text will but excite laughter among some, and no practical profit will
   it be to any. Is there anything wrong at home? go and set it to rights.
   Is there anything wrong in the shop or in the kitchen? If you have not
   done what you ought to have done as a Christian man, if you have not
   acted as you ought to have done in your trade, go and do better. Not
   that you are to be saved by works, I have been speaking to those who
   are saved already. Being saved, show by your profession what you
   believe and would by your acts glorify your Master. Let me pray you to
   think often of this text--"In that day shall there be on the bells of
   the horses, Holiness unto the Lord."
     __________________________________________________________________

                       Our Miseries, Messengers of Mercy

   A Sermon

   (No. 400)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, July the 14th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will
   heal us; he hath smitten and he will bind us up. After two days he will
   revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in
   his sight."--Hosea 6:1-2.

   TENDER FATHERS seek first to will their children by gentle means. The
   Lord, in his long-suffering, dealt very kindly with his erring Israel,
   sending them favor after favor, and blessing after blessing, saying by
   his acts, "I have given them their corn, and their wine, and their oil,
   they will surely turn unto me and say, Our Father, thou shalt be the
   guide of our youth.' But the more he multiplied his bounties, the more
   they multiplied their iniquities, and they burned sacrifice unto the
   gods of Edom, and of Moab, even to those that were no gods, saying,
   "These be thy gods, O Israel, which have given unto thee thy corn, and
   thy wine, and thy oil;" so they spent the mercies of God in sacrifice
   upon their idols, and committed transgressions with the false gods of
   the heathen, consuming upon their lusts the very mercies which God had
   sent to bring them to repentance. When at last God saw that this
   measure did not move them, because their sin was written as with an
   iron pen, and graven upon the very horns of their altars, then he tried
   harsher means; he hewed them by the prophets; they rose early and they
   prophesied until the going down of the sun, giving line upon line,
   precept upon precept, threatening them with the anger and vengeance of
   God. At last that vengeance came; he carried them away captive, and
   they went into a land that they knew not, among a cruel people, whose
   speech they could not understand. Again he delivered them out of the
   hand of their enemy; and yet, again, because of their sin, he sold them
   to Assyria, and afterwards to Babylon, that at last, after they had
   been rent and torn, they might say within themselves, "Come, and let us
   return unto the Lord." Now, my brethren, the people of Israel are but a
   picture of ourselves; especially are they representatives of a certain
   class, some of whom are now present. God has tried you with mercy upon
   mercy; kept you long in health, till you scarce ever had a day's
   sickness; given you all that you could wish, till your cup was brimming
   and flowing over; but you used his mercies for your own
   self-indulgence, and the bodily strength which was given you to be a
   blessing you have made a curse. Streams of mercy never ceasing God has
   vouchsafed to you, but your only return has been stream of sin, broad,
   and black, and deep. And now to-day he has been changing his ways with
   you. I am speaking to some whom God has of late heavily afflicted;
   seeing gentler means would not do, he has turned your wine into
   wormwood, and your honey into gall; he has made you sick in body and
   dispirited in mind; your earthly goods are melting like snow before the
   summer's sun; your children die before your very eyes, and the desire
   of your heart is taken away with a stroke. God has made all his waves
   and his billows go over you; the law has sounded ids trumpet in your
   ear and brought your sin to remembrance; conscience has started up in
   alarm from its long sleep and cries like a mighty man that waketh up
   from his slumber and finds the camp besieged. You are troubled and sore
   broken; your heart is melted like wax in the midst of your bowels, so
   that while you are sitting in the house of God to-day you are
   complaining.--"I am the man that has seen affliction;" and perhaps
   worse thank that you are groaning, "His wrath lieth hard upon me, I
   cannot look up." It is to you I am about to speak this morning. I
   single you out from the crowd, and yet I trust while I address you
   there may be also some words of comfort or of instruction for the rest
   of the congregation. Oh! may you, nay hearer, you upon whom I fix my
   eye this morning, you whose case is the case of Israel in Hosea, may
   you say, "Come, and let us return unto the Lord, for he hath torn, and
   he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up." I desire to
   come straight up to you who are in this condition and put my hand
   inside yours, holding you fast while I strive in God's name to reason
   with you, beseeching God the Holy Spirit to reason better than I can,
   sweetly moving your soul, till you say, "I will arise and go unto my
   Father."

   Three things I must do this morning; first, I must deal a blow, at the
   old Tempter, who has got the first hand at you; secondly, I will come
   to reason comfortably with you; and then, thirdly, I must lovingly
   persuade you, saying--"Come, let us return unto the Lord."

   I. First then, I must DEAL A BLOW AT THE OLD TEMPTER, WHO HAS GOT
   BEFORE ME AND HAS BEGUN TO DECEIVE YOU.

   I cannot tell what is the precise temptation that Satan has been using
   with you, but I think it is very likely to be one of four.

   The first one has been this--"Oh," saith he, "see how troubled you are,
   nothing prospers with you; what pains of body you suffer, and how
   depressed you are in spirit. God is a tyrant to you, he treats you
   cruelly; hate him, set your teeth together and curse him; say no, if he
   treats me thus he is not a God that I can love, I will abhor him from
   my very soul." I have uttered that temptation in startling language
   because such dark insinuations as this have been very common with much
   tried and troubled men. I remember many who, in telling their
   experience of how they were brought to Christ, have confessed that when
   first the hammer of God's law fell upon their hearts it hardened them,
   when God smote, they were like the bullock which kicks against the
   pricks of the ox-goad; they felt like a high blooded, unbroken horse,
   the bit was in their mouths, but they pulled and tugged at it, and the
   more it cut and wounded them the more resolved they were that they
   would not turn, in fact, hatred was stirred up against God by what was
   intended to bring them to his feet. Soul, doth Satan tempt thee thus?
   Then indeed it is a sad proof that sin is madness. I can only compare
   thy case to you poor maniac, who has labored hard to destroy himself by
   existing himself into the fire or into the water. Some kind person,
   willing to bear all the inconveniences of such an office, has
   volunteered to be his keeper. See, the man is dashing to the water's
   brink and means to throw himself into the stream, his keeper holds him
   back, and with stern words and sterner acts throws him down upon the
   ground, and binds him so that he cannot take the fatal leap. But look
   again, he longs to burn himself, he makes a tremendous effort to thrust
   his body into the flame, but his keeper shuts him up in a room where he
   cannot get at the devouring flame. All the "while this madman hates
   him, curses him, spits upon him, and would do anything if he could but
   kill his keeper and tear him to pieces in his fury. Mark you, when
   yonder maniac shall get back his reason, he will kiss the feet of that
   man whom now he hates, he will say--"I bless you for the loving
   violence which has restrained me from my own destruction, I thank you
   for denying me my own will, that you stood in my path and thwarted my
   mad desire, and that you would not let me ruin myself." Now, poor
   sinner, God is doing this with you. Oh! do not hate him. He does not
   hate you; he is not coaling with you in wrath, but in mercy. There is
   still behind the black cloud the sun of his mercy shining. Oh! that
   Satan may be cast out of you that you may not be tempted to hate God
   because of his sore smitings of you.

   Or, perhaps, the temptations of Satan have taken another shape, not so
   much hatred as sullenness. You have lost all you care for now, and you
   think that your state does not matter much to you, you would as soon
   die as live, and as for your soul, you think you cannot be more
   wretched in hell itself than you are, and you say, "So let it be; it is
   so bad that it cannot be mended." You do not bestir yourself, but you
   sit down with a stony heart waiting to be crushed. You are like some
   poor man benighted on the frozen Alps, who feels sleep creeping upon
   him, and is content to lie down there and die, as he certainly must
   unless some friendly hand shall shake him out of his desperate sleep.
   There is a kind of numbness which pain brings to the body, which has
   its equivalent in the spirit, a numbness because the grief has been so
   acute, that nature could bear no more. Then death itself loses its
   horror in the nearer terrors of the soul. "My soul chooseth strangling
   rather than life." Soul, Satan desireth to have thee that he may
   utterly destroy thee, and this is one of his ways, he seeks to make
   thee torpid that he may find thee dead; for when thou art sullen he
   knows that the warnings of the ministry, and the earnest exhortations
   of the gospel, will have but little force with thee. Wake, man, wake!
   thy dander is awful! Multitudes have perished here. Wake, I pray thee,
   wake! Oh! if thou hast any sensibility left, bestir thee. Depend on it,
   that bad as thy case is, it will be worse in the world to come, unless
   the badness of it be now blessed to thy soul. Oh! man, the pains thou
   hast had as yet are but as the finger-ache, they are but mere trifles
   compared with the miseries of eternity. Instead of opiates to make thee
   sleep, let them be goads to stir thy sluggish flesh, and make thee
   start from the deadly couch of presumption. I would be but too glad if
   I might thrust lancets into thee again, and again, anything sooner than
   you should sleep that sleep of death and be utterly destroyed.

   Possibly, however, the temptation of Satan has taken the form of
   despair. "Oh," saith he, "there is no hope for you; you can clearly
   perceive that you are the subject of divine hatred; God has not dealt
   with others as he has with you; these trials are but to first drops of
   the long shower of his eternal wrath. Depend upon it," says Satan, "now
   that your conscience is in this state, your convictions will deepen
   into a settled remorse, and then that remorse will end in final
   despair, and everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord;
   your sins are too many and too great; there is hope for any man, but
   there is no hope for you; you are beyond the lines of mercy; the arm of
   grace is not long enough or strong enough to reach such a wretch as you
   are; you are not jammed in hell yet, but you are the same as if you
   were; you are reprobate; the decree shuts you out of heaven, while the
   greatness of your sin confirms it; you are bound up in fetters that
   cannot be broken and cast into a horrible pit lout of which you never
   can be drawn." Satan, thou art a liar, oh! that this poor heart did
   know it: I tell thee this to thy face, for thou didst once bewitch me
   with thy falsehood. Thou didst bring me into this state of despair too
   till I was ready to put an end to myself, because I thought nothing
   awaited me but the wrath of God. Oh! thou lying hell-hound, how thou
   didst slander my Lord and Master. He was willing to receive me, but
   thou modest me think he would reject me; he stood waiting about the
   door of my heart, saying, "Open to me," and thou saidst that he had
   gone, that he had shut up the bowels of his compassion, and doomed for
   ever to destruction. I will be even with thee, thou great destroyer of
   souls, for thy cruel treachery with me, as long as I live I will raise
   the hue and cry against thee. Soul, do not thou believe him, he is a
   murderer of souls, and a liar from the beginning; there is hope for
   you; there is hope for you now. There is still the gospel preached to
   you: still is it freely presented in your hearing. May you say today,
   "Come, let us return unto the Lord" and he will heal you; he will bind
   you up; he will receive you to his heart; he will in no wise cast you
   out.

   But it may occur, that yet a fourth temptation has been tried with some
   of you. Satan has said, "Well, now, you can see it is of no use. Give
   it up altogether, and if you cannot be happy one way, try another; you
   clearly perceive that you are shut out of heaven, well, make the best
   of this world." "Now," says the devil, "Christ will not have you, what
   is the use of your going to a place of worship? Do not go, stay away,
   it is hopeless; the gospel will never be of any use to you; you have
   heard it these three or four years, and you only get more hardened;
   don't go again; besides, why make yourself miserable for nothing; drink
   your fill of the world's delight, if you cannot get the best good, get
   the other; eat, drink, and be merry; live a fast life, and satisfy
   yourself; you may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb; you may as
   well perish for a great sin as perish for a little one. God evidently
   has cast you off, follow your own way and choose your own delight." Oh!
   soul, oh! soul, how sad it is that these afflictions and warnings of
   conscience which are meant to bring you to Christ should be used by
   Satan as the reason why you should go from Christ. Oh! soul, the Lord
   has designs of mercy for you now he has begun to try you in your
   circumstances and afflict you in your soul; and the devil knows it, and
   is afraid of losing you and so he wants you to get out of the way of
   mercy just when mercy is coming. What, suppose you have as yet gained
   no good by attending the means of grace, does that prove that you will
   not soon be blessed? You are travelling in the wilderness, you had a
   torch, and the wind blew it out: you lit it again, and it blew it out
   again, do not say that therefore you will never see. The sun is rising,
   the sun is rising, and the fact that torches have been blown out does
   not prove that the night will last for ever. If your false hopes have
   left you, and your self-righteous trusts have all been taken away, I am
   glad. I am glad it is dark with you, for the darkest part of the night
   is that which heralds the dawning of the day. I am glad the Lord has
   laid you how, for it is now he means to hit you up. Do not I pray you
   be cajoled out of this divine mercy by the temptations of the fiend of
   hell. Rouse thee, man! Cry, "Through he slay me yet will I trust in
   him! If I be at Bethesda's pool and the water be not stirred, yet will
   I die there," (that you will never do; mark that) "though I pray, and
   he hears me not, yet my cries even to my dying hour shall go up to
   him." And mark you, he will surely hear you; only, do not be led astray
   of the Evil One to turn what is the mercy of God into an excuse for
   excess of riot; but, do you rather listen now to the voice of wisdom
   and mercy, while I seek in the second place to reason with you
   comfortably that I may bring you to say, "Come, let us return unto the
   Lord."

   II. Now forget your troubles, for a little while if you can, or only
   think of them as a background for the brightness of THE COMFORT which I
   would give you as God's messenger.

   1. So you say you have had so many trials in life, and so many
   strivings of conscience, that therefore you feel you must be too guilty
   to be saved. Do you think that you have been punished for your sins?
   Permit me to remind you that this is not the place where the Judge of
   all the earth usually punishes sin; his wrath he reserves for the day
   of judgment and the world to come. All sorrow is the result of sin, but
   still it does not come to any particular man, except in some remarkable
   instances, because of any special sin in him. Now there was Job--will
   you equal him among the saints? Was he not one of the chief of them?
   Yet he was more tried than any other man; that evidently was not
   because he was a greater sinner than others. Do you not know the fact
   that often the most wicked men are the most prosperous, whilst the most
   holy are the most afflicted? Therefore this is not the place where God
   dispenses providence according to the sole and absolute rule of
   justice; that is to be in the world to come? How would you account for
   such an instance as this, which occurred not long ago in a certain
   railway accident? There were two men who entered the train; one of them
   a Christian, the other a worldling. The Christian man took his seat; so
   did the other. At a station the worldly one said, "I should like a game
   of cards; will you get out and go with me?--there is So-and-so in such
   a carriage; come with me, and we will play together." "No," said the
   other, "I would much rather be out of your company, if that is what you
   are at." "Well then," said he, "good morning, I am going there." An
   accident of the most frightful character occurred; the Christian man
   saw those on each side of lam killed; his two companions crushed, and
   himself such a mass of bruises and broken brings as you scarcely ever
   saw; his leg broken in seven different places, and himself as it seemed
   at death's doctor. His companion who went to play cards, was perfectly
   safe all the carriage in which he rode was untouched! Now, this plainly
   shows that this is of the world in which God deals with men according
   to the rules of justice. Ships sink whether men are at prayer, or
   whether they are cursing God. Providence here is not ordered according
   to the rule by which God shall dispense his favors or his fury in the
   world to come. This is the land of long-suffering rather than of
   execution. This is the land where God in his wise providence rather
   brings us to repentance than to punishment. Now I can see the hand of
   God in all. The man who escaped as a card player, I fear, was hardened
   by the providence by which he escaped. Yet, mark you, God was
   glorified, because his providence will become a savor of death unto
   death to that man should he live and die impenitent, while in the
   Christian who was thus injured God is honored, for if you could see him
   as I saw him, with his smiling face relating the fact that he has never
   murmured once, though he had laid upon his bed for very many weeks, you
   would only admire the favor and goodness of God which gave the sinner
   space for repentance, and gave the believer room to display the grace
   of patience. It was good for the one that he was afflicted, it was good
   for the other that he escaped. But this is not the hand of punishment,
   and your having more afflictions than others, may be because God loves
   you; certainly it is not because he hates you. I have seen the wicked
   in great power, spreading themselves like green bay-trees; and I have
   seen them in their death too, and they are not in trouble as other men,
   neither are they plagued like other men; they are at ease, they are
   settled on their lees; they are not emptied from vessel to vessel. As
   for God's people, they are chastened every morning, and vexed every
   evening and the Lord's hand lieth heavy on them; yet there is God's
   goodness in that heavy hand, and infinite lovingkindness in their
   tribulations. God only gives the wicked prosperity as we give husks to
   swine; he gives them this world's transient things because he loves
   them not. I pray you then, do not misconstrue your sufferings of body
   and mind, they may be tokens of mercy; they certainly are not
   indicators of any special wrath.

   Secondly, you will say that you have great distress of mind, and trials
   of soul, and therefore there is no hope for you. I say, therefore,
   there is hope. Perhaps some of those troubles of mind come from Satan.
   Now observe this, Satan very seldom troubles those men who are all his
   own. A poor negro who had been tempted by Satan was once laughed at by
   his master about it. Said he, "The devil never tempts me, I do not even
   know that there is such a being in existence." They went out sometime
   after shooting wild ducks, and as the master shot at a covey of them
   and borne of them were wounded he was exceedingly earnest with clubs
   and stones to secure those that were wounded, while he left those that
   were evidently dead to float on the stream till he had time to pick
   them up. This gave the negro a fine opportunity of explaining his
   master's experience. "Massa, whilst you was a splashin' in de water
   after dem wounded ducks, and lettin' de dead ones float on, it jist
   come into my mind why it is dat de debil troubles me so much whilst he
   lets you alone. You are like de dead ducks, he's sure he's got you
   safe. I'm like de wounded ones, trying to git away from him, and he's
   afraid I'll die it, so he makes all de fuss after me and jist lets you
   float on down de stream. He knows he can get you any time, but he knows
   it now or never wid me. If you were to begin to flutter a little and
   show signs like you were a goin' to get away from him, he would make
   jist as big a splashin' after you as he does after me."

   But again, you will remember that it is not God's way to send
   convictions of sin to reprobates. Do men plough the sand? Do they send
   their oxen upon the rock? No, they attempt to use materials that are
   utterly rotten? No, they give them up, and leave them alone. Now, why
   is the all-wise Jehovah at work with you unless he has gracious designs
   for you; I hope it is because he is about to bring you to himself.

   Let me show you yet in the third place that this is according to the
   analogy of nature. Did you ever hear this parable? There was a certain
   shepherd who had a sheep, which he desired to lead into another and
   better field. He called it and it would not come, he led it and it
   would not follow, he drove it but it would only follow in own devices.
   At last he thought within himself "I will do this." The sheep had a
   little lamb by its side, and the shepherd took the lamb up in his arms,
   and carried it away, and then the ewe came too. And so with you, God
   has been calling to you, mother, and you did not come. Christ said
   "Come," and you would not, he sent affliction and you would not come,
   then he took your child away, and you came then, you followed the
   Saviour then. You see it was loving work on the shepherd's part, he did
   but take the lamb to save the sheep, the Saviour took your child to
   heaven that he might bring you to heaven. We had before the church the
   other night a sister who is here now I dare say, there were four in the
   family and the Lord took one child away. But that was not enough he
   took another, and another, and the fourth lay sick and ready to, die
   and then the mothers heart was broken, and mother and father both came
   to Jesus Oh! blessed afflictions, blessed losses, blessed deaths that
   end in spiritual life! Now this I trust is how God is dealing with you.
   You know, if a man has a field and desires to gather a harvest from it,
   what does he do? First of all he ploughs it. The field might say, "Why
   these scars across my face? Why thus upturn my sods?" Because there can
   be no sowing till there has been ploughing, sharp ploughshares make
   furrows for good seed. Or take yet another picture from nature. A man
   desireth to make of a rusty piece of iron a bright sword which shall be
   serviceable to a great warrior. What doth he do? He putteth it into the
   fire and melteth it, he taketh away all its dross and removeth all its
   till, then he fashioneth it with his hammer, he beateth it full sore
   upon the anvil, he anneals it in one fire after another till at last it
   comes out a good blade that will not snap in the day of warfare. This
   is what God doeth with you--I pray you do not misread the book of God's
   providence, for if you read it aright it runs thus--"I will have mercy
   on this man and therefore have I smitten him and wounded him. Come,
   therefore, let us return unto the Lord, for he hath wounded and he will
   heal, he hath smitten and he will bind us up."

   I have other arguments to use, and you must bear with me somewhat
   patiently. Thou art wounded in spirit this morning, poor mourner, wilt
   thou remember that it is God's delight to bind up broken hearts. "He
   telleth the number of the stars." What its the next verse--do you
   remember it?--"He bindeth up the broken in heart." What a mighty stoop
   this is! From counting the stars and leading them forth, mighty worlds
   though they be, he bows to become a surgeon to the poor wounded heart.
   You know what Christ's occupation is in heaven--"If he shall wipe away
   tears from oft an faces." What a blessed occupation--wiping away tears!
   Soul, Christ will be glad to wipe away thy tears now. He delights to do
   it--Christ is never more happy than when he is showing his heart to
   shiners, he is so glad when he can find his poor lost sheep, and put it
   on his shoulders and carry it home. It will maker you glad to be saved;
   but he will be infinitely glad to save you, and delighted to receive
   you, for he delighteth in mercy.

   Please remember, yet once again, that the wounds which you now feel he
   made himself, and if he is willing to heal any wounds, how much more
   those that he has himself made. There are some diseases in which the
   surgeon is compelled to wound; the proud flesh has gotten in; the cure
   has been a bad one, and in order that it may be thoroughly sound, he
   perhaps makes a cross out, a deep cross cut that goes into the very
   core of the matter. Well, his lances has made a bad wound, do you think
   the doctor will not do his best to heal it? I will go to him and say,
   "Surgeon, thou didst thyself make the wound, thou modest it in order to
   my healing, heal the wound, I pray thee, heal me." Occasionally when a
   man has broken his leg, it has been badly set by some bungler, and when
   he has consulted a skillful surgeon, he says, "I can do nothing for you
   till I break your leg again." And so often is it with men's minds; they
   get peace, peace, when there is no peace, and there is no doing
   anything with them until God breaks their heart again. Suppose a
   surgeon should break a man's led again, do you think he would go away
   and leave the poor man without setting it? No, he broke that he might
   heal, that he might make the cure a sound one. And so is it, perhaps,
   with your broken heart. Go to him, then, go to him; say, "Lord, thou
   didst break my heart; I was a hard blasphemer once, but thou hast
   brought me to my knees. I once said, I would never enter a place of
   worship;' Lord, thou knowest I go there now, though I get no comfort
   there, but I pray thee give me comfort. It was such-and-such a sermon
   that brought me to despair; Lord, guide thy servant to preach another
   that will bring me into liberty. Lord, if thou hast not broken my
   heart, break it now; but if thou hast broken it, Lord, I appeal to thee
   to heal it. Thou hast begun the work by killing me, finish the work by
   making me alive; thou hast begun by stripping me, Lord, clothe me."
   That is good argument; he will surely do it, he will not fail to carry
   on and complete that which he has begun to perform.

   Once more only--and perhaps this will be the best argument of
   all--remember you have got his promise for it. The text I read as a
   promise. It looks at first sight as if it were spoken by man, and so it
   is; but then inasmuch as it is put in God's book as the utterance of
   God's inspired prophet, it is a part of God's word, and it is warranted
   to be most true. "He hath torn and he will heal." Go and put your
   finger on this text and say, "Lord, thou hast torn me, and it is
   written in thy word, He will heal us;'"

   "Lord, I know thou canst not lie,

   Heal my soul or else I die."

   Put you your finger on the next--"He will bind us up." Say, "Lord, I do
   not deserve it; I deserve only to perish, but then thou hast said thou
   wilt do it, be as good as thy word. Lord, here is a poor sinner near
   despair, he comes to thee, bind up his broken heart; give him
   peace;"--and soul, the everlasting hills shall bow, the hoary deep
   shall itself be burned up, and earth's foundation shall be removed, but
   God's word shall never pass away, nor shall his promise fail in one
   single case. Only believe the promise; receive the promise, and this
   very day, poor broken heart, he will heal thy wounds, and thou shalt
   have joy and peace in believing through Jesus Christ our Lord.

   III. I shall not detain you much longer, but I have now the third point
   to dwell on upon which earnestly. And O Spirit of the living God bless
   these words, Jesu, do thou woo hearts to thyself whilst we seek to will
   them to thy love.

   And now I would come LOVINGLY TO PERSUADE YOU, and the persuasion I
   would use is this--"Come, let us return unto the Lord." Do you see it!
   The prophet does not say, "Go," but "Come;" he does not say, "Go you,"
   but "Come, let us." Poor soul, thou sayest there is none like thyself;
   behold I take my place side-by-side with thee. Art thou a sinner? So am
   I. Dost thou deserve God's wrath? So do I. Hast thou gone very far
   astray? So have I. Come, let us return, let us go together. Or if that
   comfort thee not enough, let me tell thee I have gone as thou now art;
   as despairing, perhaps more so; as cast down, perhaps worse, but I have
   found him to be a loving Saviour, a blessed Saviour, willing and able
   to save to the uttermost. Soul, come and try him, come and try him. My
   brothers and sisters in Christ in Christ reject you when you came to
   him? You were as bad as others, some in you were worse, did he reject
   you? I am sure that if I should ask it there would be not one thousand
   here but a vast company, who would rise and say, "I sought the Lord and
   he heard me, this poor man cried, and the Lord heard me and delivered
   me from all my fears." Soul, come, let us return. He saved me; he will
   save you.

   "Tell it unto sinners tell

   I am, I am saved from hell."

   If he could and would save one, why not another; and if the thousands
   of Israel, why not poor sinful you?

   Then, that I may persuade you further, let me remind you that to return
   to God is not a cruel request to you. He does not ask you to perform a
   pilgrimage and blister your weary feet, or to thrust an iron in your
   back and swing yourself aloft as does the Hindoo, he asks you not to
   lie on a bed of spikes or starve yourself till you can count your
   bones. He asks no suffering of you, for Christ has suffered for you.
   All he asks is than you would return to him, and what is that? That you
   would be unfeignedly sorry for your past sin, that you would ask his
   grace to keep you from it in the future, that you would now believe in
   Christ who is set forth to be the propitiation for sin, that through
   faith in his blood you may see your sin for ever put away and all your
   iniquity cancelled. That is neither a hard nor a cruel demand. It is
   for your good as well as for his glory. O Spirit of God, make the
   sinner now willing to repent and to believe in Christ.

   But, yet again, remember the comfortable fruits which will surely
   follow if you return. What would you think if I could show you yourself
   within a week? There he stands; he is singing--

   "A debtor to mercy alone,

   Of covenant mercy I sing;

   Nor fear with thy righteousness on,

   My person and offering to bring.

   The terrors of law and of God,

   With me can have nothing to do;

   My Saviour's obedience and blood,

   Hide all my transgressions from view."

   What man is that? Why, that is the man who came in here last Sunday
   morning, and said he was utterly lost. He heard the minister exhort him
   to trust Christ, and he did it, and that is where he is standing now.
   He has been brought up out of a horrible pit, and out of the miry clay,
   and his feet are set upon a rock. "If I thought that would be the
   case," saith one, "I would try it." My dear sir, you need not think it
   will be the case. God promises--and he cannot lie--"He that believeth
   and is baptized," he does not say, "may be," but "shall be saved," and
   God's "shalls" and "wills" do not play with men; but he speaks them in
   real earnestness. "Whosoever calleth upon the name of the Lord, shall
   be saved." Dare you say that this is not true? "No," say you, "it is
   undoubtedly true." Well, then, if you call upon the name of the Lord
   you shall be saved, or else the promise is false. Again, "though your
   sins be as scarlet, they shall be as wool; though they be red like
   crimson, they Enroll be whiter than snow." Do you believe that? Is it
   not a promise made to the penitent who casts himself at the feet of
   Jesus? Very well, try it personally, and if you cast yourself there,
   either this book must be withdrawn, and God must change, Christ's blood
   must lose its power, and God must un-God himself, or else he must and
   will save you. Oh! that there were such a heart in you, and such a mind
   towards God, that you would now say, "I do believe; I will believe; I
   trust my Saviour with my soul." This done, you are saved.

   Once more, may I not plead with you to return to God, because of the
   precious love of Christ? Love, I know, has great power to move. You
   will remember how in that wonderful book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," there is
   a singular instance of the power of love. Miss Ophelia had been
   laboring to train up that wicked girl biopsy, but she would not learn
   anything, though Miss Ophelia tried to make her say the Assembly's
   Catechism, in order that she might know all about it. But one day, Eva,
   the little five, (the very gospel incarnate, just as Miss Ophelia was
   the picture of the law,) sits down by her side, and says to her,
   "Topsy, why will be so naughty; what is it makes you so wicked?" "Miss
   Eva," says Topsy, "it aren't no use any being good nobody loves me."
   The little girl puts her arm round her neck and kisses her, saying.
   "Why I love you, Topsy, and it grieves me very much to see you so
   naughty." "Oh!" said Topsy, "I will try to be good if you will but love
   me." Love had won the poor child, and had subdued her. Well, now,
   perhaps you are saying, "If Christ would but say he would love me, I
   think I could repent that I ever sinned against him; I think I would be
   willing to give him my heart." Soul, if that is what you say, he does
   love you. He loved you and gave himself for you. Behold his cross--is
   there better proof of love than that? See his flowing wounds; hear how
   he groans; behold him dying! "It is a faithful saying and worthy of all
   acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners," and
   he saves them because he loves them. Oh! if that love will woo you, it
   is indeed in plenteous abundance flowing down to you now. "Ah! well,"
   you say, "I cannot do enough for him." If that be true, I am glad you
   have got as far as that, and I have finished when I have told you an
   anecdote which I trust will do us all good.

   A missionary was preaching to the Maori tribe of the New Zealanders. He
   had been truing them of the suffering love of Christ, how he had poured
   forth his soul unto death for them; and as he concluded, the hills rung
   to the thrilling question--"Is it nothing to an who pass by? Behold and
   see if there be any sorrow like unto his Borrow?" Then stood forth a
   plumed and painted chief, the scarred warrior of a thousand fights, and
   as his lips quivered with suppressed emotion, he spoke. "And did the
   Son of the Highest suffer all this for us men? Then the Indian chief
   would like to offer him some poor return for his great love. Would the
   Son of God deign to accept the Indian's hunting dog? Swift of foot and
   keen of scent the tribe has not such another, and he has been to the
   Indian as a friend." But the missionary told him that the Son of God
   had need of no such gifts as these. Thinking he had mistaken the gift
   he resumed--"Yet perchance he would accept the Indian's rifle? Unerring
   of aim, the chief cannot replace it." Again the missionary shook his
   head. For a moment the chief paused; then as a new thought struck him,
   suddenly despoiling himself of his striped blanket he cried with
   childlike earnestness, "Perhaps he who had not where to lay his head
   will yet accept the chieftain's blanket. The poor Indian will be cold
   without it, yet it is offered joyfully." Touched by love's persistency,
   the missionary tried to explain to him the real nature of the Son of
   God; that it was not men's gifts but men's hearts that he yearned for.
   For a moment a cloud of grief darkened the granite features of the old
   chief; then as the true nature of the Son of God slowly dawned upon
   him, casting aside his blanket and rifle he clasped his hands, and
   looking right up into the blue sky, his face beaming with joy, he
   exclaimed--"Perhaps the Son of the Blessed One will deign to accept the
   poor Indian himself!"

   Is that what you say this morning? You would give Christ this, and
   that, and the other. Soul, give him your heart. Say to him now,

   "Jesus, I love thy charming name,

   'Tis music to my ear;

   Fain would I sound it out so loud,

   That earth and heaven might hear."

   And then it is done; the compact is concluded; the work is over; thou
   art in the arms of Christ, thou lovest him and he loves thee. He
   wounded but he has healed; he killed thee but he has made thee alive.
   Go in peace; thou art loved much; thy sin which are many are all
   forgiven thee."
     __________________________________________________________________

                           Jacob's Waking Exclamation

   A Sermon

   (No. 401)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, July the 21st, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord in
   this place; and I knew it not."--Genesis 28:16.

   THROUGH his own foolish wisdom Jacob had been compelled to leave his
   father's house. Perhaps we are scarcely able to judge of the sorrowful
   feelings which this banishment would beget in his soul. Here we go from
   one Christian home to another. If we leave the parental roof we may
   hope still to sojourn where there is an altar to the Most High God, and
   where we can still unite with worshippers who fear his name. Not so in
   Jacob's case. The family of which he was a member, was the only
   household in the land that worshipped God; or if there were some few
   others, probably they were unknown to one another, and as far as
   Jacob's knowledge would go, he was fully assured that all the way from
   the place where he left his father until he arrived at Padan-Aram, he
   would not meet with a single person who feared the God of heaven. He
   was passing from one oasis to another across a burning sand. We may
   compare him to a swallow, which for the first time leaves our shore to
   find no rest until it has passed with weary wing the long leagues of
   purple sea. You must know too that the prevalent notion of the heathens
   among whom Jacob dwelt was that their gods had only local authority;
   that for instance, the god of Gaza was not the god of Askelon; the god
   of Beersheba would not be the God of Bethel. Their deities were gods of
   the hills and not of the valleys, and it may be but just possible that
   from great connection with the heathen, Jacob may have failed clearly
   to recognize the fact that his father's God was not like their gods; so
   in leaving his father's house there may have been this troublous
   thought rising in his mind, that he was also leaving his father's God;
   that now his prayers would scarcely be heard; that he should be an
   alien from Jehovah's land, and cut off from the congregation of the
   blessed. Jacob was not at this time a full-grown believer, he was but a
   babe in grace; his ready yielding to his mother's craft proves his want
   of advanced piety; and it is no trifling thing for a weakling to be
   taken from the nurture of home and cast alone upon a world unfriendly
   and ungenial. Happy was it for the fugitive that his Lord's compassion
   tracked his way even when he knew not that God was there. Blessed was
   the dream which assured him that Jehovah's wing had covered his stony
   bed as really as it guarded his softer couch in Isaac's tent. The truth
   seemed to surprise him, but O how sweetly it must have yielded
   consolation! "Surely," said he, and he opened his eyes to new light as
   though he knew that the night of distress had passed, and that a day of
   confidence had begun--"Surely God is in this place, and I knew it not."

   I would address you this morning upon a topic which may perhaps be as
   useful to us as to Jacob, if God the Holy Ghost shall but enable me to
   preach, and you to hear. Oh thou that art everywhere, be speedily now;
   be thou in this place, and may we know it, and tremble in thy presence.
   I shall speak on three points; first, the omnipresence of God--the
   doctrine of it; secondly, a recognition of that omnipresence, or the
   spirit which is necessary in order to discover the presence of God; and
   thirdly, the results of a recognition of this omnipresence, or the
   practice which is sure to spring out of the conviction that God is
   everywhere.

   I. First, then, THE DOCTRINE OF GOD'S OMNIPRESENCE. He is everywhere.

   In the early Christian Church, there was a wicked heresy, which for a
   long while caused great disturbance, and exceeding much controversy.
   There were some who taught that Satan, the representative of evil, was
   of co-equal power with God, the representative of good. These men found
   it necessary to impugn the doctrine of God's universal power. Their
   doctrine denied the all-pervading presence of God in the present world,
   and they seemed to imagine that we should of necessity have to get out
   of the world of nature altogether, before we could be in the presence
   of God. Their preachers seemed to teach that there was a great distance
   between God and his great universe; they always preached of him as the
   King who dwelt in the land that was very far off; nay, they almost
   seemed to go as far as though they had said, "Between us and him there
   is a great gulf fixed, so that neither can our prayers reach him, nor
   can the thoughts of his mercy come down to us." Blessed be God that
   error has long ago been exploded, and we as Christian men, without
   exception, believe that God is as much in the lowest hell as in the
   highest heaven, and as truly among the sinful hosts of mortals, as
   among the blissful choir of immaculate immortals, who day without night
   praise his name. We believe that he filleth heaven and earth, and hell;
   that he is in the very space which his creation seems to claim, for
   creatures do not displease God; and even the space which is occupied by
   his handiworks is still filled with himself. The rocky bowels of the
   unsearched-out depths are full of God; where the sea roars, or where
   the solid granite leaves no interstice or vacuum, even there is God;
   not only in the open place, and in the chasm, but penetrating all
   matter, and abounding everywhere in all, and filling all things with
   himself. "In him we live and move, and have our being, and in him are
   all things, and by him all things consist." Yet, while we receive the
   doctrine, it is well sometimes to enlarge upon it, not so much for sake
   of argument, as to make the truth stand out the more clearly to our
   minds' eye. Let us remember, then, that in the three kingdoms God is
   everywhere; in the kingdoms of nature, of providence, and of grace, we
   may say of each spot, "Surely God is in this place."

   He is everywhere in the fields of nature. Go if you please to secluded
   parts; walk through the forest-glades where the virgin moss presents a
   delicate carpet for human foot; where the deer starts up affrighted by
   the intrusion of an unexpected visitor; where the wild bird scarcely
   flies from you because as yet it is not familiar with the cruel face of
   man. As you walk among the intertwisted boughs, the natural arches of
   God's own temple which He Himself hath builded, without toil of hewer
   of stone or dauber of clay, if you be a true Christian you will be
   compelled to say--

   "The calm retreat, the silent shade,

   With prayer and praise agree;

   And seem by thy sweet bounty made

   For those who follow thee."

   You will solemnly exclaim, "Surely God is in this place." Nor will you
   be alone in your thought, for every waving flower-bell will bear
   witness to the fact, and the insect humming in the breeze, and the
   glossy beetle creeping among the sere leaves that lie beneath your
   feet, relics of many a winter's slaughter among the verdant groves, and
   the birds that are warbling among the trees will every one of them bear
   witness that surely God is there. In fact, if there be one spot more
   than another where the consciousness of God's presence will strike the
   heart of the awakened man, it will be where other men are not but where
   he himself is alone the only worshipper of God, save as a creation
   joins his strain. But you must remember too that if you go to the haunt
   of men, where they crowd and congregate together, that God is there. Go
   to one of the abutments of London Bridge and stand a moment gazing at
   the throng as it harries by, thousands and tens of thousands in an
   hour, on, on they sweep--the riches of Nations grinding the roadway,
   and multitudes of men, women, and children wearing away the granite
   pavement. God is there, though forgotten by most of them who are
   thinking only of the world and of its toils, forgetting that there is
   one above them who looks on all, and one within them who inhabiteth all
   space. Let not you and I forget, but let us say, "God is there; in
   every drop of blood that is circulating through the veins of the
   passengers; in every flush that is on the cheek; in every pulse that
   throbs or breath that heaves." The very fact that they are fed and
   clothed and are in existence will bear you witness that surely God is
   in that place; and thoughts of awe may soon come crowding o'er your
   mind, and you may find yourself as much alone with God in crowded
   Cheapside, or in the thronging Borough or noisy Whitechapel, as though
   you were far away alone on the wild prairie, or in some desert of
   Africa where foot-print of man could not be perceived. Verily God is in
   this place. Then fly with the white sail across the deep, and as you
   skim the foaming billows, if your soul be right within you, you will
   say, "Surely God is in this place." And when the storm comes on and the
   thunder rolls like drums in the march of the God of armies, and the
   skies seem to be wounded with the flashing of his glittering spear in
   the tremendous lightning, you may say in the midst of the storm as your
   bark reels and rocks, and is tossed like a sea-bird upon the
   billow--"Surely he holdeth the waters in the hollow of his hand, and
   God is here." And when you have landed, and calm comes on, and the fair
   white clouds sail slowly through the air, sailing gallantly in the
   abated breath of the wind, when everything comes out all fresh and
   green from the last shower, and there is a clear shining after the rain
   and the storm, and profound peace after the noisy hurricane, you may
   say then with refreshed enjoyment--"Surely God is in this place." But I
   need not continue in such a strain as this. Ye shall go where ye will;
   ye shall look to the most magnificent of God's works, and ye shall
   say--"God is here, upon thine awful summit, O hoary Alp! in thy dark
   bosom, O tempest-cloud! and in thy angry breath, O devastating
   hurricane!" "He makes the clouds his chariot and rides upon the wings
   of the wind." God is here. And so in the most minute--in the blossom of
   the apple, in the bloom of the tiny field-flower, in the sea-shell
   which has been washed up from its mother-deep, in the sparkling of the
   mineral brought up from darkest mines, in the highest star, or in yon
   comet that startles the nations and in its fiery chariot soon drives
   afar from mortal ken,--great God, thou art here, thou art everywhere.
   From the minute to the magnificent, in the beautiful and in the
   terrible, in the fleeting and in the lasting, thou art here, though
   sometimes we know it not.

   Let us enter now the kingdom of Providence, again to rejoice that God
   is there. My brethren, let us walk the centuries, and at one stride of
   thought let us traverse the earliest times when man first came out of
   Eden, driven from it by the fall. Then this earth had no human
   population, and the wild tribes of animals roamed it at their will. We
   know not what this island was then, save that we may suspect it to have
   been covered with dense forests, and perhaps inhabited by ferocious
   beasts; but God was here, as much here as he is to-day; as truly was he
   here then, when no ear heard his foot fall as he walked in the cool of
   the day in this great garden,--as truly here as when to-day the stings
   of ten thousand rise up to heaven, blessing and magnifying his name.
   And then when our history began--turn over its pages and you will read
   of cruel invasions and wars which stained the soil with blood, and
   crimsoned it a foot-deep with clotted gore; you will read of civil wars
   and intestine strifes between brother and brother, and you will
   say--"How is this? How was this permitted? "But if you read on and see
   how by tumult and bloody strife Liberty was served, and the best
   interest of man, you will say, "Verily, God was here." History will
   conduct you to awful battle-fields; she will bid you behold the garment
   rolled in blood; she will cover you with the thick darkness of her fire
   and vapor of smoke; and as you hear the clash of arms, and see the
   bodies of your fellow men, you say, "The devil is here;" but truth will
   say, "No, though evil be here, yet surely God was in this place though
   we knew it not; all this was needful after all--these calamities are
   but revolutions of the mighty wheels of Providence, which are too high
   to be understood, but are as sure in their action as though we could
   predict their results." Turn if you will to what is perhaps a worse
   feature in history still, and more dreary far--I mean the story of
   persecutions. Read how the men of God were stoned and were sawn
   asunder; let your imaginations revive the burnings of Smithfield, and
   the old dungeons of the Lollards' Tower; think how with fire and sword,
   and instruments of torture, the fiends of hell seemed determined to
   extirpate the chosen seed. But remember as you read the bloodiest
   tragedy, as your very soul grows sick at some awful picture of poor
   tortured human flesh, that verily God was in that place, scattering
   with rough hands, it may be, the eternal seed, bidding persecution be
   as the blast which carries seed away from some fruit-bearing tree that
   it may take root in distant islets which it had never reached unless it
   had been carried on the wings of the storm. Thou art, O God, even where
   man is most in his sin and blasphemy; thou art reigning over rebels
   themselves, and over those who seem to defy and to overturn thy will.
   Remember, always, that in history, however dreadful may seem the
   circumstances of the narrative, surely God is in that place. You may
   say that yon nation depended for its welfare upon a woman's will, or
   that its destiny hinged upon a child's life; that this dynasty rose and
   fell at the will of some far-famed adventurer; that another nation was
   rocked to its very center by the fanaticism of a foolish pretender. We
   will grant you all this, for who denies the second cause when he
   vindicates the first?--but let me say, more present is God than even
   man himself; more truly is he King, than the kings of the earth; more
   certainly is the Lord a man of war than even warriors themselves. In
   everything in the page of history, from the moment of its first
   unrolling till the last of the seven seals shall be loosed, and the
   book shall be read out before men and angels, you will have to say,
   "God was in it all." But you will please to recollect that while this
   is true of history in the mass, it is also true of it in the detail,
   and with reference to yourself and your own lot--God is there. You had
   a fire by which you lost your all, but God was there. By some fortunate
   circumstances, as you call it, you rose in life--God was there--but by
   a reverse, as you name it, you soon fell back again--God was there.
   There has nothing happened to you but what has been under his
   knowledge, his superintendence, and his ordination. Do not, I pray you,
   forget yourself while you are thinking of nations and of kingdoms, for
   it is as true of a gnat that God supports it in life as it is of an
   angel, and God is as certainly in the creeping of the aphis upon a
   rosebud as in the tumble of an avalanche from the mountain. He is in
   all things. He is in you; he is in your circumstances to-day. Take the
   thought home, and may God grant that it may have its due effect upon
   your minds. In Providence, then, we may say, "Surely God is in this
   place."

   But we now come to the third great kingdom of which the truth holds
   good in a yet more evident manner--the kingdom of grace. In yonder
   province of conviction, where hard-hearted ones are weeping penitential
   tears, where proud ones who said they would never have this man to
   reign over them are bowing their knees to kiss the Son lest he be
   angry; where rocky, adamantine consciences, have at last begun to feel;
   where obdurate, determined, incorrigible sinners, have at last turned
   from the error of their ways--God is there, for were he not there, none
   of these holy feelings would ever have arisen, and the cry would never
   have been heard--"I will arise and go unto my Father." And in yonder
   province which shines under a brighter sun, where penitents with joy
   look to a bleeding Saviour, where sinners leap to lose their chains,
   and oppressed ones sing because their burdens have rolled away; where
   they who were just now sitting in darkness and in the valley of the
   shadow of death have seen the great light--God is in that place, or
   faith had never come and hope had never arisen. And there in yonder
   province, brighter still, where Christians lay their bodies upon the
   altar as living sacrifices, where men with self-denying zeal think
   themselves to be nothing and Christ to be all in all; where the
   missionary leaves his kindred that he may die among the swarthy
   heathen; where the young man renounces brilliant prospects that he may
   be the humble servant of Jesus; where yonder work-girl toils night and
   day to earn her bread rather than sell her soul; where yonder toiling
   laborer stands up for the rights of conscience against the demands of
   the mighty; where yonder struggling believer still holds to God in all
   his troubles, saying--"Though he slay me yet will I trust in him"--God
   is in that place, and he that has eyes to see will soon perceive his
   presence there. Where the sigh is heaving, where the tear is falling,
   where the song is rising, where the desire is mounting, where love is
   burning, hope anticipating, faith abiding, joy o'erflowing, patience
   suffering, and zeal abounding, God is surely present. In the temple of
   the human heart, consecrating it unto himself. In all these three
   kingdoms then, my brethren, let us never forget that "God is in this
   place."

   I shall turn from this point when I have just made the remark that we
   are still so apt to think that God is not here. You remember that
   splendid picture which God himself gives--"Heaven is my throne, and
   earth is my footstool." You have seen, perhaps, the drawings of those
   wonderful statues which amid the ruined temples of Egypt, lift their
   heads into the very clouds. They sit upon their awful thrones
   continually, men of common stature reach no higher than the pedestals
   of their feet, while these gigantic ones tower upwards into the very
   sky. Now consider these to be but a minute representation, and let the
   colossal figure of Deity rise before your mind. Heaven is his throne,
   and there he sits; earth is his footstool, and here are his feet; while
   higher than angels fly is the head of the All-glorious One. We cannot
   comprehend the Lord at all, but we may think of him as he represents
   himself to us; he does it, you know, under human representations--let
   us then get the human representation into our mind. He is greater than
   the greatest thought--his head higher than heaven; his feet lower than
   the deepest hell; earth his footstool; heaven his throne. Do not let us
   think that he is ever absent here, for if his face be seen in heaven,
   the skirts of his garments are trailing over the whole earth. We are
   never at a distance from him; he is here, there, and everywhere; with
   you and with me, very present at every time and in every circumstances.
   I cannot bring out the truth more clearly than that; I therefore leave
   it to pass on to the second head.

   II. BUT HOW ARE WE TO RECOGNISE THIS PRESENCE OF GOD? "What is the
   Spirit which shall enable us constantly to feel it? The presence of
   electricity is very soon discovered by those bodies which are
   susceptible of its action. The presence, for instance, of iron in a
   vessel is very soon detected and discovered by the magnetic needle.
   There is an affinity between them. That carnal men should not discover
   God here I do not wonder at: that they should even say, "There is no
   God," is no marvel, because there is nothing in their nature akin to
   him, and therefore they do not perceive him. They lack all the affinity
   that can discover his presence.

   To commence, then. If you would feel God's presence, you must have an
   affinity to his nature. Your soul must have the spirit of adoption, and
   it will soon find out its Father. Your spirit must have a desire after
   holiness, and it will soon discover the presence of Him who is holiness
   itself. Your mind must be heavenly, and you will soon detect that the
   God of Heaven is here. The more nearly we become like God, the more
   sure shall we be that God is where we are. To a man who has reached the
   highest stage of sanctification the presence of God becomes a more sure
   fact than the presence of anything else beside. In fact, he may even
   get to such a state that he will look upon the fields, streets,
   inhabitants and events of the world as a dream, a passing background,
   while the only real thing to him will be the unseen God which his new
   nature so clearly manifests to him, that his faith becomes the evidence
   of things not seen, the substance of things which sense cannot
   perceive. Likeness to God is first necessary for the clear perception
   of his presence. Next, there must be a calmness of spirit. God was in
   the place when Jacob came there that night, but he did not know it, for
   he was alarmed about his brother Esau; he was troubled, and vexed, and
   disturbed. He fell asleep, and his dream calmed him; he awoke
   refreshed; the noise of his troubled thoughts was gone and heard the
   voice of God.

   "In solemn silence of the mind,

   My heaven and there my God I find."

   More quiet we want, more quiet, more calm retirement, before we shall
   well be able, even with spiritual minds, to discover the sensible
   presence of God.

   But then, next Jacob had in addition to this calm of mind--a revelation
   of Christ. That ladder, as I have said in the exposition, was a picture
   of Christ, the way of access between man and God. You will never
   perceive God in nature, until you have learned to see God in grace. We
   have heard a great deal about going up from nature to nature's God.
   Impossible! A man might as well attempt to go from the top of the Alps
   to heaven. There is still a long gulf between nature and God to the
   natural mind. You must first of all perceive God incarnate in the flesh
   of Christ, before you will perceive God in the creation which he has
   made. We have heard a great deal about men worshipping in the forest
   glades, who never frequent the sanctuary of the saints. You have heard
   much, but there was little truth in it. There is often great sound
   where there is much emptiness, and you will frequently find that those
   men who talk most of this natural worship are those who do not worship
   God at all. God's works are too gross a medium to allow the light, and
   the road to him is a rugged one if we go the way of the creatures. But
   when I see Christ, I see God's new and living way, between my soul and
   my God, most clear and pleasant. I come to my God at once, and finding
   him in Christ, I find him everywhere else besides.

   More than this, no man will perceive God, wherever he may be, unless he
   knows that God has made a promise to be with him and is able by faith
   to look to the fulfillment of it. In Jacob's case God said, "I will be
   with thee whithersoever thou goest, and I will not leave thee."
   Christian, have you heard the same? Is the twenty-third Psalm the song
   of your faith? "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
   death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." Have you consciously
   perceived that though men forsook you, God stood with you? Could you
   join the song of one who said,

   "When trouble like a gloomy cloud

   Has gathered thick and thunder'd loud,

   He near my side hath always stood,

   His loving-kindness O how good!"

   Then to you it will not be difficult to perceive the presence of God.
   You will in fact look upon it as so real that when you open your eyes
   in the morning, you will look for him with praise, and when you close
   them at night, it will only be that you may repose under the shadow of
   his wings. I wish we could get back to the spirit of the old Puritans,
   they believed in a present God always. We speculate about the laws of
   nature, we are always talking about organic matter and so on, but with
   them it was God and God alone. We look to the barometer about the rain,
   and very properly in some sense, they looked to God, and they prayed
   God either to stay the bottles of heaven, or to pour down the
   refreshing floods upon the thirsty earth. We are talking about
   attraction, finding out the laws by which the worlds are governed, the
   Puritans looked to the Lawgiver rather than to the law, and to the
   present power of God manifest in his present hand, rather than to any
   power which some dream may exist in matter itself, or in the laws of
   matter. Oh to feel God everywhere, in the little as well as in the
   great, in our risings up and in our sittings down, in our goings forth
   and in our comings in! I can conceive of no life more blessed, and of
   no Spirit more akin to the spirit of the glorified, than the mind and
   heart of the man who lives in God, and knows and feels that God is ever
   present with him.

   III. This brings me, very briefly, to one or two concluding remarks
   upon the PRACTICAL RESULTS OF A FULL RECOGNITION IN THE SOUL OF THIS
   DOCTRINE OF GOD'S OMNIPRESENCE.

   One of the first things would be to check our inordinate levity.
   Cheerfulness is a virtue: levity a vice. How much foolish talking, how
   much jesting which is not convenient, would at once end if we said,
   "Surely God is in this place." The next time you have been indulging in
   mirth--I mean not innocent mirth, but that which is connected with
   uncleanness, or with any sort of ill--think you see a finger lifted up,
   and you hear a voice saying, "Surely God is in this place." Let your
   recreation be free from sin; let your amusements be such that you can
   enjoy them while God looks on. If, too, we felt that God was in this
   place, how much oftener should we talk of him and of Christ. This
   afternoon what will many of you talk of? Sunday afternoon talk is
   generally a great difficulty to some professors. They do not like to go
   right down into what they think worldly conversation, so they generally
   talk about ministers. They consider that to be a spiritual subject; and
   generally, this talk about ministers is more wicked than talk about the
   devil himself, for I had rather you should speak religiously concerning
   Satan, than irreligiously concerning even the angels of the Churches.
   There is one tale retailed about this minister and another tale about
   the other, and the conversation ministers no edification. If they heard
   an angel say, "God is in this place," the afternoon of the day of rest
   would be spent in much more profitable conversation. But suppose that I
   have some here, to-day, who have been lately exposed to personal danger
   and peril; brethren, do you not think if in the midst of the storm, or
   in time of disease, you had heard a voice saying, "Surely God is in
   this place," you would have been perfectly at rest? The noxious air
   grows pure if he be there. The lightning cannot scathe, or if they
   scathe tis bliss; the storm cannot devour, nor can the hungry deep
   engulf; or, if they do, tis bliss if God be there: what need have you
   at any time to fear? What is your nervousness but wickedness, when the
   Eternal God is your certain refuge? A Christian in alarm at in the hand
   of his God, surely he distrusts his Father, and doubts the heart of
   infinite love! "God is in this place though I knew it not." I speak to
   some, too, who are in great poverty. You will go home to-day, and there
   are bare walls. Perhaps the seat you sit upon hath many of the rushes
   torn away and the table will be but very scantily furnished, and very
   homely at the best. "Well," but you will say, "surely God is in this
   place." What comfort for you! You may remember the old Christian's
   exclamation as you sit down for a blessing, "What, all this, and my God
   present with me!" Better this, and feel his presence, than be possessed
   of the best of the world's dainties and not know that he is here.
   Perhaps you have today some sore trouble at home. There is a Christian
   wife who has to go home to an ungodly husband, or sons and daughters
   who have to go home to a household which is anything but what it should
   be. Do not be afraid to go home, and as you cross the threshold, say,
   "Surely God is in this place." I think as John Bunyan passed over the
   threshold of the dungeon of Ledford Jail, if he could have known that
   he should be twelve years there, but that in those twelve years he
   would write the "Pilgrim's Progress," he would have said. "Surely God
   is in this place." And you, if you are called to enter a den such as
   Bunyan called his dungeon, can say, "Surely God is in this place," and
   you make it a palace at once. Some of you, too, are in very deep
   affliction. You are driven to such straits that you do not know where
   things will end, and you are in great despondency to-day. Surely God is
   in that place. As certain as there was one like unto the Son of God in
   the midst of the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, so
   surely on the glowing coals of your affliction the heavenly foot-prints
   may be seen, for surely God is in this place. You are called to-day to
   some extraordinary duty, and you do not feel strong enough for it. Go
   to it, for "Surely God is in this place." You have to address an
   assembly this afternoon for the first time. Surely God is in that
   place. He will help you. The arm will not be far off on which you have
   to lean, the divine strength not be remote to which you have to look.
   "Surely God is in this place."

   But were I to multiply pictures, I might not describe the condition of
   one-tenth of my hearers. Let me rather leave it to you or to the
   blessed Spirit of God to make an application to your own lot, and you
   shall find this to be a very well of comfort springing up with clear
   transparent water of life, "Surely God is in this place."

   And lastly, if we always remembered that God was where we are, what
   reverence would it inspire when we are in his house, in the place
   particularly and specially set apart for his service! I do not think we
   always feel in the assembly of the saints as we should do. It is not
   the place that is holy;--holiness cannot attach itself to anything but
   moral virtues and to intelligent beings. There cannot be holy bricks
   and holy stones,--the thing is absolutely impossible; but where two or
   three are met together in Christ's name, there is He in the midst of
   them. He is here, and yet how many come out of form and fashion. Some
   few think rather more of the dress they come in than they do of what
   they shall hear, or of what Spirit they shall come in. Oh! be dressed,
   stay not for another pin, but stay for another prayer it thou wilt,
   that thy soul may be dressed, for often thou comest with thy body
   decked out, but with thy soul naked before God for want of preparation
   in coming up to his house. And when we sit here, what thoughts come in!
   What buyers and sellers transact business here! How have some of you
   been looking to the cares of housewives, and some of you been busy with
   your shops! At home you do not take the shutters down on the Sunday,
   but you keep them up; I wish you would keep them up in your souls. You
   do not go into the field and look after the crops, but some men bring
   the crops into the house of God and look at them there. You would not
   take down the ledger and cast up your accounts to-day, (though some do
   that) but at the same time you have a ledger in your brains, and are
   busy with that when you ought to be thinking of your God. And I have
   noticed this, too, that in so large a house as this, where so many have
   to be occupied in showing persons to their seats, keeping the pews and
   arranging the services, there is such a tendency in the minds of such
   to have their minds dissipated from the solemn occupation in which they
   are engaged. I think there ought never to be employed in churches and
   chapels pew-openers who are not converted, for they will not be
   converted afterwards. I suppose the case of a pew-opener being
   converted after taking the office was never known. Those persons who
   have to do with the externals of the House are just those persons who
   seldom know anything of the internal. They are occupied with the shell;
   they can not think of the kernel. As with the grave digger and with
   undertaker's men, the least thoughtful of all, the most careless of all
   men, so is it with them who are most in the sanctuary, they are often
   furthest from God. Oh, may we remember "Surely God is in this place,"
   and it will give us awe when we come into his immediate presence!

   But once more, what a restraint from sin would this thought be if it
   could be painted upon our very soul! A man once took his child with him
   while he went out to steal from a neighbour's stack, and he said to the
   boy, "Look about you for fear anybody should see your father." The boy
   had read the Sculptures, so, having looked all round, his father said,
   "Have you looked all ways? "He said, "No, father, there is somebody
   looking." "Who is it?" "Father, you have not looked up, and there is
   God looking down upon you." The man's conscience was pricked. Sinner,
   you look round you, there is no one in the chamber, you perpetrate the
   crime. Look up! The father with murderous thoughts in his mind gets his
   son into an unfrequented lane, no eye he thinks beholds him, but the
   divine watcher looks on and finds helpmates on earth to keep watch too.
   Man, there are eyes in every wall. Nature is God's great photographer,
   photographing every act you do, nay, every thought that you feel as it
   prints itself upon your brain and upon your brow. You shall find at the
   last great day the picture of everything that you have done preserved,
   for he shall speak to the beam out of the sun and it shall tell what
   you said, and he shall speak to the sun itself and it shall reveal the
   picture of the uplifted hand and of the dark deed. You are always seen.
   Eyes watch you: through the thick darkness he beholdeth. The spirits
   which he sendeth abroad to and fro are ever at your elbow, and he
   himself is there. Now go and sin in the presence of God if thou darest.
   Curse him to the face if thou darest; go home to day to break his
   Sabbath if thou darest while he looks on. Surely men would not offend
   in the very presence of the Judge! They would not break the laws with
   the Lawgiver himself before their very eyes. Let him then abide in your
   thoughts.

   "Nor let your weaker passions dare

   Consent to sin, for God is there."
     __________________________________________________________________

                    The Joint Heirs and Their Divine Portion

   A Sermon

   (No. 402)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, July the 28th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Joint heirs with Christ."--Romans 8:17.

   THE APOSTLE has proceeded through a simple but exceedingly forcible
   train of reasoning till he gains this glorious point--"Joint heirs with
   Christ." He begins thus--"Ye have not received the spirit of bondage
   again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we
   cry, Abba, Father." This is a fact which he takes for granted because
   he has perceived it in the hearts of believers. We do cry, "Abba,
   Father." From this he infers that if God has given us the Spirit
   whereby we call him "Father," then we are his children, which is plain,
   fair, and clear reasoning. Then he adds--"If children then
   heirs"--though this does not hold true in all families, because all
   children are not heirs, frequently the first-born may take all the
   estate; but with God so long as they are children they have equal
   rights. "If children then heirs." He goes on to say, "Heirs of God;"
   for if they are heirs they inherit their Father's property. God is
   their Father, they are therefore God's heirs! Well, but God hath
   another Son, one who is the first-born of every creature. Exactly so,
   therefore if we be heirs, as Christ Jesus is the heir of all things, we
   are "joint heirs with Christ." I think you will see that, like links in
   a chain, these different truths draw each other on--the spirit of
   adoption proves the fact of adoption; by the act of adoption we are
   children; if children then heirs; if heirs, heirs of God; but since
   there is another heir, we must therefore be joint heirs with Christ
   Jesus. Blessed is the man to whom this reasoning is not abstract, but
   experimental. Happy is he who can follow the apostle step by step, and
   say, "Yes, I have this morning the spirit of a son; I know that my
   heart loves God, and I look to him as my Father, with trust, with
   confidence, and with love; then I am surely his son, because I have the
   Spirit a son; then I am his heir; I am the heir of God; and thus my
   faith lays hold upon the thrice-precious words of this glorious text--I
   am joint heir with Christ."

   I would invite you, my brethren in Christ Jesus, this morning, to do
   three things; first, let us consider the terms of the will--"joint
   heirs with Christ;" secondly, let us go forth and view the
   estates--what it is of which we are joint heirs; and when we have done
   so, let us proceed at once to administer, for God hath made his
   children administrators as web as heirs.

   I. First, then, there is A LEGAL TERM IN THE WILL UPON WHICH THE WHOLE
   MATTER WILL HINGE. We are called "joint heirs with Christ"--what
   meaneth this?

   1. It means, first of all, that our right to the divine heritage stands
   or falls with Christ's right to the same inheritance. We are co-heirs;
   if he be truly an heir, so are we; and if he be not, neither are we.
   Our two interests are intertwined and made one, we have neither of us
   any heirship apart from the other; we are joint heirs, Christ jointly
   with us; ourselves jointly with Christ. So, then, it follows that if
   there be any flaw in the will, so that it be not valid, if it be not
   rightly signed, sealed, and delivered, then it is no more valid for
   Christ than it is for us. If there be some points in the covenant of
   grace where wisdom has been deficient, and therefore by error it may
   miscarry, or by lack of legal right may prove null and void, it is as
   surely null towards Christ as towards ourselves, for he is jointly
   concerned therein. If according to law we are only heirs-presumptive,
   whose rights may be superseded, then our great joint heir, so far as he
   is co-heir with us, is superseded also. If it be possible that by some
   decree in heaven's high court, it should be certified and determined
   that the inheritance is not rightly ours, because some one part of the
   covenant was left in a precarious state so that it became void and of
   no effect, then, thine inheritance, O thou King of kings, has failed
   thee in the very day when it hath failed us. I trust you will lay hold
   upon that thought; if Christ as God's heir has a perfect right to what
   his Father has bestowed upon him, even so have we, for our rights are
   nonexistent. If our title be true and just, so is his, and if his
   rights of heritage be true and just, so are ours. Oh! blessed thought
   for the believer! Jesus must lose the reward of his agonies before we
   can lose the fruits of them. Jesus the Mediator must lose the glory
   which his finished work has procured for him, ere one of his co-heirs
   can miss of it; he must come down from that glory which he now
   inhabiteth, and cease to be honored as "the Lamb that was slain, and
   hath redeemed us unto God by his blood," if any one of his people shall
   be deprived of that glory, and be cast into hell. The will, if valid
   for one, is valid for all.

   But perhaps there may be a suit in law made against the will; some
   antagonist may set up a counter claim; an enemy to the entire family
   may proceed at once to attack the will with venom and with malice; he
   may take it into the Heavenly Court of Chancery, and there, before the
   great Judge, the question may be tried as to whether the inheritance be
   legally and lawfully ours. Very well, be it so; but then it is Christ's
   interest that is at stake as well as mine; he will be co-respondent in
   the suit. When Satan stood forth to accuse Joshua, the high priest, he
   did in effect accuse Christ as well as that chosen disciple, and the
   Lord was not slow to put in his rejoinder to the objection: "The Lord
   rebuke thee, O Satan, even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke
   thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? "If Satan bring an
   accusation before God against any of the Lord's redeemed, that
   accusation is made against the Redeemer himself, for God's people are
   so one with Christ, that you must first bring the charge against Christ
   himself ere you dare to lay it against any of his elect. Do not say
   you: can charge the members with sin; you may do so in the inferior
   courts of earth, but the bill will be ignored in the supreme court of
   heaven, since before that bar the accepted substitute appears to answer
   an demands. You must enter your suit against the Head if you would
   attack the members, for verily the action at law which can be pleaded
   against the member of the body must be pleaded against the Head itself,
   for no court can allow a distinction between the body and the head in
   an notion at law. If it be possible that the malice and the graft of
   hell could invent some scheme by which the covenant could he put out of
   court, and the promise of grace could be made to fail, then Christ
   fails with his people, and the heir of all things loses his inheritance
   as soon as one single one of the other heirs shall have his right to
   the inheritance disproved. Our rights are joint rights, and most be
   either jointly acknowledged or jointly denied. "We are joint heirs with
   Christ."

   Yet, further, to illustrate the full meaning of the joint
   heirship--suppose, after the via had been proved and acknowledged to be
   right, it shall be found in winding up the affairs of the testator,
   that nothing is left to distribute--suppose, after all this boast and
   talk about being heirs, the property should be nil, or there should
   even be found a debt against the estate--what then? Why, my brethren,
   if we get nothing, Christ gets nothing; if there should for us, there
   is no heaven for Christ. If there should be no thrones for us, there
   would be no throne for him; if the promise should utterly fail of
   fulfillment to the least of the joint heritors, it must also fail of
   accomplishment to our Lord Jesus Christ himself. Be the property much
   or little, we are co-heirs; if there be infinite treasures, Christ hath
   them, and we have them; but if there be no treasure whatever, and faith
   should end in disappointment, and hope in despair, the calamity which
   impoverishes us must also impoverish our great co-heir. When we are
   poor, and in eternity have no shelter; when we in the next world shall
   find no heaven and no bliss,--then, wandering as outcast orphans, we
   shall see our Elder Brother an outcast orphan too; if we be portionless
   and penniless, the Firstborn among many brethren must be portionless
   and penniless also, for with him we stand or we fall.

   And then suppose that, in winding up the estates, it should be found
   that, though there be something left, yet it be a mere trifle, scarcely
   worth an acknowledgment: enough to excite appetite but not sufficient
   to satisfy it--what if it should come out at last, that heaven is not
   the infinite joy we have been taught to expect; suppose its bliss
   should be but inferior joy, such as might be found even in this world
   below--suppose that the harps have no melody, the crowns but little
   glory, and heaven's streets but slight magnificence--what then? What
   they are to us they are to our co-heir. Saints with little glory, then
   Christ with little glory; believers with a narrow heaven, then Christ
   with a narrow heaven. If they drink but little from the river of
   pleasure, his draughts must be shallow too, for their joy is his joy,
   and his glory he has given them. He shall see of the travail of his
   soul and shall be satisfied, and ye who long for his appearing shall be
   satisfied also when ye wake up in his likeness.

   I have been dwelling upon the black side in order to bring the bright
   one out by contrast. We are joint heirs. So you see if there be any
   flaw, if there be any action to set aside the will, or if there be
   found no effects, or if the effects be slender, the loss falleth upon
   the co-heirs; not on one alone, nor on the other alone, but on the two,
   since they are jointly designated heirs in the will, and they are only
   heirs as they stand in relationship with one another. But oh! my
   brethren, let us revel with delight for a moment in the contrast which
   I might present to you. There is no flaw in God's will with regard to
   Christ. The heathen may rage, and the kings of the earth take counsel
   together, but God saith, "I will declare the decree, yet have I set my
   Son upon any holy hill of Zion." There is no fear whatever that, by any
   accident or by mistake, Christ should miss the honor to which his
   Father hath ordained him, he must be with his Father where he is. Just
   as little fear is there for you and for me if we be heirs of God. Thus
   runs the decree, and thus shall the fulfillment follow--"I will that
   they whom thou hast given me be with me where I am." No suit in law can
   stand against Christ; it were idle to dream it for a moment He has
   satisfied God's law, magnified it and made it honorable; he has
   discharged all the debts which as surety he took upon himself. Who
   shall accuse the Redeemer? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of him
   who rose again from the dead? Nor can any creature accuse his saints,
   nor can heaven, or earth, or hell disprove our rights or infringe upon
   our title so long as his title stands undisputed and indisputable. We
   shall see his face; the devils in hell cannot hinder it; we shall
   possess the promised rest, still the fiends that are beneath shall not
   rob us of the heirloom. And, believer, there is no fear that Christ
   shall be the possessor of nothing or heir of little things. He is the
   Son of God the infinitely rich, and God will not give to his Son a
   petty dowry or a trifling portion. "Ask of me," saith he, and he gives
   him unlimited permission to ask, not as Herod who would give only the
   half of his kingdom, but as one who would give everything to his Son
   whom he hath appointed heir of all things, and by whom he make the
   worlds. And O my soul, thy portion cannot be slender nor thy dowry
   narrow, since it is the same inheritance which Christ has from his
   Father's hands. Weigh the riches of Christ in scales and his treasures
   in balances and then think to count the treasures which belong to the
   saints. Reach the bottom of Christ's sea of joy, and then hope to
   understand the bliss which God hath prepared for them that love him.
   Overleap the boundaries of Christ's possession if you can, and then
   dream of ending a limit to the possessions of the elect of God. "All
   things are yours, for ye are Christ's and Christ is God's."

   2. There is another point under the first head which I must not omit.
   Then it appears if we are called joint heirs with Christ, we legally
   and strictly have no inheritance apart from him. Soul, this suggests to
   thee a solemn enquiry, "Art thou in Christ or not?" Think not that thou
   canst ever be a partaker of the fullness of God Unless thou art in
   Christ--with him vitally and personally, one. One of two joint heirs
   has no right apart from the other. The signature of the one will not
   avail to alienate the estate, nor can he sell it by his own right, nor
   have it all at his own separate disposal, or in his own sole possession
   or holding. He has, in fact, no right at all, except as he is taken in
   connection with his co-heir. Consider this, believer. You have no right
   to heaven in yourself; your right lieth in Christ. If you be pardoned,
   it is through his blood; if you be justified, it is through his
   righteousness; if you be sanctified, it is because he is made of God
   unto you sanctification; if you be taught in the ways of God, it is
   because he becomes your wisdom; if you shall be kept from falling it
   will be because you are preserved in Christ Jesus; and if you are
   perfected, it is because you are complete in him, and if you be
   glorified at the last, it will be because God the Father hath glorified
   his Son Jesus. The promises are yea and amen to thee, but only in
   Christ Jesus, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being
   predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh at things
   after the counsel of his own will. Make thou thyself assured, then,
   that thou art in union with Christ, for out of him thou hast no rights
   whatever.

   3. The title of joint heir contains another mystery which I cannot
   withhold, although it must be judiciously handled--Christ, as coheir,
   has (of his own free grace) so identified himself with what his rights
   as co-heir are not to be separated or viewed apart from ours. As God,
   by his own right, the Lord Jesus is possessor of all things, since he
   made and supports all things; but as Jesus, the mediator, the federal
   head of the covenant of grace, he hath no rights apart from his people.
   See, brethren, he enters into glory, but not for himself alone, for it
   is written, "Whither the forerunner is for us entered." Hebrews 6:20.
   Does he stand in the presence of God--he appears in the presence of God
   for us; Hebrews 9:24. Adam's death was not simply his own private loss,
   for in Adam all died, and Christ's life and all the consequences of his
   obedience are not merely his own, but the joint riches of all who are
   in him, of whom he is the federal head, and on whose behalf he
   accomplished the divine will. When Christ gave himself for us, he gave
   us all the rights and privileges which went with himself, so that now
   he has, as our Brother, no heritage apart from us, although, as Eternal
   God, he hath essential rights to which no creature may venture to
   pretend.

   Yet one more remark before we leave this point. While dwelling upon
   this joint heirship, let us remark what an honor is conferred upon us.
   To have anything to do with a great man is thought by some persons to
   be a distinguished mark of honor; to be set down in a will as co-heir
   with some great prince or noble would be considered indeed a great
   thing; but what honor is conferred on thee, believer, to be joint heir
   with the King of kings, the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God,
   the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace! Thou camest here to-day
   from thy toil, and thy bones have scarce forgotten yesterday's
   weariness; but thou art coheir with him who rules all heaven; thou art
   come here in poverty and thou wilt go home to a scant meal in a narrow
   room, but thou art co-heir with him who made the worlds, by whom: all
   thinks consist; you have come here weak and feeble, doubting,
   distrustful, and cast down, but I tell thee, weak though thou be, and
   in thine own judgment less than the least of all yet the same hand that
   wrote Christ heir of all things wrote thy name with his, and till a
   hand can be found that can blot out thy Redeemer's name thine shall
   stand and abide fair ever and ever. Come, lift up thine head; envy no
   man his dukedom; think no man's princeship worth thy coveting; thou art
   greater than the greatest, for thou art joint heir with Christ; in
   dignified relationship thou hast no superior upon earth; and except
   those who are joint heirs with thee, thou hast not an equal, since thou
   art joint heir with Christ. And wilt thou think, yet again, what cause
   there is that thou shouldest realize to-day thy union with Christ,
   since thou art joint heir with him. Soul, thou art linked with Christ
   in the Eternal business of the Eternal Father. When he decreed Christ
   to be blessed above all the blessed, he decreed thee to be a partaker
   with him. Christ was always considered as having you in him, and you
   were always considered by God as being in Christ. I pray you consider
   yourself as being in Christ. Look to-day upon thine own being, not as a
   stray spark, but as a portion of Christ's fire, not as a solitary drop,
   but as a part of that deep sea of love which we can Christ Jesus. Think
   of thyself now, not as a man or separate individual, but as a member of
   his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. These are blessed subjects,
   though I cannot speak upon them as I would. I always find when I have
   to deal with these "fat things full of marrow," that words fail us; and
   perhaps it is well, for then the excellency of the power is proved to
   be not by words of man but in the weight, and fullness, and richness of
   gospel matter. Joint heirs with Christ Jesus! I defy you to exhaust
   that topic, though you should think about it all the days of the next
   week, nay, though you should muse upon it till eternity commences with
   your soul.

   II. IN VIEWING THE ESTATES we must remark that to our present
   apprehension they are divided into two parts, the first part of the
   inheritance is one which flesh and blood would fain do without--it is
   the inheritance of suffering. When Christ was God's heir, and was here
   on earth, he was heir of the cross, heir of shame, and spitting, and
   cruel mockings, and scourgings. If we are joint heirs with him, we,
   too, must partake of the same. Come with me, believer, to your estates,
   and behold, just on the edge of your Father's great inheritance, lies
   the swamp and morass of affliction. Now this is yours. If this be not
   yours, neither are the rest, for they are in the same indenture, and
   they are beg seethed to you in the same will. The same legacy that left
   peace with you, also left tribulation with you, while you are in this
   world. Come now, though this be an exceedingly noisome spot, though it
   be a piece of ground which thou wouldst fain leave out and give to
   thine enemies, yet there is a possibility of getting great treasure and
   great riches out of it; therefore do not scorn it. But if thou scorn
   it, remember, thou scornest the rest of the inheritance, for they are
   all one and indivisible in your Father's will. Christ's cross is
   entailed on all heirs of God. Will you take the cross? What! do thy
   shoulders forbid, and refuse themselves the pain of bearing it? Then,
   remember, thy head must deny itself the pleasure of wearing the crown.
   No cross no crown. If you are joint heir and would claim one part of
   the estate, you must take the rest. Are you ready to throw up your own
   claim, and say, "I will not be heir of anything?" Be it so, then; but
   until you are, you must be ready to suffer in this world the
   afflictions of the chosen eons, for they are a part of the inheritance.
   But, remember, Christ is coheir with you in this. "In all their
   afflictions he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved
   them." Added to this you must also be the heir of persecution. Christ
   had to be persecuted and so must you. If you, for fear of shame, and
   out of the love of the flesh, will not follow Christ through an evil
   generation, neither shall you follow him when he marches through the
   streets of heaven in triumph, amidst the acclamations of angels. You
   must endure persecution; but then, remember, he will be joint heir with
   you. "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" "He had not persecuted
   Christ," you say, "it was only some poor men and women that he had
   haled to prison, or scourged in the synagogue, to compel them to
   blaspheme." Ay, but Christ was co-heir with theirs, and when Saul
   persecuted the poor servants of Jesus, he pet the Master too. Will you
   be sharers with him? Will you be scoffed at for his sake? Will you be
   willing to endure the revilings of slanderous tongues?--for if not,
   inasmuch as you reject one part of the inheritance you reject the rest.
   There is a third black portion, too, namely, temptation. You must be
   tempted of Satan, you must be tried by the world, the flesh, of the
   devil. Do you shrink from it? Do you say, "I would not be a Christian,
   if I must always be on my guard, and always fighting against temptation
   from without and from within?" Remember, in this, too, Christ is your
   co-heir. "He was tempted in all points like as we are." "We have not an
   High Priest that cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities."
   Do you shrink from being tempted? Would you take Job's jewels, but not
   his dung-hill? Would you have David's crown, but not his caves of
   Adullam, and rocks of the wild goats? Would you have your Master's
   throne, but not his temptation in the wilderness? Then, remember, it
   cannot be; when you refuse the one, you relinquish all claim to the
   other. The co-heir is heir to the entire estate; and if he says, "No,
   not to that portion," then he is not heir to any; and if he makes
   exemption anywhere, he makes exemption to the whole. The joint heirship
   reaches from the gloomy patina of deep affliction up to the bright
   ineffable splendor of the throne of bliss, nor can any man reverse the
   record. "If so be that we suffer with him, we shall also be glorified
   together."

   Now, let us march with joyful footsteps onward to the other part of the
   inheritance. As this is a legal question, and as in matters of wills
   everything should be proven and sworn to, let us have, concerning our
   inheritance, the evidence of God: that cannot lie. Now, first,
   brethren, as co-heirs with Christ, we are heirs of God--so the text
   tells us. Oh! who can tell what God is? The finite cannot grasp the
   infinite. We who are but babes cannot hold the great ocean of Godhead
   in our infantile palms. We know not what God is, nor the measure of his
   attributes. But, remember, the text tells us that all God is, is ours.
   Is he omnipotent? Thine omnipotence is ours, O God, to be our defense.
   Is he omniscient? Thine infinite wisdom, O God, is mine to guide me. Is
   he eternal? Thine eternity, O God, is mine to keep me in existence,
   that I may ever be preserved. Is he full of love and grace? Then all
   thy love, as though there were not another to be loved, is mine, O God,
   and all thy grace, as though there were never another sinner to partake
   of it, is mine. "The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my
   cup."--Psalm 16:5. "God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for
   ever."--Psalm 63:26. Take another passage. Turn to Romans, the
   4:chapter, 13th verse and you will find that there the promise that was
   made to the seed was that he should be heir of the world. "Ask of me,"
   said his rather, "and I will give thee the heathen for thy inheritance,
   and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." "This world
   is ours," says the apostle in another place, and ours because it is
   Christ's by right of inheritance. There is nothing here below which
   does not belong to a believer. If he hath wealth, let him use it in his
   Master's service, for it is his. If he hath poverty, it is better for
   him, for poverty is his to help him, to be sanctified, and to long for
   heaven. Whatever happens to him--sickness or health, adversity or
   prosperity, everything is his here below. You may walk the broad acres
   of this round globe, and never look upon a single spot that is not
   yours. You may cast your eye to the remotest star, or send your
   thoughts beyond into the untraversed leagues of space, but look where
   you will, as all is Christ's, so all is yours. You have not come of
   age, so you do not possess it yet, but the day shall come when Christ
   shall come to this earth, and take possession of it, and then his
   saints shall reign with him. "The meek shall inherit the earth, and
   delight themselves with the abundance of peace." In Hebrews 1:2., we
   are told that God has appointed Christ heir of all things. Then we are
   heirs of all things--heaven and earth, time and eternity, anything that
   you can conceive of the things that can be named and cannot be named,
   things conceivable and inconceivable, finite and infinite, human and
   divine. Christ's property extends to all, and we are co-heirs.
   Therefore, our rights and our property extend to all things whatsoever
   they may be. "For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or
   Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things
   to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Then
   in James 2:5., we are spoken of as being heirs of the kingdom. Christ
   hath a kingdom that shall never be moved. He ruleth over all. Doth he
   call himself a King? he hath made us kings. Is Christ a priest? We are
   priests unto our God. Dries he sit upon a throne? We shall overcome and
   sit down with him upon his throne. Will he judge the nations? Know ye
   not that the saints shall judge the world! Will he be received with
   triumph by his Father? So shall we when his Father shall say, "Well
   done, good and faithful servant." Will he be ruler over many things? So
   shall we be when he shall say unto us, "Enter ye into the joy of your
   Lord." Hath he joy? We shall have joy too, for we shall have his joy.
   Is he glorious? So must we be, for we shall be made like him. Is he
   everlasting? So shall we be, for because he lives, we shall live also.
   Brethren, I pray you, if your thoughts now can bring themselves to the
   matter, gather up all the honors, glories, treasures, riches, that your
   thought have ever conceived as belonging to Christ, and while the hymn
   is ringing in your ear--"Crown him, crown him, crown him, Lord of all;"
   remember that you are co-heirs with him. Oh! it is a glorious truth.
   Oratory may stand back, and eloquence may hold her tongue. The doctrine
   must be stated in its naked truth. She is, "when unadorned, adorned the
   most." This glorious truth is most sweet when earth's honeyed words are
   taken away, and most lustrous when we no longer attempt to illuminate
   her with human language. We are heirs with Christ. All that he has, all
   that he is, therefore, belongeth to us.

   III. Now, thirdly, and this is the practical part of the discourse, let
   us proceed to ADMINISTER TO THE EFFECTS. How can we do that, say you?
   Well, in the first place, there is one part of the property which we
   may enjoy at once. Behold, I present to you the fair cross of your once
   crucified Elder Brother. When you came here this morning you were
   troubled, and as you came in you were envying your neighbor. You were
   saying of such-and-such an ungodly person, "Everything seems to go well
   with him, but as for me, all the day long am I plagued, and chastened
   every morning." You were murmuring at the dispensations of God. Now,
   you have heard your Father's will read, and you find that you are joint
   heirs with Christ. You discover that Christ had his cross, and you are
   asked to administer to the will. Come, take your cross up and bear it
   with joy. You will have to carry it. Whether you take it up or not,
   your murmuring will not lighten your afflictions. You can make your
   wooden cross into an iron one, if you choose, by being of a fretful
   disposition. Resignation to God's will takes the weight out of the
   cross, but a proud spirit that will not bow to God's will change a
   wooden cross into an iron one. Now which shall it be! You must be
   chastened, you must feel the goad; will you kick against the pricks and
   so wound yourself more than you would have been by the goad itself? Why
   will you inflict more sorrow on yourself than God indicts? Be patient,
   and you only feel the rod as it is in God's hands, but when you are
   impatient and clutch at the rod, you briny it down with the weight of
   God's hand and your own hand too. Now be quiet. Not only be quiet, but
   be glad. Say, "I count it to be my joy to be permitted to be a partaker
   of the sufferings of Christ. I will count it to be my highest glory if
   I may be made a knight of the cross, and may carry that cross upon my
   shoulder: to the world a badge of dishonor, but to me the ensign of
   glory, the escutcheon of honor. I cannot of course picture what your
   precise trouble is. Some of you have a trouble perhaps, in her who is
   dearest to you. Others of you have affliction in your children, many of
   you are tried in your business, and some of you in your bodies with
   chronic or acute diseases. I know you have an a cross, or if you have
   not, I hope you will soon have one, for where there is no cross there
   is no Christ. The cross and Christ are nailed together by four nails,
   and they will never be disassociated in the experience of any
   Christian. All the sheep of the Great Shepherd are marked with the
   cross, and this not only in the fleece, but in the flesh. "If ye be
   without chastisement whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards
   and not sons. "Now, I say begin at once to administer, by shouldering
   the cross and bearing your troubles and your persecutions with patience
   and with joy.

   But next: why cannot we administer also to the blessed part of the
   glorious testament! Brethren, faith can do wonders. While sense is
   grovelling down below, faith with eagle wing cuts through the cloud and
   mounts to heaven. If you have faith enough brethren, you may this
   mourning be raised up to sit together in heavenly places with Christ
   Jesus. Come, faith, and help me now to lay my fingers among the strings
   of the golden harp. Yea, that harp is mine, and my soul by faith would
   make every string resound with melody. Glory be unto thee, O God, glory
   be unto thee; my soul is in heaven, I with the cherubim and seraphim
   would bow, and sing, and rejoice with them I veil my face in this most
   joyful moment wiping every tear from my poor eyes, I bid them look upon
   thy glory in Christ. My soul would even now take her seat upon the
   throne; where my treasure is, there shall my heart be also.

   "Even now I will adore him,

   With the glorious hosts above,

   Who for ever bow before him,

   And unceasing sing his love.

   I will begin the music here.

   And so my soul shall rise;

   Oh! for some heavenly note to, bear

   My passions to the skies.

   E'en now by faith I join my hands

   With those that went before.

   All hail! ye blood-besprinkled bands

   Upon the eternal shore."

   Oh! holy Immanuel, exalted as thou art, thy co-heirs here below begin
   by faith to partake of thy glory. Methinks my head wears the crown; the
   white robe is girt about me, and my feet tread no more the battle
   fields, but the streets of peaceful bliss. Jerusalem, my spirit is come
   to thee, and unto thy glorious assembly. O ye first-born whose names
   are written in heaven, I take my seat with you and join your rapturous
   adoration. O God, thou Judge of all, my spirit meets thee robed in my
   Saviour's righteousness, and salutes thee as my Father and my all. O
   eternity, eternity eternity!--time is gone, and change is over, and I
   am floating on thy pacific waves where winds can never howl and
   tempests never lower. My soul hath made me like the chariots of
   Aminadib, and I have gotten me away to the hills of myrrh and the
   mountains of frankincense.

   Last of all, I have another practical point. God has given Christ the
   heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost ends of the earth for
   his possession, and we are co-heirs with him. Brethren, let us advance
   to take the property. But how! Why some of you can do so by preaching
   the gospel to poor sinners in the streets. Others, this afternoon, by
   teaching your children in the class. You can say, "God has given these
   souls to Christ, I am going to take them in Christ's name." Others of
   you who can do little yourselves, can this day assist by sending forth
   men of God to preach the gospel of Christ. Germany belongs not to the
   cloudy philosopher, but to Christ. Holland, Belgium, Russia, and
   Poland, belong not to their kings and czars, Christ is the King of
   kings, these lands belong to us. Go up; take them. Say not, "There are
   giants in the land," ye are strong enough to smite them. Say not,
   "Lutheranism and Popery are mighty." So they are, but he that is with
   you is mightier far. As Jonathan of old, with his armor, climbed up the
   steep place in the cleft of the rock and began to mow down his enemies,
   so, believer, alone or with your friend, as God has called you, climb
   up, for verily the possession is yours, and you may take it. All that
   the Church wants to-day is courage and devotion. Let but the Church
   know her rights and claim them, let her cease to assimilate herself to
   the sons of earth, let her cease from her accursed fornication with the
   state, and she shall become the pure, chaste bride of Christ. Let her,
   then, as Christ's queen, claim the earth as hers, and send her heralds
   forth from sea to sea to bid all men bow before him, and confess him to
   be their King. God's power will be with her heralds, God's might shall
   be with her armies, and the earth shall soon submit, and Christ shall
   reign for ever and ever. "Say to the North, give up, and to the South,
   keep not back; bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends
   of the earth." Say it, Christians, say it this morning; say it by your
   prayer, your deeds, your constant energy, say it by your benefactions,
   demand the earth for Christ, demand it for yourselves, for ye are
   "joint heirs with Christ." I pray you take the possession now.

   Poor prodigal sinner, may our Father bring thee home, for there is an
   inheritance even for thee. "Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be
   saved."
     __________________________________________________________________

                               The Broken Column

   A Sermon

   (No. 403)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, August the 4th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee: but"--Luke 9:61.

   WHEN YOU have walked through a cemetery, you have frequently seen over
   a grave a broken column, intended to memorialize the death of some one
   who was taken away in the prime of manhood, before as yet his life had
   come to its climax. I shall take that picture of the broken column to
   represent my text. It is a broken text. You expected me to go on and to
   conclude the sentence: I have broken it off abruptly. That broken
   column shall also represent the broken resolutions of full many who
   were once in a hopeful state. As if prepared to witness a good
   profession, they said, "Lord, I will follow thee," when there came a
   heavy blow from the withering hand of sin; and the column was broken
   short with a "but." So let my text stand. I will not finish it. But so
   let not your determination stand. The Lord grant by his effectual grace
   that while you mourn with sincere grief the grave of many a fair
   resolve which never attained the maturity of true discipleship--cut off
   with the fatal "but" of indecision, you may now be quickened to newness
   of life. Thus you shall come to the fullness of the stature of a man in
   Christ. Thus, as a building fitly framed together and growing to
   completeness, you shall be made meet for a habitation of God through
   the Spirit.

   "Lord, I will follow thee: but--." How remarkably does Scripture prove
   to us that the mental characteristics of mankind are the same now as in
   the Saviour's day! We occasionally hear stories of old skeletons being
   dug up which are greater in stature than men of these times. Some
   credit the story, some do not, for there be many who maintain that the
   physical conformation of man is at this day just what it always was.
   Certainly, however, there can be no dispute whatever among observant
   men as to the identity of the inner nature of man. The gospel of Christ
   may well be an unchanging gospel, for it is a remedy which has to deal
   with an unaltering disease. The very same objections which were made to
   Christ in the days of his flesh are made to his gospel now. The same
   effects are produced under the ministry of Christ's servants in these
   modern times as were produced by his own ministry. Still are the
   promised hopes which make glad the preacher's heart, blasted and
   withered by the same blights and the same mildews which of old withered
   and blasted the prospects of the ministry during our Lord's own
   personal sojourn in the world. Oh! what hundreds, nay, what myriads of
   persons have we whose consciences are aroused, whose judgments are a
   little enlightened, and yet they vacillate--they live and die
   unchanged. Like Reuben, "unstable as water, they do not excel." They
   would follow Christ, but something lies in the way: they would join
   with him in this generation, but some difficulty suggests itself: they
   would enter the kingdom of heaven, but there is a lion in the street.
   They lie in the bed of the sluggard instead of rising up with vigor and
   striving to enter in at the strait gate. May the Holy Ghost in all the
   plenitude of his power be with us this morning, so that while I shall
   deal with the character indicated by the text, He may deal with the
   conscience of those assembled. I can merely attempt what He can
   effectually perform. I can but speak the words; it is for Him to draw
   the bow, fit the arrow to the string, and send it home between the
   joints of the harness. May some who have been in the state of those
   described by the text be brought to-day to solemn consideration, and to
   a serious decision through the Holy Spirit of God.

   Three things we would labor to do. First of all, let us endeavor to
   expose your excuses, "Lord, I will follow thee, but--." Secondly, I
   will try to expose the ignorance which lies at the bottom of the
   objection which you offer. Then, thirdly, in the most solemn manner,
   would I endeavor to bring before your mind's eye, O ye who vacillate
   like Felix, your sin and your danger, that your "buts" may now be put
   away--that your profession may be made with unfaltering tongue--that
   you may henceforth, in very deed, follow Christ whithersoever he goeth.

   I. First, then, TO EXPOSE YOUR OBJECTIONS.

   I cannot tell man by man, what may be the precise let that causes you
   to draw back, but perhaps, by giving a list, I may be directed to
   describe full many a case exactly, and with precision. Some there be
   who say, and seem very sincere in the utterance, "Lord, I would be a
   Christian, I would believe in thee, and take up thy cross and follow
   thee, but my calling prevents it. Such is my state of life that piety
   would be to me an impossibility. I must live, and I cannot live by
   godliness, therefore I am to be excused for the present from following
   Christ. My position is such in trade, that I am compelled by its
   practices to do many things which would be utterly inconsistent with
   the life of Christ in my soul. I know that I have been called to be
   where I am, but it is a position which renders my salvation hopeless;
   if I were anything but what I am, or anywhere but where I am, I might
   follow Christ, but under existing circumstances, it is far beyond my
   power." Let me answer that excuse of yours, and show how idle it is.
   Man! would you make God the author of sin? And yet if you are prepared
   to say that God has put you in the calling where you are, and that that
   calling absolutely necessitates sin, do you not perceive that you make
   the sin to be rather God's than yours? Are you prepared to be so
   blasphemous as that? Will you bring the tricks of your trade, your
   dishonesties, and your sins, and say, "Great God, thou hast compelled
   me to do this? "Oh! methinks you cannot have so hardened your brow
   until it has become like flint. Surely you have some conscience of
   rectitude left, and if you have, your conscience will respond to me
   when I say you know you are speaking that which is false. God has not
   put you where you are compelled to sin, and if you have put yourself
   there, what ought you to do but to leave that place at once. Surely the
   necessity to sin, if it arise from your own choice, doth but render
   your sin the more exceeding sinful. "But," you reply, "I will confess,
   then, that I have put myself there by choice." Then I say again, if you
   have chosen so ill a trade that you cannot live by it honestly, in the
   fear of God, and in obedience to his precepts, you have made an ill and
   wicked choice; at all hazards--for the salvation of your soul rests on
   it--give it up, though it be the renouncing of every worldly prospect.
   Though wealth be all but in your grasp, unless you would grasp
   damnation and inherit everlasting wrath, you must renounce it, and
   renounce it now. Scarcely, however, can I credit that such is the fact,
   for in all callings, except they be in themselves positively unlawful,
   a man may serve God. Perhaps the most difficult post for a Christian to
   occupy is the army, and yet have we not seen,--and do we not see at
   this day--men of high and exemplary piety, men of undoubted and
   pre-eminent godliness, who are still in the ranks and are soldiers of
   Christ? With the example of Colonel Gardner in years gone by, of Hedley
   Vicars, and Havelock in these modern times, I will not, I dare not take
   your excuse, nor do I think your conscience would permit it, but if,
   while the temptations are strong, and your strength is small, you
   really think that there you cannot serve God, then resign your
   commission, give it up; it were better for you to enter into life poor
   and penniless, and without fame or honor, than having glory, and pomp,
   and wealth, to enter into hell fire. After all, to come nearer to the
   point, is it your occupation at all? Is it true? Is it not your sin
   that has made your "but," and not your calling? Be honest with
   yourself, sir, I pray you. You say that your calling throws temptations
   in your way: be it so? Do not other men avoid the temptations, and
   because they hate sin, being taught of God the Holy Spirit, are they
   not able, even in the midst of temptation, to keep themselves unspotted
   from the world? It is, then, in your case not necessity, but
   wilfulness, that makes you continue impious and impenitent. Put the
   saddle on the right horse; put it not where it should not be, take it
   home to yourself. There is no objection in the calling, unless, again I
   repeat it, it be an objectionable calling; the root and real cause of
   your hardness of heart against Christ is in yourself and yourself
   alone. You are willingly in love with sin, it is not in your calling in
   providence.

   "Yes, but," saith another, "if it be not in our calling, yet in my case
   it is my peculiar position in providence. It is all very well for the
   minister, who has not to mingle with daily life, but can come up into
   his pulpit and pray and preach, to make little excuse for men; but I
   tell you, sir, if you knew how I was situated, you would say that I am
   quite excusable in postponing the thoughts of God and of eternity. You
   do not know what it is to have an ungodly husband, or to live in a
   family where you cannot carry out your convictions without meeting with
   persecution so ferocious and so incessant, that flesh; and blood cannot
   endure it." "Besides," says another, "I am just now in such a peculiar
   crisis, it may be I have got into it by my sin, but I feel I cannot get
   out of it without sin. If I were once out of it, and could start again,
   and stand upon a new footing, then I might follow Christ, but at the
   present time there are such things in the house where I live, such
   circumstances in my business, there are such peculiar trials in my
   family, that I think I am justified in saying, Go thy way this time,
   when I have a more convenient season I will send for thee.'" Ah! but,
   my friend, is this the truth? Let me put it to you in other words than
   you have stated it. You say, if you follow Christ you will be
   persecuted. And does not the Word of God tell you the same? And is it
   not expressly said, "He that taketh not up his cross and followeth not
   after me cannot be my disciple?" Did not the apostle say, "He that will
   live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution?" What! is nature to
   be changed for you? Must the apostles and the martyrs endure and suffer
   great things, and are the little trials that you have to bear to be
   valid excuses for you? No, by that host who waded through slaughter to
   a throne--the slaughter of themselves,--no, by the men who wear the
   crowns which they have won on racks and stakes I pray you do not think
   that this shall be any excuse for you at God's great day. Or if you
   think that it be an excuse that is valid for you now, remember, if you
   reject Christ you reject the crown. If you cannot bear the reproach of
   Christ, neither shall you have Christ's riches. If you will not suffer
   with him, neither shall you reign with him. You say that your
   circumstances compel you to sin, or else you would get into a world of
   trouble. And what do you mean by this, but that you prefer your own
   case to the Master's service? You have made this your God. Your own
   emoluments, your own aggrandizement, your own rest and luxury, you have
   set these up in preference to the command of the God that made you. O
   sir, do but see the thing in its true light! You have put yourself
   where the Israelites put the golden calf, and you have bowed down and
   you have said, "These be thy gods, O Israel!" To these you have offered
   your peace offerings. Oh, be not deceived! "If any man love the world,
   the love of the Father is not in him." "He that would save his life
   shall lose it, but he that will lose his life for Christ's sake shall
   save it." Away, then, with these excuses about your circumstances; it
   is an idle one, and will not endure the light of the day of judgment.

   "Yes," says another, "I would follow Christ; I have often felt
   inclinations to do so; and I have had some longings after better
   things: but the way of Christ is too rough for me. It demands that I
   should give up pleasures which I really love. I know if I should
   promise to give them up, I should go back to them very soon. I have
   tried, but they are too much for me. I did not think at one time that I
   was so thoroughly chained to them. But, when I tried to break away, I
   found the chains were not as I thought they were--of silk, but of iron,
   of triple steel. I cannot, sir, I tell you plainly, I cannot. If to be
   saved requires me to give up my worldly amusements, I cannot do it."
   Well, sir, I reply, you have spoken with the candour of an honest man.
   But, will you please to understand the bargain a little more clearly.
   Remember, soul, when you say, "I cannot give up the world" you have
   said, "I cannot be saved, I cannot escape from hell, I cannot be a
   partaker of the glories of heaven." You have preferred the dance to the
   entertainment of glory; you have preferred the revelling merriments at
   midnight to the eternal splendours of the throne of God. You have in
   cool blood--now mark it, you have in cool blood, determined to sell
   your soul for a few hours of giddiness, a little season of mirth. Look
   it in the face, and God help you to understand what you have done. If
   Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, what have you done?
   Lift up your eyes to heaven, behold the golden harps, and listen to the
   harmony of the glorious song, and then say, "But I prefer thy music, O
   earth, to this." Look yonder to the golden streets, and the joy and the
   bliss which await the true believer, and then coolly write it down, and
   say, "I have chosen the casino, I have preferred the house of sin to
   this." Look up and behold the draughts of joy that await believers, and
   then go to the tavern and sit down in the tap room, and say, "I have
   preferred the enjoyments of intoxication to the mirth of eternity."
   Come, I say sir, do look it in the face, for this is what you have
   done, and if, after weighing the two things in the scales together, you
   find that the momentary enjoyments of the flesh are to be preferred to
   the eternal weight of glory which God hath reserved for them that love
   him, then choose them. But if it be nothing in comparison with
   eternity; if the flesh be but dross in comparison with the spirit, if
   this world be emptiness when compared with the world to come, then
   reverse your foolish decision. May God the Holy Ghost make you wise.
   The only wise God choose your inheritance for you.

   "Oh," says another, "but it is not exactly my pleasures; for I have
   found no pleasure in sin. It is some time since iniquity ministered
   pleasure to me; I have drunk the top of the cup. The froth I have
   already daintily sipped, but now I have come to the dregs."--I know I
   am speaking to some men to-day, in this very state.--"I have jaded
   myself," says such-an-one "in the race of pleasure; I have exhausted my
   powers of enjoyment, and yet though the wine yields no lusciousness to
   my taste, I drink, for I cannot help it; and though lust affords me no
   longer any exquisite delight, still impelled as by some secret force, I
   am driven to it. From old habit it has become a second nature with me,
   and I cannot, I have tried, I have tried awfully and solemnly, I
   cannot--I cannot break it off. I am like a man whose boat is taken up
   by the rapids. I have pulled against the stream with both my arms, till
   the veins start like whip-cords to my brow, and the blood starts from
   my nose in agony of vigor, and yet I cannot reverse the stream; nor can
   I set my boat's head against it. I can see the precipice; I can hear
   the roaring of the dashing water as it leaps the cascade, and I am
   speeding on swifter, and swifter, and swifter, till my very blood boils
   with the tremendous vehemence of my crimes; I am speeding onward to my
   merited damnation."

   Ah, man! yours is a solemn "BUT" indeed. If I thought you meant it all,
   I would rather speak to you words of encouragement than of warning. For
   remember this, when you are ready to perish God is ready to save. And
   when our power is gone, then the plaintive cry, "Lord, save, or I
   perish," wrung from a despairing heart, shall reach the ears of the
   Most High, and he that delighteth in mercy shall stretch out his arm to
   save. There is hope, there in hope for thee yet. What! is the boat's
   bow already out of the water, and does she seem to leap like a live
   thing into the midst of the spray? O Eternal God, thou canst save him
   yet. Thou canst come from above, and take him out of the deep waters,
   and pluck him out of the billows that are stronger than he. Yet say
   now, is this just as you have described it? I fear lest perhaps you
   make "cannot" only a substitute for "will not." Do you not love those
   ways of the transgressor? Can you honestly say you loathe them? I do
   not believe you can. Remember the dreadful alternative. When you say I
   cannot renounce these things, and will not look to God to enable you to
   do it; you have said, "I cannot escape from the flames of hell; I
   cannot be rescued from the wrath to come; I am damned." You have, in
   fact, forestalled your own doom. That awful sentence you have
   pronounced upon yourself. You have sat in judgment on your own soul,
   put on the black cap, and read out your own sentence; you have put
   yourself upon the death-cart; you have adjusted the rope about your own
   neck, and you are about to draw the bolt and be your own executioner.
   Oh! weigh your words, and measure your acts, and wake up to a
   consciousness of what you are about. Do not take the leap in the dark.
   Look down the chasm first, and gaze a moment at the jagged rocks
   beneath which soon you must lie a mangled corpse. Now, ere you drink
   the cup, know the poison that is in the button of it; make sure of what
   you are doing, and if you are determined that you will clasp your sins
   with the spasmodic and terrific grasp of a dying, drowning man. Then
   grasp thy sins and lose thy soul; then keep thy sins, and be thou
   damned! Hold fast to thine iniquities, and be dashed for ever from the
   presence of the Eternal One. If it be horrible to hear, how much more
   horrible to do. If it be dreadful to speak, how much more solemn to
   perform in cold blood that which our lips have spoken. "But," saith
   another, "that is not my case. I can say I will follow Christ, but I am
   of such a volatile, changeable disposition that I do not think I ever
   shall fulfill my purpose. When I heard you preach a few sabbaths ago,
   sir, I went home to my chamber, and I shut the door and I prayed. But,
   you know, some acquaintance called in; he took me away, and soon every
   good thought was gone. Often have I sat shivering in the pew while the
   Word of God has been quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged
   sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of my joints and marrow, being
   a discerner of the thoughts and intents of my heart, but the world
   comes in again; so that I seem sometimes as if I were almost a saint,
   and then again, the next day I am almost a fiend. Sometimes I think I
   could do anything for Christ, and the next day I do everything for the
   world. I promise but I do not perform; I vow and break my vows; I am
   like the smoke from the chimney--soon blown away and my good
   resolutions are like a morning cloud, they are there but for the
   morning, and soon they are gone." Well, certainly you have described a
   case which is too frequent. But will you allow me to put that also in a
   true and scriptural light? Soul, dost thou know thou hast played with
   heaven? Thou hast made game of eternity, thou art like those men in the
   parable of whom it is said "they made light of it." Thou hast thought
   that the things of this world are more engrossing, to thee than the
   things of the world to come. Thou art perhaps less excusable then any
   other, for thou knowest the right and doest it not, thou seest thy sin,
   and yet thou clingest to it; thou perceivest thy ruin, and yet thou
   goest onwards towards it; thou hast had wooings of love, thou hast had
   warnings of mercy, and yet thou hast shaken all these off. Oh remember
   that text, "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall
   suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." "Because I have
   called," saith God, "and ye refused, I have stretched out my hand, and
   no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would
   none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock
   when your fear cometh." You may perhaps soon be given up to a seared
   conscience. The Word may be powerless upon you. You may become hardened
   and desperate, and then, ah! then, not the devils in hell are in a more
   hopeless condition than thou shalt be.

   I have thus gone through the most prominent excuses which men make for
   scattering from themselves those good thoughts which sometimes seek to
   get possession of their hearts. "I will follow thee Lord, but--." I
   cannot of course point out the distinct persons in this large assembly
   who are in this condition. That there are such is certain. I pray God
   the Holy Spirit to find them out, and make them judge themselves that
   they be not judged.

   II. I shall now come to the second part of my discourse. May the Lord
   be our helper. Soul, thou who sayest, "I will follow Christ, but--," I
   now come to EXPOSE THINE IGNORANCE AND THE ILL STATE OF THY HEART.

   Soul! thou hast as yet no true idea of what sin is. God the Holy Spirit
   has never opened thine eyes to see what an evil and bitter thing it is
   to sin against God, or else there would be no "buts." Picture a man who
   has lost his way, who has sunk into a slough; the waters and the mire
   are come up to his very throat. He is about to sink in it, when some
   bright spirit comes, stepping over the treacherous bog, and puts forth
   to him his hand. That man, if he knows where he is, if he knows his
   uncomfortable and desperate state, will put out his hand at once. You
   will not find him hesitating with "buts," and "of," and
   "peradventures." He feels that he is plunged into the ditch, and would
   come out of it. And you apparently are still in the wilderness of your
   natural state. You have not yet discovered what a fool might see,
   though a wayfaring man, that sin is a tremendous evil, that thy sin is
   all destructive, and will yet swallow thee up quick and utterly destroy
   thy soul. I know that when God the Holy Spirit tell me to see the
   blackness of sin, I did not need any very great pressing to be willing
   to be washed. My only question was, "Would Christ wash me?" Ask any
   poor penitent sinner that knows what the burden of sin is, whether he
   will have it taken off his shoulders, and he will not say, "I would
   have it taken off; but--." No, he will need but the very mention of the
   removal of his load; "Lord," saith he, "do but take it away from me: do
   but take it away, and I am well content."

   Again: soul, it seems plain to me that thou hast never yet been taught
   by the Holy Spirit what is thy state of comdemnation. Thou hast never
   yet learnt that the wrath of God abideth on thee. So long as thou art
   out of Christ, thou art under a curse. If that word "condemnation" had
   once been rung in thine ears, thou wouldst have no ifs and buts. When a
   man's house is on fire, and he stands at the window, and the fire
   escape is there and his hair begins to be crisp with the hot tongues of
   fire that scorch his cheeks, he has no "buts" about it, but down the
   escape he goes at once. When Lot began to see the fiery shower coming
   down from heaven, he had no "buts" about making the best of his way out
   of the city and escaping to the mountains. And you, O may God the Holy
   Ghost show to you, sinner, where you are to-day! Oh that he would make
   you know that your sentence is pronounced, that God's messengers are
   out after you to take you to prison. Then you will leave off your
   "buts," your presences, and excuses, and you will say, "Lord, what
   wouldst thou have me to do? "And be it what it may, your soul will make
   no demurs about it.

   Surely, methinks you cannot have felt the danger you are in of daily
   destruction. If you have not felt that, I do not think the Spirit of
   God has ever come into your soul after a real and saving fashion. You
   have no proof that you are one of Christ unless you have felt the
   danger of your natural state. Do you see there?--there is a scaffold
   raised; a man is brought out to execution,--there is the block and here
   stands the headsman with his sharp gleaming axe, gleaming in the
   morning sun. The man has just laid his neck upon the block in the
   little hollow place shaped out for it; there he lies, and the headsman
   has just lifted up the axe to cleave his head from his body As that man
   lies there, if a messenger should come from the king and say, "Here is
   a pardon, will you accept it?" do you believe he would say, "I will
   accept it, but--? No, springing up from what he thought would be his
   last resting place, he would say, "I thank his majesty for his abundant
   grace, and cheerfully do I rejoice in accepting it." You cannot have
   known where you are, or else "but" would be impossible to you. Such is
   your state, remember, whether you know it or not: you put your neck
   upon the block of insensibility, but the axe of justice is ready to
   smite you down to hell. The Lord help you to see your state and put the
   "buts" away from you.

   It seems to me, too, that you are ignorant altogether of what the wrath
   of God must be in the world to come. Oh! could I take you to that place
   where hope has ever been a stranger: if you could put your ear a moment
   to the gratings of those gloomy dungeons of which despair is the horrid
   warder--if I could make you listen to the sighs, the useless regrets,
   and the vain prayers of those who are cast away, you would come back
   affrighted and alarmed, and sure I am your "buts" would have been
   driven out of you. You would say, "Great God, if thou wilt but save me
   from thy wrath, do what thou wilt with me, I will make no conditions, I
   will offer thee no objections; if I must cut off my right arm, or pluck
   out my right eye, he it so, if from this place of woe thou wilt but
   save me. Oh! from this fire that never can he quenched, from this worm
   of endless folds which can never die, great God deliver me. If rough be
   the means, and unpleasant to the flesh, yet grant me but this one
   request,--save me, O God, save me from going down into the pit. "If a
   soul were just sinking to hell, and God could send some bright angel to
   pluck it from the flames just as it entered there, can you imagine its
   being so mad as to say, "I would be plucked as a brand from the
   burning, but--?" No, no. Glad to embrace the messenger of mercy, it
   would rejoice to fly from hell to heaven.

   Again, sinner, it seems clear to me, inasmuch as you say, "but," that
   you can have no idea of the glory of the person of Christ. I see you
   sitting down in your misery, in the bare uncomfortable cottage of your
   natural estate: yourself naked and filthy, with your hair matted over
   your eyes. Behold a bright chariot stays at your door, the sound of
   music is heard, and the King himself, stepping down from the chariot of
   his glory comes in, and he says, "Sinner, poor, hopeless, weak,
   miserable, look unto me and be thou saved. The chariot of my mercy
   awaits thee, come thou with me, my chariot is paved with love for such
   as thou art. Come with me, and I will bear thee to my splendours away
   from thy degradation and thy woe." You sit there and you will not look
   at him, for if you did look, you must love him. You could not behold
   his face, you could not see the mercy that is written there, the pity
   that trembles in his eye, the power that is in his arm, but you would
   say at once, "Jesu, thou hast overcome my heart, thy gracious beauty is
   more than a match for me.

   "Dissolv'd by thy goodness I fall to the ground,

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

   What shall I say more? Yet this once again I will admonish thee. O thou
   procrastinating, objecting sinner, thou hast never known what heaven
   is, or else thou wouldst never have a "but." If you and I could peep
   but for an instant within the pearly gates; could you listen to that
   seraphic song; could you behold the joy which flows and overflows the
   bosoms of the blessed; could you but spell heaven, not in letters but
   in feelings; could you wear its crown a moment, or be girt about with
   its pure white garments, you would say, "If I must go through hell to
   reach heaven, I would cheerfully do it. What are ye, riches? ye are
   bubbles. What are ye, pomps? ye are drivelling emptinesses. What are
   ye, pleasures? ye are mocking, painted witcheries. What are ye, pains?
   ye are joys. What all be ye, sorrows? ye are but bliss. What are ye,
   tribulations? ye are lighter than feathers when I compare ye with this
   exceeding and eternal weight of glory. If we could have but a glimpse
   of heaven, but a shadow of an idea of what is the eternal rest of God's
   people, we should be prepared to endure all things, to give up all
   things, to bear all things, if we might but be partakers of the
   promised reward. Your "buts" betray your ignorance; your ignorance of
   self, ignorance of sin, ignorance of condemnation, ignorance of the
   punishment, ignorance of the Saviour's person, and ignorance of the
   heaven to which he promises to being his people.

   III. Now, I have my last work to do, and that would I do briefly. Oh,
   may strength superior to mine come now, and tug, and strive, and
   wrestle with your hearts! May the Spirit of God apply the words which I
   shall now use! "Lord, I will follow thee: but--." Sinner, sinner, let
   me SHOW THEE THY SIN. When thou saidst, "But," thou didst contradict
   thyself. The meaning of that rightly read is this, "Lord, I will not
   follow thee." That "but" of thine puts the negative on all the
   profession that went before it. I wish, my hearers, that this morning
   you would either be led by grace to say, "I will believe, "or else were
   permitted honestly to see the depravity and desperate hardness of your
   own hearts so as to say, "I will not believe in Christ. "It is because
   so many of you are neither this nor that, but halting between two
   opinions, that you are the hardest characters to deal with. Sinners who
   reject Christ altogether wilfully are like flints. When the hammer of
   the Word comes against them, the flint gives forth the precious spark,
   and flies to atoms. But you are like a mass of wax moulded one day into
   one shape, and moulded the next day into another. I know a gentleman of
   considerable position in the world, who, after having been with me some
   little time, said, "Now that man is going away, and I shall be just
   what I was before;" for he had wept under the Word. He compared
   himself, he said, to a gutta-percha doll; he had got out of his old
   shape for a little while, but he would go back to what he was before.
   And how many there are of you of this kind. You will not say, "I will
   not have Christ," you will not say, "I will not think of these things."
   You dare not say, "I disbelieve the Bible," or, "I think there is no
   God, and no hereafter," but you say, "No doubt it is true, I'll think
   of it by-and-bye." You never will, sinner, you never will, you will go
   on from day to day, harping that till your last day shall come, and you
   will be found then where you are now, unless sovereign grace prevent. I
   could have more hope for you if you would say at once, "I love not God,
   I love not Christ, I fear him not, I desire not his salvation," for
   then methinks you would get an idea of what you are, and God the Spirit
   might bless it to you. Let me show you again your sin in another
   respect. How great has been your pride! When Christ bids you believe on
   him, take up his cross and follow him, he tells you to do the best
   thing you can do, and then you set up your judgment in contradiction to
   him. You say, "But." What! is Christ to mend his gospel by your whims?
   What! is the plan of salvation to be cut and shaped to suit you? Does
   not Christ know what is best for you, better than you do yourself?
   "Will you snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, rejudge his
   judgement, dictate to God, the Judge of all the earth? And yet this is
   what you attempt to do. You set up your throne in rivalry to the throne
   of grace, and insist upon it that there is more wisdom in being a
   sinner than in being a believer, that there is more happiness to be
   found apart from God than there is with him, which is to make God a
   hard Master, if not indeed to call him a liar to his face. Oh! you know
   not what is the quintessence of iniquity which lies within those words
   so easily spoken, but which will be so hard to get rid of on a dying
   bed--"I will follow thee, but--"

   I close when I have just, in a moment or so only, described your
   danger. Soul, thou art quieting thyself and saying, "Ah! it will be
   well with me at the last; for I intend to be better by-and-bye." Soul,
   soul, bethink thee how many have died while they have been speaking
   like that. There were put into the grave, during the past week,
   hundreds of persons, no doubt, who were utterly careless, but there
   were also scores who were not careless, and who had often been
   impressed, and yet they said "But, but, but," and promised better
   things, but death came in and their better things came not. And then,
   remember how many have been damned while they have been saying "But."
   They said they would repent, meanwhile they died. They said they would
   believe, meanwhile in hell they lifted up their eyes being in torments.
   They meant they said, but inasmuch as they did it not they came where
   their resolutions would be changed into remorse, and their fancied
   hopes turned into real despair. On such a subject as this I could wish
   Baxter were the preacher, and that I were the hearer. As I look around
   you, though there be full many who can read their title clear to
   mansions in the skies, yet along these pews what a considerable
   proportion there is of my hearers who are only deceiving their own
   selves! Well, sinners, I will make the road to hell as hard for you as
   I can. If you will be lost, I will put up many a chain and many a bar,
   and shut many a gate across your way. If you will listen to my voice,
   God helping me, you shall find it a hard way--that way of
   transgressors; you shall find it a hard thing to run counter to the
   proclamation of the Gospel of Christ. But why will ye die, O house of
   Israel, why will ye die? Where is your reason fled? Have beasts become
   men and men become beasts? "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his
   master's crib," but ye know not. What! are you become like the silly
   sheep that goes willingly to his slaughter? Are the swallows and cranes
   more wise than you? for they know the senses and they judge the times,
   but you know not that your summer is almost over, that your leaves are
   falling in the autumn of your life, and that your dreary winter of
   despair and of hopelessness is drawing nigh. Souls, are these things
   fancies? If so, sleep while I preach of them. Are they dreams? Do I
   bring out these doctrines but as bugbears to alarm you as if you were
   some children in a nursery? No, but as God is true, are not these the
   most solemn realities that ever rested on the lip of man or moved the
   heart of hearer? Then why is it, why is it, why is it that you make
   light of these things still? Why is it that you will go your way to-day
   as you did before? Why will ye say, "Well, the preacher has warned me
   faithfully, and I will think of it, but--; I was invited and I will
   consider, but--; I did hear the warning, but--?" Ah, souls, while you
   shall be saying "But," there shall be another "But" go forth, and that
   shall be "But cut him down, why cumbereth he the ground?" Wake,
   vengeance, wake! The sinner sleeps. Pluck out thy sword, O Justice! let
   it not rest in its scabbard, come forth! Nay, nay, oh! come not forth
   devouring sword! oh, come not forth! O Justice, be thou still! O
   Vengeance, put away thy sword, and Mercy, reign thou still! "Today if
   ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts as in the provocation,"
   but if ye harden your hearts, remember he will swear in his wrath that
   ye shall not enter into his rest. Oh! Spirit of God, do thou the sinner
   turn, for without thee he will not turn; our voice shall miss its end,
   and he will not come to Christ.
     __________________________________________________________________

                              Intercessory Prayer

   A Sermon

   (No. 404)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, August the 11th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his
   friends."--Job 42:10.

   THE LORD turned the captivity of Job." So, then, our longest sorrows
   have a close, and there is a bottom to the profoundest depths of our
   misery. Our winters shall not frown for ever; summer shall soon smile.
   The tide shall not eternally ebb out; the floods retrace their march.
   The night shall not hang its darkness for ever over our souls; the sun
   shall yet arise with healing beneath his wings,--"The Lord turned again
   the captivity of Job." Our sorrows shall have an end when God has
   gotten his end in them. The ends in the case of Job were these, that
   Satan might be defeated, foiled with his own weapons, blasted in his
   hopes when he had everything his own way. God, at Satan's challenge,
   had stretched forth his hand and touched Job in his bone and in his
   flesh, and yet the tempter could not prevail against him, but received
   his rebuff in those conquering words, "Though he slay me, yet will I
   trust in him." When Satan is defeated, then shall the battle cease. The
   Lord aimed also at the trial of Job's faith. Many weights were hung
   upon this palm tree, but it still grew uprightly. The fire had been
   fierce enough, the gold was undiminished, and only the dross was
   consumed. Another purpose the Lord had was his own glory. And God was
   glorified abundantly. Job had glorified God on his dunghill; now let
   him magnify his Lord again upon his royal seat in the gate. God had
   gotten unto himself eternal renown through that grace by which he
   supported his poor afflicted servant under the heaviest troubles which
   ever fell to the lot of man. God had another end, and that also was
   served. Job had been sanctified by his afflictions. His spirit had been
   mellowed. That small degree of tartness towards others, which may have
   been in Job's temper had been at last removed, and any
   self-justification which once had lurked within, was fairly driven out.
   Now God's gracious designs are answered, he removed the rod from his
   servant's back, and takes the melted silver from the midst of the
   glowing coals. God doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children
   of men for nought, and he shows this by the fact that he never afflicts
   them longer than there is a need for it, and never suffers them to be
   one moment longer in the furnace than is absolutely requisite to serve
   the purposes of his wisdom and of his love. "The Lord turned again the
   captivity of Job." Beloved brother in Christ, thou hast had a long
   captivity in affliction. God hath sold thee into the hand of thine
   adversaries, and thou hast wept by the waters of Babylon, hanging thy
   harp upon the willows. Despair not! He that turned the captivity of Job
   can turn thine as the streams in the south. He shall make again thy
   vineyard to blossom, and thy field to yield her fruit. Thou shalt again
   come forth with those that make merry, and once more shall the song of
   gladness be on thy lip. Let not Despair rivet his cruel fetters about
   thy soul. Hope yet, for there is hope. Trust thou still, for there is
   ground of confidence. He shall bring thee up again rejoicing from the
   land of thy captivity, and thou shalt say of him, "He hath turned my
   mourning into dancing."

   The circumstance which attended Job's restoration is that to which I
   invite your particular attention. "The Lord turned again the captivity
   of Job, when he prayed for his friends." Intercessory prayer was the
   omen of his returning greatness. It was the bow in the cloud, the dove
   bearing the olive branch, the voice of the turtle announcing the coming
   summer. When his soul began to expand itself in holy and loving prayer
   for his erring brethren, then the heart of God showed itself to him by
   returning to him his prosperity without, and cheering his soul within.
   Brethren, it is not fetching a laborious compass, when from such a text
   as this I address you upon the subject of prayer for others. Let us
   learn today to imitate the example of Job, and pray for our friends,
   and peradventure if we have been in trouble, our captivity shall be
   turned.

   Four things I would speak of this morning, and yet but one thing; I
   would speak upon intercessory prayer thus--first, by way of commending
   the exercise; secondly, by way of encouraging you to enlist in it;
   thirdly, by way of suggestion, as to the persons for whom you should
   especially pray; and fourthly, by way of exhortation to all believers
   to undertake and persevere in the exercise of intercession for others.

   I. First, then, BY WAY OF COMMENDING THE EXERCISE, let me remind you
   that intercessory prayer has been practiced by all the best of God's
   saints. We may not find instances of it appended to every saint's name,
   but beyond a doubt, there has never been a man eminent for piety
   personally, who has not always been pre-eminent in his anxious desires
   for the good of others, and in his prayers for that end. Take Abraham,
   the father of the faithful. How earnestly did he plead for his son
   Ishmael! "O that Ishmael might live before thee!" With what importunity
   did he approach the Lord on the plains of Mamre, when he wrestled with
   him again and again for Sodom; how frequently did he reduce the number,
   as though, to use the expression of the Puritan, "He were bidding and
   beating down the price at the market." "Peradventure there be fifty;
   peradventure there lack five of the fifty; peradventure there be twenty
   found there; peradventure there be ten righteous found there: wilt thou
   not spare the city for the sake of ten?" Well did he wrestle, and if we
   may sometimes be tempted to wish he had not paused when he did, yet we
   must commend him for continuing so long to plead for that doomed and
   depraved city. Remember Moses, the most royal of men, whether crowned
   or uncrowned; how often did he intercede! How frequently do you meet
   with such a record as this--"Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before
   God!" Remember that cry of his on the top of the mount, when it was to
   his own personal disadvantage to intercede, and yet when God had said,
   "Let me alone, I will make of thee a great nation," yet how he
   continued, how he thrust himself in the way of the axe of justice, and
   cried, "Spare them, Lord, and if not," (and here he reached the very
   climax of agonizing earnestness) "blot my name out of the Book of
   Life." Never was there a mightier prophet than Moses, and never one
   more intensely earnest in intercessory prayer. Or pass on, if you will,
   to the days of Samuel. Remember his words, "God forbid that I should
   sin against the Lord, in ceasing to pray for you." Or bethink you of
   Solomon, and of his earnest intercession at the opening of the temple,
   when, with outstretched hands he prayed for the assembled people; or if
   you want another royal example, turn to Hezekiah with Sennacherib's
   letter spread out before the Lord, when he prayed not only for himself,
   but for God's people of Israel in those times of straits. Think ye,
   too, of Elias, who for Israel's sake would bring down the rain that the
   land perish not; as for himself, miracles gave him his bread and his
   water, it was for others that he prayed, and said to his servant, "Go
   again seven times." Forget not Jeremy, whose tears were
   prayers--prayers coming too intensely from his heart to find expression
   in any utterance of the lip. He wept himself away, his life was one
   long shower, each drop a prayer, and the whole deluge a flood of
   intercession. And if you would have an example taken from the times of
   Christ and his apostles, remember how Peter prays on the top of the
   house, and Stephen amidst the falling stones. Or think you, if you
   will, of Paul, of whom even more than of others it could be said, that
   he never ceased to remember the saints in his prayers, "making mention
   of you daily in my prayers," stopping in the very midst of the epistle
   and saying, "For which cause I bow my knee unto the God and Father of
   our Lord Jesus Christ." As for the cloud of holy witnesses in our own
   time, I will hazard the assertion that there is not a single child of
   God who does not plead with God for his children, for his family, for
   the church at large, and for the poor ungodly perishing world. I deny
   his saintship if he does not pray for others.

   But further, while we might commend this duty by quoting innumerable
   examples from the lives of eminent saints, it is enough for the
   disciple of Christ if we say that Christ in His holy gospel has made it
   your duty and your privilege to intercede for others. When he taught us
   to pray, he said, "Our Father," and the expressions which follow are
   not in the singular but in the plural--"Give us this day our daily
   bread." "Forgive us our debts"; "Lead us not into temptation";
   evidently intending to set forth that none of us are to pray for
   ourselves alone, that while we may have sometimes prayers so bitter
   that they must be personal like the Saviour's own--"Father, if it be
   possible, let this cup pass from me"; yet, as a rule, our prayers
   should be public prayers, though offered in private; and even in secret
   we should not forget the church of the living God. By the mouth of Paul
   how frequently does the Holy Ghost exhort us to pray for ministers!
   "Brethren," says Paul, "pray for us"; and then after exhorting them to
   offer prayers and supplications for all classes and conditions of men,
   he adds, "And for us also that we may have boldness to speak as we
   ought to speak." While James, who is ever a practical apostle, bids us
   pray for one another; in that same verse, where he says, "Confess your
   sins the one to the other," he says, "and pray one for another," and
   adds the privilege "that ye may be healed," as if the healing would not
   only come to the sick person for whom we pray, but to us who offer the
   prayer; we, too, receiving some special blessing when our hearts are
   enlarged for the people of the living God.

   But, brethren, I shall not stay to quote the texts in which the duty of
   praying for others is definitely laid down. Permit me to remind you of
   the high example of your Master; he is your pattern; follow ye his
   leadership. Was there even one who interceded as he did? Remember that
   golden prayer of his, where he cried for his own people, "Father, keep
   them, keep them from the evil!" Oh what a prayer was that! He seems to
   have thought of all their wants, of all their needs, of all their
   weaknesses, and in one long stream of intercession, he pours out his
   heart before his Father's throne. Bethink you how, even in the agonies
   of his crucifixion, he did not forget that he was still an intercessor
   for man. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Oh,
   remember, brethren, it is your Saviour's example to you today, for
   there before the throne, with outstretched hands, he prays not for
   himself, for he has attained his glory; not for himself, for he rests
   from his labours, and has received his everlasting recompense; but for
   you, for the purchase of his blood, for as many as are called by his
   grace, yea, and for those who shall believe on him through our word--

   "For all that come to God by him,

   Salvation he demands;

   Points to the wounds upon his heart,

   And spreads his bleeding hands."

   Come, brethren, with such an example as this, we are verily guilty if
   we forget to plead for others.

   But I will go a little further. If in the Bible there were no example
   of intercessory supplication, if Christ had not left it upon record
   that it was his will that we should pray for others, and even if we did
   not know that it was Christ's practice to intercede, yet the very
   spirit of our holy religion would constrain us to plead for others.
   Dost thou go up into thy closet, and in the face and presence of God
   think of none but thyself? Surely the love of Christ cannot be in thee,
   for the spirit of Christ is not selfish. No man liveth unto himself
   when once he has the love of Christ in him. I know there are some whose
   piety is comfortably tethered within the limits of their own selfish
   interests. It is enough for them if they hear the Word, if they be
   saved, if they get to heaven. Ah, miserable spirit, thou shalt not get
   there! It would need another heaven for thee, for the heaven of Christ
   is the heaven of the unselfish, the temple of the large-hearted, the
   bliss of living spirits, the heaven of those who, like Christ, are
   willing to become poor that others may be rich. I cannot believe--it
   were a libel upon the cross of Christ, it were a scandal upon the
   doctrine which he taught--if I could ever believe that the man whose
   prayers are selfish has anything of the spirit of Christ within him.
   Brethren, I commend intercessory prayer, because it opens man's soul,
   gives a healthy play to his sympathies, constrains him to feel that he
   is not everybody, and that this wide world and this great universe were
   not after all made that he might be its petty lord, that everything
   might bend to his will, and all creatures crouch at his feet. It does
   him good, I say, to make him know that the cross was not uplifted alone
   for him, for its far-reaching arms were meant to drop with benedictions
   upon millions of the human race. Thou lean and hungry worshipper of
   self, this is an exercise which would make another man of thee, a man
   more like the Son of Man, and less like Nabal the churl. But again; I
   commend the blessed privilege of intercession, because of its sweet
   brotherly nature. You and I may be naturally hard, and harsh, and
   unlovely of spirit, but praying much for others will remind us we have,
   indeed, a relationship to the saints, that their interests are ours,
   that we are jointly concerned with them in all the privileges of grace.
   I do not know anything which, through the grace of God, may be a better
   means of uniting us the one to the other than constant prayer for each
   other. You cannot harbour enmity in your soul against your brother
   after you have learned to pray for him. If he hath done you ill, when
   you have taken that ill to the mercy seat, and prayed over it, you must
   forgive. Surely you could not be such a hypocrite as to invoke
   blessings on his head before God and then come forth to curse him in
   your own soul. When there have been complaints brought by brother
   against brother, it is generally the best way to say, "Let us pray
   before we enter into the matter." Wherever there is a case to be
   decided by the pastor, he ought always to say to the brethren who
   contend, "Let us pray first," and it will often happen that through
   prayer the differences will soon be forgotten. They will become so
   slight, so trivial, that when the brethren rise from their knees they
   will say, "They are gone; we cannot contend now after having been one
   in heart before the throne of God." I have heard of a man who had made
   complaints against his minister, and his minister wisely said to him,
   "Well, don't talk to me in the street; come to my house, and let us
   hear it all." He went, and the minister said, "My brother, I hope that
   what you have to say to me may be greatly blessed to me; no doubt I
   have my imperfections as well as any other man, and I hope I shall
   never be above being told of them, but in order that what you have to
   say to me may be blessed to me let us kneel down and pray together." So
   our quarrelsome friend prayed first and the minister prayed next, both
   briefly. When they rose from their knees, he said, "Now, my brother, I
   think we are both in a good state of mind; tell me what it is that you
   have to find fault with." The man blushed, and stammered, and
   stuttered, and said, he did not think there was anything at all, except
   in himself. "I have forgotten to pray for you, sir," said he, "and of
   course I cannot expect that God will feed my soul through you when I
   neglect to mention you at the throne of grace." Ah, well, brethren, if
   you will exercise yourselves much in supplication for your brethren you
   will forgive their tempers, you will overlook their rashness, you will
   not think of their harsh words; but knowing that you also may be
   tempted, and are men of like passions with them, you will cover their
   faults, and bear with their infirmities.

   Shall I need to say more in commendation of intercessory prayer except
   it be this, that it seems to me that when God gives any man much grace,
   it must be with the design that he may use it for the rest of the
   family. I would compare you who have near communion with God to
   courtiers in the king's palace. What do courtiers do? Do they not avail
   themselves of their influence at court to take the petitions of their
   friends, and present them where they can be heard? This is what we call
   patronage--a thing with which many find fault when it is used for
   political ends, but there is a kind of heavenly patronage which you
   ought to use right diligently. I ask you to use it on my behalf. When
   it is well with you, then think of me. I pray you use it on the behalf
   of the poor, the sick, the afflicted, the tempted, the tried, the
   desponding, the despairing; when thou hast the King's ear, speak to him
   for us. When thou art permitted to come very near to his throne, and he
   saith to thee, "Ask, and I will give thee what thou wilt"; when thy
   faith is strong, thine eye clear, thine access near, thine interest
   sure, and the love of God sweetly shed abroad in thy heart--then take
   the petitions of thy poor brethren who stand outside at the gate and
   say, "My Lord, I have a poor brother, a poor child of thine, who has
   desired me to ask of thee this favour. Grant it unto me; it shall be a
   favour shown unto myself; grant it unto him, for he is one of thine. Do
   it for Jesus' sake!" Nay, to come to an end in this matter of
   commendation, it is utterly impossible that you should have a large
   measure of grace, unless it prompts you to use your influence for
   others. Soul, if thou hast grace at all, and art not a mighty
   intercessor, that grace must be but as a grain of mustard-seed--a
   shrivelled, uncomely, puny thing. Thou hast just enough grace to float
   thy soul clear from the quicksand, but thou hast no deep floods of
   grace, or else thou wouldst carry in thy joyous bark a rich cargo of
   the wants of others up to the throne of God, and thou wouldst bring
   back for them rich blessings which but for thee they might not have
   obtained. If thou be like an angel with thy foot upon the golden ladder
   which reaches to heaven, if thou art ascending and descending, know
   that thou wilt ascend with others' prayers and descend with others'
   blessings, for it is impossible for a full-grown saint to live or to
   pray for himself alone. Thus much on commendation.

   II. We turn to our second point, and endeavour to say something BY WAY
   OF ENCOURAGEMENT, that you may cheerfully offer intercessory
   supplications.

   First, remember that intercessory prayer is the sweetest prayer God
   ever hears. Do not question it, for the prayer of Christ is of this
   character. In all the incense which now our Great High Priest puts into
   the censer, there is not a single grain that is for himself. His work
   is done; his reward obtained. Now you do not doubt but that Christ's
   prayer is the most acceptable of all supplications. Very well, my
   brethren, the more like your prayer is to Christ's, the more sweet it
   will be; and while petitions for yourself will be accepted, yet your
   pleadings for others, having in them more of the fruits of the Spirit,
   more love, perhaps more faith, certainly more brotherly kindness, they
   will be as the sweetest oblation that you can offer to God, the very
   fat of thy sacrifice. Remember, again, that intercessory prayer is
   exceedingly prevalent. What wonders it has wrought! Intercessory prayer
   has stayed plagues. It removed the darkness which rested over Egypt; it
   drove away the frogs which leaped upon the land; it scattered the lice
   and locusts which plagued the inhabitants of Zoar; it removed the
   murrain, and the thunder, and the lightning; it stayed all the ravages
   which God's avenging hand did upon Pharaoh and his people. Intercessory
   prayer has healed diseases; --we know it did in the early church. We
   have evidence of it in old Mosaic times. When Miriam was smitten with
   leprosy, Moses prayed, and the leprosy was removed. It has restored
   withered limbs. When the king's arm was withered, he said to the
   prophet, "Pray for me," and his arm was restored as it was before.
   Intercessory prayer has raised the dead, for Elias stretched himself
   upon the child seven times, and the child sneezed, and the child's soul
   returned. As to how many souls intercessory prayer has instrumentally
   saved, recording angel, thou canst tell! Eternity, thou shalt reveal!
   There is nothing which intercessory prayer cannot do. Oh! believer, you
   have a mighty engine in your hand, use it well, use it constantly, use
   it now with faith, and thou shalt surely prevail. But perhaps you have
   a doubt about interceding for some one who has fallen far into sin.
   Brethren, did ye ever hear of men who have been thought to be dead
   while yet alive? Have ye never heard by the farmer's fire some
   old-fashioned story of one who was washed and laid out, and wrapped up
   in his shroud to be put into his coffin, and yet he was but in a trance
   and not dead? And have ye not heard old legends of men and women who
   have been buried alive? I cannot vouch for the accuracy of those tales,
   but I can tell you that spiritually there has been many a man given up
   for dead that was still within reach of grace. There has been many a
   soul that has been put into the winding sheet even by Christian people,
   given up to damnation even by the ministers of Christ, consigned to
   perdition even by their own kinsfolk. But yet into perdition they did
   not come, but God found them, and took them out of the horrible pit and
   out of the miry clay, and set their living feet upon his living rock.
   Oh! give up nobody; still pray, lay none out for spiritually dead until
   they are lain out for dead naturally. But perhaps you say, "I cannot
   pray for others, for I am so weak, so powerless." You will get
   strength, my brethren, by the exertion. But besides, the prevalence of
   prayer does not depend upon the strength of the man who prays, but upon
   the power of the argument he uses. Now, brethren, if you sow seed you
   may be very feeble, but it is not your hand that puts the seed into the
   ground which produces the harvest,--it is the vitality in the seed. And
   so in the prayer of faith. When you can plead a promise and drop that
   prayer into the ground with hope, your weakness shall not make it
   miscarry; it shall still prevail with God and bring down blessings from
   on high. Job! thou comest from thy dunghill to intercede, and so may I
   come from my couch of weakness;--thou comest from thy poverty and thy
   desertion to intercede for others, and so may we. Elias was a man of
   like passions--sweet word!--of like passions, like infirmities, like
   tendencies to sin, but he prevailed, and so shalt thou; only do thou
   see to it that thou be not negligent in these exercises, but that thou
   pray much for others even as Job prayed for his friends.

   Now that the air is very hot, and the atmosphere heavy and becalmed,
   our friends find it difficult to listen, more difficult even than the
   speaker finds it to preach. Now, that I may have your attention yet
   once again--and a change of posture may do you all good--will you stand
   up and put the text into use by offering an intercessory prayer and
   then I will go on again. It shall be this one:

   "Pity the nations, O our God,

   Constrain the earth to come;

   Send thy victorious word abroad,

   And bring the strangers home!"

   (The congregation here rose, and sung the verse.)

   III. The third head is A SUGGESTION AS TO THE PERSONS FOR WHOM WE
   SHOULD MORE PARTICULARLY PRAY. It shall be but a suggestion, and I will
   then turn to my last point. In the case of Job, he prayed for his
   offending friends. They had spoken exceedingly harshly of him. They had
   misconstrued all his previous life, and though there had never been a
   part of his character which deserved censure--for the Lord witnessed
   concerning him, that he was a perfect and an upright man--yet they
   accused him of hypocrisy, and supposed that all he did was for the sake
   of gain. Now, perhaps, there is no greater offence which can be given
   to an upright and a holy man, than to his face, to suspect his motives,
   and to accuse him of self-seeking. And yet, shaking off everything, as
   the sun forgets the darkness that has hidden its glory, and scatters it
   by its own beams, Job comes to the mercy seat, and pleads. He is
   accepted himself, and he begs that his friends may be accepted too.
   Carry your offending ones to the throne of God; it shall be a blessed
   method of proving the trueness of your forgiveness. Do not do that,
   however, in a threatening way. I remember having to deal faithfully
   with a hypocrite, who told me, by way of threatening, he should pray
   for me. It was a horrid threat, for who would wish to have his name
   associated with a prayer which would be an abomination to the Lord. Do
   not do it in that sense, as though like a supercilious hypocrite, you
   would make your prayer itself a stalking horse for your vain glory; but
   do it when you are alone before God, and in secret; not that you may
   gratify your revenge by telling the story out again, for that were
   abominable indeed; but that you may remove from your erring brother any
   sin which may have stained his garments, by asking the Lord to forgive
   him.

   Again: be sure you take there your controverting friends. These
   brethren had been arguing with Job, and the controversy dragged its
   weary length along. Brethren, it is better to pray than it is to
   controvert. Sometimes you think it would be a good thing to have a
   public discussion upon a doctrine. It would be a better thing to have
   prayer over it. You say, "Let two good men, on different sides, meet
   and fight the matter out." I say, "No! let the two good men meet and
   pray the matter out." He that will not submit his doctrine to the test
   of the mercy seat, I should suspect is wrong. I can say that I am not
   afraid to offer prayer that my brethren who do not see "Believers'
   baptism" may be made to see it. If they think it is wrong, I wish that
   they would pray to God to set us right; but I have never heard them do
   that; I have never heard them pray to the Lord to convince us of the
   truth of infant sprinkling--I wish they would, if they believe it to be
   scriptural, and I am perfectly willing to put it to the old test, the
   God that answereth by fire, let him be God, and whichever shall
   prevail, when prayer shall be the ultimate arbiter, let that stand.
   Carry your dear friends who are wrong in practice, not to the
   discussion-room, or to the debating-club, but carry them before God,
   and let this be your cry, "Oh! Thou that teachest us to our profit,
   teach me if I be wrong, and teach my friend wherein he errs, and make
   him right."

   This is the thing we ought also to do with haughty friends. Eliphaz and
   Bildad were very high and haughty--Oh! how they looked down upon poor
   Job! They thought he was a very great sinner, a very desperate
   hypocrite; they stayed with him, but doubtless they thought it very
   great condescension. Now, you sometimes hear complaints made by
   Christians about other people being proud. It will not make them humble
   for you to grumble about that. What if there be a Mrs. So-and-so who
   wears a very rustling dress, and never takes any notice of you because
   you cannot rustle too! What if there be a brother who can afford to
   wear creaking boots, and will not notice you in the street because you
   happen to be poor! Tell your Father about it; that is the best way.
   Why, you would not be angry, I suppose, with a man for having the gout,
   or a torpid liver, or a cataract in the eye; you would pity him. Why be
   angry with your brother because of his being proud? It is a disease, a
   very bad disease, that scarlet fever of pride; go and pray the Lord to
   cure him; your anger will not do it; it may puff him up and make him
   worse than ever he was before, but it will not set him right. Pray him
   down, brother, pray him down; have duel with him, and have the choice
   of weapons yourself, and let that be the weapon of all--prayer; and if
   he be proud, I know this, if you prevail with God, God will soon take
   the pride out of his own child and make him humble as he should be. But
   particularly let me ask you to pray most for those who are disabled
   from praying for themselves. Job's three friends could not pray for
   themselves, because the Lord said he would not accept them if they did.
   He said he was angry with them, but as for Job, said he, "Him will I
   accept." Do not let me shock your feelings when I say there are some,
   even of God's people, who are not able to pray acceptably at certain
   seasons. When a man has just been committing sin, repentance is his
   first work, not prayer; he must first set matters right between God and
   his own soul before he may go and intercede for others. And there are
   many poor Christians that cannot pray; doubt has come in, sin has taken
   away their confidence, and they are standing outside the gate with
   their petitions; they dare not enter within the veil. There are many
   tried believers, too, that are so desponding that they cannot pray with
   faith, and therefore they cannot prevail. Now, my dear brethren, if you
   can pray, take their sins into court with you, and when you have had
   your own hearing, then say, "But, my Lord, inasmuch as thou hast
   honoured me, and made me to eat of thy bread, and drink from thy cup,
   hear me for thy poor people who are just now denied the light of thy
   countenance." Besides, there are millions of poor sinners who are dead
   in sin and they cannot pray, pray for them; it is a blessed thing--that
   vicarious repentance and vicarious faith; which a saint may exert
   towards a sinner. "Lord, that sinner does not feel; help me to feel for
   him because he will not feel; Lord, that sinner will not believe in
   Christ, he does not think that Christ can save him, but I know he can,
   and I will pray believingly for that sinner, and I will repent for him,
   and though my repentance and my faith will not avail him without his
   personal repentance and faith, yet it may come to pass that through me
   he may be brought to repentance and led to prayer."

   IV. Now, lest I should weary you, let me come to the closing part of my
   discourse. And, O God, lend us thy strength now, that this duty may
   come forcibly home to our conscience, and we may at once engage in this
   exercise! Brethren, I have to EXHORT YOU TO PRAY FOR OTHERS. Before I
   do it, I will ask you a personal question. Do you always pray for
   others? Guilty or not guilty, here? Do you think you have taken the
   case of your children, your church, your neighbourhood, and the ungodly
   world before God as you ought to have done? If you have, I have not.
   For I stand here a chief culprit before the Master to make confession
   of the sin; and while I shall exhort you to practice what is
   undoubtedly a noble privilege, I shall be most of all exhorting myself.

   I begin thus, by saying, Brethren, how can you and I repay the debt we
   owe to the Church unless we pray for others? How was it that you were
   converted? It was because somebody else prayed for you. I, in tracing
   back my own conversion, cannot fail to impute it, through God's Spirit,
   to the prayers of my mother. I believe that the Lord heard her earnest
   cries when I knew not that her soul was exercised about me. There are
   many of you that were prayed for when you were asleep in your cradles
   as unconscious infants. Your mothers' liquid prayers fell hot upon your
   infant brows, and gave you what was a true christening while you were
   still but little ones. There are husbands here who owe their conversion
   to their wives' prayers; brothers who must acknowledge that it was a
   sister's pleading; children who must confess that their sabbath-school
   teachers were wont to pray for them. Now, if by others' prayers you and
   I were brought to Christ, how can we repay this Christian kindness, but
   by pleading for others? He who has not a man to pray for him may write
   himself down a hopeless character. During one of the revivals in
   America, a young man was going to see the minister, but he did not,
   because the minister had avoided him with considerable coldness. A
   remark was made to the minister upon what he had done, and he said,
   "Well, I did not want to see him; I knew he had only come to mock and
   scoff; what should I see him for; you do not know him as well as I do,
   or else you would have done the same." A day or two after there was a
   public meeting, where the preaching of the Word was to be carried on in
   the hope that the revival might be continued. A young man who had been
   lately converted through the prayers of another young man was riding to
   the worship on his horse, and as he was riding along he was overtaken
   by our young friend whom the minister thought so godless. He said to
   him, "Where are you going today, William?" "Well, I am going to the
   meeting, and I hear that you have been converted." "I thank God I have
   been brought to a knowledge of the truth," he answered. "Oh!" said the
   other, "I shall never be; I wish I might." His friend was surprised to
   hear him whom the minister thought to be so hard say that, and he said,
   "But why cannot you be converted?" "Why?" said the other, "you know you
   were converted through the prayers of Mr. K--." "Yes, so I was." "Ah,"
   said the other, "there is nobody to pray for me; they have all given me
   up long ago." "Why," said his friend, "it is very singular, but Mr.
   K--, who prayed for me, has been praying for you too; we were together
   last night, and I heard him." The other threw himself back in his
   saddle, and seemed as if he would fall from his horse with surprise.
   "Is that true?" said he. "Yes, it is." "Then blessed be God, there is
   hope for me now, and if he has prayed for me, that gives me a reason
   why I should now pray believingly for myself." And he did so, and that
   meeting witnessed him confessing his faith in Christ. Now, let no man
   of your acquaintance say that there is nobody to pray for him; but as
   you had somebody to plead for you, let poor souls of your acquaintance
   find in you a person to plead for them.

   Then, again, permit me to say, how are you to prove your love to Christ
   or to his church if you refuse to pray for men? "We know that we have
   passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." If we do
   not love the brethren, we are still dead. I will aver no man loves the
   brethren who does not pray for them. What! It is the very least thing
   you can do, and if you do not perform the least, you certainly will
   fail in the greater. You do not love the brethren unless you pray for
   them, and then it follows you are dead in trespasses and sins. Let me
   ask you again how is it that you hope to get your own prayers answered
   if you never plead for others? Will not the Lord say, "Selfish wretch,
   thou art always knocking at my door, but it is always to cry for thine
   own welfare and never for another's; inasmuch as thou hast never asked
   for a blessing for one of the least of these my brethren, neither will
   I give a blessing to thee. Thou lovest not the saints, thou lovest not
   thy fellow men, how canst thou love me whom thou hast not seen, and how
   shall I love thee and give thee the blessing which thou askest at my
   hands?" Brethren, again I say I would earnestly exhort you to intercede
   for others, for how can you be Christians if you do not? Christians are
   priests, but how priests if they offer no sacrifice? Christians are
   lights, but how lights unless they shine for others? Christians are
   sent into the world, even as Christ was sent into the world, but how
   sent unless they are sent to pray? Christians are meant not only to be
   blessed themselves, but in them shall all the nations of the earth be
   blessed, but how if you refuse to pray? Give up your profession, cast
   down, I pray you, the ephod of a priest if you will not burn the
   incense, renounce your Christianity if you will not carry it out, make
   not a mock and sport of solemn things. And you must do so if you still
   refuse selfishly to give to your friends a part and a lot in your
   supplications before the throne. O brethren, let us unite with one
   heart and with one soul to plead with God for this neighbourhood! Let
   us carry "London" written on our breasts just as the high priest of old
   carried the names of the tribes. Mothers, bear your children before
   God! Fathers, carry your sons and your daughters! Men and brethren, let
   us take a wicked world and the dark places thereof which are full of
   the habitations of cruelty! Let us cry aloud and keep no silence, and
   give to the Lord no rest till he establish and make his Church a praise
   in the earth. Wake, ye watchmen upon Zion's walls, and renew your
   shouts! Wake, ye favourites of heaven, and renew your prayers! The
   cloud hangs above you, it is yours to draw down its sacred floods in
   genial showers by earnest prayers. God hath put high up in the
   mountains of his promise springs of love, it is yours to bring them
   down by the divine channel of your intense supplications. Do it, I pray
   you, lest inasmuch as you have shut your bowels of compassion and have
   refused to plead with God for the conversion of others, he should say
   in his wrath, "These are not my children. They have not my spirit. They
   are not partakers of my love, neither shall they enter into my rest."
   Why, there are some of you that have not prayed for others for months,
   I am afraid, except it be at a prayer meeting. You know what your night
   prayers are. It is, "Lord, take care of my family." You know how some
   farmers pray. "Lord, send fair weather in this part of the country.
   Lord, preserve the precious fruits of the field all round this
   neighbourhood. Never mind about their being spoilt anywhere else, for
   that will send the markets up." And so there are some who make
   themselves special objects of supplication; and what care they for the
   perishing crowd. This is the drift of some men's wishes, "Lord, bless
   the Church, but don't send another minister into our neighbourhood lest
   he should take our congregations from us. Lord, send labourers into the
   vineyard, but do not send them into our corner lest they should take
   any of our glory from us." That is the kind of supplication. Let us
   have done with such. Let us be Christians; let us have expanded souls
   and minds that can feel for others. Let us weep with them that weep,
   and rejoice with them that rejoice; and as a Church and as private
   persons, we shall find the Lord will turn our captivity when we pray
   for our friends. God help us to plead for others! And as for you that
   have never prayed for yourselves, God help you to believe in the Lord
   Jesus! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                       The Triumphal Entry Into Jerusalem

   A Sermon

   (No. 405)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, August the 18th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek,
   and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass."--Matthew.
   21:5.

   WE HAVE READ the chapter from which our text is taken; let me now
   rehearse the incident in your hearing. There was an expectation upon
   the popular mind of the Jewish people, that Messiah was about to come.
   They expected him to be a temporal prince, one who would make war upon
   the Romans and restore to the Jews their lost nationality. There were
   many who, though they did not believe in Christ with a spiritual faith,
   nevertheless hoped that perhaps he might be to them a great temporal
   deliverer, and we read that on one or two occasions they would have
   taken him and made him a king, but that he hid himself. There was an
   anxious desire that somebody or other should lift the standard of
   rebellion and lead the people against their oppressors. Seeing the
   mighty things which Christ did, the wish was father to the thought, and
   they imagined that He might probably restore to Israel the kingdom and
   set them free. The Saviour at length saw that it was coming to a
   crisis. For him it must either be death for having disappointed popular
   expectation, or else he must yield to the wishes of the people, and be
   made a king. You know which be chose. He came to Save others, and not
   to be made a king himself in the sense in which they understood him.
   The Lord had worked a most remarkable miracle, he had raised Lazarus
   from the dead after he had been buried four days. This was a miracle so
   novel and so astounding, that it became town talk. Multitudes went out
   of Jerusalem to Bethany, it was only about two miles distant, to see
   Lazarus. The miracle was well authenticated, there were multitudes of
   witnesses, it was generally accepted as being one of the greatest
   marvels of the age, and they drew the inference from it that Christ
   must be the Messiah. The people determined that now they would make him
   a king, and that now he should lead them against the hosts of Rome. He,
   intending no such thing, nevertheless overruled their enthusiasm that
   by it he might have an opportunity of performing that which had been
   written of him in the prophets. You must not imagine that all those who
   strewed the branches in the way and cried "Hosanna" cared about Christ
   as a spiritual prince. No, they thought that he was to be a temporal
   deliverer, and when they found out afterwards that they were mistaken
   they hated him just as much as they had loved him, and "Crucify him,
   crucify him," was as loud and vehement a cry as "Hosanna, blessed is he
   that cometh in the name of the Lord." Our Saviour thus availed himself
   of their mistaken enthusiasm for divers wise ends and purposes. It was
   needful that the prophecy should be fulfilled--"Rejoice greatly, O
   daughter of Zion! Shout O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold thy King cometh
   unto thee, he is just and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an
   ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass." It was needful again, that he
   should make a public claim to be the Son of David, and that he should
   claim to be the rightful inheritor of David's throne,--this he did on
   this occasion. It was needful too, that he should leave his enemies
   without excuse. In order that they might not say, "If thou be the
   Messias, tell us plainly," he did tell them plainly. This riding
   through the streets of Jerusalem was as plain a manifesto and
   proclamation of his royal rights as could possibly have been issued. I
   think, moreover,--and upon this I build the discourse of this
   morning,--I think that Christ used the popular fanaticism as an
   opportunity of preaching to us a living sermon, embodying great truths
   which are too apt to be forgotten because of their spiritual character,
   embodying them in the outward form and symbol of himself riding as a
   king, attended by hosts of followers. We come to this as the subject of
   our sermon. Let us what we can lean from it.

   I. One of the first things we learn is this. By thus through the
   streets in state, Jesus Christ claimed to be a king. That claim had
   been to a great extent kept in the background until now, but ere he
   goes to his Father, when his enemies' rage has reached its utmost fury,
   and when his own hour of deepest humiliation has just arrived, he makes
   an open claim before the eyes of all men to be called and acknowledged
   a king. He summonses first his heralds. Twit disciples come. He sends
   forth his mandate--"Go ye into the village over against you, and ye
   shall find an ass and a colt." He gathers together his courtiers. His
   twelve disciples, those who usually attended him, come around him. He
   mounts the ass which of old had been ridden by the Jewish lawgivers,
   the rulers of the people. He begins to ride through the streets and the
   multitudes clap their hands. It is reckoned by some that no fewer than
   three thousand people must have been present on the occasion, some
   going before some following after, and others standing on either side
   to see the show. He rides to his capital; the streets of Jerusalem, the
   royal city, are open to him, like a king, he ascends to his palace. He
   was a spiritual king, and therefore he went not to the palace temporal
   but to the palace spiritual. He rides to the temple, and then, taking
   possession of it, he begins to teach in it as he had not done before.
   He had been sometimes in Solomon's porch, but he was oftener on the
   mountain's side than in the temple; but now, like a king, he takes
   possession of his palace, and there, sitting down on his prophetic
   throne, he teaches the people in his royal courts. Ye princes of the
   earth, give ear, there is one who claims to be numbered with you. It is
   Jesus, the Son of David, the King of the Jews. Room for him, ye
   emperors, room for him! Room for the man who was born in a manger! Room
   for the man whose disciples were fishermen! Room for him whose garment
   was that of a peasant, without seam, woven from the top throughout! He
   wears no crown except the crown of thorns, yet he is more royal than
   you. About his loins he wears no purple, yet he is more imperial far
   than you. Upon his feet there are no silver sandals bedight with
   pearls, yet he is more glorious than you. Room for him: room for him!
   Hosanna! Hosanna! Let him be proclaimed again a King! a King! a King!
   Let him value his place upon his throne, high above the kings of the
   earth. This is what he then did, he proclaimed himself a King.

   II. Moreover, Christ by this act showed what sort of a king he might
   have been if he had pleased, and what sort of a king he might be now,
   if he willed it. Had it been our Lord's will, those multitudes who
   followed him in the streets would actually have crowned him there and
   then, and bowing the knee, they would have accepted him as the branch
   that sprung out of the dried root of Jesse--him that was to come--the
   ruler, the Shiloh among God's people. He had only to have said a word,
   and they would have rushed with him at their head to Pilate's palace,
   and taking him by surprise, with but few soldiers in the land, Pilate
   might soon have been his prisoner, and have been tried for his life.
   Before the indomitable valor and the tremendous fury of a Jewish army,
   Palestine might soon have been cleared of all the Roman legions, and
   have become again a royal land. Nay, we aver it, with his power of
   working miracles, with his might by which he drove the soldiers back,
   when he said, "I am he;" he might have cleared not only that land but
   every other, he might have marched from country to country, and from
   kingdom to kingdom, till every royal city and every regal state would
   have yielded to his supremacy. He could have made those that dwelt in
   the isles of the sea to bow before him, and they that inhabit the
   wilderness could have been bidden to lick the dust. There was no
   reason, O ye kings of the earth, why Christ should not have been
   mightier than you. If his kingdom had been of this world, he might have
   founded a dynasty more lasting than yours, he might have gathered
   troops before whose might your legions would be melted like snow before
   the summer's sun, he might have dashed to pieces the Roman image, till,
   a broken mass, like a potter's vessel shivered by a rod of iron, it
   might have been dashed to shivers.

   It is even so, my brethren. If it were Christ's will, he might make his
   saints, everyone of them, a prince, he might make his Church rich and
   powerful, he might lift up his religion if he chose, and make it the
   most magnificent and sumptuous. If it were his will, there is no reason
   why all the glory we read of in the Old Testament under Solomon, might
   not be given to the Church under David's greater Son. But he does not
   come to do it, and hence the impertinence of those who think that
   Christ is to be worshipped with a gorgeous architecture, with
   magnificent vestments, with proud processions, with the alliance of
   states with churches, with making the bishops of God magnificent lords
   and rulers, with lifting up the Church herself, and attempting to put
   upon her shoulders those garments that will never fit her, vestments
   that were never meant for her. If Christ cared for this world's glory,
   it might soon be at his feet. If he willed to take it, who should raise
   a tongue against his claim, or who should lift a finger against his
   might! But he cares not for it. Take your gewgaws elsewhere, take your
   tinsel hence, he wants it not. Remove your glory, and your pomp, and
   your splendor, he needs it not at your hands. His kingdom is not of
   this world, else would his servants fight, else were his ministers
   clothed in robes of scarlet, and his servants would sit among princes,
   he cares not for it. People of God, seek not after it. What your Master
   would not have, do not court yourselves. Oh! Church of Christ what
   thine husband disdained, do thou disdain also. He might have had it,
   but he would not. And he read to us the lesson, that if all these
   things might be the Church's, it were well for he to pass by and say,
   "These are not for me--I was not meant to shine in these borrowed
   plumes."

   III. But thirdly, and here lies the pith of the matter, you have seen
   that Christ claimed to be a king; you have seen what kind of a king he
   might have been and would not be, but now you see what kind of a king
   he is, and what kind of a king claimed to be. What was his kingdom?
   What its nature? What was his royal authority? Who were to be his
   subjects? What his laws? What his government? Now you perceive at once
   from the passage taken as a whole, that Christ's kingdom is a very
   strange one, totally different from anything that ever has been seen or
   ever will be seen besides.

   It is a kingdom, in the first place, in which the disciples are the
   courtiers. Our blessed Lord had no prince in waiting, no usher of the
   black rod, no gentlemen-at-arms who supplied the place of those grand
   officers? Why a few poor humble fishermen, who were his disciples.
   Learn, then, that if in Christ's kingdom you would be a peer you must
   be a disciple; to sit at his feet is the honor which he will give you.
   Hearing his words obeying his commands, receiving of his grace--this is
   true dignity, this is true magnificence. The poorest man that loves
   Christ, or the humblest woman who is willing to accept him as her
   teaches, becomes at once one of the nobility that wait upon Christ
   Jesus. What a kingdom is this which makes fishermen nobles, and
   peasants princes while they remain but fishermen and peasants still!
   This is the kingdom of which we speak, in which discipleship is the
   highest degree, in which divine service is the patent of nobility.

   It is a kingdom, strange to say it, in which the king's laws are none
   of then written upon paper. The king's laws are not promulgated by
   mouth of herald, but are written upon the heart. Do you not perceive
   that in the narrative Christ bids his servants go and take his royal
   steed, such as it was, and this was the law, "Loose him and let him
   go?" but where was the law written? It was written upon the heart of
   that man to whom the ass and the foal belonged, for he immediately
   said, "Let them go" cheerfully and with great joy; he thought it a high
   honor to contribute to the royal state of this great King of peace. So,
   brethren, in the kingdom of Christ you shall see no huge law books, no
   attorneys, no solicitors, no barristers who have need to expound the
   law. The law-book is here in the heart, the barrister is here in the
   conscience, the law is written no more on parchment, no more
   promulgated and written, as the Roman decrees were, upon steel and
   harass, but upon the fleshy tablets of the heart. The human will is
   subdued to obedience, the human heart is moulded to Christ's image, his
   desire becomes the desire of his subjects, his glory their chief aim,
   and his law the very delight of their souls. Strange kingdom this,
   which needs no law save those which are written upon the hearts of the
   subjects.

   Stranger still, as some will think it, this was a kingdom in which
   riches unsure no part whatever of its glory. There rides the King, the
   poorest of the whole state, for yonder King had not where to lay his
   head. There rides the King, the poorest of them all, upon another man's
   ass that he has borrowed. There rides the King, one who is soon to die;
   stripped of his robes to die naked and exposed. And yet he is the King
   of this kingdom, the First, the Prince, the Leader, the crowned One of
   the whole generation, simply because he had the least. He it was who
   had given most to others, and retained least himself. He who was least
   selfish and most disinterested, he who lived most for others, was King
   of this kingdom. And look at the courtiers, look at the princes! they
   were all poor too; they had no flags to hang out from the windows, so
   they cast their poor clothes upon the hedges or hung them from the
   windows as he rode along. They had no splendid purple to make a carpet
   for the feet of his ass, so they cast their own toil-worn clothes in
   the way, they strewed along the path palm branches which they could
   easily reach from the trees which lined the road, because they had no
   money with which to bear the expense of a greater triumph. Every way it
   was a poor thing. No spangles of gold, no flaunting banners no blowing
   of silver trumpets, no pomp, no state! It was poverty's own triumph.
   Poverty enthroned on Poverty's own beast rides through the streets.
   Strange kingdom this, brethren! I trust we recognize it--a kingdom in
   which he that is chief among us, is not he that is richest in gold, but
   he that is richest in faith; a kingdom which depends on no revenue
   accept the revenue of divine grace; a kingdom which bids every man sit
   down under its shadow with delight, be he rich or be he poor.

   Strange kingdom this! But, brethren, here is something perhaps yet more
   exceeding wonderful, it was a kingdom without armed force. Oh, prince,
   where are thy soldiers? Is this thine army? These thousands that attend
   thee? Where are their swords? They carry branches of palm. Where are
   their accoutrements? They have almost stripped themselves to pave thy
   way with their garments. Is this thine host? Are these thy battalions?
   Oh strange kingdom, without an army! Most strange King, who wears no
   sword, but rides along in this midst of his people conquering and to
   conquer a strange kingdom, in which there is the palm without the
   sword, the victory without the battle. No blood, no tears, no
   devastation, no burned cities, no mangled bodies! King of peace, King
   of peace, this is thy dominion! Tis even so in the kingdom over which
   Christ is king to-day, there is no force to be used. If the kings of
   the earth should any to the ministers of Christ, "We will lend you our
   soldiers," our reply would be, "What can we do with them?--as soldiers
   they are worthless to us." It was an ill day for the Church when she
   borrowed the army of that unhallowed heathen, the emperor Constantine
   and thought that would make her great. She gained nothing by it save
   pollution, degradation and shame, and that Church which asks the civil
   arm to help it, that Church which would make her Sabbaths binding on
   the people by force of law, that Church which would have her dogmas
   proclaimed with beat of drum, and make the fist or the sword to become
   her weapons, knoweth not what spirit she is of. These are carnal
   weapons. They are out of place in a spiritual kingdom. His armies are
   loving thoughts, his troops are kind words. The power by which he rules
   his people is not the strong hand and the stretched-out arm of police
   or soldiery, but by deeds of love and words of overflowing benediction
   he asserts his sovereign sway.

   This was a strange kingdom too, my brethren, because it was without any
   pomp. If you call it pomp, what singular pomp it was! When our kings
   are proclaimed, three strange fellows, the like of whom one would never
   see at any other time, called heralds, come riding forth to proclaim
   the king. Strange are their dresses, romantic their costume, and with
   sound of trumpet the king is magnificently proclaimed. Then comes the
   coronation and how the nation is moved from end to end with transport
   when the new king is about to be crowned! What multitudes crowd the
   street. Sometimes of old the fountains were made to flow with wine, and
   there was scarce a street which was not hung with tapestry throughout.
   But here comes the King of kings, the Prince of the kings of the earth;
   no mottled steed, no prancing horse which would keep at a distance the
   sons of poverty; he rides upon his ass, and as he rides along speaks
   kindly to the little children, who are crying, "Hosanna," and wishes
   well to the mothers and fathers of the lowest grade, who crowd around
   him. He is approachable; he is not divided from them; he claims not to
   be their superior, but their servant so little stately as a king, he
   was the servant of all No trumpet sounds--he is content with the voice
   of men, no caparisons upon his ass, but his own disciple's garments, no
   pomp but the pomp which loving hearts right willingly yielded to him.
   Thus on he rides; his the kingdom of meekness, the kingdom of
   humiliation. Brethren, may we belong to that kingdom too; may we feel
   in our hearts that Christ is come in us to cast down every high and
   every proud thought, that every valley may be lifted up, and every hill
   may be abased, and the whole land exalted in that day!

   Listen again, and this perhaps is a striking part of Christ's
   kingdom--he came to establish a kingdom without taxations. Where were
   the collectors of the King's revenue? You say he had not any; yes he
   had, but what a revenue it was! Every man took off his garments
   willingly; he never asked it; his revenue flowed freely from the
   willing gifts of his people. The first had lent his ass and his colt,
   the rest had given their clothes. Those who had scarce clothes to part
   with, plucked the branches from the trees, and here was state for once
   which cost no man anything, or rather for which nothing was demanded of
   any man, but everything spontaneously given. This is the kingdom of
   Christ,--a kingdom which subsists not upon tithe, Church-rate or Easter
   dues, but a kingdom which lives upon the free-will offering of the
   willing people, a kingdom which demands nothing of any man, but which
   comes to him with a stronger force than demand, saying to him, "Thou
   art not under the law, but under grace, wilt thou not, being bought
   with a price, consecrate thyself and all that thou hast, to the service
   of the King of kings! Brethren, do you think me wild and fanatical in
   talking of a kingdom of this sort? Indeed, twere fanatical if we said
   that any mere man could establish such a dominion. But Christ has done
   it, and this day there be tens of thousands of men in this world who
   call him King, and who feel that he is more their King than the ruler
   of their Dative land; that they give to him a sincerer homage than they
   ever give to the beg beloved sovereign, they feel that his power over
   them is such as they would not wish to resist--the power of love, that
   their gifts to him are an too little, for they wish to give themselves
   away, tis all that they can do. Marvellous and matchless kingdom! it's
   like shall never be found on earth.

   Before I leave this point, I should like to remark that apparently this
   was a kingdom in which all creatures were considered. Why did Christ
   have two beasts? There was an ass and a colt the foal of an ass; he
   rode on the foal of the ass because it had never been ridden before.
   Now I have looked at several of the commentators to see what they say
   about it, and one old commentator has made me laugh--I trust he will
   not make you laugh too--by saying, that Christ telling his disciples to
   bring the foal as well as the sea should teach us thee infants ought to
   be baptized as well as their parents, which seemed to me to be an
   argument eminently worthy of childish baptism. Thinking the matter
   over, however, I consider there is a better reason to be given,--Christ
   would not have any pain in his kingdom, he would not have even an ass
   suffer by him, and if the foal had been taken away from its mother,
   there would have been the poor mother in the stable at home, thinking
   of its foal, and there would have been the foal longing to get back,
   like those oxen that the Philistines used when they took back the ark,
   and which went lowing as they went, because their calves were at home.
   Wondrous kingdom of Christ, in which the very beast shall have its
   share! "For the creature was made subject to vanity by our sin." It was
   the beast that suffered because we sinned, and Christ intends that his
   kingdom should bring back the beast to its own pristine happiness. He
   would make us merciful men, considerative even to the beasts. I believe
   that when his kingdom fully comes, the animal nature will be put back
   to its former happiness. "Then shall the lion eat straw like the ox,
   the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned
   child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den." Old Eden's
   peacefulness, and the familiarity between man and the lower creatures,
   shall come back once more. And even now, wherever the gospel is fully
   known in man's heart, man begins to recognize that he has no right
   wantonly to kill a sparrow or a worm, because it is in Christ's
   dominion; and he who would not ride a foal without having its mother by
   its side, that it might be at peace and happy, would not have any of
   his disciples think lightly of the meanest creature that his hands have
   made. Blessed kingdom this which considereth even the berate! Doth God
   care for oxen? Ay, that he doth; and for the very ass itself, that heir
   of toil, he careth. Christ's kingdom, then, shall care for beasts as
   well as men.

   Once more: Christ, in riding through the streets of Jerusalem, taught
   in a public manner, that his kingdom was to be one of joy. Brethren,
   when great conquerors ride through the streets, you often hear of the
   joy of the people; how the women throw roses on the pathway, how they
   crowd around the hero of the day, and wave their handkerchiefs to show
   their appreciation of the deliverance he has wrought. The city has been
   long besieged; the champion has driven away the besiegers, and the
   people will now have rest. Fling open wide the gates, clear the road
   and let the hero come, let the meanest page that is in his retinue be
   honored this day for the deliverer's sake. Ah! brethren, but in those
   triumphs how many tears there are that are hidden! There is a woman who
   hears the sound of the bells for victory, and she says, "Ah! victory
   indeed, but I am a widow, and my little ones are orphans." And from the
   balconies where beauty looks down and smiles, there may be a
   forgetfulness for the moment of friends and kindred over whom they will
   soon have to weep, for every battle is with blood, and every conquest
   is with woe, and every shout of victory hath in it weeping, and
   wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Every sound of trumpet because the
   battle is obtained, doth but cover over the cries, the sorrows, and the
   deep agonies of those that have been bereaved of their kinsfolk! But in
   thy triumph, Jesu, there were no tears! When the little children cried,
   "Hosanna," they had not lost their fathers in battle. When the men and
   women shouted, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,"
   they had no cause to shout with bated breath, or to mar their joys with
   the remembrance of misery. No, in his kingdom there is unalloyed,
   unmingled joy. Shout, shout, ye that are subjects of King Jesus!
   Sorrows ye may have, but not from him, troubles may come to you because
   you are in the world, but they come not from him, His service is
   perfect liberty. His ways are ways of pleasantness, and all his paths
   are peace.

   "Joy to the world, the Saviour comes,

   The Saviour promised long;

   Let every heart prepare a tune,

   And every voice a song."

   He comes wipe away your tears and not to make them flow, he comes to
   lift you from your dunghills and set you upon his throne, to fetch you
   from your dungeons and make you leap in liberty.

   "Blessings abound wherein he reigns,

   The prisoner leaps to lose his chain;

   The weary find eternal rest,

   And all the eons of want are blessed."

   Singular kingdom this!

   IV. And now I come to my fourth and last head. The Saviour, in his
   triumphal entrance into the capital of his fathers, declared to us very
   plainly the practical effects of his kingdom. Now what are these? One
   of the first effects was that the whole city was moved. What does that
   mean? It means that everybody had something to say about it, and that
   everybody felt something because Christ rode through the street. There
   were some who leaned from the tops of their houses, and looked down the
   street and said to one another--"Aha! Did ever you see such fool's play
   as this? Humph! Here is Jesus of Nazareth down here riding on an ass!
   Surely if he meant to be king he might have chosen a horse. Look at
   him! They call that pomp! There is some old fisherman has just thrown
   down his bad-smelling garment; I dare say it had fish in it an hour or
   two ago? "Look," says one, "see that old beggar throwing his cap into
   the air for joy!" "Aha!" say they, "was there ever such a ridiculous
   thing as that?" I cannot put it in such terms as they would describe
   it; if I could, I think I would. I should like to make you see how
   ridiculous this must have seemed to the people. Why, if Pilate himself
   had heard about it he would have said--"Ah! there is nothing much to
   fear from that. There is no fear that that man will ever upset Caesar;
   there is no fear that he will ever overturn an army. Where are their
   swords? There is not a sword among them! They have no cries that sound
   like rebellion; their songs are only some religious verses taken out of
   the Psalms." "Oh!" says he, "the whole thing is contemptible and
   ridiculous." And this was the opinion of a great many in Jerusalem.
   Perhaps that is your opinion, my friend. The kingdom of Christ, you
   say, is ridiculous; you do not believe perhaps that there are any
   people who are ruled by him though we say that we own him as our King,
   and that we feel the law of love to be a law which constrains us to
   sweet obedience. "Oh," you say, "it is cant and hypocrisy." And there
   are some who attend where they have golden censers, and altars, and
   priests, and they say, "Oh! a religion that is so simple--singing a few
   hymns, and offering extempore prayer!--Ah! give me a bishop with a
   mitre--a fine fellow in lawn sleeves--that is the thing for me." "Oh,"
   says another, "let me hear the peals of the organ; let me see the thing
   done scientifically, let me see a little drapery too; let the man come
   up clad in his proper garb to show that he is something different from
   other people; do not let him stand dressed as if he were an ordinary
   man; let me see something in the worship different from anything I have
   seen before." They want it clothed with a little pomp, and because if
   is not so they say--"Ah! Humph!" They sneer at it, and this is all that
   Christ gets from multitudes of men who think themselves exceeding wise.
   He is to them foolishness and they pass by with a sneer. Your sneers
   will be exchanged for tears ere long sirs! When he comes with real pomp
   and splendor you will weep and wail, because you disowned the King of
   Peace.

   "The Lord shall come! a dreadful form,

   With rainbow wreath and robes of storm,

   With cherub voice and wings of wind,

   The appointed Judge of all mankind."

   Then you will find it inconvenient to have treated him with contempt.
   Others no doubt there were in Jerusalem who were filled with curiosity.
   They said--"Dear me, whatever can it be? What is the meaning of it? Who
   is this? I wish you would come," they said to their neighbors, "and
   tell us the history of this singular man, we should like to know about
   it." Some of them said, "He is gone to the temple, I dare say he will
   work a miracle;" so off they ran, and squeezed and pressed, and
   thronged to see a marvel. They were like Herod, they longed to see some
   wonder wrought by him. It was the first day of Christ's coming too, and
   of course the enthusiasm might last some nine days if he would keep it
   up, so they were very curious about it. And this is all Christ gets
   from thousands of people. They hear about a revival of religion. Well,
   they would like to know what it is and hear about it. There is
   something doing at such-and-such a place of worship; well, they would
   like to go if it were only to see the place. "There is a strange
   minister says queer things; let us go and hear him. We had intended to
   go out"--you know who I mean among yourselves--"we had intended to go
   out on an excursion today," said you, "but let us go there instead."
   Just so, curiosity, curiosity; this is all Christ gets to-day, and he
   that died upon the cross becomes a theme for an idle tale, and he that
   is Lord of angels and adored of men, is to be talked of as though he
   were a Wizard of the North or some eccentric impostor! Ah! you will
   find it inconvenient to have treated him thus by-and-bye; for when he
   comes, and when every eye shall see him, you who merely curiously
   enquired for him shall find that he shall inquire for you, not with
   animosity but with wrath, and it shall be--"Depart, ye cursed, into
   everlasting fire." But anon the crowd there were some who were worse
   still, for they looked on the whole thing with envy "Ah!" said Rabbi
   Simeon to Rabbi Hillel, "the people were never so pleased with us. We
   know a great deal more than that impostor; we have read through all our
   religious books." "Don't you remember him," says one, "that when he was
   a boy he was rather precocious? You remember he came into the temple
   and talked with us, and since then he deceiveth the people," meaning by
   that he outshone them, that he had more esteem in the hearts of the
   multitude than they had, though they were prouder far. "Oh!" said the
   Pharisee, "he does not wear any phylactery, and I have made mine very
   large; I have made my garments almost all borders, so that they may be
   exceeding broad." "Ah!" says another, "I tithe my mint, my anise, and
   my cummin, and I stand at the corner of the street and blow a trumpet
   when I give away a penny, but yet people will not put me on an ass;
   they will not clap their hands and say, Hosanna' to me, but the whole
   earth is gone after this man like a parcel of children. Besides, think
   of going into the temple disturbing their betters, disturbing us who
   are making a show of our pretended prayers and standing in the courts!"
   And this is what Christ gets from a great many. They do not like to see
   Christ's cause get on. Nay, they would have Christ be lean that they
   might fatten themselves upon the plunder, they would have his Church be
   despicable. They like to hear of the falls of Christian ministers. If
   they can find a fault in a Christian man "Report it, report it, report
   it," say they. But if a man walk uprightly, if he glorifies Christ, if
   the Church increases, if souls are saved, straightway there is an
   uproar and the whole city is stirred, the whole uproar begins and is
   carried on by falsehoods, lying accusations, and slanders against the
   characters of Christ's people. In some way or other, men are sure to be
   moved, if they are not moved to laugh, if they are not moved to
   enquire, they are moved to envy. But blessed is it that some in
   Jerusalem were moved to rejoice. Oh! there were many who, like Simeon
   and Anna rejoiced to see that day, and many of them went home and said,
   "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have
   seen thy salvation." There was many a bedridden woman in the back
   streets of Jerusalem, that sat up in the bed and said, "Hosanna," and
   wished that she could get down into the street, that she might throw
   her old mantle in the way, and might bow before him who was the King of
   the Jews. There were many weeping eyes that wiped away their tears that
   day, and many mourning believers who began from that hour to rejoice
   with joy unspeakable. And so there are some of you that hear of Christ
   the King with joy. You join in the hymn; not as we have all joined with
   the voice, but with the heart.

   "Rejoice, the Saviour reigns,

   The God of peace and love

   When he had purged our stains.

   He took his seat above

   Rejoice, rejoice!

   Rejoice aloud, ye saints, rejoice!"

   Such, then, the first effect of Christ's kingdom! Wherever it comes,
   the city is stirred. Do not believe the gospel is preached at all if it
   does not make a stir. Do not believe, my brethren, that the gospel is
   preached in Christ's way if it does not make some angry and some happy,
   if it does not make many enemies and some friends.

   There is yet another practical effect of Christ's kingdom. He went up
   to the temple and there at one table sat a lot of men with baskets
   containing pairs of doves. "Any doves, sir, any doves!" He looked at
   them and said, "Take these things hence." He spoke with a holy furore.
   There were others changing money as the people came in to pay their
   half shekel; he overturned the tables and set them all a-flying, and
   soon emptied the whole court of all these merchants who were making a
   gain of godliness, and making religion a stalking-horse for their own
   emolument. Now this is what Christ does wherever he comes. I wish he
   would come in the Church of England a little more, and purge out the
   sale of advowsons, get rid of that accursed simony which is still
   tolerated by law and purge out the men that are malappropriators, who
   take that which belongs to the ministers of Christ, and apply it to
   their own uses. I would that he would come into all our planes of
   worship, so that once for all it might be seen that they who serve God
   serve him because they love him, and not for what they can get by it. I
   would that every professor of religion could be quite clean in his own
   conscience that he never made a profession to get respectability or to
   get esteem, but only made it that he might honor Christ and glorify his
   Master. The spiritual meaning of it all is this--We have no houses of
   God now; bricks and mortar are not holy, the places where we worship
   God are places of worship, but they are not the houses of God any
   longer than we are in them. We believe no superstition which makes any
   place holy, but we are the temple of God. Men themselves are God's
   temples, and where Christ comes he drives out the buyers and sellers,
   he expunges all selfishness. I will never believe that Christ, the
   King, has made your heart his palace till you are unselfish. Oh, how
   many professors there are who want to get so much honor, so much
   respect! As to giving to the poor, thinking it more blessed to give
   than to receive, as for feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, as
   for living for other people, and not for themselves--they do not think
   of that. O Master, come into thy temple and drive out our selfishness,
   now come, turn out all those things which would make it convenient to
   serve Mammon by serving God; help us to live unto thee, and to live for
   others by living to thee, and not live unto ourselves!

   The last practical effect of our Lord Jesus Christ's kingdom was he
   held a grand levee; he had, if I may so speak, a drawing-room day; and
   who we be the people who came to attend him? Now, ye courtiers, the
   disciples, show up your nobility and gentry that are come to wait upon
   him. Here comes one man, he has a bandage over here, and the other eye
   has almost failed--show him in, here comes another, his feet are all
   twisted and contorted--show him in, here comes another limping on two
   crutches, both his limbs are disabled, and another has lost his limbs.
   Here they come and here is the levee. The King himself comes here and
   holds a grand meeting, and the blind and the lame are his guests, and
   now he comes, he touches that blind eye and light shines in; he speaks
   to this man with a withered leg, he walks; he touches two eyes at once,
   and they both see, and to another he says, "I will take away thy
   crutches, stand upright and rejoice and leap with joy." This is what
   the King does wherever he comes. Come hither this morning, I beseech
   thee, thou great King! There are blind eyes here that cannot see thy
   beauty. Walk, Jesu, walk among this crowd and touch the eyes. Ah! then,
   brethren, if he should do that, you will say, "There is a beauty in him
   that I never saw before." Jesu, touch their eyes, they cannot take away
   their own blindness, do thou do it! Help them to look to thee hanging
   upon the cross! They cannot do it unless thou dost enable them. May
   they do it now, and find life in thee! O Jesu, there are some here that
   are lame--knees that cannot bend, they have never prayed; there are
   some here whose feet will not run in the way of thy commandments--feet
   that will not carry them up where thy name is praised, and where thou
   art had in honor. Walk, great King, walk thou in solemn pomp throughout
   this house, and make it like the temple of old! Display here thy power
   and hold thy grand meeting in the healing of the lame and the curing of
   the blind "Oh!" saith one, "I would that he would open my blind eyes."
   Soul, he will do it, he will do it. Breathe thy prayer out now, and it
   shall be done, for he is nigh thee now. He is standing by thy side, he
   speaks to thee, and he saith--"Look unto me and be thou saved, thou
   vilest of the vile." There is another, and he says--"Lord, I would be
   made whole." He says--"Be thou whole then." Believe on him and he will
   save thee. He is near you, brother, he is near you. He is not in the
   pulpit more than he is in the pew, nor in one pew more than in another.
   Say not--"Who shall go to heaven to find him, or into the depths to
   bring him up?" He is near you; he will hear your prayer even though you
   speak not; he will hear your heart speak. Oh! say unto him--"Jesus,
   heal me," and he will do it; he will do it now. Let us breathe the
   prayer, and then we will part.

   Jesus, heal us! Save us, Son of David, save us! Thou seest how blind we
   be--oh, give us the sight of faith! Thou seest how lame we be--oh, give
   us the strength of grace! And now, e'en now, thou Son of David, purge
   out our selfishness, and come and live and reign in us as in thy
   temple-palaces! We ask it, O thou great King, for thine own sake. Amen.
   And ere we leave this place, we cry again, "Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna.
   Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."
     __________________________________________________________________

                       The Infallibility of God's Purpose

   A Sermon

   (No. 406)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, August the 25th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "But he is in one minds, and who can turn him? and what his soul
   desireth, even that he doeth.--Job 23:13.

   IT is very advantageous to the Christian mind frequently to consider
   the deep and unsearchable attributes of God. The beneficial effect is
   palpable in two ways, exerting a sacred influence both on the judgment
   and the heart. In respect to the one, it tends to confirm us in those
   good old orthodox doctrines which lie at the basis of our faith. If we
   study man, and make him the only object of our research, there will be
   a strong tendency in our minds to exaggerate his importance. We shall
   think too much of the creature and too little of the Creator,
   preferring that knowledge which is to be found out by observation and
   reason to that divine truth which revelation alone could make known to
   us. The basis and groundwork of Arminian theology lies in attaching
   undue importance to man, and giving God rather the second place than
   the first. Let your mind dwell for a long time upon man as a free
   agent, upon man as a responsible being, upon man, not so much as being
   under God's claims as having claims upon God, and you will soon find
   upspringing in your thoughts a set of crude doctrines, to support which
   the letter of some few isolated texts in Scripture may be speciously
   quoted, but which really in spirit are contrary to the whole tenour of
   the Word of God. Thus your orthodoxy will be shaken to its very
   foundations, and your soul will be driven out to sea again without
   peace or joy. Brethren, I am not afraid that any man, who thinks
   worthily about the Creator, stands in awe of his adorable perfections
   and sees him sitting upon the throne, doing all things according to the
   counsel of his will, will go far wrong in his doctrinal sentiments. He
   may say, "My heart is fixed, O God;" and when the heart is fixed with a
   firm conviction of the greatness, the omnipotence, the divinity indeed
   of him whom we call God, the head will not wander far from truth.
   Another happy result of such meditation is the steady peace, the
   grateful calm it gives to the soul. Have you been a long time at sea,
   and has the continual motion of the ship sickened and disturbed you?
   Have you come to look upon everything as moving till you scarcely put
   one foot before the other without the fear of falling down because the
   floor rocks beneath your tread? With what delight do you put your feet
   at last upon the shore and say, "Ah! this does not move; this is solid
   ground. What though the tempest howl, this island is safely moored. She
   will not start from her bearings; when I tread on her she will not
   yield beneath my feet." Just so is it with us when we turn from the
   ever-shifting, often boisterous tide of earthly things to take refuge
   in the Eternal God who hath been "our dwelling-place in all
   generations." The fleeting things of human life, and the fickle
   thoughts and showy deeds of men, are as moveable and changeable as the
   waters of the treacherous deep; but when we mount up, as it were, with
   eagles' wings to him that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, before
   whom all its inhabitants are as grasshoppers, we nestle in the Rock of
   ages, which from its eternal socket never starts, and in its fixed
   immoveability never can be disturbed. Or to use another simile. You
   have seen little children running round, and round, and round till they
   get giddy, and they stand still and hold fast a moment and everything
   seems to he flying round about them, but by holding fast and still, and
   getting into the mind the fact that that to which they hold at least is
   firm, at last the braise grows still again, and the world ceases to
   whirl. So you and I have been these six days like little children
   running round in circles, and everything has been moving with us, till
   perhaps as we came, to this place this morning we felt as if the very
   promises of God had moved, as if Providence had shifted, our friends
   had dial, our kindred passed away, and we came to look on everything as
   a floating mass--nothing firm, nothing fixed. Brethren, let us get a
   good grip to-day of the immutability of God. Let us stand still awhile,
   and know that the Lord is God. We shall see at length that things do
   not move as we dreamed they did: "to every thing there is a season, and
   a time to every purpose under the heavens." There is still a fixedness
   in that which seems most fickle. That which appears to be most dreamy
   has a reality, inasmuch as it is a part of that divinely substantial
   scheme which God is working out, the end whereof shall be his eternal
   glory. Twill cool your brain, twill calm your heart, my brother, twill
   make you go back to the world's fight quiet and composed, twill make
   you stand fast in the day of temptation if now through divine grace you
   can come near to God and offer him the tribute of our devotion, who is
   without variableness or shadow of a turning.

   The text will be considered by us this morning--first, as enunciating a
   great general truth; and, secondly, out of that general truth, we shall
   fetch another upon which we shall enlarge, I trust, to our comfort.

   I. The text may be regarded as TEACHING A GENERAL TRUTH. We will take
   the first clause of the sentence, "He is in one mind." Now, the fact
   taught here is, that in all the acts of God in Providence, he has a
   fixed and a settled purpose. "He is in one mind." It is eminently
   consolatory to us who are God's creatures, to know that he did not make
   us without a purpose, and that now, in all his dealings with us he has
   the same wise and gracious end to be served. We suffer, the head aches,
   the heart leaps with palpitations, the blood creeps sluggishly along
   where its healthy flow should have been more rapid. We lose our limbs,
   crushed by accident, some sense fails us; the eye is eclipsed in
   perpetual night; our mind is racked and disturbed; our fortunes vary;
   our goods disappear before our eyes; our children, portions of
   ourselves, sicken and die. Our crosses are as continual as our lives,
   we are seldom long at ease; we are born to sorrow, and certainly it is
   an inheritance of which we are never deprived; we suffer continually.
   Will it not reconcile us to our sorrows, that they serve some end? To
   be scourged needlessly we consider to be a disgrace, but to be scourged
   if our country were to be served we should consider an honor, because
   there is a purpose in it. To suffer the maiming of our bodies, because
   of some whim of a tyrant, would be a thing hard to bear, but if we
   administer thereby to the weal of our families, or to the glory of our
   God, we would be content not to he mutilated once but to be cut
   piece-meal away, that so his great purpose might be answered. O
   believer, ever look, then, on all thy sufferings as being parts of the
   divine plan, and say, as wave upon wave rolls over thee, "He is in one
   mind!" He is carrying out still his one great purpose; none of these
   cometh by chance, none of these happeneth to me out of order, but
   everything cometh to me according to the purpose of his own will, and
   answereth the purpose of his own great mind. We have to labor too. How
   hard do some men labor who have to toil for their daily bread! Their
   bread is saturated with their sweat; they wear no garment which they
   have not woven out of their own nerves and muscles. How sternly, too,
   do others labor, who have with their brain to serve their fellow-men or
   their God! How have some heroic missionaries spent themselves, and been
   spent in their fond enterprise! How have many ministers of Christ
   exhausted not simply the body, but the mind! Their hilarity so natural
   to them has given place to despondency, and the natural effervescence
   of their spirits has at last died out into oneness of soul, through the
   desperateness of their ardor. Well, and sometimes this labor for God is
   unrequited. We plough, but the furrow yields no harvest. We sow, but
   the field refuses the grain, and the devouring belies of the hungry
   birds alone are satisfied therewith. We build, but the storm casts down
   the stones which we had quarried with Herculean efforts piling one on
   another. We sweat, we toil, we moil, we fail. How often do we come back
   weeping because we have toiled, as we think, without success! Yet,
   Christian man, thou hast not been without sucess, for "He is still in
   one mind." All this was necessary to the fulfillment of his one
   purpose. Thou art not lost; thy labor has not rotted under the clods.
   All, though thou seest it not, has been working together towards the
   desired end. Stand upon the sea-beach for a moment. A wave has just
   come up careening in its pride. Its crown of froth is spent. As it
   leaps beyond its fellow, it dies, it dies. And now another, and it
   dies, and now another, and it dies. Oh! weep not, deep sea, be not thou
   sorrowful, for though each wave dieth, yet thou prevailest! O thou
   mighty ocean! onward does the flood advance, till it has covered all
   the sand and washed the feet of the white cliffs. So its it with God's
   purpose. You and I are only waves of his great sea; we wash up, we seem
   to retire, as if there had been no advance; anther wave comes still
   each wave must retire as though there had been no progress; but the
   great divine sea of his purpose is still moving on. He is still of one
   mind and carrying out his plan. How sorrowful it often seems to think
   how good men die! They learn through the days of their youth, and often
   before they come to years to use their learning, they are gone. The
   blade is made and annealed in many a fire, but ere the foeman useth it,
   it snaps! How many laborers, too, in the Master's vineyard, who when by
   their experience they were getting more useful than ever, have been
   taken away just when the Church wanteth them most! He that stood
   upright in the chariot, guiding the steeds, suddenly falls back, and we
   cry, "My father, my father, the horsemen of Israel and the chariot
   thereof!" Still notwithstanding all, we may console ourselves in the
   midst of our grief with the blessed reflection that everything is a
   part of God's plan. He is still of one mind: nothing happeneth which is
   not a part of the divine scheme. To enlarge our thoughts a monument,
   have you never noticed, in reading history, how nationals suddenly
   decay? When their civilization has advanced so far that we thought it
   would produce men of the highest mould, suddenly old age begins to
   wrinkle its brow, its arm grows weak, the scepter falls, and the crown
   droops from the head, and we have said, "Is not the world gone back
   again?" The barbarian fall has sacked the city, and where once
   everything was beauty, now there is nothing but ruthless bloodshed and
   destruction. Ah! but, my brethren, all those things were but the
   carrying out of the divine plan. Just so you may have seen sometimes
   upon the hard rock the lichen spring. Soon as the lichen race grows
   grand, it dies. But wherefore? It is because its death prepares the
   moss, and the moss which is feebler compared with the lichen growth, at
   last increases till you see before you the finest specimens of that
   genus. But the moss decays. Yet weep not for its decaying, its ashes
   shall prepare a soil for some plants of a little higher growth, and as
   these decay, one after another, race after race, they at last prepare
   the soil upon which even the goodly cedar itself might stretch out its
   roots. So has it been with the race of men--Egypt, and Assyria,
   Babylon, Greece, and Rome, have crumbled, each and all, when their hour
   had come, to be succeeded by a better. And if this race of ours should
   ever be eclipsed, if the Anglo Saxons' boasted pride should yet be
   stained, even then it will prove to be a link in the divine purpose.
   Still, in the end his one mind shall be carried out, his one great
   result shall be thereby achieved. Not only the decay of nations, but
   the apparent degeneration of some races of men, and even the total
   extinction of others, forms a part of the like fixed purpose. In all
   those cases there may be reasons of sorrow, but faith sees grounds of
   rejoicing. To gather up all in one, the calamities of earthquake, the
   devastations of storm, the extirpations of war, and all the terrible
   catastrophes of plague, have only been co-workers with God--slaves
   compelled to tug the galley of the divine purpose across the sea of
   time. From every evil good has come, and the more the evil has
   accumulated the more hath God glorified himself in bringing out at last
   his grand, his everlasting design. This, I take it, is the first
   general lesson of the text--in every event of Providence, God has a
   purpose. "He is in one mind." Mark, not only a purpose, but only one
   purpose, for all history is but one. There are many scenes, but it is
   one drama; there are many pages, but it is one book; there are many
   leaves, but it is one tree, there are many provinces, yea, and there be
   lords many and rulers many, yet is there but one empire, and God the
   only Potentate. "O come let us worship and bow down before him: for the
   Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods!"

   2. "Who can turn him?" This is the second clause of the sentence, and
   here I think we are taught the doctrine that the purpose of God is
   unchanged. The first sentence shows that he has a purpose, the second
   shows that it is incapable of change. "Who can turn him?" There are
   some shallow thinkers who dream that the great plan and design of God
   was thrown out of order by the fall of man. The fall they consider all
   accidental circumstances, not intended in the divine plan, and so, God
   being placed in a delicate predicament of requiring to sacrifice his
   justice or his mercy, used the plan of the atonement of Christ as a
   divine expedient Brethren, it may be lawful to use such terms, it may
   be lawful to you, it would not be to me, for well am I persuaded that
   the very fall of man was a part of the divine purpose--that even the
   sin of Adam, though he did it freely, was nevertheless contemplated in
   the divine scheme, and was by no means such a thing as to involve a
   digression from his primary plan. Then came the delude, and the race of
   man was swept away, but God's purpose was not affected by the
   destruction of the race. In after years his people Israel forsook him
   and worshipped Baal and Ashtoreth, but his purpose, was not changed any
   more by the defection of his chosen nation than by the destruction of
   his creatures. And when in after years the gospel was sent to the Jews
   and they resisted it, and Paul and Peter turned to the Gentiles, do not
   suppose that God had to take down his book and make an erasure or an
   amendment. No, the whole was written there from the beginning, he knew
   everything of it, he has never altered a single sentence nor changed a
   single line of the divine purpose. What he intended the great picture
   to be, that it shall be at the end, and where you see some black
   strokes which seem not in keeping, these shall yet be toned down; and
   where there are some brighter dashes, too bright for the sombre
   picture, these shall yet be brought into harmony; and when in the end
   God shall exhibit the whole, he shall elicit both from men and angels
   tremendous shouts of praise, while they say, "Great and marvelous are
   thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of
   Saints! Thou only art holy. All nations shall come and worship before
   Thee, for thy judgments are made manifest." Where we have thought his
   government wrong, there shall it prove most right, and where we dreamed
   he had forgotten to be good, there shall his goodness be most clear. It
   is a sweet consolation to the mind of one who muses much upon these
   deep matters, that God never has changed in any degree from his
   purpose; and the result will be, notwithstanding everything to the
   contrary, just precisely in every jot and tittle what he foreknow and
   fore-ordained it should be. Now then, wars, ye may rise, and other
   Alexanders and Caesars may spring up, but he will not change. Now,
   nations and peoples, lift up yourselves and let your parliaments pass
   your decrees but he changeth not. Now, rebels, foam at the mouth and
   let your fury boil, but he changeth not for you. Oh! nations, and
   peoples, and tongues, and thou round earth, thou speedest on thy orbit
   still, and all the fury of thine inhabitants cannot make thee move from
   thy predestinated pathway. Creation is an arrow from the bow of God and
   that arrow goes on, straight on, without deviation, to the center of
   that target which God ordained that it should strike. Never varied is
   his plan; he is without variableness or shadow of a turning. Albert
   Barnes very justly says, "It is, when properly understood, a matter of
   unspeakable consolation that God has a plan--for who could honor a God
   who had no plan, but who did everything by haphazard? It is matter of
   rejoicing that he has one great purpose which extends through all ages,
   and embraces all things; for then everything falls into its proper
   place, and has its appropriate bearing on other events. It is a matter
   of joy that God does execute all his purposes for as they were all good
   and wise, it is desirable that they should be executed. It could be a
   calamity if a good plan were not executed. Why, then, should men murmur
   at the purposes or the decrees of God?"

   3. The text also teaches a third general truth. While God had a
   purpose, and that purpose has never changed, the third clause teaches
   us that this purpose is sure to be effected. "What his soul desireth,
   that he doeth." He made the world out of nothing, there was no
   resistance there. "Light be," said he, and light was, there was no
   resistance there. "Providence be," said he, and Providence shall be,
   and when you shall come to see the end as well as the beginning, you
   shall find that there was no resistance there. It is a wonderful thing
   how God effects his purpose while still the creature is free. They who
   think that predestination and the fulfillment of the divine purpose is
   contrary to the free-agency of man, know not what they say, nor whereof
   they affirm. It were no miracle for God to effect his own purpose, if
   he were dealing with stocks and stones, with granite and with trees but
   this is the miracle of miracles, that the creatures are free,
   absolutely free, and joy the divine purpose stands! Herein is wisdom!
   This is a deep unsearchable. Man walks without a fetter, yet treads in
   the very steps which God ordained him to tread in, as certainly as
   though manacles had bound him to the spot. Man chooses his own seat,
   selects his own position, guided by his will he chooses sin, or guided
   by diving grace he chooses the right, and yet in his choice sits as
   sovereign, on the throne: not disturbing, but still over-ruling, and
   proving himself to be able to deal as with free creatures as with
   creatures without freedom, as wall able to effect his purpose when he
   has endowed men with thought, and reason, and judgment, as when he had
   only to deal with the solid rocks and with the imbedded sea. O
   Christians! you shall never be able to fathom this, but you may wonder
   at it. I know there is an easy way of getting out of this great deep,
   either by denying predestination altogether or by denying free-agency
   altogether, but if you can hold the two, if you can say, "Yes, my
   consciousness teaches me that man does as he wills, but my faith
   teaches me that God does as he wills, and these two are not contrary
   the one to the other; and yet I cannot tell how it is, I cannot tell
   how God effects his end, I can only wonder and admire, and say, "O the
   depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how
   unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out." Every
   creature free and doing as it wills yet God more free still and doing
   as he wills, not only in heaven but among the inhabitants of this lower
   earth. I have thus given you a general subject upon which I would
   invite you to spend your meditations in your quiet hours, for I am
   persuaded that sometimes to think of these deep doctrines will be found
   very profitable it will be to you like the advice of Christ to Simon
   Peter:--"Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a
   draught." You shall have a draught of exceeding great thoughts and
   exceeding great graces if you dare to launch out into this exceeding
   deep sea, and let out the nets of your contemplation at the command of
   Christ. "Behold God is great." "O Lord! how great are thy works, and
   thy thoughts are very deep! A brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a
   fool understand this."

   II. I now come to the second part of my subject, which will be, I
   trust, cheering to the people of God. From the general doctrine that
   God has a plan, that this plan is invariable, and that this plan is
   certain to be carried out, I drew the most precious doctrine that IN
   SALVATION GOD IS OF ONE MIND,--and who can turn him?--and what his
   heart desireth, that he doeth. Now, mark, I address myself at this hour
   only to you who as the people of God. Dost thou believe in the Lord
   Jesus Christ with all thine heal? Is the spirit of adoption given to
   thee whereby thou canst say, "Abba, Father?" If so draw nigh, for this
   truth is for thee.

   Come then, my brethren, in the first place let us consider that God is
   of one mind. Of old, my soul, he determined to save thee. Thy calling
   proves thine election, and thine election teaches thee that God
   ordained to save thee. He is not a man that he should lie, nor the Son
   of Man that he should repent. He is of one mind. He saw thee ruined in
   the fall of thy father Adam, but his mind never changed from his
   purpose to save thee. He saw thee in thy nativity. Thou well test
   astray from the woman speaking lies, thy youthful follies and
   disobedience he saw, but never did that gracious mind alter in its
   designs of love to thee. Then in thy manhood thou didst plunge into
   vice and sin. Cover, O darkness, all on guilt, and let the night
   conceal it from our eyes for ever! Though he added sin to sin, and our
   pride waxed exceeding high and hot, yet he has of one mind.

   "Determined to save, he watched o'er my path

   When Satan's blind slave, I spotted with death."

   At last, when the happy hour arrived, he came to our door and knocked,
   and he said, "Open to me." And do you remember, O my brothel, how we
   said, "Get thee gone, O Jesu, we want thee not?" We scorned his grace,
   defied his love, but he was of one mind, and no hardness of heart could
   turn him. He had determined to have us for his spouse, and he would not
   take "No" for an answer. He said he would have us, and he persevered.
   He knocked again, and do you remember how we half opened the door? But
   then some strong temptation came and we shut it in his very face, and
   he said, "Open to me, my dove, my head is wet with the dew, and my
   locks with the drops of the night"--yet we bolted and barred the door,
   and would not let him in. But he was of one mind and none could turn
   him. Oh! my soul weeps now when I think of the many convictions that I
   stifled, of the many movings of his Spirit that I rejected, and those
   many times when conscience bade me repent, and urged me to flee to him,
   but I would not; of those seasons when a mother's tears united with all
   the intercession of the Saviour, yet the heart harder than adamant, and
   less eat to be melted than the granite itself, refused to move and
   would not yield. But he was of one mind. He had no fickleness in him.
   He said he would have us, and have us he would. He had written our
   names in his book, and he would not cross them out. It was his solemn
   purpose that yield we should. And O that hour when we yielded at the
   last! Then did he prove that in all our wanderings he had been of one
   mind. And O since then, how sorrowful the reflection! Since then, how
   often have you and I turned! We have backslidden, and if we had the
   Arminian's God to deal with, we should either have been in hell, or out
   of the covenant at this hour. I know I should be in the covenant and
   out of the covenant a hundred times a day if I had a God who put me out
   every time I sinned and then restored it when I repented. But no,
   despite our sin, our unbelief, our backslidings, our forgetfulness of
   him, he was of one mind. And brethren, I know this, that though we
   shall wander still, though in dark hours you and I may slip, and often
   fall, yet his lovingkindness changes not. Thy strong arm, O God shall
   bear us on; thy loving heart will never fail; thou wilt not turn thy
   love away from us, or make it cease or pour upon us thy fierce anger,
   but having begun, thou wilt complete the triumphs of thy grace. Nothing
   shall make thee change thy mind. What joy is this to you, believers?
   for your mind changes every day, your experience varies like the wind,
   and if salvation were to be the result of any purpose on your part,
   certainly it never would be effected. But since it is God's work to
   save, and we have proved hitherto that he is of one mind, our faith
   shall revel in the thought that he will be of one thought even to the
   end, till all on glory's summit we shall sing of that fixed purpose and
   that immutable love which never turned aside until the deed of grace
   was triumphantly achieved.

   Now, believer, listen to the second lesson: "Who can turn him?" While
   he is immutable from within, he is immovable from without. "Who can
   turn him?" That is a splendid picture presented to us by Moses in the
   Book of Numbers. The children of Israel were encamped in the plains of
   Moab. As the trees of lign aloes which the Lord had planted, and as
   cedar trees beside the waters, were their tents. Quietly and calmly
   they were resting in the valley--the tabernacle of the Lord in their
   midst, and the pillar of cloud spread over them as a shield. But on the
   mountain range there were two men--Balak, the son of Zippor, king of
   the Moabites, and Balaam the prophet of Pethor. They had builded seven
   altars and offered seven bullocks, and Balak said unto Balsam, "Come,
   curse me Jacob, come, defy Israel." Four times did the prophet take up
   his parable. Four times did he use his enchantments, offering the
   sacrifices of God on the altars of Baal. Four times did he vainly
   attempt a false divination. But I would have you mark that in each
   succeeding vision the mind God is brought out in deeper characters.
   First, he confesses his own impotence, "How shall I curse, whom God
   hath not cursed, how shall I defy, whom the Lord hath not defied?" Then
   the second oracle brings out more distinctly the divine blessing.
   "Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and he hath blessed, and
   I cannot reverse it." A third audacious attempt is not with a heavier
   repulse, for the stifled curse recoils on themselves--"Blessed is he
   that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee." Once again in
   the vision that closes the picture, the eyes of Balaam are opened till
   he gets a glimpse of the Star that should come out of Jacob, and the
   Scepter that shall rise out of Israel, with the dawning glory of the
   latter days. Well might Balaam say, "There is no enchantment against
   Jacob, no divination against Israel. And now transfer that picture in
   your mind to all your enemies, and specially to that arch-fiend of
   hell. He comes before God to-day with the remembrance of your sins, and
   he desires that he may curse Israel, but he has found a hundred times
   that there is no enchantment against Jacob nor divination against
   Israel He took David into the sin of lust, and he found that God would
   not curse him there, but bless him with a sorrowful chastisement and
   with a deep repentance He took Peter into the sin of denying his
   Master, and he denied him with oaths and curses. But the Lord would not
   curse him even there, but turned and looked on Peter, not with a
   lightning glance that might have shivered him, but with a look of love
   that made him weep bitterly. He had taken you and me at divers times
   into positions of unbelief, and we have doubted God. Satan
   said--"Surely, surely God will curse him there," but never once has he
   done it. He has smitten, but the blow was full of love. He has
   chastised, but the chastisement was fraught with mercy. He has not
   cursed us, nor will he. Thou canst not turn God's mind, then, fiend of
   hell, thine enchantments cannot prosper, thine accusations shall not
   prevail. "He is in one mind, who can turn him? "And brethren, you know
   when men are turned, they are sometimes turned by advice. Now who can
   advise with God. Who shall counsel the Most High to cast off the
   darlings of his bosom, or persuade the Saviour to reject his spouse?
   Such counsel offered were blasphemy, and it would be not pugnant to his
   soul. Or else men are turned by entreaties. But how shall God listen to
   the entreaties of the evil one? Are not the prayers of the wicked an
   abomination to the? Lord? Let them pray against us, let them entreat
   the Lord to curse us. But he is of one mind and no revengeful prayer
   should change the purpose of his love. Sometimes as men are changed by
   the ties of relationship: a another interposes and lose yields, but in
   our case, who can interpose? God's only begotten Son is as much
   concerned in our salvation as his Father, and instead of interposing to
   change, he would--if such a thing were needed--still continue to plead
   that the love and mercy of God might never be withdrawn. Oh, let us
   rejoice in this,--

   "Midst all our sin, and care, and woe,

   His Spirit will not let us go."

   The Lord will not forsake his people for his great name's sake; because
   it hath pleased the Lord to make you his people. "He is in one mind,
   and who can turn him?"

   I know not how it is, but I feel that I cannot preach from this text as
   I should like. But oh! the text itself is music to my ears. It seems to
   sound like the martial trumpet of the battle, and my soul is ready for
   the fray. It seems now that if trials and troubles should come, if I
   could but hold my hand upon this precious text, I would laugh at them
   all. "Who can turn him?"--I would shout--"Who can turn him?" Come on,
   earth and hell, come on, for "who can turn him?" Come on, ye boisterous
   troubles, come on, ye innumerable temptations, come on, slanderer and
   liar, "who can turn him?" And since he cannot be changed, my soul must
   and will rejoice "with joy unspeakable and full of glory." I wish I
   could throw the text like a bombshell into the midst of the army of
   doubters, that that army might be routed at once, for when we get a
   text like this, it must be the text which takes effect, and not our
   explanation. This surely is a most marvellous death-blow to our doubts
   and fears.

   "He is in one mind, and who can turn him?"

   And now with a few words upon the last sentence I shall
   conclude:--God's purpose must be effected--"What his soul desireth,
   that he doeth." Beloved, what God's soul desireth is your salvation and
   mine, if we be his chosen. Well, that he doeth. Part of that salvation
   consists in our perfect sanctification. We have had a long struggle
   with inbred sin, and as far as we can judge, we have not made much
   progress, for still is the Philistine in the land, and still doth the
   Canaanite invade us. We sin still, and our hearts still have in sheen
   unbelief and proneness to depart from the living God. Can you think it
   possible that you will ever be without any tendency to sin? Does it not
   seem a dream that you should ever be without fault before the throne of
   God--without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing? But yet you shall be;
   his heart desireth it, and that he doeth. He would have his spouse
   without any defilement he would have his chosen generation without
   anything to mar their perfection. Now, inasmuch as he spake and it was
   done, he has but to speak and it shall be done with you. You cannot
   rout your foes but he can. You cannot overcome your besetting sins, but
   he can do it. You cannot drive out your corruptions, for they have
   chariots of iron, but he will drive out the last of them, till the
   whole land shall be without one enemy to disturb its perpetual peace. O
   what a joy to know that it will be ere long! Oh! it will be so soon
   with some of us--such a few weeks, though we perhaps are reckoning on
   years of life! A few weeks, or a few days, and we shall have passed
   through Jordan's flood and stand complete in him, accepted in the
   Beloved! And should it be many years--should we be spared till the
   snows of a century shall have fallen upon our frosted hair--yet even
   then we must not doubt that his purpose shall at last be fulfilled. We
   shall be spotless and faultless and unblameable in his sight ere long.

   Another part of our salvation is, that we should at last be without
   pain, without sorrow, gathered with the Church of the first-born before
   the Father's face. Does it not seem, when you sit down to think of
   yourself as being in heaven, as a pretty dream that never will be true?
   What! shall these fingers one day smite the strings of a golden harp? O
   aching head! shalt thou one day wear a crown of glory that fadeth not
   away? O toil-worn body! shalt thou bathe thyself in seas of heavenly
   rest? Is not heaven too good for us, brothers and sisters? Can it be
   that we, poor we, shall ever get inside those pearly gates, or tread
   the golden streets? Oh shall we ever see his face? Will he ever kiss us
   with the kisses of his lips? Will the King immortal, invisible, the
   only wise God, our Saviour, take us to his bosom, and call us all his
   own? Oh! shall we ever drink out of the rivers of pleasure that are at
   the right hand of the Most High? Shall we be among that happy company
   who shall be led to the living fountains of waters and kill tears be
   wiped away from our eyes? Ah! that we shall be! for "he is in one mind
   and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, that he doeth."
   "Father, I will that they whom thou hath given me be with me where I
   am, that they may behold my glory." That is an immortal omnipotent
   desire. We shall be with him where be is; his purpose shall be
   effected, and we shall partake of his bliss. Now rise, ye who love the
   Saviour, and put your trust in him--rise like men who have God within
   you, and sit no longer down upon your dunghills. Come, ye desponding
   ones; if salvation were to be your own work, ye might despair, but
   since it is his, and he changes not, you must not even doubt.

   "Now let the feeble all be strong,

   And make Jehovah's power their song;

   His shield is spread o'er every saint.

   And thus supported, who can faint?"

   If you perish--even the weakest of you--God's purpose cannot be
   effected. If you fall, his honor will be stained. If you perish, heaven
   itself will be dishonored; Christ will have lost one of his members;
   the Divine Husband will be disappointed in part of his well-beloved
   spouse; he will be a king whose regalia has been stolen; nay, he will
   not be complete himself, for the Church is his fullness, and how can he
   be full if a part of his fullness shall be cast away? Putting these
   things together, let us take courage, and in the name of God let us set
   up our banners. He that has been with us hitherto will preserve us to
   the end, and we shall soon sing in the fruition of glory as we now
   recite in the confidence of faith, that his purpose is completed, and
   his love immutable.

   This I say by way of close such a subject ought to inspire every man
   with awe. I speak to some here who are unconverted. It is an awful
   thought; God's purpose will be subserved in you. You may hate him, but
   as he get him honor upon Pharaoh and all his hosts, so will he upon
   you. You may think that you will spoil his designs: that shall be your
   idea, but your very acts, though guided with that intent, shall only
   tend to sum serve his glory. Think of that! To rebel against God is
   useless, for you cannot prevail. To resist him is not only impertinence
   but folly. He will be as much glorified by you, whichever way you go.
   You shall either yield him willing honor or unwilling honor, but either
   way his purpose in you shall most certainly be subserved. O that this
   thought might make you bow your heads and say, "Great God, glorify thy
   mercy in me, for I have revolted; show that thou canst forgive. I have
   sinned, deeply sinned. Prove the depths of thy mercy by pardoning me. I
   know that Jesus died, and that he is set forth as a propitiator; I
   believe on him as such. O God! I trust him: I pray thee, glorify
   thyself in me by showing what thy grace can do in casting sin behind
   thy back, and blotting out iniquity, transgression, and sin." Sinner,
   he will do it, he will do it, if thus you plead and thus you pray, he
   will do it, for there was never a sinner rejected yet, that came to God
   with humble prayer and faith. Going to God to-day, confessing your sin,
   and taking hold of Christ, as upon the horns of the altar of mercy, and
   of sacrifice, you shall find that it was a part of the divine plan to
   bring you here to-day, to strike your mind with awe, to lead you humbly
   to the cross, to lead you afterwards joyfully to your God, and to bring
   you perfect at last before his throne.

   God add his blessing for Christ's sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                             Natural or Spiritual?

   A Sermon

   (No. 407)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, September the 1st, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God,
   neither can he know then because they are spiritually discerned."--1
   Corinthians 2:14.

   THE APOSTLE PAUL knows of only two classes of men--natural and
   spiritual. Before his eye all other distinctions are extinguished.
   Barbarian or Scythian, bond or friar, male or female, circumcision or
   uncircumcision--all these varieties among men are mere accidents in his
   esteem. He does not stay to divide men, according to the symptoms of
   their nature. They may be devout men, such as make a profession of
   godliness, men of morality, men who have commenced sin, or men who have
   become adepts in it. He knows better than merely to judge of men by
   their symptoms; he takes either their diseased state or their healthy
   state, and so divides them. He lays the axe at the root of the trees,
   and doing so, he perceives only two classes of men--the natural and the
   spiritual. Under the term "natural," the apostle includes all those
   persons who are not partakers of the Spirit of God; it matters not how
   excellent, how estimable, how intelligent, how instructed they may be.
   If the Spirit of God hath not given to them a new and higher nature
   than they ever possessed by their creature birth, he puts them all down
   at once in the list of natural men. They are what they are by nature.
   They never professed to have received the Spirit of God. He puts them
   down, therefore, as natural men. On the other hand, all into whom the
   Spirit of God has come, breathing into them a new and diviner life, he
   puts down under the other head of spiritual men. They may be as yet but
   babes in grace; their faith may be weak; their love may be but in its
   early bud; as yet their spiritual senses may be little exercised,
   perhaps their faults may be in excess of their virtues, but inasmuch as
   the root of the matter is in them, and they have passed from death unto
   life, out of the region of nature into that which is beyond nature--the
   kingdom of grace--he puts them down also, all of them in one list, as
   spiritual men. And then he goes on to affirm concerning natural
   men,--those who are not partakers of the Spirit,--that the truths of
   God, which are spiritual, they do not and cannot receive. He teaches
   that it is utterly impossible that they ever should receive then,
   unless lifted out of that class of natural men and transformed by the
   Spirit's work into spiritual men. This change, however, being effected,
   they will not only receive the things of the Spirit, but embrace them
   with delight, feed upon them with intense satisfaction, and rise
   eventually into that state of glory which is next beyond the state of
   grace.

   This morning I propose--and O that God the Holy Spirit may bear witness
   in our hearts!--I propose, first of all, to dwell a little while upon
   the great truth that natural men do not receive the things of the
   Spirit of God, but count them foolishness; in the second place, I shall
   show, for a moment only, that the reason of the rejection of the things
   of God cannot be because they are really foolish, for they are not so;
   thirdly, we shall come to the inference that the reason why the natural
   man rejects the things of God, is to be found in himself alone; and
   then, fourthly, we shall consider the practical lessons which the whole
   subject teaches.

   I. First, then, it is a well-known fact, and one which can be proved by
   the observation of every day, that THE NATURAL MAN RECEIVES NOT THE
   THINGS OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD.

   Mark, we lay this down as a rule. We do not say that the drunken or
   debauched natural man receives not the things of God. That is true; but
   we also insist upon it that the delicate and the refined natural man
   receives not the things of the Spirit of God. I do not pick out some
   one case, and say the uneducated, illiterate, coarse, low-minded
   natural man cannot comprehend spiritual things; but all alike, the most
   intelligent, enlightened, and trained natural men, equally, do not, and
   cannot, and will not comprehend the things of the Spirit of God. Like
   our apostle, we take a wide range, and do not leave out one. However
   amiable in natural temperament, however well trained by the best
   parental associations, however kept in check by the most excellent
   position in providence, however patriotic, however self-denying,
   however benevolent, however estimable in an other respects, the natural
   man does not and cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God.

   Now look around and search for the facts which prove the truth of this.
   How many natural men there are, and such as you would call good men too
   in some ways, who oppose violently the things of the Spirit of God.
   They do not believe them; nay, they say they are a lie. They cannot
   understand how men should be simpletons enough to believe such
   ridiculous things. Honestly do they imagine that they shall be snapping
   the chains of priestcraft and unrivetting the fetters of superstition,
   if they should come forward and attempt to prove that these spiritual
   things are a mere delusion. There, gentlemen, we have lived to see you,
   under a profession of religion, actually oppose those spiritual things
   which this religion teaches. We have lived to see what we scarcely ever
   dreamed to be possible--clergymen of the Church of England themselves
   denying the truths which they swore they would defend, and in their
   "Essays and Reviews" seeking to cast down those spiritual things which
   once they professed to have understood when they claimed to have
   received the Holy Spirit by the laying on of the hands of their bishop.
   We have not only in these times opened and avowed infidel lecturers
   who, like honest men deny everything openly, but we have the
   hypocritical Christian infidel who, like a dishonest thief and wolf in
   sheep's clothing, willing always to take the gain of godliness, denies
   godliness itself. Perhaps it was left for this age to permit wickedness
   to culminate to the highest, and to see the growth of the vilest
   hypocrisy that ever appeared among the sons of men. We have had
   abundant proof that men of the most scientific minds, persons who have
   been exceedingly inquiring, men who have trod the realms of knowledge,
   and gone even to the seventh heaven of wisdom, that these have
   nevertheless proved that they could not receive the things of the
   kingdom of God, by their determined opposition and enmity against
   anything like the truth as it is in Jesus. When you hear them
   blaspheming the holy name of Christ, when you hear them bringing what
   they call "scientific facts" against the truth of revelation, be not
   amazed as though it were some new thing, but write this down in your
   memorandum book--the Holy Ghost said of old, "The natural man receiveth
   not the things of the Spirit of God," and these men live to prove that
   what the Spirit of God said was very truth.

   A greater proportion of persons there are who do not so much oppose
   violently as more secretly despise and condemn. Well, they tell us,
   they dare say that the Christian religion is a very good thing for some
   people, and especially for old women and for persons that are on the
   borders of the grave, but still no rational being would endorse full
   all the doctrines of the gospel, and especially that particular form of
   them which John Calvin taught; for if there be any doctrines that
   excite more the spleen of there wise men than any other, it is the
   doctrines of grace, the doctrine of discriminating, distinguishing
   love, the doctrine of divine sovereignty, the doctrine of God, being
   really God, and not man. Against these they have no words too bitter.
   "Oh," they say, "it is an exploded theory; it has had its day, and it
   has become effete," and so, without actually persecuting those who hold
   the truth, or without even setting themselves up by active efforts to
   put it down they do secretly with a sneer and with a jest, pass it by
   as a thing utterly unworthy of a rational person, a thing that is not
   for a moment to be thought of as being one half so important as the
   wing of a beetle, or as the particular flight of a sparrow, or the
   period of the migration of a swallow. All the facts of natural history
   they think valuable and important, but these grander truths which have
   to do with the kingdom of God they despise utterly, and think they are
   but the dream of simpletons. Again, I say, my brethren, marvel not at
   this. Let this be to you another argument that the Spirit of God knew
   what was in man, and rightly judged of the human heart when he said,
   "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God."

   Probably in this assembly there are very few of either of these two
   classes, but a far more numerous company now claims our attention. The
   great mass of mankind say, "We dare say it is all well, and good, and
   true, and it is a proper thing for ministers think about, and the
   deacons of churches, and so on, no doubt they should see to it: it is
   very proper that there should be a right creed, and that the articles
   of the Church should be defended, and of course the Bible Society
   should spread the Bible, but then, of course, nobody ought to be
   importuned to read it, it is of no particular importance." Better read
   the almanack than read the Bible, according to some; and as to the
   doctrines, "Oh," they say--

   "For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight,

   He can't be wrong whose life is in the right."

   "O yes, no doubt," they say, when they see some zealous brother
   vindicating a truth, "you are all right, and so is your friend opposite
   who believes the very reverse; you are both right as far as you go; and
   as far as I am concerned, I should never interfere with you, for I do
   not consider the things to be worth the turning of a hair; I never
   trouble my head at all about it. I have so much to do with the rise and
   fall of stocks in the market, of attending to my cattle, or seeing
   after my shop, that it would not do for me to attempt to be a
   theologian. The Bible is an excellent book; I have nothing to say
   against that, certainly; but, at the same time, for a farmer, a book on
   practical chemistry is more useful, and no doubt, for a person who
   holds some office in the parish, he had better buy a handy-book of
   common law than a book on the law of God." I only just give you a
   sketch of what many say and of what many more think. I know there are
   many of you here present to-day who say, "O yes, it is a good thing for
   us to go somewhere on a Sunday; we do not think the Sabbath should be
   broken; we like to hear a minister, and we like to see him in earnest,
   but it is of no importance to us; it is not a matter of concern to us."
   Ah! since, you, too have proved that, "the natural man receiveth not
   the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him,
   because they are spiritually discerned." These things which are so
   important, that you should neglect everything else to attend to them,
   are by you thought folly; these eternal realities, compared with which
   the world's highest interests are but as unsubstantial shadows, you
   pass by as being idle dreams and doubtless they are dreams to you,
   because you, still being in your natural estate, do not, cannot, will
   not, receive the things of the Spirit of God.

   We are not without those persons, also, who even go farther. They say,
   "Well these things are of no importance to me;" and they think that
   those are fools who feel that there is any importance in them to them
   personally. "Oh!" says one, "for a man to sit down and think the
   doctrine of election, and believe himself to be elect--why the man must
   be of a very debased intellect." "Oh," says another, "to be always
   meditating upon the atonement of Christ--why there are other themes
   more expansive to think thou this." "Ay," says a third, "to be turning
   over a mere system of divinity, and professing to be able to revel in
   certain mysterious truths, such persons must be of a weak mind, or else
   very fanatical or enthusiastic." And so you will often hear persons
   say, if a man be a little more earnest than usual, "Surely that man is
   going wild; certainly he is attaching an undue importance to these
   matters." They will put him down as a Sectarian, perhaps which is one
   of the most honorable names by which a true Christian is known in these
   times. "Ah!" they will say, "a zealot, a bigot!" because a man happens
   to be honest in what he professes to believe, and thinks that if
   religion be anything, it would be everything and if it be worth all our
   thought, it is worth all our thoughts: that if it have any truth in it,
   it ought to be the master and ruler of all other truths, and governor
   of all the thoughts and the acts of life. Now, Christian men and women,
   when ye see any who turn upon their heel and despise you, because with
   earnestness you would seek the Lord your God, and strive to honor him,
   think it not some new display of human depravity; think not that you
   have made a fresh discovery in the awful deep of human departure from
   God, but say, rather now again, "I know, and once more am I confirmed
   in the fact, that the natural man receiveth not the things of the
   Spirit of God." It is a great wonder that there is one Christian upon
   the face of the earth. Some religions teach doctrines palatable to
   human nature, but the doctrines of Christ are the most unpalatable that
   could have been suggested. Some religions find that in nature which
   echoes to their voice, but Christ comes and brings a sword upon the
   earth to slay the fondest darlings of our fancy, and put to death the
   proudest favourites of our ambition. Oh! had the religion of Christ
   taught us that man was a noble being, only a little fallen--had the
   religion of Christ taught that Christ had taken away by his blood, sin
   from every man, and that every man by his own free-will, without divine
   grace, might be saved--it were indeed a most acceptable religion to the
   mass of men; it would just suit their taste; and as the ox drinks down
   water, so would they drink it down. But such a religion as that of
   Christ, so diametrically opposed as it is to all the evil propensities
   of man, owes its very existence to the might of God: that it has not
   long ago died from the earth, through the decease of its last admirer,
   is only due to that supreme power of the Holy Spirit which goeth with
   the preaching of the gospel wherever Christ is faithfully lifted up.

   II. Now, briefly on my second point.--THE NATURAL MAN COUNTS THE THINGS
   OF GOD TO BE FOOLISH; but there is nothing whatever in the things
   themselves to justify such an estimation.

   Sir, you do not know what you say when you declare that the gospel of
   Christ is absurd. I am certain you do not understand it, and that you
   are talking of something you have never studied. You are generally
   pretty safe with a man who rails at the Bible, by saying, "Did you ever
   read it?" You are not often wrong, when you hear a minister of Christ
   found fault with, by saying to the man, "Did you ever hear him? did you
   ever read his sermons?" In nine cases out of ten it is, "No, I do not
   know anything about him, yet I do not like him, I do not know anything
   about Christ, but I do not like him, I do not know anything about his
   doctrines, but I do not wish to know." I have heard persons rail at
   Calvinistic doctrine, who never in their lives have read a word that
   Calvin wrote. If you were to offer them a small treatise in which that
   noble system of divinity should be vindicated, they would say, "Oh! it
   is no doubt so dry, I should not be able to read it." Yet these learned
   gentlemen know what is inside a book without opening it! They are like
   some critics of whom I have heard, who, when they meet with a new
   volume, take the knife and cut the first page, smell it, and then
   condemn or praise. Many there are who do just the same with the Bible.
   They have heard some verses of it once or twice, they have got some
   idea of it, and straightway they are wise. They take to themselves
   their own degree of Doctor of Divinity, and they have much boldness in
   their unbelief. Now, of any man who should denounce the system of truth
   which is taught in Scripture as ridiculous and foolish, I can only say
   he has never taken the trouble to search it out for himself. Have not
   the mightiest intellects confessed that the truths of this book were
   infinitely above their highest flights? Even Newton, who could thread
   the spheres, and map the march of what else had seemed discordant
   planets, even he said there were depths here which no mortal could
   fathom. "O the depths of the wisdom of God!" This has been the
   exclamation of some of the most glorious minds that have ever
   enlightened the world. And I can say, and I know it to be a truth, that
   every man who reads the Word of God, and studies the divinity therein
   revealed--if he at first thinketh that he understandeth it, when he
   reads again, finds that he has only begun to know; and when he shall
   have searched year after year, and have become more than usually
   prescient in the study of the things of God, he will still say, "Now I
   begin to know my folly, now I began to discover that God is above me
   and beneath me, but I cannot grasp him, I cannot find out the Almighty
   to perfection, his words, his works, his ways, herein revealed to the
   sons of men, are past finding out." You wise fellows who turn upon your
   heels, and sneer at things which have astonished minds infinitely
   vaster than yours, prove your own folly when you call the things of God
   folly. With regard to that particular form of divine truth which we
   hold so dear, currently called Calvinistic doctrines--there is no
   philosophy propounded by any sage, so profound as that philosophy.
   There are no truths that were ever taught so wonderful, so worthy of
   the profoundest research of the most expanded minds, as those doctrines
   of the eternal love, the discriminating grace, and the infinite power
   of God, co-working to produce the results which his wisdom had decreed.
   When every other science shall have been exhausted, when astronomy
   shall have no wonders left, when geology shall have no secrets to
   unravel, when natural history and philosophy shall have given up all
   their infinite treasures, there will still remain a mine without a
   bottom, there will still remain a sea of wisdom without a shore, in the
   doctrines of the gospel of the grace of God. The folly, therefore,
   cannot be in the doctrines themselves.

   And as on the one hand, these things of the Spirit of God are wise and
   profound, so on the other hand, they are most important, and most
   imperatively necessary to be understood, so that if they be not
   received, it is not because they are uncongenial with our necessities.
   There are some speculations which a man need not enter upon. I receive
   constantly questions upon speculations which never struck my mind
   before, and certainly never will again. Persons want to know what is
   the origin of sin; they ask ten thousand questions which, if they could
   be answered, would not make them a whit the better. But the things of
   the gospel of God, which are as important as life and death depending
   upon them, men are content to slur over without making any earnest
   enquiry, or setting themselves to ascertain their truth. O sirs! the
   doctrines of God teach you your relationship to your Maker--is not that
   worth understanding? They teach you your condition before the Most High
   God--should you not know that? Ought you not to have clear ideas of it?
   They show you how God can be just to man, and yet be gracious--is not
   that a riddle that is worthy to have an answer? They reveal to you how
   you can approach to God, and become his child; how you may be conformed
   to his image, and made a partaker of his glory--is not that worth
   understanding? They reveal to you the world to come; they put to your
   short-sighted eye, a telescope which enables you to pierce the darkness
   and to see the unseen. The doctrines of grace put into your hands the
   keys of heaven, and unveil the secrets of death, and hell--are not
   these things worth grasping? Are not the secrets of these places worth
   the discovery? The doctrines of grace put inside your hands powers
   infinitely greater than ever wizard was conceived to have wielded when
   he used his magic rod. By their might you can destroy your troubles;
   you can see your sins swallowed up; you can behold your enemies
   defeated; you can see death destroyed, the grave swallowed up, and life
   and immortality brought to light. If you, then, as a natural man, say
   that the things that are written in this book are foolish, it is not
   because they are trivial, unimportant, and despicable, for no man can
   ever over-estimate their value, and no soul can solemnly enough weigh
   them, and understand how important they are. It argues a high excess of
   impiety, when a man shall say that that which came from God is foolish.
   Perhaps blasphemy itself cannot outlive that, and yet how many have
   been guilty of this constructive blasphemy! Let my finger run around
   these galleries, and along these seats beneath; are there not many of
   you who have said the Bible was a dull and uninteresting book? And yet
   God wrote it! And what have you said? Have you not impugned your Maker?
   Have you not said, perhaps, that the doctrines of the Gospel were very
   unimportant? Can you believe that your Maker sat down to write an
   unimportant book, or that the Holy Ghost inspired men of old to write
   that which, if not nonsense, is certainly of no importance whatever?
   Come, bow your head and repent of this your grave offense, for an
   offense it is, since it is not within the compass of any modest reason
   to imagine that any word which God has written can be foolish, or
   unimportant or unworthy to be understood. I suppose it is granted by
   all who love the Word of God, and to those mainly I must appeal, that
   the reason why the natural man rejects the sinners of God is not
   because they are foolish; then there must be some other reason.

   III. Thirdly, therefore. I propose to speak of THE REASON FOR THE
   REJECTION OF THE DOCTRINES OF THE GOSPEL BY NATURAL MEN.

   The reasons are to be found in themselves. And what are those reasons?
   The apostle tells us they cannot receive them, for they are foolishness
   unto them. I think he means they cannot receive them, first of all, for
   want of taste. You have sometimes seen a man standing before a splendid
   picture. It was painted by Raphael, or Rubens, or Titiens, and he
   stands and admires it. "What a noble countenance!" says he, "How well
   the colouring has been placed! How excellently he understands his
   lights and shadows! What a fine conception! I could stand a week and
   admire that splendid picture." Some country bumpkin, who is walking
   through the gallery, hears what our friend the artist is saying, and he
   says, "I should not like to stand a week and look at it, it looks to me
   to be an old decayed piece of canvas that wants cleaning. "I do not
   think the world would be much the worse if it should all get cleaned
   off." He walks through the gallery, and notices that on the wall
   outside there is a great daub--a picture of an elephant standing on its
   head, and a clown or two performing in some circus, and he says,
   "That's beautiful; that's just my taste." Now you blame our country
   friend because he cannot admire that which is really excellent, but
   finds a great deal more satisfaction in a common daub plastered on the
   wall. It would be quite correct to say of him that he cannot receive
   the beauties of refinement and taste, because he has never been in any
   way instructed in the matter; he has a want of taste for such things.
   Just so is it with the natural man. Give him some work of fiction--a
   daub upon the wall. Give him some fine piece of imagination; (and what
   is that when compared with the word of him that spake from heaven?) and
   he is satisfied. But before the book of God, before the revelation of
   the Most High, of the All-Wise, he stands and he sees nothing; nothing
   to admire; nothing to enchant his heart; nothing to kindle his
   imagination; nothing to enlist his faith; nothing to arouse his powers;
   nothing to excite his hopes. Surely there in a sad want of taste here,
   and the natural man, for want of taste for such things, loves not the
   things of God.

   But it is not merely for want of taste, it is for want of organs by
   which to appreciates the third. Here is a blind man, and we have taken
   him upon a pilgrimage to the summit of a mountain. What a landscape, my
   friend; what a landscape! What do you think of it? "Not much," says he.
   Why, look at those lakes there melting into one! Do you not see the
   mountain yonder across the valley? What a variety of colors upon its
   sides! Did ever you see such a blending of colors as that which is here
   produced by the Great Artist? And there, cannot you see yonder clouds
   how nobly they sail along? Look downward. What a pleasant sight is that
   village which seems to have diminished till it looks like a few
   children's toys put together there in sport. And now turn yonder and
   see that winding river like a thread of silver going through the
   emerald fields--what a magnificent view! What do you think of it, my
   friend? "I do not think much of it," says he. You are astonished. At
   last you say, "Well, if you do not think something of this, you must be
   blind." "That is just what I am," says he, "and of course I do not
   think much of this when I am blind." Now that natural man is blind. The
   eye of the Christian is his faith; but the natural man, being destitute
   of a living faith in thy living Saviour, is like a man without eyes. He
   says it is foolish; it is nothing to him. Do you think you could get a
   blind man to count down hundreds of pounds for a single picture? It is
   of no use to him. What would a deaf man give to go where you hear the
   sweetest singing that ever trilled from human lips? "Oh! no," thinks
   he, "it is foolish." He can hardly understand why men should spend
   their money and give the time to listen to the numerous combinations of
   sound produced by a Handel. Or if blind, he cannot comprehend why men
   should build long galleries and hang their fortunes out in pictures, or
   why they should travel to the Alps, or wish to cross the sea to view
   the mighty wonders of other lands. "No," says he, "it is foolish and
   trivial; better stop at home; there is nothing in it." So is it with
   the natural man. He lacks the organs, he has no ear of faith, no eye of
   faith, and he cannot therefore receive the things of God; they are
   foolishness to him.

   But more than this--not only does he lack taste and lack organs, but he
   actually lacks the nature which could appreciate these things. I will
   tell you a fable. There was a certain swine exceedingly learned among
   its class. It had studied the flavour of all manners of seeds, and
   fruits, and acorns, and knew right well, by long calculations and
   experience, the right time when the trough would be full, and when it
   would be time for it to come forth from its resting place. Greatly
   respected was this aged swine, and considered by its fellows to be one
   of the great dignitaries of the stye, and one day it enlightened its
   fellows by a speech to this effect:--"I saw," said he, "the other
   night, by the light of the moon, a man--poor simple man that he was,
   looking through a long tube at the stars. Now I thought within myself
   that surely he was mad. If he had been scraping up acorns, there would
   have been some common sense in it; if he had been getting together
   husks, why there would have been something practical in it, but for a
   man with two feet and two hands, to be letting them be still, and only
   using his eyes to look up at the stars--ah! he must be a fanatic and an
   enthusiast; he is not as sensible and practical as you and I are, who
   are content so long as we get our barley meal regularly, and can creep
   back and lie down again in our straw." And all his audience grunted
   their approbation. They said at once that this human being was far
   inferior to the swine in the matter of practical wisdom. Do not smile,
   perhaps you belong to these gentry yourselves. I heard a human swine
   say the other day--mark, a human swine--it was one who sometimes could
   look through a telescope, and this human swine said, "Ah! there you
   are! You are going to your chapel on Thursday night, and to your
   prayer-meeting on the Monday, and you spend hours in praying and
   reading your Bible; it is fanaticism. Now, I am the man for
   common-sense; I stick to my business, I do. I say, Leave these things
   to take care of themselves.' I am looking out for the present; I am
   practical, I am." And those that were by, grunted their approval, like
   human swine, as they were, and if a really spiritual man had been
   present he would not have wondered, but he would have said, "Every
   being to its taste; these are natural men, and they set up their own
   nature; it is a swinish nature, and they act up to their swinish
   spirit." He would not have been angry with them, but he would have
   pitied them. Poor things, "The natural man receiveth not the things of
   the Spirit of God." "What a degrading simile!" saith one. It is, sir,
   but not more degrading than human nature is. "Why you make us out to be
   inferior to Christians then! "Of course you are. As much as the brute
   is inferior to a man, so is a mere natural man inferior to a
   spiritually-minded man, because we rise by three steps of the ladder.
   There is the animal, he lacks intellect. God gives intellect, and there
   comes the man; God gives his Spirit, and then comes the Christian, but
   the Christian is a higher and nobler creature than the mere offspring
   of Adam. Just as much as the second Adam, who is the Lord from heaven,
   exceeds the first Adam, who was but made of the dust of the earth, so
   do the seed of the second Adam exceed all the offspring of the first
   Adam; rising to a higher life, to greater dignities, and to a nobler
   destiny than they.

   IV. And now, lastly, I come to THE PRACTICAL TRUTHS WHICH FLOW FROM
   THIS GREAT THOUGH SORROWFUL FACT.

   Do you not perceive, men and brethren, that if what I have stated be
   true there is absolute necessity for regeneration, or the work of the
   Spirit? An absolute necessity, I say, because in no one single instance
   can it be dispensed with. You may educate a nature till it should
   attain the highest point, but you cannot educate an old nature into a
   new one. You may educate a horse, but you cannot educate it into a man.
   You shall train the bird that sits upon your finger but you cannot
   train a limpet into an eagle, nor is it possible for you to train by
   the best instruction the natural man into a spiritual man. Between the
   two there is still a great gulf fixed. But cannot the natural man, by
   great efforts long-continued at last come to be spiritual? No, he
   cannot. Let the fish in the water wish as much as ever it likes, and
   despite Dr. Darwin's hypothesis, I aver that no pike by all its wishing
   ever wished itself into an ostrich, and that no single minnow was ever
   known to make itself into a lark. It may get as high as its own nature
   can get it but not beyond; it is a transformation which only the Divine
   Being can effect. So you may by your own efforts make yourselves the
   best of natural men. You may become the most patriotic of statesmen,
   you may become the most sober and discreet of moralists, you may become
   the kindest and most benevolent of philanthropists, but into a
   spiritual man you cannot bring yourself. Do what you will, and still at
   your very best there is a division wide as eternity between you and the
   regenerate man. But cannot another man help us out of such a nature
   into a state of grace? No, by no means; as man is powerless for
   himself, so is he powerless for his fellow. The priest may dip his
   pretentious fingers into the water which he professes to have
   sanctified, and may put the drops upon the infant's brow but that the
   child is regenerate is a lie. He may take the child in after-life into
   the baptismal pool if he will, and there bury him agreeably to the
   apostle's metaphor, but that by immersion any more than by sprinkling a
   soul can be regenerate, is a gross and infamous lie. He may put his
   hand upon his head and bless him in God's name, he may perform divers
   enchantments over him, and conclude at last with the final sacred
   greasing, and dispatch his spirit with extreme unction into another
   world but to regenerate another man is as impossible to our fellow-men
   as to create a world or to make another heaven, and rival the majesty
   of Deity. How, then, is it to be done? The Spirit of God alone can do
   it. O sirs! this is a great mystery, but you must know it if you would
   be saved, it is a solemn secret, but it is one which must be known in
   your consciences, or else shut out from heaven you must be. The Spirit
   of God must new make you, ye must be born again. "If a man be in Christ
   Jesus he is a new creature, old things have passed away, behold, all
   things have become new." The same power which raised Christ Jesus from
   the dead must he exerted in raising us from the dead, the very same
   omnipotence, without which angels or worms could not have had a being,
   must again step forth out of its privy-chamber, and do as great a work
   as it did at the first creation in making us anew in Christ Jesus our
   Lord. There have been attempts at all times to get rid of this
   unpleasant necessity. Constantly the Christian Church itself tries to
   forget it, but as often as ever this old doctrine of regeneration is
   brought forward pointedly, God is pleased to favor his Church with a
   revival. The doctrine which looks at first as though it would hush
   every exertion with indolence, and make men sit down with listlessness
   and despair, is really like the trump of God to awake the dead, and
   where it is fully and faithfully preached, though it grate upon the
   carnal ear, though it excite enmity in many against the man who dares
   to proclaim it, yet it is owned of God. Because it honors God, God will
   honor it. This was the staple preaching of Whitfield, and it was by the
   preaching of this that he was made as the mighty angel flying through
   the midst of heaven preaching the everlasting gospel to every creature.
   He was always great upon that which he called the great
   R--Regeneration. Whenever you heard him, the three R's came out
   clearly--Ruin, Regeneration, and Redemption! Man ruined, wholly ruined,
   hopelessly helplessly, eternally ruined! Man regenerated by the Spirit
   of God, and by the Spirit of God alone wholly made a new creature in
   Christ! Man redeemed, redeemed by precious blood from all his sins, not
   by works of righteousness, not by deeds of the law, not by ceremonies,
   prayers, or resolutions, but by the precious blood of Christ! Oh! we
   must be very pointed, and very plain about regeneration, for this is
   the very pith and marrow of the matter--"Except a man be born again, he
   cannot see the kingdom of God."

   Another practical inference. If you and I, or any of us, have received
   the things of the Spirit of God, we ought to look upon that as
   comfortable evidence that we have been born again. What say you, my
   hearer? Does your faith lay her hand this morning upon the head of
   Christ, and take him to be your Saviour, your teacher, and your all? If
   so, blessed art thou, for flesh and blood have not revealed this unto
   thee. Or does thy spirit this morning not only agree to the truth of
   divine election, of assured redemption, and of the finished work and
   immutable love of Christ; but dost thou love the truth in thy heart as
   well as agree to it in the head? If so, the natural man receiveth not
   these things, therefore thou art no natural man; but the Spirit of God
   has brought thee into his kingdom, because he has enabled thee to
   receive his truth. Precious is faith indeed, because it assuredly
   evidences to us what is beyond the reach of our senses. You can't tell
   whether you are born again or not, except by your faith. There will be
   no difference in your face, there will be no difference in your flesh,
   nor even in your mental characteristics; you may remain to a great
   extent the same man as far as mind and body are concerned; but
   faith--that which was not there before--faith is the grand symptom
   which betokens returning health; it is the flag hung out upon the
   castle of the soul, showing that the King is the secret tenant in the
   state-room of the soul, it is the light which shows that the sun has
   risen; it is the morning star which heralds the full illumination and
   meridian sunlight of eternal glory. Prize your faith, ask for more of
   it, but look upon it as being an evidence that you have passed from
   death unto life.

   And, lastly, my dear hearers, how this text shows you the necessity of
   accompanying all your efforts to do good with earnest prayer to God!
   "Old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon." When we first begin to
   preach, we think that the doctrines that are so sweet to us will be
   sure to be sweet to other people; and when persons begin to abuse and
   find fault we are so astonished. Oh! if we had begun to learn the truth
   a little better, we should not be astonished at all, except when any
   receive the truth, for that we should always think to be the greatest
   miracle of all. You have been trying to teach your child, and it is not
   converted yet. Ah! don't marvel, but take your child in the arms of
   your prayer to the spirit of God, and say, "O Lord, I cannot put the
   truth into this child, for it cannot receive it: do thou renew its
   heart, and then it shall receive the truth indeed! "And specially may I
   ask your continued and earnest prayers for me. What is the minister of
   Christ to do? He has to speak to a mountain and bid it be removed. Can
   his words remove it? He has to speak to fire and bid it change its
   nature into water. He has to speak to the dead, and say, "Ye dry bones,
   live! "Is not his ministry a foolish and a futile thing unless the
   Spirit of God be with him? I pray you then, be instant in your prayers
   to God. Strive earnestly at the throne of grace for all the ministers
   of the New Testament, that power may be bestowed upon them, for we are
   better at home than here if the Spirit of God be not with us. In vain,
   O ye unbelievers, ye sound your trumpets! in vain, O ye Gideons, ye
   break your pitchers that the light may shine in vain, ye Jonahs, ye cry
   through the midst of the wretched city! in vain, ye Peters, ye preach
   even to peoples of many nations! If the Spirit come not down from on
   high like tongues of fire, if God send not life, and energy, and light
   with the Word, ye shall go back without your sheaves,--ye shall return
   without success, wearied by disappointment, damaged by fear and ready
   to lay down and die. But oh! if thou comest forth, O Spirit of God!
   there is not a preacher in the corner of the streets who shall not win
   his souls; there is not a minister to-day in the humblest conventicle,
   in the lowest of back streets, which shall not be made like Peter on
   the Pentecostal day, there is not one feeble man or woman teaching
   children in the Sabbath-school who shall not become a winner of souls
   when the Spirit of God is with him!

   Of all that I have taught this morning, this is the sum.--Man is dead
   in sin, and life is a gift of God. You who have received it should
   plead with God that that gift should be bestowed on others. "He that
   believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth not shall
   be damned."
     __________________________________________________________________

                           Accidents, Not Punishments

   Spurgeon preached this message in response to two disasters that had
   hit very close to home. On Sunday, August 25, 1861, a nightmarish
   collision between two trains in the Clayton Tunnel (a 1.5-mile long
   tunnel between London and Brighton) had claimed 23 lives and severely
   injured hundreds. Barely more than two weeks later, on Monday,
   September 2, another train wreck in Kentish Town Fields (in North
   London) claimed 15 more lives. See:

   [1]http://ukhrail.uel.ac.uk/glossary/clayton.html

   [2]http://ukhrail.uel.ac.uk/glossary/sigs.html

   [3]http://www.hassocksuk.com/clayton_tunnel.htm

   A Sermon

   (No. 408)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, September the 8th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "There were present at that season some that told him of the Galileans,
   whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus
   answering said unto them, suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners
   above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you,
   Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those
   eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them, think ye
   that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem! I tell
   you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."--Luke
   13:1-5.

   THE YEAR 1861 will have a notoriety among its fellows as the year of
   calamities. Just at that season when man goeth forth to reap the fruit
   of his labors, when the harvest of the earth is ripe, and the barns are
   beginning to burst with the new wheat, Death too, the mighty reaper,
   has come forth to out down his harvest; full sheaves have been gathered
   into his garner--the tomb, and terrible have been the wailings which
   compose the harvest hymn of death. In reading the newspapers during the
   last two weeks, even the most stolid must have been the subject of very
   painful feelings. Not only have there been catastrophes so alarming
   that the blood chills at their remembrance, but column after column of
   the paper has been devoted to calamities of a minor degree of horror,
   but which, when added together, are enough to astound the mind with the
   fearful amount of sudden death which has of late fallen on the sons of
   men. We have had not only one incident for every day in the week, but
   two or three; we have not simply been stunned with the alarming noise
   of one terrific clash, but another, and another, and another, have
   followed upon each other's heels, like Job's messengers, till we have
   needed Job's patience and resignation to hear the dreadful tale of
   woes.

   Now, men and brethren, such things as these have always happened in all
   ages of the world. Think not that this is a new thing; do not dream, as
   some do, that this is the produce of an overwrought civilization, or of
   that modern and most wonderful discovery of steam. If the steam engine
   had never been known, and if the railway had never been constructed,
   there would have been sudden deaths and terrible accidents, not
   withstanding. In taking up the old records in which our ancestors wrote
   down their accidents and calamities, we find that the old stage coach
   yielded quite as heavy a booty to death as does the swiftly-rushing
   train; there were gates to Hades then as many as there are now, and
   roads to death quite as steep and precipitous, and traveled by quite as
   vast a multitude as in our present time. Do you doubt that? Permit me
   to refer you to the chapter before you. Remember those eighteen upon
   whom the tower in Siloam fell. What if no collision crushed them; what
   if they were not destroyed by the ungovernable iron horse dragging them
   down from an embankment; yet some badly-built tower, or some wall
   beaten by the tempest could fall upon eighteen at a time, and they
   might perish. Or worse than that, a despotic ruler, having the lives of
   men at his girdle, like the keys of his palace, might fall upon
   worshippers in the temple itself, and mix their blood with the blood of
   the bullocks which they were just then sacrificing to the God of
   heaven. Do not think, then, that this is an age in which God is dealing
   more hardly with us than of old. Do not think that God's providence has
   become more lax than it was, there always were sudden deaths, and there
   always will be. There always were seasons when death's wolves hunted in
   hungry packs, and, probably, until the end of this dispensation, the
   last enemy will hold his periodic festivals, and glut the worms with
   the flesh of men. Be not, therefore, cast down with any sudden fear,
   neither be ye troubled by these calamities. Go about your business, and
   if your avocations should call you to cross the field of death itself,
   do it, and do it bravely. God has not thrown up the reins of the world,
   he has not taken off his hand from the helm of the great ship, still

   "He everywhere hath sway,

   And all things serve his might;

   His every act pure blessing is,

   His path unsullied light."

   Only learn to trust him, and thou shalt not be afraid of sudden fear;
   "thy soul shall dwell at ease, and thy seed shall inherit the earth."

   The particular subject of this morning, however, is this--the use which
   we ought to make of these fearful texts which God is writing in capital
   letters upon the history of the world. God hath spoken once, yea,
   twice, let it not be said that man regardeth it not. We have seen a
   glimmering of God's power, we have beheld something of the readiness
   with which he can destroy our fellow-creatures. Let us "hear the rod
   and him that hath appointed it," and in hearing it, let us do two
   things. First, let us not be so foolish as to draw the conclusion of
   superstitious and ignorant persons--that conclusions which is hinted at
   in the text, namely, that those who are thus destroyed by accident are
   sinners above all the sinners that be in the land. And, secondly, let
   us draw the right and proper inference, let us make practical use of
   all these events for our own personal improvement, let us hear the
   voice of the Savior saying, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise
   perish."

   I. First, then, LET US TAKE HEED THAT WE DO NOT DRAW THE RASH AND HASTY
   CONCLUSION FROM TERRIBLE ACCIDENTS, THAT THOSE WHO SUFFER BY THEM
   SUFFER ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR SINS.

   It has been most absurdly stated that those who travel on the first day
   of the week and meet with an accident, ought to regard that accident as
   being a judgment from God upon them on account of their violating the
   Christian's day of worship. It has been stated even by godly ministers,
   that the late deplorable collision should be looked upon as an
   exceedingly wonderful and remarkable visitation of the wrath of God
   against those unhappy persons who happened to be in the Clayton tunnel.
   Now I enter my solemn protest against such an inference as that, not in
   my own name, but in the name of Him who is the Christian's Master and
   the Christian's Teacher. I say of those who were crushed in that
   tunnel, think ye that they were sinners above all the sinners "I tell
   you, all: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Or
   those who perished but last Monday, think ye that they were sinners
   above all the sinners that were in London? "I tell you, Nay: but,
   except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Now, mark, I would not
   deny but what there have sometimes been judgments of God upon
   particular persons for sin; sometimes, and I think but exceedingly
   rarely, such things have occurred. Some of us have heard in our own
   experience instances of men who have blasphemed God and defied Him to
   destroy them, who have suddenly fallen dead; and in such cases, the
   punishment has so quickly followed the blasphemy that one could not
   help perceiving the hand of God in it. The man had wantonly asked for
   the judgment of God, his prayer was heard and the judgment came. And,
   beyond a doubt, there are what may be called natural judgments. You see
   a man ragged, poor, houseless; he has been profligate, he has been a
   drunkard, he has lost his character, and it is but the just judgment of
   God upon him that he should be starving, and that he should be an
   outcast among men. You see in the hospitals loathsome specimens of men
   and women foully diseased; God forbid that we should deny that in such
   a case--the punishment being the natural result of the sin--there is a
   judgment of God upon licentiousness and ungodly lusts. And the like may
   be said in many instances where there is so clear a link between the
   sin and the punishment that the blindest men may discern that God hath
   made Misery the child of Sin. But in cases of accident, such as that to
   which I refer, and in cases of sudden and instant death, again, I say,
   I enter my earnest protest against the foolish and ridiculous idea that
   those who thus perish are sinners above all the sinners who survive
   unharmed.

   Let me just try to reason this matter out with Christian people, for
   there are some unenlightened Christian people who will feel horrified
   by what I have said. Those who are ready at perversions may even dream
   that I would apologise for the breach of the day of worship. Now I do
   no such thing. I do not extenuate the sin, I only testify and declare
   that accidents are not to be viewed as punishments for sin, for
   punishment belongs not to this world, but to the world to come. To all
   those who hastily look on every calamity as a judgment I would speak in
   the earnest hope of setting them right. Let me begin, then, by saying,
   my dear brethren, do not you see that what you say is not true? and
   that is the best of reasons why you should not say it. Does not your
   own experience and observation teach you that one event happeneth both
   to the righteous and to the wicked? It is true, the wicked man
   sometimes falls dead in the street; but has not the minister fallen
   dead in the pulpit? It is true that a pleasure-boat, in which men were
   seeking their own pleasure on the Sunday, has suddenly gone down; but
   is it not equally true that a ship which contained none but godly men,
   who were bound upon an excursion to preach the gospel, has gone down
   too? The visible providence of God has no respect of persons; and a
   storm may gather around the "John Williams" missionary ship, quite as
   well as around a vessel filled with riotous sinners. Why, do you not
   perceive that the providence of God has been, in fact, in its outward
   dealings, rather harder upon the good than upon the bad? For; did not
   Paul say, as he looked upon the miseries of the righteous in his day,
   "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most
   miserable?" The path of righteousness has often conducted men to the
   rack, to the prison, to the gibbet, to the stake; while the road of sin
   has often led a man to empire, to dominion, and to high esteem among
   his fellows. It is not true that in this world God does punish men for
   sin, and reward them for their good deeds. For, did not David say, "I
   have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green
   bay tree?" and did not this perplex the Psalmist for a little season,
   until he went into the sanctuary of God, and then he understood their
   end? Although your faith assures you that the ultimate result of
   providence will work out only good to the people of God, yet your life,
   though it be but a brief part of the Divine drama of history, must have
   taught you that providence does not outwardly discriminate between the
   righteous and the wicked--that the righteous perish suddenly as well as
   the wicked--that the plague knows no difference between the sinner and
   the saint--and that the sword of war is alike pitiless to the sons of
   God and the sons of Belial. When God sendeth forth the scourge, it
   slayeth suddenly the innocent as well as the perverse and froward. Now,
   my brethren, if your idea of an avenging and Awarding providence be not
   true, why should you talk as if it were? And why, if it be not correct
   as a general rule, should you suppose it to be true in this one
   particular instance? Get the idea out of your head, for the gospel of
   God never needs you to believe an untruth.

   But, secondly, there is another reason. The idea that whenever an
   accident occurs we are to look upon it as a judgment from God would
   make the providence of God to be, instead of a great deep, a fiery
   shallow pool. Why, any child can understand the providence of God, if
   it be true that when there is a railway accident it is because people
   travel on a Sunday. I take any little child from the smallest
   infant-class form in the Sunday-school, and he will say, "Yes, I see
   that." But then, if such a thing be providence, if it be a providence
   that can be understood, manifestly it is not the Scriptural idea of
   providence, for in the Scripture we are always taught that God's
   providence is "a great deep;" and even Ezekiel, who had the wing of the
   cherubim and could fly aloft, when he saw the wheels which were the
   great picture of the providence of God, could only say the wheels were
   so high that they were terrible, and were full of eyes, so that he
   cried, "O wheel!" If--I repeat it to make it plain--if always a
   calamity were the result of some sin, providence would be as simple as
   that twice two made four; it would be one of the first lessons that a
   little child might learn. But Scripture teaches us that providence is a
   great depth in which the human intellect may swim and dive, but it can
   neither find a bottom nor a shore, and if you and I pretend that we can
   find out the reasons of providence, and twist the dispensations of God
   over our fingers, we only prove our folly, but we do not prove that we
   have begun to understand the ways of God. Why, look, sirs; suppose for
   a moment there were some great performance going on, and you should
   step in in the middle of it and see one actor upon the stage for a
   moment, and you should say, "Yes, I understand it," what a simpleton
   you would be! Do you not know that the great transactions of providence
   began near six thousand years ago? and you have only stepped into this
   world for thirty or forty years, and seen one actor on the stage, and
   you say you understand it. Tush! you do not; you have only begun to
   know. Only He knoweth the end from the beginning, only He understands
   what are the great results, and what is the great reason for which the
   world was made, and for which He permits both good and evil to occur.
   Think not that you know the ways of God; it is to degrade providence,
   and to bring God down to the level of men, when you pretend that you
   can understand these calamities and find out the secret designs of
   wisdom.

   But next, do you not perceive that such an idea as this would encourage
   Phariseeism? These people who were crushed to death, or scalded, or
   destroyed under the wheels of railway carriages, were worse sinners
   than we are. Very well, then what good people we must be; what
   excellent examples of virtue! We do not such things as they, and
   therefore God makes all things smooth for us. Inasmuch as we here
   traveled some of us every day in the week, and yet have never been
   smashed to pieces, we may on this supposition rank ourselves with the
   favourites of Deity. And then, do not you see, brethren, our safety
   would be an argument for our being Christians?--our having traveled on
   a railway safely would be an argument that we were regenerate persons,
   yet I have never read in the Scriptures, "We know that we have passed
   from death unto life, because we have traveled from London to Brighton
   safely twice a day." I never found a verse which looked like this; and
   yet if it were true that the worst of sinners met with accidents, it
   would follow as a natural converse to that proposition, that those who
   do not meet with accidents must be very good people, and what
   Pharisaical notions we thus beget and foster. But I cannot indulge the
   folly for a moment. As I look for a moment upon the poor mangled bodies
   of those who have been so suddenly slain, my eyes find tears, but my
   heart does not boast, nor my lips accuse--far from me be the boastful
   cry, "God, I thank thee that I am not as these men are!" Nay, nay, nay,
   it is not the spirit of Christ, nor the spirit of Christianity. While
   we can thank God that we are preserved, yet we can say, "It is of thy
   mercy that we are not consumed," and we must ascribe it to his grace,
   and to his grace alone. But we cannot suppose that there was any
   betterness in us, why we should be kept alive with death so near. It is
   only because he hath had mercy, and been very long-suffering to
   us-ward, not willing that we should perish, but that we should come to
   repentance, that he has thus preserved us from going down to the grave,
   and kept us alive from death.

   And then, will you allow me to remark, that the supposition against
   which I am earnestly contending, is a very cruel and unkind one. For if
   this were the case, that all persons who thus meet with their death in
   an extraordinary and terrible manner were greater sinners than the
   rest, would it not be a crushing blow to bereaved survivors, and is it
   not ungenerous on our part to indulge the idea unless we are compelled
   by unanswerable reasons to accept it as an awful truth? Now, I defy you
   to whisper it in the widow's ear. Go home to her and say, "Your husband
   was a worse sinner than the rest of men, therefore he died." You have
   not brutality enough for that. A little unconscious infant, which had
   never sinned, though, doubtless, an inheritor of Adam's fall, is found
   crushed amidst the debris of the accident. Now think for a moment, what
   would be the infamous consequence of the supposition, that those who
   perished were worse than others. You would have to make it out that
   this unconscious infant was a worse sinner than many in the dens of
   infamy whose lives are yet spared. Do you not perceive that the thing
   is radically false and I might perhaps show you the injustice of it
   best, by reminding you, that it may one day turn upon your own head.
   Let it be your own case that you should meet with sudden death in such
   a way are you willing to be adjudged to damnation on that account? Such
   an event may happen in the house of God. Let me recall to my own, and
   to your sorrowful recollection, what occurred when once we met
   together; I can say with a pure heart, we met for no object but to
   serve our God, and the minister had no aim in going to that place but
   that of gathering the many to hear who otherwise would not have
   listened to his voice and yet there were funerals as the result of a
   holy effort (for holy effort still we avow it to have been, and the
   aftersmile of God hath proved it so). There were deaths, and deaths
   among God's people, I was about to say, I am glad it was with God's
   people rather than with others. A fearful fright took hold upon the
   congregation, and they fled, and do you not see that if accidents are
   to be viewed as judgments, then it is a fair inference that we were
   sinning in being there--an insinuation which our consciences repudiate
   with scorn? However, if that logic were true, it is as true against us
   as it is against others, and inasmuch as you would repel with
   indignation the accusation that any were grounded or hurt on account of
   sin, in being there to worship God, what you repel for yourself repel
   for others, and be no party to the accusation which is brought against
   those who have been destroyed during the last fortnight, that they
   perished on account of any great sin.

   Here I anticipate the outcries of prudent and zealous persons who
   tremble for the ark of God, and would touch it with Uzzah's hand.
   "Well," says one, "but we ought not to talk like this, for it is a very
   serviceable superstition, because there are many people who will be
   kept from travelling on a Sunday by the accident, and we ought to tell
   them, therefore, that those who perished, perished because they
   traveled on Sunday." Brethren, I would not tell a lie to save a soul,
   and this would be telling lies, for it is not the fact I would do
   anything to stop Sunday labor and sin, but I would not forge a
   falsehood even to do that. They might have perished on a Monday as well
   as on a Sunday. God gives no special immunity any day of the week, and
   accidents may occur as well at one time as at another, and it is only a
   pious fraud when we seek thus to prey upon the superstition of men to
   make capital for Christ. The Roman Catholic priest might consistently
   use such an argument, but an honest Christian man, who believes that
   the religion of Christ can take care of itself without his telling
   falsehoods, scorns to do it. These men did not perish because they
   traveled on a Sunday. Witness the fact that others perished on the
   Monday when they were on an errand of mercy. I know not why or
   wherefore God sent the accident. God forbid that we should offer our
   own reason when God has not given us his reason, but we are not allowed
   to make the superstition of men an instrument for the advancing the
   glory of God. You know among Protestants there is a great deal of
   popery. I meet with people who uphold infant baptism on the plea,
   "Well, it is not doing any hurt, and there is a great deal of good
   meaning in it, and it may do good, and even confirmation may be blessed
   to some people, and therefore do not let us speak against it." I have
   nothing to do with whether the thing does hurt or not, all I have to do
   with is whether it is right, whether it is scriptural, whether it is
   true, and if the truth does mischief, which is a supposition we can by
   no means allow, that mischief will not lie at our door. We have nothing
   to do but to speak the truth, even though the heavens should fall, I
   say again, that any advancement of the gospel which is owing to the
   superstition of men is a false advance, and it will by-and-bye recoil
   upon the people who use such an unhallowed weapon. We have a religion
   which appeals to man's judgment and common sense, and when we cannot
   get on with that, I scorn that we should proceed by any other means;
   and, brethren, if there be any person who should harden his heart and
   say, "Well, I am as safe on one day as another," which is quite true, I
   must say to him, "The sin of your making such a use as this of a truth
   must lie at your own door, not at mine; but if I could keep you from
   violating the Christian's day of rest by putting before you a
   superstitious hypothesis, I would not do it, because I feel that though
   I might keep you from that one sin a little time, you would by-and-bye
   grow too intelligent to be duped by me, and then you would come to look
   upon me as a priest who had played upon your fears instead of appealing
   to your judgment." Oh! it is time for us to know that our Christianity
   is not a weak, shivering thing, that appeals to the petty superstitious
   fears of ignorant and darkened minds. It is a manly thing, loving the
   light, and needing no sanctified frauds for its defense. Yes, critic!
   turn thy lantern upon us, and let it glare into our very eyes; we are
   not afraid, truth is mighty and it can prevail, and if it cannot
   prevail in the daylight, we have no wish that the sun should set to
   give it an opportunity. I believe that very much infidelity has sprung
   from the very natural desire of some Christian people to make use of
   common mistakes. "Oh," they have said, "this popular error is a very
   good one, it keeps people right; let us perpetuate the mistake, for it
   evidently does good." And then, when the mistake has been found out,
   infidels here said, "Oh, you see now these Christian people are found
   out in their tricks." Let us have no tricks, brethren; let us not talk
   to men as though they were little children, and could be frightened by
   tales of ghosts and witches. The fact is, that this is not the time of
   retribution, and it is worse than idle for us to teach that it is.

   And now, lastly--and then I leave this point--do you not perceive that
   the un-Christian and un-Scriptural supposition that when men suddenly
   meet with death it is the result of sin, robs Christianity of one of
   its noblest arguments for the immortality of the soul? Brethren, we
   assert daily, with Scripture for our warrant, that God is just, and
   inasmuch as he is just, he must punish sin, and reward the righteous.
   Manifestly he does not do it in this world. I think I have plainly
   shown that in this world, one event happeneth to both; that the
   righteous man is poor as well as the wicked, and that he dies suddenly
   as well as the most graceless. Very well, then, the inference is
   natural and clear, that there most be a next world in which these
   things must be righted. If there be a God, he must be just; and if he
   be just, he must punish sin; and since he does not do it in this world,
   there therefore must be another state in which men shall receive the
   due reward of their works, and they that have sown to the flesh shall
   of the flesh reap corruption, while they that have sown to the Spirit,
   shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Make this world the reaping
   place, and you have taken the sting out of sin. "Oh," says the sinner,
   "if the sorrows men endure here be all the punishment they will have,
   we will sin greedily." Say to them, "No; this is not the world of
   punishment, but the world of probation; it is not the court of justice,
   but the land of mercy; it is not the prison of terror, but the house of
   long-suffering;" and you have opened before their eyes the gates of the
   future; you have set the judgment-throne before their eyes; you have
   reminded them of "Come, ye blessed," and "Depart, ye cursed;" ye have a
   more reasonable, not to say a more Scriptural, ground of appeal to
   their consciences and to their hearts.

   I have thus spoken with the view of putting down as much as I can the
   idea which is too current among the ungodly, that we as Christians hold
   every calamity to be a judgment. We do not; we do not believe that
   those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell were sinners above
   all the sinners that were in Jerusalem.

   II. Now to our second point. WHAT USE, THEN, OUGHT WE TO MAKE OF THIS
   VOICE OF GOD AS HEARD AMIDST THE SHRIEKS AND GROANS OF DYING MEN? Two
   uses; first, inquiry, and secondly, warning.

   The first inquiry we should put to ourselves is this: "Why may it not
   be my case that I may very soon and suddenly be cut off? Have I a lease
   of my life? Have I any special guardianship which ensures me that I
   shall not suddenly pass the portals of the tomb? Have I received a
   charter of longevity? Have I been covered with such a coat of armor
   that I am invulnerable to the arrows of death? Why am not I to die?"
   And the next question it should suggest is this: "Am not I as great a
   sinner as those who died? Are there not with me, even with me, sins
   against the Lord my God? If in outward sin others have exceeded me, are
   not the thoughts of my heart evil? Does not the same law which curses
   them curse me? I have not continued in all the things that are written
   in the book of the law to do them. It is as impossible that I should be
   saved by my works as that they should be. Am not I under the law as
   well as they by nature, and therefore am not I as well as they under
   the curse? That question should arise. Instead of thinking of their
   sins which would make me proud, I should think of my own which will
   make me humble. Instead of speculating upon their guilt, which is no
   business of mine, I should turn my eyes within and think upon my own
   transgression, for which I must personally answer before the Most High
   God." Then the next question is, "Have I repented of my sin? I need not
   be inquiring whether they have or not: have I? Since I am liable to the
   same calamity, am I prepared to meet it? Have I felt, through the Holy
   Spirit's convincing power, the blackness and depravity of my heart?
   Have I been led to confess before God that I deserve his wrath, and
   that his displeasure, if it light on me, will be my just due? Do I hate
   sin? Have I learned to abhor it? Have I, through the Holy Spirit,
   turned away from it as from a deadly poison, and do I seek now to honor
   Christ my Master? Am I washed in his blood? Do I bear his likeness? Do
   I reflect his character? Do I seek to live to his praise? For if not, I
   am in as great danger as they were, and may quite as suddenly be cut
   off, and then where am I? I will not ask where are they? And then,
   again, instead of prying into the future destiny of these unhappy men
   and women, how much better to inquire into our own destiny and our own
   state!

   "What am I? my soul, awake,

   And an impartial survey take."

   Am I prepared to die? If now the gates of hell should be opened, shall
   I enter there? If now beneath me the wide jaws of death should gape, am
   I prepared with confidence to walk through the midst of them, fearing
   no evil, because God is with me? This is the proper use to make of
   these accidents; this is the wisest way to apply the judgments of God
   to our own selves and to our own condition. O sirs, God has spoken to
   every man in London during these last two weeks; he has spoken to me,
   he has spoken to you, men, women, and children. God's voice has rung
   out of the dark tunnel,--has spoken from the sunset and from the
   glaring bonfire round which lay the corpses of men and women, and he
   has said to you, "Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think
   not, the Son of Man cometh." It is so spoken to you that I hope it may
   set you inquiring, "Am I prepared? am I ready? am I willing now to face
   my Judge, and hear the sentence pronounced upon my soul?"

   When we have used it thus for inquiry, let me remind you that we ought
   to use it also for warning. "Ye shall all likewise perish." "No," says
   one, "not likewise. We shall not all be crushed, many of us will die in
   our beds. We shall not all be burned, many of us will tranquilly close
   our eyes." Ay, but the text says, "Ye shall all likewise perish." And
   let me remind you that some of you may perish in the same identical
   manner. You have no reason to believe that you may not also suddenly be
   cut off while walking the streets. You may fall dead while eating your
   meals--how many have perished with the staff of life in their hands! Ye
   shall be in your bed, and your bed shall suddenly be made your tomb.
   You shall be strong, hale, hearty, and in health, and either by an
   accident or by the stoppage of the circulation of your blood, you shall
   be suddenly hurried before your God. Oh! may sudden death to you be
   sudden glory!

   But it may happen with some of us that in the same sudden manner as
   others have died, so shall we. But lately in America, a brother, while
   preaching the Word, laid down his body and his charge at once. You
   remember the death of Dr. Beaumont, who, while proclaiming the gospel
   of Christ, closed his eyes to earth. And I remember the death of a
   minister in this country, who had but just given out the verse--

   "Father, I long, I faint to see

   The place of thine abode;

   I'd leave thine earthly courts and flee

   Up to thy house, my God,"

   when it pleased God to grant him the desire of his heart, and he
   appeared before the King in his beauty, then, may not such a sudden
   death as that happen to you and to me?

   But it is quite certain that, let death come when it may, there are
   some few respects in which it will come to us in just the same manner
   as it has to those who have so lately been hurried away. First, it will
   come quite as surely. They could not, travel as fast as they would,
   escape from the pursuer. They could not journey where they may, from
   home or to home, escape the shaft when the time had come. And so shall
   we perish. Just as surely, as certainly as death has set his seal upon
   the corpses which are not covered with the sod, so certainly shall he
   set his seal on us (unless the Lord should come before), for "it is
   appointed unto all men once to die, and after death the judgment."
   There is no discharge in this way; there is no escape for any
   individual by any bye-path, there is no bridge over this river; there
   is no ferry-boat by which we may cross this Jordan dryshod. Into thy
   chill depths, O river, each one of us must descend, in thy cold stream,
   our blood must be frozen; and beneath thy foaming billows our head must
   sink! We, too, must surely die. "Trite," you say, "and commonplace" and
   death is commonplace, but it only happens once to us. God grant that
   that once dying may perpetually be in our minds, till we die daily, and
   find it not hard work to die at the last.

   Well, then, as death comes both to them and to us surely, so will it
   come both to them and to us most potently and irresistibly. When death
   surprised them, then what help had they? A child's card house was not
   more easily crushed than these ponderous carriages. What could they do
   to help one another? They are sitting talking side by side. The scream
   is heard, and ere a second cry can be uttered, they are crushed and
   mangled. The husband may seek to extricate his wife, but heavy timbers
   have covered her body, he can only find at last her poor head, and she
   is dead, and he takes his sorrowful seat by her side, and puts his hand
   upon her brow, until it is stone cold, and though he has seen one and
   another plucked with broken bones from the midst of the ruined mass, he
   has to leave her body there. Alas! his children are motherless, and
   himself robbed of the partner of his bosom. They could not resist; they
   might do what they would, but as soon as the moment came, on they went,
   and death or broken bones was the result. So with you and me, bribe the
   physician with the largest fee, but he could not put fresh blood into
   your veins; pay him in masses of gold, but he could not make the pulse
   give another throb. Death, irresistible conqueror of men, there is none
   that can stand against thee, thy word is law, thy will is destiny! So
   shall it come to us as it did to them; it shall come with power, and
   none of us can resist.

   When it came to them, it came instantly, and would not brook delay. So
   will it come to us. We may have longer notice than they, but when the
   hour has struck there shall be no postponing it. Gather up thy feet in
   thy bed, O Patriarch, for thou must die and not live! Give the last
   kiss to thy wife, thou veteran soldier of the cross. Put thy hands upon
   thy children's head, and give them the dying benediction, for all thy
   prayers cannot lengthen out thy life, and all thy tears cannot add a
   drop to the dry wellspring of thy being. Thou must go, the Master
   sendeth for thee, and he brooks no delay. Nay, though thy whole family
   should be ready to sacrifice their lives to buy thee but an hour of
   respite, it must not be. Though a nation should be a holocaust, a
   willing sacrifice, to give its sovereign another week in addition to
   his reign, yet it must not be. Though the whole flock should willingly
   consent to tread the dark vaults of the tomb, to let their pastor's
   life be spared but for another year, it must not be. Death will have no
   delay; the time is up, the clock has struck, the sand has run out, and
   as certainly as they died when their time was come, in the field by
   sudden accident, so certainly must we.

   And then, again, let us remember that death will come to us as it did
   to them, with terrors. Not with the crash of broken timbers, perhaps,
   not with the darkness of the tunnel, not with the smoke and with the
   steam, not with the shrieks of women and the groans of dying men, but
   yet with terrors. For meet death where we may, if we be not in Christ,
   and if the shepherd's rod and staff do not comfort us, to die must be
   an awful and tremendous thing. Yes, in thy body, O sinner, with downy
   pillows beneath thy head, and a wife's tender arm to bear thee up, and
   a tender hand to wipe thy clammy sweat, thou will find it awful work to
   face the monster and feel his sting, and enter into his dread dominion.
   It is awful work at any time, and at every time, under the best and
   most propitious circumstances, for a man to die unprepared.

   And now I would send you away with this one thought abiding on your
   memories; we are dying creatures, not living creatures, and we shall
   soon be gone. Perhaps, as here I stand, and rudely talk of these
   mysterious things, soon shall this hand be stretched, and dumb the
   mouth that lisps the faltering strain, power supreme, O everlasting
   King, come when thou mayest, oh! mayest thou ne'er intrude upon an
   ill-spent hour; but find me wrapped in meditation high, hymning my
   great Creator; doing works of mercy to the poor and needy ones, or
   bearing in my arms the poor and weary of the flock, or solacing the
   disconsolate, or blowing the blast of the gospel trumpet in the ears of
   deaf and perishing souls! Then come when thou wilt, if thou art with me
   in life, I shall not fear to meet thee in death. But oh, let my soul be
   ready with her wedding-garment, with her lamp trimmed and her light
   burning, ready to see her Master and enter into the joy of her Lord!
   Souls, ye know the way of salvation, ye have heard it often, hear it
   yet again! "He that believeth on the Lord Jesus has everlasting life."
   "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth
   not shall be damned." "Believe thou with thy heart, and with thy mouth
   make confession." May the Holy Ghost give the grace to do both, and
   this done, thou mayest say,

   "Come, death, and some celestial band,

   To bear my soul away!"
     __________________________________________________________________

                              Fellowship With God

   A Sermon

   (No. 409)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, September the 15th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also
   may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the
   Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ."--1 John 1:3.

   FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD was one of the richest privileges of unfallen man.
   The Lord God walked in the garden and talked with Adam as a man talketh
   with his friend. So long as he was willing and obedient, Adam ate the
   fat of the land, and among the rich dainties and "wines on the lees
   well refined," of which his soul was a partaker, we must number first
   and foremost, unbroken communion with God, his Father and his Friend.
   Sin, as it banished man from Eden, banished man from God, and from that
   time our face has been turned from the Most High, and his face has been
   turned from us;--we have hated God, and God has been angry with us
   every day. Christ came into the world to restore to us our lost
   patrimony. It was the great object of his wondrous sacrifice to put us
   into a position which should be equal and even superior to that which
   we occupied in Adam before the fall, and as he has already restored to
   us many things that we lost, so among the rest--fellowship with God.
   They who have by his grace believed, and have by the precious blood
   been washed, have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord, they
   are "no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the
   saints and of the household of God," and they have access with boldness
   into this grace wherein we stand. So they who are in the kingdom, and
   under the dispensation of the second Adam, have restored to them in all
   its fullness that fellowship which was lost to them by the sin and
   disobedience of their first federal head. John was among the number of
   those who had enjoyed this privilege with Christ in his flesh. He had
   been Christ's chosen companion, elect out of the elect to a choice and
   peculiar privilege. During the incarnation, he was one of the favored
   three who had enjoyed the closest intimacy with the Redeemer; he had
   seen Christ in his transfiguration, had witnessed the raising of the
   dead maid, had been with the Lord in the garden, and he had lingered
   with him even when the thrust was given after death, and the blood and
   water flowed from his pierced heart. John had the nearest, the dearest,
   the closest fellowship with Christ in the flesh. As he had laid his
   head upon Christ's bosom, so had he laid all his thoughts and all the
   emotions of his mind upon the heart's love and divine affection of his
   Lord and Master but Christ was gone; it was no more possible to hear
   his voice, to see him with eyes, or to handle him with hands, yet John
   had not lost his fellowship, though he knew him no more after the
   flesh, yet he knew him after a nobler sort. Nor was his fellowship less
   real, less close, less sweet, or less divine, than it had been when he
   had walked and talked with him, and had been privileged to eat and
   drink with him at that last sacred feast. John says, "Truly our
   fellowship is"--not was--"is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus
   Christ."

   And now, my brethren and sisters in the common faith of our Lord Jesus,
   this morning I trust that many of us can say, "Our fellowship is with
   the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." Did the apostle John need
   to say, "Truly"--as much as though some doubted or denied it? We, too,
   have sometimes an occasion to make as solemn an affirmation as he has
   done. There are certain sectaries who exalt the form of their church
   government into a sine qua non of piety, and they say of us that it is
   impossible that we should have a fellowship with Christ, because we
   follow not after them. Because we reject not the ministry which God has
   appointed, to take up with some newly-devised scheme, by which everyone
   is to instruct his brother, forsooth therefore we have not the
   fellowship which is reserved for their sect and party. We have been
   led, when they have spoken very bitterly, to question ourselves; but
   after deep searchings of heart, in reply to them we can say, "Brethren,
   whether you be right, or we be right in the matter of church discipline
   or organization, yet we can assure you that truly our fellowship is
   with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.'" And ofttimes the
   doctrinalist--the man who thinks more of the doctrine of Christ than of
   the person of Christ, and who couples therewith the conceit that he
   himself must be right, and all others wrong,--because we may not be
   able to endorse all the heights of his doctrine, or, on the other hand,
   may not be able to join with him in his legal statements--says, "O
   these people! there are many of them, but they can have no fellowship
   with God, because they do not sound our Shibboleth, they do not join
   with us in every separate dogma which we teach, and therefore the Lord
   is not with them." Ah, but we can say to them, "Brethren, we are
   content to leave these doctrinal disputes to the Great Arbiter of right
   and wrong; we have formed our opinion of Scripture; we hope, as in the
   sight of God, and as before the Most High, we can say, we have not
   shunned to declare the whole counsel of God." But whether this be so or
   not, we protest to you, "Truly," yes, "truly our fellowship is with the
   Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." And perhaps the
   experimentalist--the man who attaches undue importance to his own
   particular form of experience--may cry out that the minister has not
   had the same experience of human depravity as himself; he may condemn
   us utterly because we do not give prominence to a certain favourite but
   unhealthy standard of spiritual conviction. Well, we can say to him,
   "We have preached what we do know, we have testified what we have seen,
   and if we cannot go to all the heights, and depths, and lengths, and
   breadths, as yet, we hope to grow; but we can say, even should you
   doubt our declaration, Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and
   with his Son Jesus Christ.'"

   This brings me immediately and directly to the text. You will perceive
   that there is suggested by the text, a quiet investigation, leading to
   a most solemn affirmation. "Truly our fellowship is with the Father,
   and with his Son Jesus Christ." And then there is, secondly, in the
   former part of the text, a most affectionate desire, leading to
   appropriate action. Our desire is, that you may have fellowship with
   us, and, therefore, "that which we have seen and heard declare we unto
   you."

   I. First, then, let us in all quietude and stillness of heart, talk
   this matter over with one another, and see if it be not so, that we
   have had, and do have real FELLOWSHIP WITH THE FATHER, AND WITH HIS SON
   JESUS CHRIST.

   Now, brethren, we have had fellowship with the FATHER. In order to have
   fellowship with any man, there must be a concord of heart. "Can two
   walk together unless they be agreed?" At the very bottom of fellowship
   there must be a likeness; we must have like wishes, like desires; we
   must have espoused like ends, and our spirits must be welded together
   in the intention to effect like purposes. Now, I think we can avow,
   this morning, in the first place, that we do feel a sweet concord with
   God in his eternal purposes. I read the Book of God, and I find that he
   hath ordained Christ to be the Head of his Church, and that he hath
   chosen unto himself "a number that no man can number." I find it
   revealed in the Word of God that he is a God of distinguishing and
   discriminating grace; that he "will have mercy on whom he will have
   mercy, and will have compassion on whom he will have compassion," that
   he will bring many sons unto glory, "to the praise of the glory of his
   grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved." Brethren,
   cannot you and I say, as in the sight of a heart-searching God, we have
   full accord with God in his purposes? Why, we love them, we delight in
   them, the decrees of God are satisfactory to us. If it were possible
   for us to alter the roll in which his divine intentions are written, we
   would not do it, we feel that whatever he has ordained must be right,
   and as for his ordination of his people unto eternal life, and his
   loving them above all people that be on the face of the earth, why this
   is one of the richest joys that we know. The doctrine of election is a
   sweet cordial to the child of God. I can cry, "My Father, thou art
   King, thou hast chosen the base things of this world, and things that
   are not, to bring to nought the things out are; and in this I have
   fellowship with thee, for I can exclaim, I thank thee, O Father, Lord
   of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and
   prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it
   seemeth good in thy sight.'"

   Again, we have fellowship with God in the object for which the purpose
   was first formed, namely, his own glory. Ah, the deeds of the Most High
   tend to manifest his majesty and glorify his Godhead. O brethren, do
   not we sympathise with God in this object? Give glory unto him, give
   glory unto him, O all creatures that his hand hath made! The highest
   aspiration of our spirit, when it is most enlarged, and most inflamed
   is, that he in all things may he glorified. He knows, for he can read
   the heart, that oftentimes, when we have ourselves been bowed down, and
   we have been made as the very dust of the earth, we have said, "This is
   still my comfort, that he is exalted, that he still reigneth, and doeth
   as he wills arming the armies of heaven, and among the people of this
   lower world." Do you not desire his glory as he desires it? He has
   purposed to stain the pride of all human boasting, and to make the
   world know that Jehovah is God, and "that beside him there is none
   else" do not you also desire the same, and do you not daily pray, "Let
   him be magnified from the rising of the sun unto the going down
   thereof; let all creatures call him blessed, let all that have breath,
   praise, laud, and magnify his name?" In this, then--in his purpose, and
   in the object of his purpose, we have "fellowship with the Father."

   And now, have we not fellowship with him in the plan by which he
   effects that purpose? It pleased him, that in "the fullness of time, he
   should send forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law to
   redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption
   of sons." He laid one foundation, and one only, and he said concerning
   it, that "other foundation shall no man lay but that which is laid."
   God has chosen "the stone which the builders refused," that it might be
   made the "headstone of the corner:" this is the Lord's doing, and
   cannot we say, "It is wondrous in our eyes?" As he is unto God "the
   chief corner stone, elect, precious," so "unto you that believe He is
   precious." Looking at all the plan from the beginning to the end, do
   you not agree in it? Does it not strike you as being the wisest, the
   most gracious, the most glorious scheme that could have been devised?
   And as from its first fountain in predestination, onward to the ocean
   of glory, you traverse the ever-flowing stream, do you not say of it in
   all matchless course, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
   Christ, who according to his abundant mercy hath chosen us in him from
   before the foundation of the world, and who having, chosen us, will
   glorify us and bring us to himself at the last?" Yes, there is not a
   single word that we would alter, there is not a line in this divine
   scheme that we would wish to change. If it approves itself to him, it
   certainly approves itself to us, if he chose it as the plan of divine
   operation, we adore his choice, we reverence both the wisdom and the
   love which planned and carried out the design.

   And yet more I think we may add, we have fellowship with God in the
   most prominent characteristics of that plan. Throughout the whole way
   of salvation, you have seen displayed the justice and the mercy of God,
   each with undimmed lustre. You have seen his grace in forgiving the
   sinner, but you have seen his holiness in avenging sin upon the
   substitute. You have seen his truthfulness acting in two ways, his
   truth in threatening,--by no means sparing the guilty, his truth in the
   promise,--"passing by transgression, iniquity, and sin." Throughout the
   whole Divine plan of salvation, there is not a single blot upon any of
   the attributes of the Most High. "Holy! holy! holy! Lord God of
   Sabbath," is still the son of angels, even when they see sinners who
   were once the vilest of the vile, brought to share their joys, and sing
   their songs. And, brethren, do not you and I feel we have fellowship
   with God in this? Would you have him unjust that you might be saved? I
   think you would say, "Never! never! not even for my sake let him be
   unjust." Would you have him unloving to others, that he might make you
   his favourite? No! and there is no trace of anything like this. You
   would not have him retract his threatening, for then you might fear
   that he would forget his promise. I am sure, as you look upon the
   character of God, as he manifests it in the face of Jesus Christ, your
   soul is filled with ineffable and delightful adoration; you can sing
   unto him, "Great art thou, O God, thy mercy endureth for ever," and
   taking up the words of David, you can say, "I will sing of mercy, and
   of judgment; unto thee, O God, will I sing!" In the purpose, then, in
   the object of that purpose, in the plan by which the purpose is
   achieved, and in the characteristics of that plan, the believer in
   Christ has fellowship or sweet concord with the Father.

   But to proceed a step further: we have a most divine and precious
   communion with the Father in the objects of his love. When two persons
   love the same thing, their affection becomes a tie between them. The
   two may love each other, but when in the course of providence, children
   are brought into the house, their children become another bond between
   their parents, each of them mutually giving their hearts to their
   little ones, feel that their hearts are yet more fully given the one to
   the other. Now, there is a tie between God the Father and our souls,
   for did not he say, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
   pleased?" And cannot you and I add, "Yes, he is our beloved Savior, in
   whom we are well pleased?" Is it not written, "It pleased the Father to
   bruise him?" And do we not feel that ye have found a divine pleasure
   and satisfaction in looking into his wounds, his agonies, and his
   death? And has not Father determined to glorify his Son Jesus? And is
   not the fondest thought of our heart that we may help to glorify him
   here on earth, and may spread his glories even in heaven, by telling to
   the angels, and principalities, and powers, the height and depth of his
   lovingkindness? Does the Father love the Son?--even so do we love him,
   not to the same infinite extent, for we are finite beings, yet with
   sincerity, even as the Father loves Jesus, so sincerely do we love
   him--

   "A very wretch, Lord! I should prove,

   Had I no love for thee;

   Rather than not my Savior love,

   O may I cease to be!"

   So in this, then, we have fellowship with the Father, seeing that we
   are both agreed in loving the Son. Does the Father love the
   saints?--even so do we. Doth he declare that "Precious shall their
   blood be in his sight? "Does he bear, and carry them, and show his
   interest for them? Will he say that "His delight is in his people," and
   that "they are his peculiar portion," and his "choice heritage?" My
   soul, canst thou not say, in the midst of all thy doubts and fears--"I
   know that I have passed from death unto life, because I love the
   brethren?" Canst thou not protest, "O my heart! that the excellent of
   the earth are all thy delight, where they dwell, I would dwell, where
   they die, I would die, their portion shall be my portion, their God
   shall be my God for ever and ever." In this, too, we have fellowship
   with the Father.

   But you know, brethren, the word "fellowship" not only signifies
   concord of heart but it implies a carrying out of that concord a little
   further, in converse or mutual communication. May the Holy Spirit grant
   that we may not say a word which is not strictly verified by our
   experience! but I hope we can say we have had converse with the Divine
   Father. We have not seen him at any time, nor have we beheld his shape.
   It has not been given to us, like Moses, to be put in the cleft of the
   rock, and to see the back parts, or the train of the invisible Jehovah;
   but yet we have spoken to him; we have said to him, "Abbe, Father;" we
   have saluted him in that title which came from our very heart, "Our
   Father, who art in heaven." We have had access to him in such a way
   that we cannot have been deceived. We have found him, and through the
   precious blood of Christ, we have come even unto his feet, we have
   ordered our cause before him, and we have filled our mouth with
   arguments, nor has the speaking been all on our side, for he has been
   pleased to shed abroad, by his Spirit, his love in our hearts. While we
   have felt the spirit of adoption, he, on the other hand, has showed to
   us the lovingkindness of a tender Father. We have felt, though no sound
   was heard; we have known, though no angelic messenger gave us witness,
   that his Spirit did "bear witness with our spirits that we were born of
   God." We were embraced of him--no more at a distance; we were "brought
   nigh by the blood of Christ." I trust, my brothers and sisters, you can
   each of you say--though you wish it could be more intense than it
   is--"I have in all these things had fellowship with the Father, for I
   have conversed with him, and he has spoken to me." You can join in the
   words of that hymn--

   "If in my Father's love

   I share a filial part,

   Send down thy Spirit like a dove,

   To rest upon my heart."

   Furthermore, and to conclude upon this point of fellowship with the
   Father, we can, I think, refer ourselves to the All-wise One, and we
   can say we have had fellowship with God in this respect, that the very
   thing which is His happiness has been our happiness. That which has
   been the delight of his Holy Being has been a delight to us. "And what
   is that?" say you. Why, brethren, doth not God delight in holiness, in
   goodness, in mercy, and in lovingkindness, and has not that been our
   delight too? I am sure our greatest miseries here have been our sins.
   We do not murmur at our afflictions, if we could but get rid of those
   sins which bind us down and hamper us when we would mount towards
   heaven. Holiness is our pleasure, purity is our delight, and if we
   could but be perfect even as he is perfect, and freed from sin, even as
   God our Father, is freed from everything like iniquity, then we should
   be in heaven, for this is our happiness; the same happiness which God
   finds in purity and righteousness, we find in it too.

   And if it be the happiness of the Father to have communion with the
   persons of the Trinity--if the Father delights in his Son, even so do
   we delight in him, and such delight, that if we told it to the
   stranger, he would not believe us, and if we spoke it in the wordling's
   ear, he would think us mad. Jesu, thou art the sun of our soul; thou
   art to us the river of which we drink, the bread of which we eat, the
   air we breathe; thou art the basis of our life and thou art the summit
   of it, thou art the prop, the mainstay, the pillar, the beauty, the joy
   of our being! If we have but thee, we can ask nothing besides, for thou
   art all in all, and if we have thee not, we are wretched and undone.
   So, then we have fellowship with the Father, because that which is his
   happiness is most certainly our happiness.

   And so, also, that which is the Father's employment is our employment.
   I speak not of you all, He knows whom he hath chosen. We cannot join
   with the Father in upholding all worlds, we cannot send forth floods of
   light at the rising of the sun, we cannot feed the cattle on a thousand
   hills, nor can we give food and life to all creatures that have breath.
   But there is something which we can do which he does. He doeth good to
   all his creatures, and we can do good also. He beareth witness to his
   Son Jesus, and we can bear witness too. "The Father worketh hitherto"
   that his Son may be glorified, and we work too. O thou Eternal Worker!
   it is thine to save souls, and we are co-workers with thee. We are his
   husbandry, we are his building, he scatters the seed of truth, we
   scatter it too, his words speak comfort, and our words comfort the
   weary too, when God the Spirit is with us. We hope we can say, "For us
   to live is Christ," and is not this what God lives for too? We desire
   nothing so much as to glorify him, and this is the Father's will, as
   well as Jesus Christ's prayer, "Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may
   glorify thee." Do you not see, brethren, we stand on the same scaffold
   with the eternal God? When we lift our hand, he lifts up his eternal
   arm, when we speak, he speaks too, and speaks the same thing; when we
   purpose Christ's glory, he purposes that glory too, when we long to
   bring home the wandering sheep, and to recall the prodigal sons, he
   longs to do the same. So that in that respect we can say, "Truly we
   have fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ."

   2. And now I must turn with some brevity to announce also, and to
   affirm the fact, that we have fellowship with the Son as well as with
   the Father. In both these matters we are like little children that have
   begun to speak or learn their letters. We have not yet attained, O
   brethren, though I say we have fellowship with the Father, yet how
   little we have of it compared with what we hope to have! This
   fellowship is like the river in Ezekiel, at the first it is up to the
   ancles, and afterwards it is up to the knees, and then up to the loins,
   and then it becomes a river to swim in. There be, I fear, few of us who
   have waded where there is a river to swim in, but, blessed be God,
   though it be only up to the ancles, yet we have fellowship, and if we
   have but a little of it, that little is the seed of more, and the
   certain pledge of greater joys to come. Well, now we have fellowship
   with the Lord Jesus Christ, I think we can say, for our hearts are
   united to him,--we cannot speak of this, but I think we can weep about
   it,--

   "Jesus, we love thy charming name,

   'Tis music to our ears."

   We may sometimes have to sing--

   "Tis a point I long to know

   Oft it causeth anxious thought;

   Do I love the Lord or no?

   Am I his, or am I not?"

   But I think we can come back after all and answer, "Yea, Lord, thou
   knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee." At any rate, it is
   strange that I should never be happy without thee, it is singular that
   I can find no peace anywhere but in thee. If I did not love thee,
   should I have such longings after thee? Should I have such mournings
   and such sorrowings when thou art gone? Would it be so dark without
   thee if I still were blind, and would it be so bright with thee if I
   did not see a glimmering of thy light and some rays of thy beauties? Ye
   men and brethren, Satan may say what he will, and our sense may seem to
   contradict the statements, but still our soul followeth hard after him.
   He is to us all our salvation and all our desire. We have, then,
   fellowship with Christ, since his heart is set in us, and our heart is
   knit to him.

   Further, we have had some small degree of fellowship with him in his
   sufferings. We have not yet "resisted unto blood striving against sin,"
   but we have carried his cross and we have suffered his reproach. There
   have been some who could say--

   "Jesus, I my cross have taken

   All to leave and follow thee."

   And others of us, whose path has been somewhat smoother, have
   nevertheless felt the cross within us--for the new spirit within us has
   had to contend with all that once we loved, there have been wars and
   fightings, and a perpetual conflict, not only from without, but what is
   far more severe, from within also. Yet if it should cause more sorrow
   we still would follow him, for we count it as our riches that we may
   bear the reproach of Christ as he bore reproach for us. I trust, my
   brothers and sisters you that profess to be his followers do not blush
   to own his name. I hope you do not turn your backs in the day of
   battle. If you do, you may question whether your fellowship is with the
   Son Jesus Christ, but if you can welcome shame and hail reproach
   because he remembers you, then in this you have been conformed unto his
   death, and have been made partakers of his sufferings. I have sometimes
   thought it were worth all the bitterness if we might drink of his cup
   and be baptised with his baptism. We can have no Gethsemane with all
   its bloody sweat, yet we have had our Gethsemanes too, we cannot die on
   Calvary, but I hope we have been crucified with him and the world is
   crucified to us, and we unto the world; we cannot go into the tomb of
   Joseph of Arimathea, yet we have been buried with him in baptism unto
   death, that like as Jesus Christ rose from the dead by the glory of the
   Father, even so we also might rise to newness of life; and I hope,
   inasmuch as he has risen and ascended up on high, though our bodies are
   still here, yet we have set our affection on things above and not on
   things on the earth; and as he has been raised up and made to sit
   together with his Father, I hope we know the meaning of that passage.
   "He hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly
   places in Christ Jesus." And as he is to come and reign, I hope we know
   also something of that, for he hath made us kings and priests unto our
   God, and we shall reign with him for ever and ever. From the manger to
   the cross, and from the cross to the millennium, there should be in the
   Christian's experience a blessed fellowship. We ought to know Christ in
   his obscurity and littleness--the babe Christ being in our hearts. We
   ought to know him in his wilderness temptations--ourselves being
   tempted in all points. We ought to know him in his blasphemies and
   slanders--ourselves being accounted by man to be as Beelzebub, and as
   the offscouring of all things, we must know him in his passion, in his
   agony, and in his death, and then, "Thanks be to God, which giveth us
   the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," we may know him in his
   triumphs, in his ascension upon high, in his session at the right hand
   of God, and in his coming to judge the quick and the dead, for we, too,
   shall judge angels through Jesus Christ our Lord. We have, I hope, in
   some humble measure in these respects, fellowship with the Son Jesus
   Christ.

   But our fellowship has assumed also a practical form, in that the same
   desires and aspirations which were in Christ when he was on the earth
   are in us now. Oh! we have uttered feelingly the very words of Christ,
   "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" And when we
   could not do all we would, when there seemed to be some insuperable
   obstacle in the path of our usefulness, we have nevertheless said, "My
   meat and my drink is to do the will of him that sent me." And when at
   any time we have been wearied in the Master's service, we have yet
   found such good cheer therein, that we could say with him, "I have meat
   to eat that ye know not of." "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me
   up." And at times, in the thoughts of serving God and even of suffering
   for him we have said, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am
   I straitened till it be accomplished!" For we have desired with desire
   to eat that Passover, that we, too, might say of our humble work, "It
   is finished," and commend our spirit into the eternal hand. Oh! have
   you never wept with Christ as he did over poor Jerusalem? Did London's
   vices never bring the tears into your eyes? Did you never weep over
   hard-hearted souls, perhaps in your own family? Have you never cried as
   he did, "How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen
   gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not?" Oh! I hope,
   without egotism, without saying more than we have really felt, we have
   thirsted and panted to bring others up out of their degradation and
   their fall, till we have felt that if we might be offered ourselves, if
   by our sacrifice souls might be saved, we would be willing to have it
   said, "He saved others, himself he cannot save." In this, then, we have
   had fellowship with Christ.

   And yet, further, as I have said, fellowship requires converse. Oh! ye
   daughters of Jerusalem, have we not had converse with Him? Tell ye of
   that happy day when we went forth to meet king Solomon, and crowned him
   "with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his
   espousals; and in the day of the gladness of his heart," when he took
   us up into his chariot, the bottom whereof was of silver and the sides
   thereof lined with love for the daughters of Jerusalem, and we rode in
   covenant safety and in royal pomp with him. When the king came into his
   palace and he said, "Let the fatlings be killed, eat; yea, eat
   abundantly and drink abundantly, O beloved!" and we ate of all his
   sweet wines and of all his luscious fruits which he had laid up in
   store for his beloved till we said, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me
   with apples, for I am sick with love, his left hand is under my head,
   and his right arm doth embrace me." Brethren, we have leaped right out
   of the body to embrace him, at least so we have thought, from excess of
   joy, and that, too, when there was nothing in the world to give us
   content, when our prospects were blighted, when our health has failed
   us, when the sun of this world was quenched, then He came forth, even
   He who is all in all, and lifted the light of his countenance upon us.

   You have had, I hope, some few of these in-flowings of love, when you
   have eaten angels' food, when you have forgotten the dry bread and
   mouldy crusts that you had in the wallet of your experience, and did
   eat the new corn of the kingdom, and did drink the new wine with your
   blessed and divine Master; you no longer traveled in rumbling chariots,
   but your soul was like the swiftly-speeding chariots of Amminadib; you
   flew after your beloved in transport so divine, that tongue can never
   tell, and lips can never describe the sacred rapture. Yes, "Truly our
   fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ."

   We have but a few minutes remaining for the second head, which might
   very well demand an entire discourse.

   II. There was, secondly, AN AFFECTIONATE DESIRE, LEADING TO APPROPRIATE
   EFFORT. This affectionate desire was that others might have fellowship
   with us. Having found the honey, we cannot eat it alone, having tasted
   that the Lord is gracious, it is one of the first instincts of the
   new-born nature to send us out crying, "So, every one that thirsteth,
   come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat;
   yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." We would
   that others had fellowship with us in all respects except our sins; for
   we can say with the apostle, "I would to God that ye were not only
   almost, but altogether such as I am, except these bonds!" But these
   bonds of sin we would not wish that any should bear. Brethren, we would
   that you had fellowship with us in the peace we feel with God our
   Father, in the access which we have to his throne, in the confidence
   which we have in the truth of his promise, in the overflowing joys we
   experience when he manifests himself to us! We would that you had our
   hopes, that you could look forward to death and the grave with the same
   delight as we can, expecting to be transformed into his image, and to
   see him as he is! We wish you had our faith, only more of it--that you
   might have the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
   not seen! We wish that you had fellowship with us in prevailing prayer,
   that you knew how to cast your burdens upon the Lord--that you
   understood how to bring every blessing from on high, by pleading the
   merits of the Savior! We wish to gather up all in one, that in
   everything which is lovely and of good repute, in everything which is
   happy, ennobling, divine, and everlasting you might be made partakers
   and have fellowship with us!

   And this desire leads the child of God to make use of an appropriate
   effort, and what is that? It is to tell to others what he has seen and
   what he has heard. Now, I shall try to use that means this morning, for
   I think, perhaps, the illustration of fact may be better than any
   illustration of words. Do I not address many here who never had any
   fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. Perhaps you
   hardly know what it means, and when you hear what it means, you attach
   no importance to it. It is nothing to you to talk with God; you never
   dream of such a thing as speaking to Christ, and Christ speaking to
   you. Ah! if you knew its sweetness, you would never, never be content
   till you had it, you would thirst with such a thirst, that you would
   never cease, but thirst till you drink of the water of the well of
   Bethlehem, which is by the gate. Well now, soul, that thou mayest have
   fellowship with us in these things, let me tell thee what I have heard,
   and known, and seen, for this is what the text tells me to speak of--I
   have known and seen that Christ is one who is ready to forgive
   thee--able to forgive thee. Oh! shall I never forget when I first went
   to him, laden with iniquity, and black with sin, bowed down by five
   years of conviction, which had rendered my fears despair, and my doubts
   had gathered till they seemed impenetrable to the light! I went to him,
   and I thought he would reject me; I thought him to be hard, and
   unwilling to forgive. But I only looked on him, only looked at
   him,--one glimpse of a tearful eye at a crucified Savior, and that
   moment without a pause the burden rolled away; the guilt was gone,
   peace of mind took the place of despair, and I could sing, "I'm
   forgiven, I'm forgiven!" I had many sins, but He took them all away.
   Some of those sins were deeply aggravated. I would not tell them in a
   human ear, but they are gone, in one instant too, not because of any
   merit, but gone freely and graciously of his own abundant mercy,
   according to the riches of his lovingkindness in Christ Jesus the Lord.
   Now what we have seen and heard we do testify, that ye also may have
   fellowship with us, for "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and
   with his Son Jesus Christ." Still he is willing to receive you, he is
   able to forgive you. Laden with guilt and full of woe, hie thee to that
   full relief! Make no tarrying! "Linger not in all the plain!" Let not
   thy heavy heart tempt thee to refrain thyself from him! He stands with
   open arms, ready to pardon, with open heart, willing to receive. Nay,
   he runs, methinks I see him, though thou art yet far off, he runs and
   meets thee, he falls upon thy neck, he kisseth thee, he saith, "Take
   off his rags, clothe him in the best robe; put shoes on his feet and a
   ring upon his hand, and let us eat and be merry, for the dead is alive
   and the lost is found."

   But I testify yet again, soul, that after thou hast once believed in
   Christ, and received thy pardon, thou wilt find him to be willing to
   keep thy soul from sin. I thought that even if Christ forgave me, it
   would be impossible for me to break off evil habits and the lusts of
   the flesh. And I have known many scores of men who were swearers, and
   they said they should never be able to rinse their mouths of their
   oaths. They were drunkards too, and they said that drink would get the
   upper hand of them yet, but we have seen and we have testified that
   when we believe in Christ, he changes the heart, he renews the nature,
   makes us hate the things we loved before, and love the things we once
   despised. We have seen it, and we testify it. O drunkard, he can make
   thee sober! unchaste man, he can make thee virtuous! There is no lust
   which his arm cannot subdue, no mighty sin which he cannot drive out,
   he shall make thee run in the way of his commandments with delight,
   thou shalt neither turn aside to the right hand nor to the left.

   "But" saith another, "if he did uphold for awhile I should never be
   able to hold on." What I have seen and heard, that I do declare unto
   thee. Blessed be his name, I am yet young in grace but he has been
   faithful to me. The child believed, and the child now testifies that
   God is faithful, and has not once forsaken nor left him, but preserved
   him. I half wish this morning that grey hairs were on my head that I
   might give force to this testimony of "what I have seen and heard." I
   remember well, when declaring that God was a faithful God, my good old
   grandfather, who was sitting behind me in the pulpit, came forward and
   said, "My grandson can tell you that, but I can bear witness to it. I
   have passed my three score years and ten, but still He has been
   faithful and true."

   "E'en down to old age, all his people shall prove

   His sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;

   And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,

   Like lambs they shall still in his bosom be borne."

   We testify this to you, that you may have fellowship with us, for "our
   fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ."

   I have this much to say, and if I should never preach again, and if
   this might be the last discourse I should ever deliver in this world, I
   would wish to make this the final testimony. There is that joy in
   religion that I never dreamed of. He is a good Master whom I have
   served, that is a blessed faith which He has bestowed upon me, and
   yields such blessed hope, that

   "I would not change my bless'd estate

   For all the world calls good or great."

   And if I had to die like a dog, and there were no hereafter, I would
   still prefer to be a Christian, and the humblest Christian minister to
   being a king or an emperor, for I am persuaded there are more delights
   in Christ; yea, more joy in one glimpse of his face than is to be found
   in all the praises of this harlot-world, and in all the delights which
   it can yield to us in its sunniest and brightest days. And I am
   persuaded that what he has been till now, he will be to the end; and
   where he hath begun a good work, he will carry it on. Yes, sinners,
   Christ's cross is a hope that we can die by,--which can take us down to
   the grave without a fear, which can make us short in the midst of the
   swelling waters of Jordan, can make us transported with delight even
   when we are bowed down with physical pain or nervous distress. There is
   that in Christ, I say, which can make us triumph over the gloomiest
   terrors of grim death, and make us rejoice in the darkest of tempests
   which can blacken the grave. Trust ye, trust ye in the Lord, for our
   testimony, and that of all his people, is, that he is worthy to be
   trusted. "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen
   thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord."
     __________________________________________________________________

                            Not Now, But Hereafter!

   A Sermon

   (No. 410)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, September the 22nd, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Have ye not asked them that go by the way? and do ye not know their
   tokens, that the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction? they
   shall be brought forth to the day of wrath. Who shall declare his way
   to his face? and who shall repay him what he hath done?"--Job 21:29-31.

   THE SERMON WHICH I PREACHED two Lord's days ago upon the accidents, has
   caused considerable consternation among pious people with weak heads.
   Their idea that an calamities are judgments, is so inveterate a
   prejudice, and so favourite a dogma, that our exposure of its absurdity
   is, in their opinion, eminently calculated to encourage sin and quiet
   the consciences of offenders. Now, I feel quite at ease in this matter,
   and am confident that I have done service to our great cause, even
   though the timid should be alarmed, and the superstitious should be
   annoyed. Our gracious God and Father has seen fit to give us a whole
   book of the Bible upon the subject; the main drift of the Book of Job
   is to prove that temporal afflictions are not evidences of the Lord's
   displeasure, and I beg the modern Bildads and Zophars to reconsider
   their position, lest they too should be found to be "speaking wickedly
   for God, and talking deceitfully for him."--Job 13:7. In my very soul I
   feel that if evil days shall come upon me, if poverty, desertion, and
   disease should place me upon Job's dunghill, I shall point to that
   sermon with pleasure, and say to those who will tell me that God is
   angry with me, and has judged me to be unworthy, "Nay, ye know not what
   ye say, for the judgment is not passed already, nor is this the field
   of execution; neither disease, nor bereavements, nor poverty, can prove
   a man to be wicked, nor do they even hint that the chosen are divided
   from the hearts of Christ." O my beloved friends, settle it in your
   hearts that men are not to be judged according to their present
   circumstances, and learn like David to understand their end. It will
   save you from writing bitter things against yourselves in the time of
   trouble, and prevent your scanning the works of Providence, and
   measuring the infinite by line and plummet.

   It is mainly my business, today, to deal with those who may wickedly
   continue in sin because their judgment tarries. If the Lord does not in
   this world visit the ungodly with stripes, this is but the surer
   evidence that in the world to come there is a solemn retribution for
   the impenitent. If the affliction which is here accorded to men be not
   the punishment of sin, we turn to Scripture and discover what that
   punishment will be, and we are soon informed that it is something far
   heavier than any calamities which occur in this life,--something
   infinitely more tremendous than the most disastrous accident, the most
   shocking mutilation, or the most painful death. I know that there be
   some in these days who are like those in the time of the royal
   preacher, of whom he said, "because sentence against an evil work is
   not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully
   set in them to do evil." Should I be addressing some this morning who
   have found a stupid quiet for their consciences in the fact that God
   does not here usually visit men's sins upon their heads, let me put it
   to them whether such peace is reasonable. There is a city which has
   revolted. A great king has threatened them with entire destruction for
   the revolt. He does not, in hurried passion, send against them a
   handful of soldiers to inflict instant and petty chastisement, he waits
   awhile, and marshals all his hosts, till every battalion has been put
   in array, till every mighty man has girded on his armor. Fools! will ye
   draw consolation from the delay of your destroyer? Will ye say, because
   he has not ridden forth against you on the very day of your rebellion
   that therefore this is a time of revelry and mirth? Nay, rather,
   inasmuch as he is gathering his hosts for the battle, let it cause you
   to tremble, for he shall break down your walls, and give your whole
   company to the sword. Imagine yourselves voyagers, far out upon the
   sea. A black cloud darkens in the sky, you say you fear not the cloud
   because it is not at present pouring forth the rain-flood. But that is
   the reason why ye should fear it, for the cloud is waiting until it
   grows and spreads, till under the wing of darkness the egg of cloud has
   been hatched into the black screaming eagle of the storm. See you, the
   clouds are hurrying from east and west, mustering for the strife! Mark
   you not the sea heaving heavily in sympathy with heaven's convulsions?
   Behold how all the dread artillery of heaven is gathering up for one
   tremendous shock. Fools! do ye say ye will not fear because the
   thundercloud has not yet burst, because as yet the breath of wind has
   not transformed itself into the blast of hurricane? It is gathering,
   sirs, congregating its forces and accumulating its fury, and the longer
   that it gathers, the more terrible shall be the moment when it bursts
   upon your devoted heads. And so to-day, God's clouds that float in the
   sky, the calamities of Providence, are not pouring on you the tempest
   of wrath; but is this a reason why ye should be at peace? Nay! the
   clouds are gathering, every sin is adding to the mass, every day of
   God's long-suffering is covering heaven in blacker sable, every moment
   that he spares he does but prepare to punish in more tremendous force;
   and dread and direful shall be the day, when at last omnipotence itself
   shall come to the assistance of outraged justice, and you shall feel
   that God is God as much in punishing sin, as in the making of the
   worlds.

   It was a fable of the old Jewish rabbis, that when the angel Gabriel
   flew he used both wings, because he always came with good tidings; but
   that when Michael flew, bearing God's sword to smite through the loins
   of king", he always flew with one wing. But Michael arrives as surely
   at his destined goal as Gabriel himself. The feet of the avenging
   deities may seem to be shod with lead for tardiness, and their tread
   may be as noiseless as wool, but they are as sure as the feet of mercy.
   I know, when God comes to bless, the axles of his chariot are hot with
   speed, and his steeds are white with foam, and when he comes to curse
   he travels slowly, with many a sigh, for he willeth not the death of
   any, but had rather "that he should turn unto him and live;" but
   remember, in judgment he comes in all his might, and he shall be
   discovered to be not less a God when he smiteth than when he giveth the
   kisses of his lips, and lifts the pardoned sinner into acceptance and
   favor.

   We shall now deal with the sorrowful topic of the punishment of sin in
   the world to come. I have preached less upon this subject than almost
   upon any other, and yet always is it thrown in our teeth that we
   delight to dwell upon these horrors. I never come to this subject
   without the deepest distress of heart, and God alone shall know how
   many tears it costs these eyes when I have to deal out as God's
   faithful ambassador the thunders of his law. I delight to preach of
   Calvary, and of divine love, and of grace unsearchable. But this theme
   is to me the burden of the Lord, we must not, we dare not keep it back;
   fidelity to conscience, truthfulness to God, love to the souls of men,
   constrains us to make this a part of our ministry, not keeping back any
   part of the price.

   I shall divide the discourse this morning into three parts, first, I
   shall speak of the punishment of sin, by way of affirmation, or prove
   that it must be so; secondly, by way of explanation, of what kind and
   nature this punishment must be; and then, thirdly, by way of
   expostulation, pleading with those who are yet in the land of mercy,
   that they would hasten to the voice of wisdom, and that God's grace may
   turn them from the error of their ways.

   I. First, then, by wag of affirmation--THERE MUST BE A PUNISHMENT FOR
   SIN.

   Job says, that this is a truth so written upon the very nature of man,
   that even those who go by the way, the ignorant traveler and wayfarer,
   dares not for a moment deny that such is the case. "Have ye not asked
   them that go by the way? and do ye not know their tokens?" And truly it
   is so. If there be one intuitive truth which man perceives without need
   of argument, it is that sin deserves to be punished, and since sin in
   not punished here, it fellows that the punishment must be endured in
   the world to come.

   Let us, however, very briefly, review the argument. Sin must be
   punished from the very nature of God. God is; if God is God, he must be
   just. You can no more separate the idea of justice from the idea of
   God, than you can omniscience, or omnipresence, or omnipotence. To
   suppose of a God who was not omnipotent, is to make a supposition which
   is contradictory in its terms; for the term "God" includes that
   thought. And to suppose an unjust God, is to imagine an absurdity,--you
   have used, I repeat it, contradictory terms;--justice is included in
   the very thought of God. See how the oppressed always recognize this.
   The slave who has long been trampled under the feet of a tyrannical
   master, with his back fresh from the gory lash, lifts up his eye to God
   the avenger, for he feels instinctively that God must be just.
   Nationalities who have made appeals to arms, but have been subdued
   again to serfdom, at last in their despair cry out to God, for this is
   the bottom of man's thoughts, and the one which is sure to come forth
   when pain has emptied out his lighter notions, that God doth execute
   righteousness and judgment "for all that are oppressed." So, too, when
   man would aver a thing to be true he calls upon God to be his witness,
   because in his innermost nature he feels that God will be a just and
   impartial witness. If he thought not so, it would be ridiculous to call
   upon God to witness to his asseveration. Note how the tearful eye, the
   groaning mind, the bursting heart, all turn instinctively to the Judge
   of all the earth. Man feels that God must be just. But how just? How
   just, if crowned beads that do injustice shall go unpunished? How just,
   if the adulterer, the thief, the liar, and the hypocrite unpunished
   here, should go unpunished in the world to come. Where is thy justice,
   God, if this world be all? We say, "Alas for love if, thou were an end
   nought beyond, O earth!" and we may add, alas, for justice too; for
   where could it live, where could it dwell, unless there were a world to
   come, in which God will right the wrongs, and avenge himself upon an
   who have trampled on his laws.

   Not only does his very nature show this, but those acts of God, which
   are recorded in Revelation, prove incontestably that he will by no
   means spare the guilty. There have been judgment. I am not now
   appealing to the crotchets and opinions of ill-judging man, but to the
   inspired chronicles, for I will quote those judgments alone which the
   Word of God calls such. Adam sinned. Twas but the touching of an apple;
   Eden was blasted, Adam was exiled. The world sinned; they ate, they
   drank, they married, and were given in marriage; they forgot the Most
   High. The fountains of the great deep gave forth their floods; the
   cisterns of heaven emptied out their cataracts. All the world was
   drowned; and the last shriek of the strong swimmer yielding at last to
   universal death, told out to us that God is just. Look across to the
   allies of the plain. When they had wholly given themselves up to
   unnatural lusts, God rained fire and brimstone out of heaven upon Sodom
   and Gomorrha. And when he did so, what did he but write in letters of
   fire this word--"God is just, he furiously avengeth and terribly
   punisheth sin." Behold, too, Pharaoh and all his hosts drowned in the
   Red Sea. For what purpose was Pharaoh but that God might show forth his
   power in him--might prove to the world that there were vessels of
   wrath, and that God knew how to fill them to the brim, and break them
   as with a rod of iron. Look to Palestine, and behold its kings put to
   death by the sword of the Lord and his servant Joshua. What means a
   land stained in blood? It meaneth this, that the race had offended much
   against heaven; and God, that man might have some glimpses of his
   terrible justice, declared that he would root out the races of Canaan,
   and would have war with Amalek from generation to generation. It is
   impossible to reconcile Old Testament history with the effeminate
   notion of neological divinity, that God is only a universal Father, but
   not a governor and a judge. If these gentlemen will quietly read some
   of those awful passages in the Old Testament, they cannot--unless they
   should deny the inspiration of the passage, or attempt to tone down in
   meaning--they cannot but confess that they see there far less a loving
   parent than a God dressed in arms, of whom we may say, "The Lord is a
   man of war, the Lord is his name. Thy right hand, O Lord, thy right
   hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces thine enemies." A God without
   justice is what this modern church is seeking after. These new
   doctrines would fashion a deity destitute of those sublime attributes,
   which keep the world in awe, and command for him the reverence of his
   creatures.

   This brings me to my third argument. Not only do the nature and the
   acts of God prove that he will punish sin, but the very necessities of
   the world demand it. Imagine the contrary. Put in all our Christian
   pulpits men who should teach to sinners that there is no punishment for
   sin. Let them say to them, "What you suffer here is to be looked upon
   as God's judgment on your offense; but there is no world to come in
   which your sins will be visited upon your heads." Friends, you may at
   once advise the government to multiply the number of our jails tenfold.
   If there be no punishment for sin in another world, if it be so light
   and trifling an offense that the little sufferings of this life are
   sufficient atonement for it, then you have thrown up the floodgates
   which have hitherto dammed up the overflowing floods; you will soon see
   society swept from its moorings, there will be no possibility that men
   will seek to be honest, when they find that honesty or dishonesty are
   terms which have but a trifling difference between them. If sin be so
   slight a thing, men will think virtue to be a slight thing too, and if
   there be so little punishment for crime, they will soon think that
   there can be but little reason for virtue, and where will be our
   commonwealths, and our social compacts? The best lawgivers, however
   amiably disposed they may be, find that they must back up their laws
   with penalties. A state which should be founded upon laws without
   penalties could not last a week, or if it lasted, you would find that
   while the laws would be disregarded there would be more death and more
   suffering than there had been before. When was the guillotine most at
   work, but when there was loudest boast of liberty, and men's living
   without law. When would there be the most of murder, but when there
   should no more be heard the threat of condemnation, and when they who
   were assassins might be permitted to go abroad untouched. There must be
   punishment for the world's own good, to say nothing of the nature of
   God, which for its dignity and holiness necessarily demands that very
   offense and transgression should receive its just recompense of reward.

   But further, I affirm the punishment of sin from the atonement of
   Christ. Friends, if there be no necessity that sin should be punished,
   why did Jesus die? Why, Father, didst thou send thy only begotten and
   well-beloved Son, and lay upon him the iniquities of us an? Was he
   needed for an example? He might have been our example without dying, in
   fact if this were all, virtue, crowned and glorified, might have been
   quite as noble an incentive to goodness, as virtue mocked and
   crucified. He was needed that he might take our sins, and having taken
   our sins, it became absolutely necessary that Jesus Christ should die.
   In the death of Christ, if sin must not necessarily be punished, I see
   nothing but the death of a martyr, like James, or Peter, or Polycarp,
   the death of a man murdered for being better than his fellows. And why
   do we make this fuss and noise about salvation by the death of Christ
   if that be all. Why has the Christian church existed to be a false
   witness, to testify to a fiction? Why has her blood been shed these
   many centuries, to maintain that the blood of Jesus Christ taketh away
   the sin of the world, if the sin could he taken away without
   punishment? The wounds of Christ have no meaning, his precious blood
   has no value, his thorn-crowned head is not worthy of worship, nor is
   his death worthy of daily ministry, unless it be that he suffered "the
   just for the unjust to bring us to God;" God in Christ punished the
   sins of his people; and if he did it in Christ, unpardoned sinner, rest
   assured he will do it in you. If the imputed sins of Christ brought him
   the agonies of Gethsemane, what will your sins bring you? If guilt that
   was not his own brought him an exceeding heaviness, "even unto death,"
   what will your sins bring you, sins remember which are your own? "He
   that spared not his own Son" wilt never spare rebels. He who did not
   spare his Son a single lash or a single stroke, will certainly make no
   exemption in your favor, if you live and die impenitent and reject the
   gospel of Christ.

   Besides, my dear friends, permit me to say that those who think that
   sin is not to be punished, are generally the worst of men. Men hate
   hell for the reason that murderers hate the gallows. The miscreant
   Youngman, who was executed on the top of yonder gaol, informed the
   chaplain that he objected on principle to all capital punishment, an
   objection natural enough when it was his own inevitable doom. They who
   dissent from the doctrine of divine justice, are interested in forming
   that opinion; the wish is father to the thought, they would have their
   sin unpunished, they hope it may be, and then they say it will be. You
   will not hear a thief's objection to a policeman; you do not imagine
   that a criminal's objection to a judge is very valid, and the sinner's
   objection to hell lies only here, that he will not repent, and he
   therefore fears the dread certainty that he shall be punished. Besides
   even these worst of men, who pretend not to believe, do believe. Their
   fears betray the secret conviction of their consciences, and on their
   dying beds, or in a storm, whenever they have thought they were about
   to see with their own eyes the stern realities of eternity, their fears
   have proved them to be as strong believers as those who profess the
   faith. Infidelity is not honest. It may profess to be, but it is not. I
   think that our judges are right in not accepting the oath of an
   infidel. It is not possible that he should be honest in the notion that
   there is no God. When God is around him in every leaf, in every tree,
   and in every star in the sky; it is not possible that a man should be
   honest when he calls himself an atheist. Nor do we believe that any man
   can speak the dictates of his inmost heart, when he says that sin will
   never be punished, and that he may sin with impunity. His conscience
   gives him the lie, he knows it must be so, and that God will visit his
   offenses upon his head.

   I shall not enlarge further, except to say in gathering up the
   thoughts, impenitent sinner, be thou sure of this; there shall not a
   sin of thine fall to the ground unremembered, "For every idle word that
   thou shall speak God will bring thee into judgment," how much more for
   every blasphemous word and for every rebellious act. Do not wrap
   thyself up in the delusive thought that sin will escape unpunished.
   Even if it should be so, then the Christian is as well off as you are,
   but since righteousness will be laid to the line, and judgment to the
   plummet, what will become of you? Be wise before it is too late.
   Believe to-day what you will find out to be a fact ere long. God has
   revealed it to you, his revelation has tokens and signs which prove its
   divine origin. Believe what He has revealed; do not say in your heart
   "I never will believe there is a hell unless one should come from it."
   Do you not see, that if one should come from it then you would not
   believe at all, because you would say, "If one person came from hell,
   then another may, and I may myself." It would take away all your dread
   of future punishment if any spirit should come back from it, and
   therefore it is you that you should not have that be given you. Yet
   methinks the shrieks of dying sinners, the cries which some of you have
   heard coming up from the death beds of blasphemers, ought to be enough
   evidence that there is a world to come whereof we speak, and that there
   are terrors of the law which are happily concealed to-day from your
   eyes and from your ears, but which you may soon know, and know far
   better than the best words can teach you, by your own feelings, by your
   own everlasting despair, and banishment from God.

   II. I turn now to the second portion of the discourse: THE NATURE OF
   THIS PUNISHMENT by way of explanation.

   How will God punish sin? The text says, "The wicked is reserved to the
   day of destruction, they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath."
   The old Puritanic preachers, such men as Alleyne, who wrote the
   "Alarm," and others of his class--always gave a very cross picture of
   the world to come. They could never represent it except by brimstone
   flames, and dancing fiends, and such like horrors. They were
   conscientious in the drawing of the picture, and to them the terrors of
   the Lord gross, corporeal, unscriptural ideas of hell, but rather let
   us feel that it is a great mystery, concerning which we must rather
   follow Scripture than imagination. The first punishment which will be
   executed upon man for his sins, will be punishment to his soul. The
   soul leaves the body, the body is here enclosed in the coffin, rotting
   in the tomb; the disembodied spirit will appear before its God. It will
   then know at once what its future destination shall be. The great
   assize will not then have been held, the Judge will not have officially
   pronounced the sentence, but the soul anticipating the sentence will
   antidote its execution. Memory will begin to reflect upon past sins,
   past mercies unimproved, past opportunities neglected, and past
   offenses which have long been forgotten. Then the conscience will begin
   to thunder. "Thou didst this wantonly," saith Conscience. "Thou didst
   it against light and knowledge, thou didst despise Christ, thou didst
   neglect the day of mercy, thou hast been a suicide, thou hast destroyed
   thyself." Then the fears will come in, the fears of the day of
   judgment, when the body shall be reunited with the soul. And those
   fears will sting the man with thoughts like these. "What wilt thou say
   when He comes to judge thee? How will thou bear the eyes of Him that
   shall read thee through and through? Now thou knowest that what was
   preached to thee on earth is true. Thou art no infidel now. Now the
   truth is not kept out of thy soul by the dulness of thy fleshly body;
   thou seest thou knowest it. What will become of thee when earth shall
   pass away and heaven shall shake, and hell shall gape to receive its
   prey?" So the spirit shall be virtually in hell before the body goes
   there. This shall be the first punishment of sin.

   Then, when the day predestined shall have come, the trump of the
   archangel shall ring through the aid--the trump this time of the second
   resurrection--for the dead in Christ shall have already risen, and have
   reigned with Christ upon the earth. Then rings the elation note that
   wakes the dead. They start up, and the soul returns to its old house,
   the body. Then it receives its sentence. It is brought forth as the
   text says, "to the day of wrath,"--it had been reserved in chains
   before, in blackness and darkness, it is now brought forth to receive
   the sentence, that the body may begin its hell. Then, mark you, beyond
   a doubt, for we cannot understand Scripture, and especially the words
   of Christ without it, the body shall have pains meet for its offenses.
   Your members were servants of your lusts, they shall be partakers of
   the wage of your soul--the feet that carried you in the paths of sin,
   shall tread the fiery road, the eyes which gazed with lustful glance,
   shall now be made to weep the scalding tear, the teeth which ministered
   to your gluttony, shall now gnash for pain, the tongues which talked so
   exceeding proudly against God, shall be "tormented in this flame."
   There shall be certainly a punishment for the body as well as for the
   soul, for what else did Christ mean when he said, "Fear him who is able
   to destroy both body and soul in hell." I shall not enlarge upon what
   sort of punishment this will be, suffice me to say, that whatever it
   is, it will be just. The sinner in hell shall not endure one iota more
   than he deserves, he shall have the due reward of his deeds--no more.
   God is not unjust to punish men arbitrarily,--I know of no arbitrary
   condemnation. There is no such thing as sovereign damnation; it will be
   justice--inflexible, I grant you, but yet not such as shall pass the
   bounds of due and right desert. God will give to man only the harvest
   of his own deeds. He sowed the wind, and he shall reap the whirlwind.
   You shall not have the consolation in hell of saying that you did not
   deserve it, for in hell you will be made to feel, "I brought this on
   myself, I destroyed myself, it is true I am in pain, but I am the
   father of my own pains; I planted the tree which yields the bitter
   fruit, I digged about it and I watered it, I did the work, I labored,
   and this is my wages;" and you will have to feel there and then, that
   in every pang that rends the heart God is infinitely just. And then,
   whatever the pain may be, we know that while it is just, it will be
   terrible. Whose are those awful words, "He shall burn up the chaff with
   unquenchable fire! "Is this the language of Moses? No, of Christ. It is
   a remarkable fact, that the most frightful descriptions of punishment,
   of another world are from the lips of the Savior. Had Peter spoken
   them, you would have said Peter was harsh in spirit. It was the Master
   spake them. He who wept over Jerusalem said, "These shall go away into
   everlasting punishment;" he spoke of "burning up the chaff;" he spoke
   of "binding hand and foot and giving them up to the tormentors." In the
   compass of revelation there are no words so grim and terrible in their
   awful suggestiveness, as the words of Him "who went about doing good,"
   and wept and cried, "Come unto me, and ye that labor and are heavy
   laden, and I will give you rest."

   And we know, again that this punishment will be eternal. This is the
   very pith of it. There were no hell, if it were not eternal, full the
   hope of an end would be the end of fear. If there could be an end to
   hell at any time, there would be an end to it at once, for no man would
   feel that desperate despair, if there were a hope that it should come
   to a close. But it is eternity, eternity, eternity, that makes
   punishment bad. This is the bell which tolls the funeral of every
   hope--eternity, eternity, eternity. To sail across a sea of fire for
   ever, never reaching a haven; to sink, but never reach the bottom, or
   to rise to heights of greater agony, and never reach the summit. Oh,
   brethren, brethren, it is not the wrath of God in this world that you
   have so much to fear, the wrath's to come, the wrath's to come. And it
   is not the wrath that the soul shall be filled with when it has been
   there a thousand years, it is the wrath's to come. They will go on
   sinning and God will go on averaging, they will go on blaspheming and
   they shall go on gnawing their tongues, they shall go on hating God and
   they shall go on feeling his anger, they shall go from bad to worse in
   character, and doubtless from ball to worse in agony. O God, help us to
   escape from this awful thing--the wrath, the wrath to come!

   III. I close now by offering SOME FEW WORDS OF EXPOSTULATION.

   You will kindly look at the thirty-first verse. He says "Who shall
   declare his way to his face? and who shall repay him what he hath
   done!" Now there are many men who think they shall come off soot free,
   because in this life there are none who will dare to mention their sins
   to their face. The covetous man is very seldom rebuked for his
   covetousness. If a man lives an unclean life, he does not usually read
   books which would prick his conscience. If a man acts dishonorably in
   his trade, if another should tell him of it, he would be exceedingly
   insulted. It is true a faithful minister will often make men feel
   uneasy in their sins, for he will be led by God's direction to give
   such a description of the offenses and of the punishment, that he will
   make sinners tremble in their shoes. But still are there not some among
   you here to-day who can sin with both your hands, and there is no
   Elijah to say, "Thou art the man. "You have none to meet you in
   Naboth's vineyard, and say to you, "Hast thou killed and taken
   possession? "There is perhaps hardly a "still small voice:" there used
   to be one. The agonizing face of your wife when first you had forsaken
   the way of virtue; the ghastly look of your mother as you were bringing
   down her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, the sorrowful gaze of
   your little children when first their father became a drunkard, these
   were still voices to you, but they are hushed now. When God gives you
   up, then indeed your damnation slumbereth not. But remember, however
   cheaply you can sin now, God will not fear insulting you; he will bring
   your sins to your remembrance and there shall be no consideration of
   your dignity. He vein not consult your feelings, he will not look upon
   you as a great one; he will bring your sins to remembrance in no
   courtly phrases and in no polished terms. You shall find that the lips
   of Justice know not how to make distinctions between you and the basest
   menial whom once you despised. Now, if a man should speak your
   character it would be libel; but when God speaks it, you shall not
   threaten him. What thinkest thou that he will fear and tremble before
   thee? Who art thou, O man, that the lips of the Eternal God should be
   silent about thee? Who art thou that he should fail to draw thy
   character in black or crimson hues? He will convict thee to thy face,
   and thou shalt be utterly unable to plead guiltless of thy sins. And
   then the text says "Who shall repay him? "Ah! there is no hand which
   dares repay you now; you have gone unpunished yet. No law can touch
   you, you say; ah! but there is a law divulge which overrides the law
   that is human; and if the arm of human justice be too short, the arm of
   God is as long as it is strong, and he will reach you, and to the last
   jot and little pay you your due reward. You shall not escape, even in
   the slightest degree. No pleas and prayers, no tears and excuses, shall
   have any avail with him, but till justice shall have had its uttermost
   farthing, thou shalt by no means come out thence.

   And now, sinner, why wilt thou dare the wrath of God? Why wilt thou run
   this fearful risk? Why wilt thou make thy bed in hell? Why wilt thou
   dwell in everlasting burnings? Is it wise, or art thou mad, and is thy
   reason gone? Have I preached to you a bugbear and a fable?--if so, go
   thy way and sin. But oh! if it be true--and it must be, unless you are
   prepared to reject that precious book and the very name of
   Christian--if it be true! Soul, I pray thee let me feel for thee, if
   thou wilt not feel for thyself. Why dash thyself upon the point of
   Jehovah's javelin? Why destroy thyself against the bosses of his
   buckler? What can there be that makes thee so in love with ruin? Why
   wilt thou hug the grave, and embrace destruction? Soul, again I say,
   art thou mad?--art thou mad?--art thou mad? May the Lord teach thee
   reason, and may he help thee to flee to the only refuge where a sinner
   may find mercy.

   I shall close when I have tried to set out the way of Mercy. I have
   read in the old Histories of England, that Edward the Second, one of
   our kings, was exceedingly enraged against one of his courtiers; being
   out hunting one day, he threatened the courtier with the severest
   punishment. There was a river between them at the time, and the
   courtier thinking that he was perfectly safe, ventured to offer some
   jeering remark upon the king--telling him that at any rate he would not
   be likely to chastise him until he got at him. The king feeling his
   anger hot within him, told him that the water should not long divide
   them, leaped into the middle of the stream, and with some difficulty
   gained the other side. The courtier in great alarm fled in terror, and
   the king pursued him with might and main, spurring his horse to the
   utmost. Nor did his anger cease; he carried his drawn sword in his hand
   with the intention of killing him. At last the courtier, seeing that
   there was no hope for any escape, knelt down upon the grass, and laying
   bare his neck, said, "I heartily deserve to die, mercy, King! mercy!
   "He sent back his sword into the scabbard in a moment, and said,
   "Whilst you sought to escape me I determined to destroy you, but when I
   see you humble at my feet I freely forgive you." Even so is it with the
   King of heaven. Sinners, ye say there is this life between you and God,
   ah! but how soon will the white horse of Justice pass the stream, and
   then flee, flee as you may today, he will surely overtake you. He now
   is swift to destroy, let it be yours on your knees to make confession
   of your sin and say, "I deserve thy wrath, Great King, I deserve thy
   wrath," and if to this thou art enabled to add the plea of the precious
   blood of Christ, the sword of Justice will return into its scabbard,
   and he will say, "I am just, and yet the justifier of the ungodly." For
   Jesus died, and inasmuch as Jesus Christ has died, Justice is satisfied
   on the account of all believers. Go thy way, thy sins which are many
   are all forgiven thee. "What must I do to saved?" saith one. This is
   all thou hast to do, and this the Holy Spirit will work in thee.
   "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with all thine heart." "What is
   that?" say you. "I believe him to be divine; I believe that he is able
   to save." That will not save you, there must be something more than
   that. "What then?" "Believe in him,"--carry out practically your belief
   that he is able to save by trusting yourself in his hands. To exhibit
   again an old picture which has often been used, there is a child in a
   burning house, hanging from the upper window. A strong man stands
   beneath and offers to catch him, if he will but drop from yonder hot
   window sill to which he still clings. "Drop, my child," saith he, "I
   will catch you." The child believes the strength of his preserver; that
   does not save him. He trusts to the strength, he lets go his hold and
   falls, is caught and is preserved, that is faith. Let go your hold of
   your good works, your good thoughts, and all else, and tried in Christ.
   He never did let one soul dash itself to earth yet, that did but fall
   into his hands. Oh! for grace for every one of us to say in the words
   of Watts,--

   "A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,

   On Christ's kind arms I fall;

   He is my strength and righteousness,

   My Jesus and my all."
     __________________________________________________________________

                                Infant Salvation

   A Sermon

   (No. 411)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, September 29th, 1861 by the

   Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well"--2 Kings
   4:26.

   THE SUBJECT of this morning's discourse will be "Infant Salvation." It
   may not possibly be interesting to all present, but I do not remember
   to have preached upon this subject to this congregation, and I am
   anxious moreover that the printed series should contain sermons upon
   the whole range of theology. I think there is no one point which ought
   to be left out in our ministry, even though it may only yield comfort
   to a class. Perhaps the larger proportion of this audience have at some
   time or other had to shed the briny tear over the child's little
   coffin;--it may be that through this subject consolation may be
   afforded to them. This good Shunammite was asked by Gehazi, whether it
   was well with herself. She was mourning over a lost chid, and yet she
   said, "It is well;" she felt that the trial would surely be blessed.
   "Is it well with thy husband?" He was old and stricken in years, and
   was ripening for death, yet she said, "Yes, it is well." Then came the
   question about her child, it was dead at home, and the enquiry would
   renew her griefs, "Is it well with the child?" Yet she said, "It is
   well," perhaps so answering because she had a faith that soon it should
   be restored to her, and that its temporary absence was well; or I think
   rather because she was persuaded that whatever might have become of its
   spirit, it was safe in the keeping of God, happy beneath the shadow of
   his wings. Therefore, not fearing that it was lost, having no suspicion
   whatever that it was cast away from the place of bliss--for that
   suspicion would have quite prevented her giving such answer--she said
   "Yes, the child is dead, but it is well.'"

   Now, let every mother and father here present know assuredly that it is
   well with the child, if God hath taken it away from you in its infant
   days. You never heard its declaration of faith--it was not capable of
   such a thing--it was not baptized into the Lord Jesus Christ, not
   buried with him in baptism; it was not capable of giving that "answer
   of a good conscience towards God;" nevertheless, you may rest assured
   that it is well with the child, well in a higher and a better sense
   than it is well with yourselves; well without limitation, well without
   exception, well infinitely, "well" eternally. Perhaps you will say,
   "What reasons have we for believing that it is well with the child?"
   Before I enter upon that I would make one observation. It has been
   wickedly, lyingly, and slanderously said of Calvinists, that we believe
   that some little children perish. Those who make the accusation know
   that their charge is false. I cannot even dare to hope, though I would
   wish to do so, that they ignorantly misrepresent us. They wickedly
   repeat what has been denied a thousand times, what they know is not
   true. In Calvin's advice to Omit, he interprets the second commandment
   "shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me," as referring to
   generations, and hence he seems to teach that infants who have had
   pious ancestors, no matter how remotely, dying as infants are saved.
   This would certainly take in the whole race. As for modern Calvinists,
   I know of no exception, but we all hope and believe that all persons
   dying in infancy are elect. Dr. Gill, who has been looked upon in late
   times as being a very standard of Calvinism, not to say of
   ultra-Calvinism, himself never hints for a moment the supposition that
   any infant has perished, but affirms of it that it is a dark and
   mysterious subject, but that it is his belief, and he thinks he has
   Scripture to warrant it, that they who have fallen asleep in infancy
   have not perished, but have been numbered with the chosen of God, and
   so have entered into eternal rest. We have never taught the contrary,
   and when the charge is brought, I repudiate it and say, "You may have
   said so, we never did, and you know we never did. If you dare to repeat
   the slander again, let the lie stand in scarlet on your very cheek if
   you be capable of a blush." We have never dreamed of such a thing. With
   very few and rare exceptions, so rare that I never heard of them except
   from the lips of slanderers, we have never imagined that infants dying
   as infants have perished, but we have believed that they enter into the
   paradise of God.

   First, then, this morning, I shall endeavor to explain the way in which
   we believed infants are saved; secondly, give reasons for do believing;
   and then, thirdly, seek to bring out a practical use of the subject.

   I. First of all, THE WAY IN WHICH WE BELIEVE INFANTS TO BE SAVED.

   Some ground the idea of the eternal blessedness of the infant upon its
   innocence. We do no such thing; we believe that the infant fell in the
   first Adam, "for in Adam all died." All Adam's posterity, whether
   infant or adult, were represented by him--he stood for them all, and
   when he fell, he fell for them all. There was no exception made at all
   in the covenant of works made with Adam as to infants dying; and
   inasmuch as they were included in Adam, though they have not sinned
   after the similitude of Adam's transgression, they have original guilt.
   They are "born in sin and steepen in iniquity; in sin do their mothers
   conceive them;" so saith David of himself, and (by inference) of the
   whole human race. If they be saved, we believe it is not because of any
   natural innocence. They enter heaven by the very same way that we do;
   they are receives in the name of Christ. "Other foundation can no man
   lay than that which is laid," and I do not think nor dream that there
   is a different foundation for the infant than that which is laid for
   the adult. And equally is it far from our minds to believe that infants
   go to heaven through baptism--not to say, in the first place, that we
   believe infant sprinkling to be a human and carnal invention, an
   addition to the Word of God, and therefore wicked and injurious. When
   we reflect that it is rendered into some thing worse than superstition
   by being accompanied with falsehood, when children are taught that in
   their baptism they are made the children of God, and inheritors of the
   kingdom of heaven, which is as base a lie as ever was forged in hell,
   or uttered beneath the copes of heaven, our spirit sinks at the fearful
   errors which have crept into the Church, through the one little door of
   infant sprinkling. No; children are not saved because they are
   baptized, for if so, the Puseyite is quite right in refusing to bury
   our little children if they die unbaptized. Yes, the barbarian is quite
   right in driving the parent, as he does to this day, from the church
   yard of his own national Church, and telling him that his child may rot
   above-ground, and that it shall not be buried except it be at the dead
   of night, because the superstitious drops have never fallen on its
   brow. He is right enough if that baptism made the child a Christian,
   and if that child could not be saved without it. But a thing so
   revolting to feeling, is at once to be eschewed by Christian men. The
   child is saved, if snatched away by death as we are, on another ground
   than that of rites and ceremonies, and the will of man.

   On what ground, then, do we believe the child to be saved? We believe
   it to be as lost on the rest of mankind, and as truly condemned by the
   sentence which said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
   surely die." It is saved because it is elect. In the compass of
   election, in the Lamb's Book of Life, we believe there shall be found
   written millions of souls who are only shown on earth, and then stretch
   their wings for heaven. They are saved, too, because they were redeemed
   by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. He who shed his blood for all
   his people, bought them with the same price with which he redeemed
   their parents, and therefore are they saved because Christ was sponsor
   for them, and suffered in their room and stead. They are saved, again
   not without regeneration, for, "except a man"--the text does not mean
   an adult man but a person, a being of the human race--"except a man be
   born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." No doubt, in some
   mysterious manner the Spirit of God regenerates the infant soul, and it
   enters into glory made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the
   saints in light. That this is possible is proved from Scripture
   instances. John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Ghost from his
   mother's would. We read of Jeremiah also, that the same had occurred to
   him; and of Samuel we find that while yet a babe the Lord called him.
   We believe, therefore, that even before the intellect can work, God,
   who worketh not by the will of man, nor by blood, but by the mysterious
   agency of his Holy Spirit, creates the infant soul a new creature in
   Christ Jesus, and then it enters into the "rest which remaineth for the
   people of God." By election, by redemption, by regeneration, the child
   enters into glory, by the selfsame door by which every believer in
   Christ Jesus hopes to enter, and in no other way. If we could not
   suppose that children could be saved in the same way as adults, if it
   would be necessary to suppose that God's justice must be infringe, or
   that his plan of salvation must be altered to suit their cases, then we
   should be in doubt; but we can see that with the same appliances, by
   the same plan, on precisely the same grounds, and through the same
   agencies, the infant soul can behold the Savior a face in glory
   everlasting, and therefore we are at ease upon the matter.

   II. This brings me now to note THE REASONS WHY WE THUS THINK INFANTS
   ARE SAVED.

   First, we ground our conviction very much upon the goodness of the
   nature of God. We say that the opposite doctrine that some infants
   perish and are lost, is altogether repugnant to the idea which we have
   of Him whose name is love. If we had a God, whose name was Moloch, if
   God were an arbitrary tyrant, without benevolence or grace, we could
   suppose some infants being cast into hell; but our God, who heareth the
   young ravens when they cry, certainly will find no delight in the
   shrieks and cries of infants cast away from his presence. We read of
   him that he is so tender, that he careth for oxen, that he would not
   have the mouth of the ox muzzled, that treadeth out the corn. Nay, he
   careth for the bird upon the nest, and would not have the mother bird
   killed while sitting upon its nest with its little ones. He made
   ordinances and commands even for irrational creatures. He finds food
   for the most loathsome animal, nor does he neglect the worm any more
   than the angel, and shall we believe with such universal goodness as
   this, that he would cast away the infant soul I say it would he clear
   contrary to all that we have ever read or ever believed of Him, that
   our faith would stagger before a revelation which should display a fact
   so singularly exceptional to the tenor of his other deeds. We have
   learned humbly to submit our judgments to his will, and we dare not
   criticise or accuse the Lord of All; we believe him to be just, let him
   do as he may, and? Therefore, whatever he might reveal we would accept;
   but he never has, and I think he never will require of us so desperate
   a stretch of faith as to see goodness in the eternal misery of an
   infinite cast into hell. You remember when Jonah--petulant,
   quick-tempered Jonah--would have Nineveh perish God gave it as the
   reason why Nineveh should not be destroyed, that there were in it more
   than six score thousand infants,--persons, he said, who knew not their
   light hand tram their left. If he spared Nineveh that their mortal life
   might be spared, think you that their immortal souls shall be
   needlessly cast away! I only put it to your own reason. It is not a
   case where we need much argument. Would your God cast away an infant?
   If yours could, I am happy to say he is not the God that I adore.

   Again, we think it would be inconsistent utterly with the known
   character of our Lord Jesus Christ. When his disciples put away the
   little children whom their anxious mothers brought to him, Jesus said,
   "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not for of
   such is the kingdom of heaven," by which he taught, as John Newton very
   properly says, that such as these made up a very great part of the
   kingdom of heaven. And when we consider that upon the best statistics
   it is calculated that more than one third of the human race die in
   infancy, and probably if we take into calculation those districts where
   infanticide prevails, as in heathen countries, such as China and the
   like, perhaps one half of the population of the world die before they
   reach adult years,--the saying of the Savior derives great force
   indeed," Of such is the kingdom of heaven." If some remind me that the
   kingdom of heaven means the dispensation of grace on earth, I answer,
   yes, it does, and it means the same dispensation in heaven too, for
   while part of the kingdom of heaven is on earth in the Church, since
   the Church is always one, that other part of the Church which is above
   is also the kingdom of heaven. We know this text is constantly used as
   a proof of baptism, but in the first place, Christ did not baptize
   them, for "Jesus Christ baptized not;" in the second place, his
   disciples did not baptize them, for they withstood their coming, and
   would have driven them away. Then if Jesus did not, and his disciple
   did not, who did,' It has no more to do with baptism than with
   circumcision. There is not the slightest allusion to baptism in the
   text, or in the context; and I can prove the circumcision of infants
   from it with quite as fair logic as others attempt to prove infant
   baptism. However, it does prove this, that infants compose a great part
   of the family of Christ, and that Jesus Christ is known to have had a
   love and amiableness towards the little ones. When they shouted in the
   temple, "Hosanna!" did he rebuke them? No; but rejoiced in their boyish
   shouts. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hath God ordained
   strength," and does not that text seem to say that in heaven there
   shall be "perfect praise" rendered to God by multitudes of cherubs who
   were here on earth--your little ones fondled in your bosom--and then
   suddenly snatched away to heaven. I could not believe it of Jesus, that
   he would say to little children, "Depart, ye accursed, into everlasting
   fire in hell!" I cannot conceive it possible of him as the loving and
   tender one, that when he shall sit to judge all nations, he should put
   the little ones on the left hand, and should banish them for ever from
   his presence. Could he address them, and say to them, "I was an
   hungred, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no
   drink, sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not? "How could they do
   it? And if the main reason of damnation lie in sins of omission like
   there which it was not possible for them to commit, for want of power
   to perform the duty how, then, shall he condemn and cast them away?

   Furthermore, we think that the ways of grace, if we consider them,
   render it highly improbable, not to say impossible, that an infant soul
   should be destroyed. What saith Scripture? "Where sin abounded, grace
   did much more abound." Such a thing as that could not be sail of an
   infant cast away. We know that God is so abundantly gracious that such
   expressions as the "unsearchable riches of Christ," "God who is rich in
   mercy," "A God full of compassion," "The exceeding riches of his
   grace," and the like are truly applicable without exaggeration or
   hyperbole. We know that he is good to all, and his tender mercies are
   over all his works, and that in grace he is able to do "exceeding
   abundantly above what we can ask or even think." The grace of God has
   sought out in the world the greatest sinners. It has not passed by the
   vilest of the vile. He who called himself the chief of sinners was a
   partaker of the love of Christ. All manner of sin and of blasphemy have
   been forgiven unto man. He has been able to save unto the uttermost
   them that come unto God by Christ, and dons it seem consistent with
   such grace as this that it should pass by the myriads upon myriads of
   little ones, who wear the image of the earthy Adam, and never stamp
   upon them the image of the heavenly? I cannot conceive such a thing. He
   that has tasted and felt, and handled the grace of God, will, I think,
   shrink instinctively from any other doctrine than this, that infants
   dying such, are most assuredly saved.

   Once again one of the strongest inferential arguments is to be found in
   the fact that Scripture positively states that the number of saved
   souls at the last will be very great. In the Revelation we read of a
   number that no man can number. The Psalmist speaks of them as numerous
   as dew drops from the womb of the morning. Many passages give to
   Abraham, as the father of the faithful, a seed as many as the stars of
   heaven, or as the sand on the sea shore. Christ is to see of the
   travail of his soul and be satisfied; surely it is not a little that
   will satisfy him. The virtue of the precious redemption involves a
   great host who were redeemed. All Scripture seems to tenon that heaven
   will not be a narrow world, that its population will not be like a
   handful gleaned out of a vintage, but that Christ shall be glorified by
   ten thousand times ten thousand, whom he hath redeemed with his blood.
   Now where are they to come from? How small a part of the map could be
   called Christian! Look at it. Out of that part which could be called
   Christian, how small a portion of them would bear the name of believer!
   How few could be said to have even a nominal attachment to the Church
   of Christ? Out of this, how many are hypocrites, and know not the
   truth! I do not see it possible, unless indeed the millennium age
   should soon come, and then far exceed a thousand years, I do not see
   how it is possible that so vast a number should enter heaven, unless it
   be on the supposition that infant souls constitute the great majority.
   It is a sweet belief to my own mind that there will be more saved than
   lost, for in all things Christ is to have the pre-eminence, and why not
   in this? It was the thought of a great divine that perhaps at the last
   the number of the lost would not bear a greater proportion to the
   number of the saved, than do the number of criminals in gaols to those
   who are abroad in a properly-conducted state. I hope it may be found to
   be so. At any rate, it is not my business to be asking, "Lord, are
   there few that shall be saved?" The gate is strait, but the Lord knows
   how to bring thousands through it without making it any wider, and we
   ought not to seek to shut any out by seeking to make it narrower. Oh! I
   do know that Christ will have the victory, and that as he is followed
   by streaming hosts, the black prince of hell will never be able to
   count so many followers in his dreary train as Christ in his
   resplendent triumph. And if so we must have the children saved; yea,
   brethren, if not so, we must have them, because we feel anyhow they
   must be numbered with the blessed, and dwell with Christ hereafter.

   Now for one or two incidental matters which occur in Scripture, which
   seem to throw a little light also on the subject. You have not
   forgotten the case of David. His child by Bathsheba was to die as a
   punishment for the father's offense. David prayed, and fasted, and
   vexed his soul; at last they tell him the child is dead. He fasted no
   more, but he said, "I shall go to him, he shall not return to me." Now,
   where did David expect to go to? Why, to heaven surely. Then his child
   must bays been there, for he said, "I shall go to him." I do not hear
   him say the same of Absalom. He did not stand over his corpse, and say,
   "I shall go to him;" he had no hope for that rebellious son. Over this
   child it was not--"O my son! would to God I had died for thee!" No, he
   could let this babe go with perfect confidence, for he said, "I shall
   go to him." "I know," he might have said, "that He hath made with me an
   everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, and when I walk
   through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for he
   is with me, I shall go to my child, and in heaven we shall be re-united
   with each other." You remember, his, those instances which I have
   already quoted, where children are said to have been sanctified from
   the comb. It casts this light upon the subject, it shows it not to be
   impossible that a child should be a partaker of grace while yet a babe.
   Then you have the passage, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings he
   hath perfected praise." The coming out of Egypt was a type of the
   redemption of the chosen seed, and you know that in that case the
   little ones were to go forth, nay, not even a hoof was to be left
   behind. Why not children in the greater deliverance to join in the song
   of Moses and of the Lamb? And there is a passage in Ezekiel, for where
   we have but little, we must pick up even the crumbs, and do as our
   Master did--gather up the fragments that nothing be lost--there is a
   passage in Ezekiel, sixteenth chapter, twenty-first verse, where God is
   censuring his people for having given up their little infants to
   Moloch, having caused them to pass through the fire, and he says of
   these little ones, "Thou hast slain lay children, and delivered them to
   cause them to pass through the fire," so, then, they were God's
   children those little ones who died in the red-hot arms of Moloch while
   babes, God calls "my children." We may, therefore, believe concerning
   all those who have fallen asleep in these early days of life, that
   Jesus said of them, "These are my children," and that he now to-day,
   while he leads his sheep unto loving fountains of water, does not
   forget still to carry out his own injunction, "Feed my lambs." Yea,
   to-day even he carrieth "the lambs in his bosom," and even before the
   eternal throne he is not ashamed to say, "Behold I and the children
   whom thou hast given me." There is another passage in Scripture which I
   think may be used. In the first chapter of Deuteronomy these ball been
   a threatening pronounced upon the children of Israel in the wilderness,
   that, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, they should never see the
   promised land; nevertheless, it is added. "Your little ones, which ye
   said should be a prey and your children, which in that day had no
   knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto
   them will I give it, and they shall possess it." To you, fathers and
   mothers who fear not God, who live and die unbelieving, I would say,
   your unbelief cannot shut your children out of heaven and I bless God
   for that. While you cannot lay hold on that text which says "The
   promise is unto us and our children, even to as many as the Lord our
   God shall call," yet inasmuch as the sin of the generation in the
   wilderness did not shut the next generation out of Canaan but they did
   surely enter in, so the sin of unbelieving parents shall not
   necessarily be the ruin of their children, but they shall still,
   through God's sovereign grace and his overflowing mercy, be made
   partakers of the rest which he hath reserved for his people. Understand
   that this morning I have not made a distinction between the children of
   godly and ungodly parents. If they die in infancy, I do not mind who is
   father nor who their mother, they are saved; I do not even endorse the
   theory of a good Presbyterian minister who supposes that the children
   of godly parents will have a better place in heaven than those who
   happen to be sprung from ungodly ones. I do not believe in any such
   thing. I am not certain that there are any degrees in heaven at an; and
   even if there were, I am not clear that even that would prove our
   children to have any higher rights than others. All of them without
   exception, from whosoever loins they may have sprung, will, we believe,
   not by baptism, not by their parents' faith, but simply as we are all
   saved through the election of God, through the precious blood "Christ,
   through the regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit, attain to glory
   and Immortality, and wear the image of the heavenly as they have worn
   the image of the earthy.

   III. I now come to make a PRACTICAL USE OF THE DOCTRINE.

   First, let it be a comfort to bereaved parents. You say it is a heavy
   cross that you have to carry. Remember, it is easier to carry a dead
   cross than a living one. To have a living cross is indeed a
   tribulation,--to have a child who is rebellious in his childhood,
   vicious in his youth, debauched in his manhood! Ah, would God that he
   had died from the birth; would God that he had never seen the light!
   Many a father's heirs have been brought with sorrow to the grave
   through his living childre, but I think never through his dead babes,
   certainly not if he were a Christian, and were able to take the comfort
   of the apostle's words--"We sorrow not as they that are without hope."
   So you would have your child live? Ah, if you could have drawn aside
   the veil of destiny, and have seen to what he might have lived! Would
   you have had him live to ripen for the gallows? Would you have him live
   to curse his father's God? Would you have him live to make your home
   wretched to make you wet your pillow with tears, and send you to your
   daily work with your hands upon your loins because of sorrow? Such
   might have been the case; it is not so now, for your little one sings
   before the throne of God. Do you know from what sorrows your little one
   has escaped? You have had enough yourself. It was born of woman, it
   would have been of few days and full of trouble as you are. It has
   escaped those sorrows, do you lament that? Remember, too your own sins,
   and the deep sorrow of repentance. Had that child lived, it would have
   been a sinner, and it must have known the bitterness of conviction of
   sin. It has escaped that; it rejoices now in the glory of God. Then
   would you have it back again? Bereaved parents, could you for a moment
   see your own offspring above, I think you would very speedily wipe away
   your team. There among the sweet voices which sing the perpetual carol
   may be heard the voice of your own child--an angel now, and you the
   mother of a songster before the throne of God. You might not have
   murmured had you received the promise that your child should have been
   elevated to the peerage, it has been elevated higher than that--to the
   peerage of heaven. It has received the dignity of the immortals, it is
   robed in better than royal garments it is more rich and more blessed
   than it could have been if all the crowns of earth could have been put
   upon its head. Wherefore, then would you complain? An old poet has
   penned a verse well fitted for an infant's epitaph;--

   "Short was my life, the longer is my rest,

   God takes those soonest whom he loveth best,

   Who's born today, and dies tomorrow,

   Loses some hours of joy, but months of sorrow.

   Other diseases often come to grieve us,

   Death restrikes but once, and that stroke doth relieve us."

   Your child has had that one stroke and has been relieved from all these
   pains, and you may say of it, this much we know, he is supremely
   blessed, has escaped from sin, and care, and woe, and with the Savior
   rests. "Happy the babe," says Hervey, "who,

   Privileged by faith, a shorter labor and a lighter weight,

   Received but yesterday the gift of breath,

   Ordered tomorrow to return to death."

   While another says, looking upward to the skies,

   "O blest exchange, O envied lot,

   Without a conflict crowned,

   Stranger to pain, in pleasure bless'd

   And without fame, renowned."

   So is it. It is well to fight and will, but to will as fairly without
   the fight! It is well to sing the song of triumph after we have passed
   the Red Sea with all its terrors, but to sing the song without the sea
   is glorious still! I do not know that I would prefer the lot of a child
   in heaven myself. I think it is nobler to have borne the storm, and to
   have struggled against the wind and the rain. I think it will be a
   subject of congratulation through eternity, for you and me, that we did
   not come so easy a way to heaven, for it is only a pin's prick after
   all, this mortal life; then there is exceeding great glory hereafter.
   But yet I think we may still thank God for those little ones that they
   have been spared our sins, and spared our infirmities, and spared our
   pains and are entered into the rest above. Thus saith the Lord unto
   thee, O Rachel, if thou weepest for thy children, and refuseth to be
   comforted because they are not: "Restrain thy voice from weeping, and
   thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded with the Lord,
   and they shall come again from the land of the enemy."

   The next and perhaps more useful and profitable inference to be drawn
   from the text is this: many of you are parents who have children in
   heaven. Is it not a desirable thing that you should go there, too? And
   yet have I not in these galleries and in this area some, perhaps many,
   who have no hope hereafter? In fact, you have left that which is beyond
   the grave to be thought of another day, you have given all your time
   and thoughts to the short, brief, and unsatisfactory pursuits of mortal
   life. Mother unconverted mother, from the battlements of heaven your
   child beckons you to Paradise. Father, ungodly, impenitent father, the
   little eyes that one--looked joyously on you, look down upon you now,
   and the lips which had scarcely learned to call you father, ere they
   were sealed by the silence of death, may be heard as with a still small
   voice, saying to you this morning, "Father, must we be for ever divided
   by the great gulf which no man can pass? "Doth not nature itself put a
   kind of longing in your soul that you may be bound in the bundle of
   life with your own children? Then stop and think. As you are at
   present, you cannot hope for that; for your way is sinful, you have
   forgotten Christ, you have not repented of sin, you have loved the
   wages of iniquity I pray thee go to thy chamber this morning and think
   of thyself as being driven from thy little ones, banished for ever from
   the presence of God, cast "where their worm dieth not and where their
   fire is not quenched." If thou wilt think of these matters, perhaps the
   heart will begin to move, and the eyes may begin to flow, and then may
   the Holy Spirit put before thine eyes the cross of the Savior the holy
   child Jesus! And remember, if thou wilt turn thine eye to him thou
   shalt live: if thou believest on him with all thy heart thou shalt be
   with him where He is,--with all those whom the Father gave him who have
   gone before Thou needest not to be shut out. Wilt thou sign thine own
   doom, and write thine own death warrant? Neglect not this great
   salvation but may the grace of God work with thee to make thee seek,
   for thou shalt find--to make thee knock, for the door shall be
   opened--to make thee ask, for he that asketh shall receive! O might I
   take you by the hand--perhaps you have come from a newly-made grave, or
   left the child at home dead, and God has made me a messenger to you
   this morning; O might I take you by the hand and say, "We cannot bring
   him back again, the spirit is gone beyond recall, but you may follow!"
   Behold the ladder of light before you! The first step upon it is
   repentance, out of thyself the next step is faith, into, Christ, and
   when thou art there, thou art fairly and safely on thy way, and ere
   long thou shalt be received at heaven's gates by those very little ones
   who have gone before, that they may come to welcome thee when thou
   shouldest land upon the eternal chores.

   Yet another lesson of instruction, and I will not detain you much
   longer. What shall we say to parent who have living children? We have
   spoken of those that are dead, what shall we say of the living? I think
   I might say, reserve your tears, bereaved parents, for the children
   that live. You may go to the little grave, you may look upon it and
   say, "This my child is saved; it resteth for ever beyond all fear of
   harm." You may come back to those who are sitting round your table, and
   you can look from one to the other and say, "These my children, many of
   them are unsaved." Out of God, out of Christ, some of them are just
   ripening into manhood and into womanhood, and you can plainly see that
   their heart is like every natural heart, desperately wicked. There is
   subject for weeping for you. I pray you never cease to weep for them
   until they have ceased to sin, never cease to hope for them until they
   have ceased to live; never cease to pray for them until you yourself
   cease to breathe. Carry them before God in the arms of faith, and do
   not be desponding because they are not what you want them to be. They
   will be won yet if you have but faith in God. Do not think that it is
   hopeless. He that saved you can save them. Take them one by one
   constantly to God's mercy-seat and wrestle with Him, and say, "I will
   not let thee go except thou bless me." The promise is unto you and to
   your child, even to as many as the Lord your God shall call. Pray,
   strive, wrestle, and it shall yet be your happy lot to see your
   household saved. This was the word which the apostle gave to the
   gaoler, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and
   thy house." We have had many proofs of it, for in this pool under here
   I have baptised not only the father and the mother, but in many cases
   all the children too, who one after another have been brought by grace
   even to put their trust in Jesus. It should be the longing of every
   parent's heart to see all his offspring Christ's, and all that have
   sprung from his loins numbered in the host of those who shall sing
   around the throne of God. We may pray in faith, for we have a promise
   about it; we may pray in faith, for we have many precedents in
   Scripture, the God of Abraham is the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,
   but for this good thing he will be inquired of by the House of Israel
   to do it for them. Inquire of Him, plead with Him, go before Him with
   the power of faith and earnestness, and He will surely hear you.

   One word to all the congregation. A little child was saying the other
   day--and children will sometimes say strange things--"Papa, I cannot go
   back again." When he was asked what he meant, he explained that he was
   here, he had begun his life, and it seemed such a thought to him that
   he could not cease to be,--he could not go back again. You and I may
   say the same; here we are; we have grown up, we cannot go back again to
   that childhood in which we once were; we have therefore no door of
   escape there. Good John Bunyan used to wish that he had died when he
   was a child. Then again, he hoped he might be descended from some Jew,
   for he had a notion that the Hebrews might be saved. That door God has
   closed. Every door is closed to you and me except the one that is just
   in front of us, and that has the mark of the cross upon it. There is
   the golden knocker of prayer: do we choose to turn aside from that to
   find another,--a gate of ceremonies, or of blood, or of birth? We shall
   never enter that way. There is that knocker! By faith, great God, I
   will lift it now. "I, the chief of sinners am, have mercy upon me!
   "Jesus stands there. "Come in," saith he, "thou blessed of the Lord;
   wherefore standest thou without?" He receives me to his arms, washes,
   clothes, glorifies me, when I come to him. Am I such a fool that I do
   not knock? Yes, such I am by nature--then what a fool! O Spirit of God!
   make me wise to know my danger and my refuge! And now, sinner, in the
   name of him that liveth and was lead, and is alive for evermore, lay
   hold upon that knocker, lift it, give it a blow, and let your prayer
   be, ere thou leanest this sanctuary, "God be merciful to me a sinner!"
   May the Lord hear and bless, for his name's sake!
     __________________________________________________________________

                     God'S First Words To The First Sinner

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 6, 1861,

   BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The Lord God called to Adam and said unto him, Where are you?"

   Genesis 3:9.

   IT will be interesting to the members of this Church to know that it
   was under a sermon delivered by Mr. William Wallin from this very text,
   that my honored and venerable predecessor, Dr. Gill, was converted to a
   knowledge of the Truth of God as it is in Jesus. I looked with some
   degree of curiosity to his interpretation of this passage. I had half
   hoped to find there some allusion to his own conversion, but I did not,
   although I was edified by his clear and methodical comment upon it, to
   which I am under obligations for suggesting the present discourse. May
   I hope that, as this text has been the means in the hands of God of
   conferring upon the Church of Christ a man who valiantly defended the
   Truth of God, and was the means of expounding the Doctrine of Grace
   with great clearness, that there may be here present today someone at
   least who like John Gill may hear the Word with power, and may receive
   it in its quickening influence into his soul! No, let us pray that not
   one alone, but that many may hear the enquiry of God as it rings
   through the multitude, and while it reaches the ear, may it reach the
   heart, too, and may some be brought before God in answer to the
   question, "Where are you?" and receive the assurance of pardon, and go
   on their way in peace!

   It is not necessary that I should, in expounding this text, enter at
   all into the circumstances which led to the enquiry. Man had sinned
   against God. Mark the alienation of heart which sin causes in the
   sinner. Adam ought to have sought out his Maker. He should have gone
   through the garden crying for his God, "My God, my God, I have sinned
   against You! Where are You? Low at Your feet Your creature falls and
   asks mercy at Your hands. My Father, You have placed me in this lovely
   Paradise; I have wickedly and willfully eaten of the fruit of which You
   said that I should not eat of it, since in the day I ate thereof I
   should surely die. Behold, my Father, I submit to the penalty. I
   confess Your justice and beseech Your mercy, if mercy can be shown to
   such an one as I am." But instead thereof, Adam flees from God! The
   sinner comes not to God; God comes to him. It is not, "My God, where
   are You?" But the first cry is the voice of Grace, "Sinner where are
   you?" God comes to man; man seeks not his God. Despite all the
   Doctrines which proud free will has manufactured, there has never been
   found from Adam's day until now a single instance in which the sinner
   first sought his God! God must first seek him. The sheep strays of
   itself, but it never returns to its fold unless sought by the Great
   Shepherd! It is human to err, it is Divine to repent. Man can commit
   iniquity, but even to know that it isiniquity so as to feel the guilt
   of it, is the gift of the Grace of God. We have and are nothing but
   what is vile! Everything which is God-like, everything which aspires
   towards righteousness and true holiness, comes from the Most High.

   And while the text manifestly teaches us the alienation of the human
   heart from God, so that man shuns his Maker and does not desire
   fellowship with Him, it reveals also the folly which sin has caused.
   Sin made man a fool! He was once in God's Image, wise; now, since the
   trail of the serpent has passed over his nature, he has become an
   arrogant fool, for is not he a fool who would cover the nakedness of
   sin with fig leaves? Is not he indeed mad who would hide from the
   Omniscient Jehovah beneath the spreading branches of trees? Did not
   Adam know that God fills all space, and dwells everywhere, that from
   the highest Heaven to the deepest Hell there is nothing that is hid
   from His understanding? And yet so ignorant and stupid is he that he
   hopes to escape from God, and make the trees of the garden a covert
   from the fiery eyes of Divine Wrath! Ah, how foolish we are! How we
   repeat the folly of our first parent every day when we seek to hide sin
   from conscience, and then think it is hidden from God; when we are more
   afraid of the gaze of man than of the searching of the Eternal One;
   when because the sin is secret, and has not entrenched upon the laws
   and customs of society, we go to our beds with the black mark still
   upon us, being satisfied because man does not see it, that therefore
   God does not perceive it! O sin, you have made man ask the question,
   "Where shall I flee from Your Presence?" And you have made him forget
   that if he ascends to Heaven, God is there; if he makes his bed in
   Hell, God is there, and if he says, "Surely the darkness shall cover
   me," even the night shall be light about him!

   But now, the Lord Himself comes forth to Adam, and note how He comes.
   He comes walking. He was in no haste to smite the offender, not flying
   upon wings of wind, not hurrying with His fiery sword unsheathed, but
   walking in the garden. "In the cool of the day"--not in the dead of
   night when the natural glooms of darkness might have increased the
   terrors of the criminal; not in the heat of the day, lest he should
   imagine that God comes in the heat of passion; not in the early
   morning, as if in haste to slay, but at the close of the day, for God
   is long-suffering, slow to anger, and of great mercy. He came in the
   cool of the evening, when the sun was setting upon Eden's last day of
   glory, when the dews began to weep for man's misery, when the gentle
   winds with breath of mercy breathed upon the hot cheek of fear! He came
   when earth was silent, that man might meditate, and when Heaven was
   lighting her evening lamps, that man might have hope in darkness--then
   and not till then--came forth the offended Father! Adam flees and seeks
   to avoid that very God whom he had once met with confidence, and with
   whom he had the sweetest fellowship, talking with Him as a man talks
   with his friend. And now hear the voice of God as He cries, "Adam,
   where are you?" Oh, there were two Truths of God in that short
   sentence! It showed that Adam was lost, or God would not have needed to
   ask him where he was. Until we have lost a thing, we need not inquire
   about it. But when God said, "Adam, where are you?" it was the voice of
   a shepherd enquiring for his lost sheep. Or better still, the cry of a
   loving parent asking for his child that has run away from him, "Where
   are you?"

   There are but three words, but they contain the dread Doctrine of our
   lost estate. When Godasks, "Where are you?" man must be lost. When God
   Himself inquires where he is, he must be lost in a more awful sense
   than you and I have as yet fully known! But then, there was also mercy
   here, for it showed that God intended to have mercy upon man or else He
   would have let him remain lost, and would not have said, "Where are
   you?" Men do not inquire for what they do not value. There was a Gospel
   sermon, I think, in those three Divine Words as they penetrated the
   dense parts of the thicket, and reached the tingling ears of the
   fugitives--"Where are you?" Your God is not willing to lose you; He is
   come forth to seek you, just as by-and-by He means to come forth in the
   Person of His Son, not only to seek but to save that which now is lost!
   "Where are you, Adam?" Oh, had God meant to have destroyed the race, He
   would have hurled His thunderbolt at once, and burned the trees, and
   let the ashes of the sinner lie beneath His angry gaze! He would have
   rushed in the whirlwind, and in the storm, and tearing up the cedars
   and the pomegranates by their roots, He would have said, "Here you are,
   you rebel! Traitor, take your due deserts! Let Hell open before you,
   and be you swallowed up forever!" But no, He loves man; He cares for
   him, and therefore now inquires where he is in tones of calmness,
   "Adam, where are you, where are you?"

   The question which the Lord asked of Adam may be used in five different
   ways. We are not sure in what precise sense the Lord intended
   it--perhaps in all--for there is always in the utterance of the Divine
   One a great depth which couches beneath. Our words, if they give one
   sense, do well; but the Lord knows how to speak so that He shall teach
   many Truths in few words. We give little in much--God gives much in
   little! Many words and little sense--this is too often the rule of
   man's speech. Few words and much meaning--this is the rule with God. We
   give gold beaten out into leaf; God gives ingots of gold when He
   speaks! We use but the filings of gems; God drops pearls from His lips
   each time He speaks to us! Nor shall we, perhaps, even in eternity,
   know how Divine are God's words--how like Himself, how exceedingly
   broad, how infinite.

   I. We believe that the enquiry of God was intended in an AROUSING
   SENSE--"Adam, where are you?" Sin stultifies the conscience, it drugs
   the mind, so that after sin man is not so capable of understanding his
   danger as he would have been without it. Sin is a poison which kills
   conscience painlessly by mortification. Men die by sin as men die when
   frozen to death upon the Alps--they die in a sleep; they sleep, and
   sleep, and sleep, and sleep on, till death closes the scene, and then
   in Hell they awake in torments! One of the first works of Divine Grace
   in a man is to put aside this sleep, to startle him from his lethargy,
   to make him open his eyes and discover his danger. One of the first
   deeds of the Good Physician is to put sensibility into our flesh. It
   has become cold, and dead, and mortified. He puts life into it, and
   then there is pain; but that very pain has a salutary effect upon us.
   Now, I think that this question from the Lord was intended to set Adam
   thinking. "Where are you?" He had perceived in some degree into what a
   state his sin had brought him, but this question was meant to stir the
   depths of his spirit, and wake him up to such a sense of danger, that
   he should labor to escape from the wrath to come. "Adam, where are
   you?"--look at yourself now, naked, a stranger to your God, dreading
   the Presence of your Maker, miserable, undone. "Adam, where are
   you?"--with a hard heart, with a rebellious will, fallen, fallen,
   fallen from your high estate! "Adam, where are you?" Lost! Lost to your
   God, lost to happiness, lost to peace, lost in time, lost in eternity.
   Sinner, ' ' where are you?" O that I might, by the earnest words which
   I shall now utter, stir up some callous, careless sinner to answer the
   enquiry for himself! Man, where are you?--where are you this morning?
   Shall I tell you? You are in a condition in which your very conscience
   condemns you! How many there are of you who have never repented of sin,
   have never believed in Christ! I ask you, is your conscience easy?--Is
   it always easy? Are there not some times when the thunder is heard? Are
   there not seasons when the watchman lights his candle, and searches the
   secret parts of your soul, and discovers your iniquity? Where are you,
   then?--For conscience is to God what the hook is to the fisherman.
   Conscience, like God's hook, is in your jaws today, and He has but to
   draw in the line, and you are in the consuming fire! Though conscience
   makes you smart, Justice shall be far sterner with you than your poor
   imperfect conscience. If your heart condemns you, God is greater than
   your heart, and knows all things. Your conscience tells you you are
   wrong--O how wrong, then, must you be!

   But man, do you not know you are a stranger from your God? Many of you
   seldom think of Him. You can spend days and weeks without a mention of
   His name, except, perhaps, in some trivial language, as in an oath. You
   cannot live without a friend, but you can live without your God! You
   eat, you drink, you are satisfied; the world is enough for you; its
   transient pleasures satisfy your spirit. If you saw God here, you would
   flee from Him! You are an enemy to Him! Oh, is this the right case for
   a creature to be in? Let the question come to you--"Where are you?"
   Must not that creature be in a very pitiable position who is afraid of
   his Creator? You were made to glorify Him! You were made to rejoice in
   His Presence, and to delight in His goodness! But it seems you love not
   the very food which was meant to sustain you. You must be sick--you
   must be sick, indeed! "Where are you?" Remember, the Almighty God is
   angry with you. His Commandments, like so many guns, are all pointed
   against you this morning, and it needs only the uplifted finger of the
   Divine One, and they shall soon destroy you and break you in pieces!
   Would a man be comfortable with his neck upon the block, and the axe
   gleaming above his head? It is your case today! You are in the position
   of the courtier at the feast of Dionysius, with the sword over your
   head suspended by a single hair. Condemned already!! "God is angry with
   the wicked every day." "If you turn not, He will whet His sword; He has
   bent His bow, and made it ready." Where are you? O God, help the man to
   see where he is! Open his eyes! Let the question startle him. Let him
   start in his sleep a little--yes, let him wake and discover where he
   is--obnoxious to Your wrath, and the object of Your hot displeasure!

   "Where are you?" Your life is frail; nothing can be weaker. A spider's
   line is a cable compared with the thread of your life. Dreams are
   substantial masonry compared with the bubble structure of your being.
   You are here and you are gone! You sit here today; before another week
   is past, you may be howling in another world. Oh, where are you, Man?
   Unpardoned, and yet a dying man! Condemned, yet going carelessly
   towards destruction! Covered with sin, yet speeding to your Judge's
   dread tribunal! Lost here, yet hurrying on, each moment bearing you on
   eagle's wings to the place where you shall be eternally lost! How hard
   it is to bring ourselves to know ourselves! In other matters, if a man
   is a little sick he seeks his doctor, and would know his position. But
   here a man says, "Peace, peace. Let well enough alone." If we fear that
   our personal estates are at all in jeopardy, we have anxious nights and
   toilsome days; but, oh, our souls--our poor, poor souls--we play with
   them as if they were worthless counters, or bits of platter which a
   child might pick up in the streets and cast away! Sinner! Sinner!
   Sinner! Is your soul so poor a bauble that you can afford to lose it,
   because you will not break your sleep and stop your pleasurable dreams?
   Oh, if a brother's heart can move your heart, and if a brother's voice
   can wake your sleeping eyes, I would say, "What ails you, O Sleeper?
   Arise and call upon your God! Awake! Why do you sleep?! Awake to answer
   the question, 'Where are you?'--lost, ruined and undone! O sinner where
   are you?"

   II. Now, secondly, the question was meant to CONVINCE OF SIN, and so to
   lead to a confession. Had Adam's heart been in a right state, he would
   have made a full confession of his sinfulness. "Where are you?" Let us
   hear the voice of God saying that to us, if today we are out of God,
   and out of Christ. "Where are you, Adam? I made you in My own Image, I
   made you a little lower than the angels; I made you to have dominion
   over the works of My hands; I put all things under your feet--the fowl
   of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatever passes through the
   depths of the sea. I gave this whole garden of delights to be your
   home. I honored you with My Presence, I thought of your welfare. The
   moon did not hurt you by night, the sun did not smite you by day. I
   tempered the winds for you; I clothed the trees with fruit for your
   nourishment; I made all things minister to your happiness. Where are
   you? I asked of you but that little thing, that you would not touch one
   tree which I had reserved for Myself. Where are you? Are you in the
   room of a thief, a rebel, a traitor? Have you sinned? O Adam, where are
   you?"

   And now, Sinner, hear me. "Where are you?" To many of you the Lord
   might say, "I gave you a godly mother who kept over you in your
   childhood. I gave you a holy father who longed for your conversion. I
   gave you the gifts of Providence--you never wanted for a meal. I
   clothed your back. I put you in a comfortable position in life. I
   raised you up from a bed of sickness. I overlooked ten thousand
   follies. My mercies like a river have flown to you. When you opened
   your eyes in the morning, it was to look upon My goodness; and till the
   last moment of the night I was your helper, and drew the curtains about
   your defenseless head. I have covered you with My feathers, under My
   wings have you trusted, and now where are you? Have you not forgotten
   My Commandments, abhorred My Person, broken My Laws, rejected My Son?
   Are you not at this day a disbeliever, content to trust to your own
   works but not to take the finished righteousness of My Beloved Son, the
   Savior of the world? What have you done for Him who has done so much
   for you? What are you? Have you not been a cumber-ground--a tree that
   sucks the soul but bears no fruit--that drinks in the genial rain of
   Heaven, but yields no grateful fruit? Where are you? Are you not today
   in the camp of My enemy? Are you not on Satan's side, defying Me, and
   lifting up the puny arm of your rebellion against the Lord who made
   you, and who keeps the breath in your nostrils--in whose hands your
   life is, and whose are all your ways? Sinner, where are you? After all
   God's goodness--still a sinner!"

   Read the question again thus, "Where are you?" The serpent said you
   would be a god. You thought to be made exceedingly glorious. Is it so,
   Adam? Is it so? Where is your boasted knowledge? Where the honors?
   Where the vast attainments that rebellion would bring to you? Instead
   of the clothing of angels, you are naked! Instead of glory, you have
   shame! Instead of preferment, you have disgrace! Adam, where are you?
   And Sinner, where are you? Sin said to you, "I will give you
   pleasure"--you have had it; but what of the pain which followed the
   pleasure? Sin gave you its cup full of mixed wine; but what of the red
   eyes, and of the woe? Sin said to you, "I will make you great," but
   what has it done for you? Drunkard, what has it done for you? Given you
   rags and poverty! Adulterer, fornicator--what has it done for you?
   Filled your flesh with leprosy, and your soul with agony! Thief! Cheat!
   What has it done for you? Disgraced you, and branded you before the
   eyes of men! Sinner in secret! Polite sinner! What has it done for you?
   Soured your sweets, and poisoned all your joys! Where are you? Where
   are you? In every case sin has been a curse. Without exception,
   rebellion, if it has not yet brought its due deserts, will do so, and
   sinners shall be filled with their own ways.

   And then to add to the conviction, the Lord asks of Adam, "Where are
   you," as if He asked him, "How did you get there?" Adam, you came there
   of yourself. If you had been upright, Eve had not cast you down. Eve
   'twas not the serpent with whom the main guilt must lies; had you not
   given ear, he might have tempted long if you had been deaf. And so
   today God says to the sinner, "Where are you?" You are where you have
   brought yourself. That you have sinned is your own fault, and none
   else's but your own! Oh, it is hard to make a sinner see that sin is
   his own property. It is the only thing we have! There is only one thing
   we created, and that is sin, and that is our own. If I permit anything
   that is evil, I must confess it is a child that has sprung from my own
   heart--it has its origin in myself! If we talk of the Fall, men will
   throw their sin on father Adam. They speak of the depravity of nature,
   and then they think they are to be excused, as if depravity of nature
   did not prove the man to be desperately bad--as if it were not saying
   that sin is essentially man's own thing--that he has it in his very
   bones, and is his blood. If we are sinners, there is no excuse for us
   whatever. And if we live and die so, the guilt shall lie at our own
   door, and nowhere else. "Adam, where are you?" You are where you have
   willfully put yourself, and you remain willfully in the same desperate
   state of rebellion against God, and of alienation from Him!

   I would God that something would not only arouse the sinner this
   morning, but work conviction in him. It is easier to make a man start
   in his sleep than to make him rise and burn the loathsome bed on which
   he slumbered--and this is what the sinner must do--and what he wiildoif
   God is at work in him! He will wake up and find himself lost;
   conviction will give him the consciousness that he has destroyed
   himself, and then he will hate the sins he loved before! He will flee
   from his false refuges, forsake his joys, and seek to find a lasting
   salvation where alone it can be found--in the blood of Christ!

   III. This brings me to the third way in which we may regard the
   question of the text. The Lord God called to Adam and said to him,
   "Where are you?" We may regard this text as the VOICE OF GOD BEMOANING
   MAN'S LOST ESTATE.

   Some have even ventured to translate the Hebrew, "Alas for you, alas
   for you!" It is as if God uttered the words of the Prophet, "How can I
   give you up? How can I utterly destroy you? How can I set you as Admah?
   How shall I make you as Zeboim? My repentings are kindled, My heart is
   moved for you. Where are you, My poor Adam? You did talk with Me, but
   you have now fled from Me. You were happy once, what are you now? Naked
   and poor, and miserable. You were once in My Image glorious, immortal,
   blessed--where are you now, poor Adam? My Image is marred in you, your
   own Father's face is taken away, and you have made yourself earthy,
   sensual, devilish! Where are you now, poor Adam?"

   Oh, it is amazing to think how the Lord felt for poor Adam! It is taken
   for granted by all theologians that God can neither feel nor suffer.
   There is no such thing in the Word of God. If it could be said that God
   could not do anything, and everything, we would say that He was not
   Omnipotent! But He can do all things, and we have not a God who cannot
   be moved--we have One who feels, and who describes Himself in human
   language as having a father's heart, and all the tenderness of a
   mother's heart. Just as a father cries over a rebellious son, so does
   the eternal Father say, "Poor Adam, where are you?"

   And now have I here this morning any soul on whom the former part of
   the text has had some effect? Do you feel yourself to be lost, and do
   you discern that this lostness is the result of your own willful folly?
   Do you bemoan yourself? Ah, then, God bemoans you! He is looking down
   upon you, and He is saying, "Ah, poor drunkard, why will you cling to
   your cups? Into what misery have they brought you?" He is saying to you
   who are now weeping over sin, "Ah, poor child, what pain you suffer
   from your own willful folly!" A father's heart moves; He longs to clasp
   His Ephraim to His breast. Do not think, Sinner, that God is
   stony-hearted. You have a heart of stone, God has not! Do not think
   that He is slow to move--you are slow to move--He is not--the hardness
   is in yourself! If you are straitened anywhere, it is in your own
   heart, not in Him! Soul, Soul convicted of sin! God loves you, and to
   prove how He loves you, in the Person of His Son He creeps over you and
   He cries, "O that you had known, even you in this, your day, the things
   that make for your peace; but now are they hid from your eyes." I hear
   Him saying to you, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have
   gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chickens under her
   wings, but you would not!" I pray you, let this mournful wailing voice
   of the Eternal God come to your ears and move you to repentance! "As I
   live, says the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him who dies,
   but had rather that he would turn unto Me and live."

   Oh, does your heart feel ready to burst because of your sin and the
   misery into which it has brought you? Pray, poor Sinner, "I will arise
   and go unto my Father, and will say to Him, Father, I have sinned
   against Heaven and in Your sight, and am no more worthy to be called
   Your son." He sees you, Sinner! When you are yet a great way off, He
   sees you--here are eyes of mercy! He runs--here are feet of mercy! He
   clasps you--here are arms of mercy! He kisses you-- here are lips of
   mercy! He says, "Take off his rags"--here are words of mercy! He
   clothes you--here are deeds of mercy! Wonders of mercy--all mercy! O
   did you know what a reception a God of mercy gives to sinners, you
   would not stay away! As John Bunyan says, when the besieger hangs out
   the black flag, then those within the walls say they will fight it out.
   But when he runs up the white flag, and tells them that if they will
   open the gates he will have mercy upon them, no, he will give a charter
   to their city, then, says Bunyan, they say, "Fling open the gates," and
   they come tumbling over the walls to him in the readiness of their
   hearts! Soul, let not Satan deceive you by telling you that God is
   hard, unkind, unwilling to forgive! Try Him, try Him! Just as you
   are--black with sin, filthy, self-condemned--and if you need anything
   to make you come to Him, hear again the Lord's plaintive cry, as it
   rings through the trees of Eden, "Adam, poor Adam, My own creature,
   where, where are you?"

   IV. But now I must turn, lest time should fail us, to a fourth way in
   which no doubt this verse was intended. It is an arousing voice, a
   convincing voice, a bemoaning voice--but, in the fourth place--it is a
   SEEKING VOICE. "Adam, where are you?" I am come to find you wherever
   you may be. I will look for you till the eyes of My pity see you. I
   will follow you till the hands of My mercy reach you, and I will still
   hold you till I bring you back to Myself, and reconcile you to My
   heart.

   Again, if you have been able to follow me through the three parts of
   the discourse, I can speak confidently to you. If you have been
   awakened, if you have been convinced, if you have some longings toward
   God, then the Lord has come forth to seek you, and to seek you this
   morning! What a thought it is, that when God comes forth to seek His
   chosen, He knows where they are, and He never misses them; and though
   they may have wandered ever so far, yet it is not too far for Him! If
   they had gone to the gates of Hell, and the gates were half opened to
   receive them, the Lord would get them even there. If they had so sinned
   that they had given themselves up, and every Christian living had given
   them up, too--if Satan had counted upon them, and had made ready to
   receive them, yet when God comes forth to seek them, He will find them,
   and He will have them after all! You who are lost, perishing sinners,
   hear the voice of God, for it speaks to you, "Where are you?" for I
   have come to seek you. "Lord I am in such a place that I cannot do
   anything for myself." "Then I have come to seek you, and do all for
   you." "Lord, I am in such a place that the Law threatens me, and
   Justice frowns upon me." "I have come to answer the threats of the Law,
   and to bear all the wrath of Justice!" "But, Lord, I am in such a place
   that I cannot repent as I would." "I have come to seek you, and I am
   exalted on high to give repentance and remission of sins."

   "But, Lord, I cannot believe in You; I cannot believe as I would." "A
   bruised reed I will not break, and a smoking flax will I not quench, I
   have come to give you faith." "But, Lord, I am in such a state that my
   prayers can never be acceptable." "I have come to pray for you, and
   then to grant you your desires." "But, Lord, You do not know what a
   wretch I am." "Yes, I know you. Though I asked you the question, 'Where
   are you?' it was that you might know where you are, for Iknew well
   enough!" "But, Lord, I have been the chief of sinners--none can have so
   aggravated their guilt as I have." "But wherever you may be, I have
   come to save you." "But I am an outcast from society." "But I have come
   to gather together the outcasts of Israel." "Oh, but I have sinned
   beyond all hope." "Yes, but I have come to give hope to hopeless
   sinners." "Yes, but then I deserve to be lost." "Yes, but I have come
   to magnify the Law and make it honorable, and so to give you your
   deserts in the Person of Christ, and then to give you My mercy because
   of His merits." There is not a sinner here conscious of his lost estate
   who can be in a position out of which he cannot be brought! I will
   conceive the worst of all the worst, the vilest of all the vile--we
   will bring up those who have taken high degrees in the devil's
   synagogue, and become masters of iniquity--but still if with tearful
   eyes they look alone to the wounds of Him who shed His blood for
   sinners, He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto
   God by Him!

   Oh, I cannot preach this morning as I would, nor can you perhaps hear
   as you would wish, but may the Lord speak where I cannot, and may He
   say unto some despairing sinner here, "Soul, your hour is come. I will
   pluck you out of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay, at this
   day and at this very hour! I will set your feet upon a Rock. I will put
   a new song into your mouth, and I will establish your goings." Blessed,
   blessed, be the name of the Most High if such may be the case!

   V. And now, lastly, we feel sure that this text may be used and must be
   used, in another sense. To those who reject the text as a voice of
   awakening and conviction; to those who despise it as the voice of mercy
   bemoaning them, or as the voice of goodness seeking them, it comes in
   another way. It is the voice of JUSTICE SUMMONING THEM.

   Adam had fled, but God must have him come to His bar. "Where are you,
   Adam? Come here, Man, come here, I must judge you, sin cannot go
   unpunished! Come, and your guilty spouse with you. Come here; I must
   put questions to you; I must hear your pleading, and since they will be
   vain and void, I must pronounce your sentence." For though there was
   much of pity in the question, there was something of severity, too.
   "Adam, Adam, where are you? Come here to be judged." Today you hear not
   that cry; it is mercifully postponed. You shallhear it soon; you shall
   hear it for the first time like mutterings of thunder when the storm
   begins; when sickness casts you on your bed, and Death looks through
   his bony eyes upon you, and touches you with his ghastly hand, and
   says, "Prepare to meet your God." You may put off the question today;
   you will have to deal with it when God Himself shall come into closer
   contact with your nature than He does today. Then shall your bones be
   as a jelly, and your ribs shall quake, and your very heart shall melt
   like wax! You shall contend with the pains of sickness or disease; but
   there shall be a direr pain than these! You shall have to look on
   death, but death shall not be the most terrible of all your terrors,
   for you shall see behind'death the judgment and the doom! Then you will
   hear it, when the room is silent, and voices of wife and children are
   hushed; when only the clock is ticking, you shall hear the steps of God
   coming to you in the eventide of your life, saying to you, "Where are
   you? Now you shall meet Me. Gird up your loins! No more invitations of
   mercy for you! Your day of mercy is gone! No warnings from the
   minister; now you shall meet Meface to face." "Where are you?"

   Can you brag and boast now, when your nerves have become roads for the
   hot feet of pain to travel on, and your strength has gone and fled, and
   you are as a candle ready to die out? Where now are your oaths? Where
   now your merrymakings and your jests? Where are you now? You may toss
   and turn, but you will not be able to escape the question! You will try
   to look back to this life, but you will be compelled to look forward to
   the life or the death to come! And still will the Lord whisper into
   your ears, "Where are you? Where are you?" Then shall come the last
   struggle, when the strong man shall be bowed, when the bright and
   glittering eyes shall be covered over with film, and the tongue shall
   cleave to the roof of the mouth, and the hands shall lie with no
   strength on the bed, and the feet shall no more be able to support the
   body; when the pulse shall fail, and the clammy death-sweat shall stand
   upon the brow; and in those last moments there will still be heard that
   awful voice, rising with the gathering storm till it reaches the full
   grandeur of the awful tempest--"Where are you?" In the Jordan without
   God; nearing the grave without hope; dying, but no Christ to help you;
   launching upon eternity, but no hope of eternal salvation! It is over,
   and the last pang has passed, and the thread is snapped that bound the
   spirit to the body, and you are gone into another world! But the
   question follows you--"Where are you?" Your Spirit is now awake; it
   sleeps no more; it is rid of the dull flesh that kept it sullen,
   stolid, stupid, dead. Now it hears that Voice, indeed, and it thrills
   through and through the spirit, for the soul is brought before its God!

   "Where are you? Where are you?" cries the quickened conscience; ad God
   answers it, "Depart, you cursed one!" The spirit departs from God, not
   to hide itself among the trees of the garden, but to plunge itself into
   waves of agony! And how many years have passed, and the body, though
   the soul has been alive and has suffered, has been sleeping in the
   grave, and the worms have devoured it?

   But hark, the Day of Judgment! The day of thunder has arrived! Shrill
   above all thunders sounds the awful trumpet. And after the trumpet
   comes the voice--"Awake, you dead, and come to judgment!" Amidst that
   awful tumult is heard the cry, "Where are you?" The angelic messenger
   has found your body, and from the grave your body starts, from
   underneath the green sward. Up it leaps in answer to the question,
   "Where are you?" and to its horror its ghastly spirit comes back. Its
   soul, that long has suffered, returns into the resurrection body, and
   they two, comrades in sin, are now comrades in judgment! The cry rings
   forth once more, and that very ear shall hear it that now listens to
   me--"Where are you?" Then comes the Great White Throne, and those very
   eyes shall see it that now gaze on me! And then comes the commencement
   of the dread assize--and that heart shall quail then which moves not
   now! Then shall come your own personal trial; and oh, Sinner! Sinner!
   It is not for me to describe your terror! I could not give even the
   faintest picture of that death-sound, and of the death of your immortal
   spirit while you hear it--"I was hungry, and you gave Me no meat; I was
   thirsty, and you gave Me no drink; inasmuch as you did it not unto one
   of the least of these, My brethren, you did it not to Me; and these
   shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life
   eternal." Oh, Earth! Earth! Earth! Hear the Word of the Lord! I pray
   each of you to hear it for yourselves! I have not talked to you of
   dreams. You know they are realities. And if you know it not now, you
   shall before long. I do beseech you by the blood of Him who died for
   sinners--and what stronger argument can I use?--think of the question,
   "Where are you?" May God show you where you are! Hear the bemoaning
   voice of God, as pityingly He weeps over you! Seek His face, for He
   seeks you; and then you need not dread to hear Him say at the last,
   "Where are you?" But you will be able to say, "Here am I, and the
   children You have given me. We have washed our robes, and made them
   white in the blood of the Lamb; and, Father, here we are, hoping to
   dwell in Your Presence forever and ever."

   Oh, that I could plead with you as a man pleads for his life! Would
   that these lips of clay were lips of fire, and this tongue no more of
   flesh, but a live coal taken with the tongs from off the altar! Oh, for
   words that would burn their way into your souls! O Sinner! Sinner! Why
   will you die? Why will you perish? Man, eternity is an awful thing, and
   an angry God is a dreadful thing! And to be judged and condemned--what
   tongue can tell the horror? Escape for your life; look not behind you;
   stay not in all the plain; escape to Mount Calvary, lest you be
   consumed! "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." Trust Him alonewith your
   soul; trust Him with it now, "and you shall be saved, and your house."
     __________________________________________________________________

                             To Die Or Not To Die!

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 11, 1861,

   BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the
   Lord."

   2 Corinthians 5:8.

   I once heard two good men holding a dialogue with one another. I should
   not like to have the task of saying which I thought the better man of
   the two. I believe them both to be sincere followers of the Savior and
   both of them, I think have a good hope through grace. One of them said
   he should be glad to go to Heaven. He wished that his time was come. He
   did not see anything here worth living for and he should be only too
   glad if now the summons should reach him that he should cross the river
   and arrive in the Promised Land. The other brother said he did not feel
   so. He thought he had many reasons why he would rather just then live
   than die.

   He thanked God that he had lived to see the Church in prosperity and it
   made his heart glad. He should like, he said, to be a sharer of the
   Church's joy for years to come. Besides, he had those he loved on earth
   and he said perhaps it might be a weakness in him but certainly he
   could not join in the other brother's aspirations--at least not to the
   same extent. I stood by. I do not know that I volunteered then any very
   strong words by way of notice of what either of them said, yet I took
   notes of their conversation. Thinking the matter over it suggested to
   me a few thoughts which I shall endeavor to present to you tonight. May
   the topic be interesting and may you feel your own interest in it.

   Now there was one of the Brethren who would rather not depart but stay.
   I will take up that side of the question first and show when such a
   desire is wrong and when it is right. The other Brother, like Paul,
   said he would rather depart for he thought it far better. I will take
   up that side of the question afterwards and show when that, too is
   wrong and when that, too, is right. I think they must both be sifted
   and to pronounce a judgment upon either prematurely as right or wrong
   would be to perpetrate an injustice and to commit an error.

   Sometimes it is wrong for a Christian man to say, "I do not want to
   die--I would rather live." And one of the first cases is when that
   Christian man has grown worldly. I think it was Dr. Johnson who being
   taken by one of his friends over to his fine house and along the walks
   of his beautiful garden, observed to him--"Ah, Sir, these are the
   things that make it hard to die." To leave the comforts of life. To go
   from a nest that is well-feathered and to stretch our wings into the
   air. To leave the house which our industry has built, the objects
   familiar to our senses, the projects that absorb our interest and above
   all, the fam-ily--I say willingly--to leave these is difficult. All
   these are so many strings tying us down like ropes which fasten the
   baboon which would flee if once its cords were cut.

   But, Brethren, this is wrong in a Christian man. What is there in this
   present world that he should love, compared with the world to come? Has
   Christ taught him to find his solace here? Did Christ come from Heaven
   that we should find a Heaven below? No, rather has He taught us that
   the enjoyments of this world are not fit meat for the noble spirits
   which He has recreated. Men must eat angels' food. They cannot live by
   bread alone. The world was never meant to fill a believer's soul. He
   may find some contentment in it--for "every creature of God is good and
   is to be received with thanksgiving."

   But to set this world in comparison with the next so as to be unwilling
   to let it go in order to receive the crown of life-- this were
   folly--this were madness, this were wickedness in the godly man. In
   such a sense as that the thing is wrong.

   And again, when the Christian man wishes to stay here, because he has a
   secret fear of dying, it is wrong. Brethren, I would not speak harshly
   to those who, "by fear of death are all their lifetime subject to
   bondage." I would speak encouragingly to them. What did Christ come
   into the world for? He came to deliver those who are subject to this
   bondage. And did Christ come in vain? No, Brethren. Then let us shake
   off these chains. They are unworthy of the men who have a part and lot
   in Christ Jesus the Redeemer.

   Afraid to die? Why, you are afraid of a stingless enemy. Afraid of a
   shadow--no, you are afraid of Heaven's own portals. You are afraid of
   your Father's servant whom He sends to bring you to Himself! Be more
   afraid of living than of dying, for there are more fears in life than
   in death. In fact, to the Christian there is no fear in death. "Oh,
   but," you say, "the pains and groans of death!" "No," say I, "they are
   the pains and groans of life." There are no pains and groans in death.
   Death occupies but an in- stant--it is but, as it were, a pin's prick
   and all is over. It is life that gives the pains. The sighs, the groans
   and the strife are not those of death--but those of life struggling
   against death--when the strong man will not yield himself. So says one
   of our poets--

   "How deep implanted in the breast of man The dread ofdeath!!sing its
   sovereign cure. Why start at death?-- Where is he? Death arrived Is
   past. Not come or gone; he's never here. Before hope, sensation fails;
   black-boding man Receives, not suffers, death's tremendous blow."
   Brethren, when Jesus Christ died for our offenses and was raised again
   for our justification, He "loosed the pains of death." Our old Divines
   were accustomed to say--"Then there are only a few loose pains for the
   believer to suffer." Death seizes not the Christian with the strong
   grip of an officer of Justice. Rather does death beckon the soul away
   to be present with the Lord!

   Let those fear to die whose sins lie heavy on their consciences. Let
   those fear to die who have heaped sin upon sin, who have rejected the
   atonement, have trampled on the blood of sprinkling, have cast behind
   their backs the invitations of mercy and live and die in their sins.
   But you--you fear death? You whose sins are forgiven? You who are
   clothed in Jesus' righteousness? You to whom death is admission into
   immortality? You to whom death is but the end of dying and the
   beginning of life? You fear death? Why Sirs, surely you know not what
   spirit you are of. Such fear of dying is wrong in the Christian. Let
   him strive against it and by getting more grace let him overcome his
   dread.

   Then again, if the Christian's fear of dying is the result of his
   doubting his interest in Christ, that is wrong. We have no right to
   doubt. "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved." But some read
   it as though it said, "He that doubts shall be saved." In this very
   verse the Apostle says, "We are always confident." Now, some divines
   hate the very word "confidence" and some professors of religion think
   that a Christian has nothing to do with confidence. And yet, the
   Apostle says, "We are always confident." And, indeed, the Apostle knew
   what was the proper spirit for a believer--that he might not be
   trembling between death and life, between hope and fear, with "of," and
   "but," and "perhaps"--for his only rocks.

   No, that is not the spirit of a child of God. One would think, to hear
   some men talk, that the atonement of Christ was a quagmire, a bog, or
   bending ice which might give way under our feet. But, Brethren, it is
   not so. It is a rock more lasting than the rocks on which the earth is
   piled and more enduring than the solid columns which support Heaven's
   starry roof. Why fear, then? Why doubt? Why tremble? Such pining after
   life, such fears of death because we doubt our Savior are disreputable
   in a Christian man. Let us seek to overcome them--that being always
   confident, we may be willing to depart--which is far better.

   One more point I ought not to pass over here, albeit I do not know in
   which scale to put it--whether to call it right or wrong. When the
   Christian had rather stay here because he has a large family dependent
   upon him and he says, "How can I die?" "Ah," he says, "the Apostle Paul
   had not a house to maintain and a responsible business to manage for
   the support of his dependent household. He lived in single blessedness
   and when he journeyed he took all his stock-in-trade with him. But if I
   were to die just now, I should leave my widow without provision and my
   children would be all but penniless orphans."

   Well now, that is a right consideration. The religion of Christ does
   not teach us to deny our natural affections and if any man desire not
   to provide for his own household, he is worse than a heathen man and a
   publican. But mark, if that care gets to be earning care--if it is a
   distrustful care as to God's Providence--then it is wrong, for many a
   time has a believer closed his eyes in perfect peace, though he knew
   that he left his dear ones without a heritage, for he has put God's
   promise between his lips--"Leave your fatherless children and let your
   widow trust in Me."

   I think I may tell a story that might aptly illustrate this. Though
   some are here whom it concerns, the name not transpiring it can do no
   hurt. I have heard of a poor laboring man whose children were at that
   time struggling for their bread and suddenly the pangs of death came on
   him. As he lay dying, this was the legacy he left his
   children--children, mark you who are this day, many of them, rich and
   all of them together with his widow to her dying day--they have been
   comfortably provided for. He said to his wife, as he was dying--"You
   will find so many shillings in that box over there"--and you would
   think he was going to say, "Take care of it, it is the last I have."

   But no. He said, "I owe just that sum of money to Mrs. So-and-So down
   in the village. Take it and pay her. It is all I owe in the world and
   then I can die content." As a Christian man he died and left to his
   children a better heritage than many a peer of the realm has bestowed,
   though he has given estates over the acres of which a bird's wing might
   flag in the attempt to fly. And I say from that very moment--and there
   are those here who can bear me witness--from that very moment that
   man's family rose in circumstances. From that very instant they began
   to rise in respectability and position in life and they make it their
   boast that their father left them such a heritage as that.

   Oh, Christian man, you may in the strength of an unwavering faith in
   God close your eyes in peace. Let not your social position too much
   disturb you, but while you make all the provision you can let not your
   provision ever stint you in your generosity to Christ's cause, or mar
   the peace with which you go to your death-pillow. He that has been with
   you will also be with your seed. I cannot boast many years of
   observation--I cannot say as David did--"I have been young and now am
   old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging
   bread"--but there be many gray-headed ones who can say that and set to
   their seal that God is true.

   Having thus brought out what I think the wrong side of the matter, let
   me now show you when I think it may be right for the believer to say,
   "I would rather live than die." And that is, first, when he feels that
   he has not yet done much for the matter and a field of labors is just
   opening before his eyes. "Oh," says he, "I should not like to go to
   Heaven yet, for I have done so little for Him on earth." As a valiant
   soldier, with the field of battle in view, he wants to win a victory.
   The fight is just beginning and he has not had an opportunity of
   distinguishing himself. He has been in the rear and he says to himself,
   "I want an opportunity of rushing to the front and thinning my new
   laurels, so that before the battle be over I may be distinguished for
   serving my country."

   So many a young Christian may, with a noble ambition, say--"I do not
   want my part in the battle to be over yet. I had rather stay a little
   longer, till I have fought the good fight and finished my course."
   Christian! Christian! If you say thus, who can blame you? Your desire
   to remain is commendable indeed. But perhaps we have been long in the
   field and we are saying-- "I do not want to die yet, because the
   laborers are few"? Oh, let me stay till I see others raised up to
   preach the Gospel that I love. Great Commander of our hosts, let my
   hand hold Your standard till another hand stronger than mine shall
   grasp it. Let me stand in the fore-front of the battle, till You find
   someone else to bear the world's opprobrium and tug and toil for souls
   even in the very fire."

   I can quote Carry and Ward and Pierre, who when they were laid down
   with sickness at Serampore, prayed that they might live a little
   longer, because every godly man in India was then worth a thousand.
   They seemed to say, "If any would come and take my place, gladly would
   I go to find repose. But I have to keep this gap, or guard this
   bulwark. Oh Captain, call me not away, lest Your name be dishonored and
   Your enemies get to themselves triumph." If Elisha said, "My Father, my
   Father, my Father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen
   thereof"--much more can you conceive the charioteer of God who has long
   held in the rapid steeds, standing upright in his chariot, as he feels
   the death-film gathering over his eye and he is about in sheer
   exhaustion to cast down the reins.

   Because he can hold them no longer, you can hear him cry, "Let me just
   live until I can pass the reins to my successor's hands and transfer,
   like Moses, the guardianship of Israel to a Joshua who shall lead them
   into the Promised Land." In those two cases and there may be others--it
   would be allowable for the believer to say, "To abide in the flesh is
   more needful for You and therefore I prefer rather to live than die."

   I now take the second stage of the controversy and shall try to deal
   fairly with that. When is it right and when is it wrong for a believer
   to wish to go to Heaven?

   First, it is wrong when he wants to get there to get away from his
   work. Sometimes when we have got a hard task to do for the Lord we wish
   that the rest would come and we talk almost peevishly of the "rest that
   remains for the people of God." There be some lazy spirits who would
   like an everlasting Sabbath, when they might always sit still and do
   nothing. That is their notion of Heaven--

   "There on a green and flowery mount, Our weary souls shall sit."

   My own constitutional idleness always makes me look forward to Heaven
   as a place of rest, for in everything I do I am obliged to drive myself
   to do it for the Master's sake. And there are many, I dare say, who
   suffer from a torpid and sluggish liver, to whom the thought of Heaven
   as a place of rest is generally the paramount one.

   Well, now, I do not think that we ought to wish to go to Heaven to have
   done with work. Suppose you were to employ a laborer and he came to you
   about ten o'clock in the morning and said, "Master, it is a very hot
   day, I wish it was six o'clock at night." You would say, "Let me see,
   how many hours have you been at work--there is your money, take it and
   go. I want none of those laggard fellows about my premises that are
   always looking for six o'clock." Or suppose you had another man engaged
   by the week and you met him on Thursday and he said, "I wish it was
   Saturday, Sir, I wish it was Saturday night."

   "Ah," you would say, "A man that always looks for Saturday night is
   never worth his master's keeping. Just go on with your work till it is
   finished and then when Saturday night comes it will be all the more
   welcome to you." And yet,

   Brethren you and I have been guilty of that same unworthy listlessness
   with regard to the things of Christ. We have wanted to get away from
   the work. It was too hard and too hot for us--so we would even wish to
   skulk into Heaven that we might repose our wearied souls upon the green
   and flowery mounts. Now that is wrong. Get up with you, get up with
   you! "Six days shall you labor and do all that you have to do. But the
   seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God." If you murmur at the
   six days of labor for Christ Jesus in His vineyard--how shall you hope
   to enjoy with Him the eternal Sabbatism that remains for the people of
   God?

   Some, too, wish to get away from this world because there is some
   little discouragement that they have met with in laboring for Christ.
   Jonah thought he would rather go to Tarshish than to Nineveh. There are
   many spiritual Jonahs who had rather go to Heaven than they would go to
   their pulpits again, or to the place where they have been taunted,
   ridiculed and persecuted. It is the same spirit of disobedience and
   unbelief. They want to get out of the work and away from the
   discouragements of it and so they say they would like to go Home. I
   knew a man a little while ago--and he who tells the tale knows by
   experience the truth of it--I knew a man who, thinking of his own
   responsibility and of the solemn work which lay upon him, having met
   with some rough words and being somewhat cast down, wished to go to
   Heaven.

   And he has been ashamed of himself ever since, for he thought within
   himself--what business had he the first time he met with an enemy, to
   say to his Captain, "Please let me go home." We have read this last
   week some excellent stories of valiant men. There are a few instances
   that ought perhaps to be told for our encouragement. There was a
   certain officer in a certain battle, which we need not mention, but
   which ought to be called forever, "The Battle of the Spurs." This
   gentleman, finding there was no chance, rode as quickly as he could to
   Washington to say it was a mistake. Yes, of course that is what he went
   for. He was not at all afraid. Of course he did not return home,
   because he did not like the look of the campaign, or thought there
   might be a chance of his being cut down.

   Perhaps that was not the reason. Perhaps he was a very brave man and so
   he showed his back to the enemy, thinking that the back alone of so
   brave a man would be enough to confound his foes. Perhaps that was it.
   And perhaps that may be the reason why you and I want to go to Heaven
   when we get a little uncomfortable. But to tell you the truth, I
   suspect it was abominable cowardice. And I suspect it is the same with
   you and with me. We get cowardly and afraid of the world lest its
   opposition stain our pride--afraid of Satan--whom it is our duty to
   resist. And tender of the flesh which it is our great duty to mortify
   and not to pamper. And withal we are distrustful of God as our Helper.
   It is then we fretfully say, "Let us go to Heaven."

   Fancy Martin Luther talking like that! Melancthon did it once, but
   Martin Luther said, "No, no, Melancthon, you are not going to Heaven
   yet. I will not have it," and down he went and prayed while Melancthon
   said, "Let me die, Luther." But Luther said, "No, we want you and you
   are not to be let off yet, you must stand in the thick of the battle
   till the fight changes and victory is ours." Thus, to wish to get away
   from our appointed place of trial and conflict, because of
   discouragements, is wrong in the extreme.

   And there are some --I would not speak severely but truthfully--some
   there are who want to go to Heaven, to get away from the Lord's will on
   earth. They have had so much pain, that they would like to be released
   from it. We cannot, we will not, blame them. If we had the same
   sufferings, we should have the same desire. But yet does it not
   sometimes amount to this, "Father, I see the cup is there and I know I
   ought to drink it, but if the cup cannot pass from me, let me pass away
   from it"? Does it not sometimes amount to this, "This furnace is very
   hot, Lord, take me out of it to Heaven at once"? Does it not come to
   this, "Lord, You have tried me so sorely. I do not like these trials. I
   have an objection to Your will and I should like to be removed from the
   necessity of enduring it"?

   Such people never do die, remember, for years afterwards--because the
   Lord knows they are not fit to die. When we want to die to get away
   from our pains, we generally keep on living. But when we are able to
   say, "Well, let it be as He wills. I would be glad to be rid of pain,
   but I would be content to bear it if it is God's will," then patience
   has had her perfect work and it often happens that the Lord says, "It
   is well, My child--your will is My will and now it is My will that you
   should be with Me where I am."

   And now, bear with me patiently while I try to show when such a desire
   as this is not only undeserving of censure, but truly praiseworthy,
   exceedingly commendable and eminently to be desired. Brothers and
   Sisters, if you long to go to Heaven because you are conscious of your
   daily sins and want to be rid of them--if, seeing your perpetual
   mistakes, transgressions and iniquities, you are saying--

   "Sin, my worst enemy before,
   Shall vex my eyes and ears no more;
   My inward foes shall all be slain,
   Nor Satan break my peace again"-- it is a good desire, for to be
   perfectly holy is an aspiration worthy of the best of men. You may--I
   am sure you will--in the thought that you shall be without spot or
   wrinkle, or any such thing say, "Jesus, make no tarrying, but quickly
   take Your servant to Yourself."

   Suppose, again, that you wish to serve God better than you do and you
   say, "Oh, my Master, I cannot serve You here as I would. I would like
   to be removed to Heaven that I might serve You day and night in Your
   temple, that I might fly on Your errands, sing Your praises without
   ceasing and adore You before Your face with raptures here unknown."
   Then, inasmuch as it is a proper thing for the servant of God to desire
   to be a better servant and a more faithful and obedient steward, it
   must be right and proper for him to long to be conformed unto his
   Master's image, that he may serve his Master without imperfection.

   Oh, methinks, Brethren, this should be one of the strongest reasons to
   make us long to get from this world and gain the promised home.

   Again, when you and I have been at the Lord's Table, or in some service
   where we have had great enjoyment, we have gone home singing in our
   hearts--

   "Now I have tasted of the grapes, I sometimes long to go
   Where my dear Lord the vineyard keeps, And all the clusters grow."

   You have had the earnest and you want to have the whole of the
   redemption money. You have tasted of Eschol's grapes and you want to go
   and live in the land that flows with milk and honey. If you did not
   want to go, it would be as strange as it would be wicked.

   Oh Jesus! When we have sipped Your love, we have longed to bathe in it.
   When we have tasted some of Heaven's dewdrops, we have longed to drink
   of the river of God that is full of water. When we have come up some of
   the lower knolls of the hill, we have panted to climb the mountain's
   summit and stand where God dwells in the high places of eternity--

   "Hopeless of joy is anything below,
   We only long to soar,
   The fullness of His love to feel,
   And lose His smile no more.
   His hand, with all the gentle power,
   The sweet constraint of love,
   Has drawn us from this restless world,
   And fixed our hearts above."

   Such earnests make us pant for Heaven and it cannot be wrong if such is
   the case.

   Again, when you have had near fellowship with Christ--when you have
   seen His face and leaned your head upon His bosom--it would indeed be a
   strange thing if you did not wish to be with Him where He is. I would
   not believe that a woman loved her husband if she never cared for his
   society. The affianced one has seen her betrothed husband but for a
   moment and she wishes to see him again and longs for the time when they
   shall never part again. And so the heart that is affianced to Christ
   longs to be happy, pants for His embrace and to sit with Him at the
   marriage supper. If I were to compare Christ with wine, I would say He
   is such wine that the more you drink, the more you long to drink.

   If I compare Him to food--though He stops one hunger He gives us
   another. Oh, I think that was a splendid thought of Rutherford's, when,
   having floated upon the river of Christ's fellowship, he said--"Oh,
   that my ship would sink and founder in the sea! Oh, that it would go
   down till forty fathoms of His love should reach over the mast head of
   my highest thoughts! Oh, to be swallowed up in Christ--to be lost in
   Him--as the ray is lost in the sun and the drop in the sea!" If you did
   not long for this it would be a shame indeed! If you did not long to
   see His face it would seem as though you had no love for Him and would
   never be conformed in His image.

   Brethren, I shall say no more, except to put these few thoughts
   together. You are a child--he is not a loving child that does not wish
   to see his father's face. How some of us used to long for the holidays!
   We used to make a little almanac and put down the days and mark them
   off one by one. Six weeks before the time, we would begin to count how
   many days there were and every morning we would say there was one day
   less before we went home. Either he is a bad child--or he has got a bad
   father--that does not want to go home. Now we have got a good and
   blessed Father and I hope He has made us His true children and we want
   to see His face.

   We long for the time when we shall no longer be under tutors and
   governors, but shall come home to enjoy the inheritance. Brethren, we
   are also laborers. It were a strange thing if the laborer did not wish
   to achieve the end of his toils. It were indeed a strange thing if,
   industrious though he is, he did not prefer the end of his toils to the
   beginning. It were contrary to nature and I think contrary to grace, if
   the farmer did not long for the harvest and if he that toils did not
   desire to receive the reward. We are not only laborers, Brethren, but
   mariners--mariners that are often tempest-tossed.

   The sails are rent to shreds. The timbers are creaking. The ship drives
   along before the blast--who does not want to get into port? Which man
   among you does not desire to say--"See, the harbor is near. Lo, the red
   lights!" Who among you would not wish to cast anchor now and say, "I
   have passed the floods and now I am come to my desired havens"?
   Brethren, we are not only mariners but pilgrims--pilgrims of the weary
   foot, having here no continuing city. Who does not want to get to his
   home?--

   "Home, home, sweet home! There's no place like home!"

   Heaven is my home and there is no place like Heaven! No, if you put me
   in a palace it is not my home. No, though the world were at my feet, it
   were not my home. Home! Home! Who will not long for home?

   And last, what soldier does not long for victory? He would not still
   the fight, but he wishes it were triumphantly over. He does not turn
   his back, but breasting the foe he marches on with deadly tramp, with
   bayonet fixed, keeping the line, till, going over the dead bodies of
   his enemies, at last he reaches the camp, takes it by storm and puts
   the banner of his country where once waved the standard of his foe.
   What Roman soldier did not anticipate the triumph, Brethren? What Roman
   cohort lid not expect to join in the triumphal procession? What
   commander did not aspire to the vote of thanks at the capitol?

   Let us then pant for home. It is the end of the battle. It is the
   reward of victory. Let us not long for Heaven to escape from the fight,
   but as a victory that is the result of it. And now what say you? Do you
   say--

   "To Jesus, the crown of my hope, My soul is in haste to be gone?"

   Oh, some of you can say it. God grant you your desire. May you find the
   promised rest when God's time shall come. And I would say for myself--I
   would say for you--"Oh, God, in Your own time come quickly--come
   quickly--come, Lord Jesus!"

   How different the feelings of those of you who have no Heaven
   hereafter! To you Death is a chasm and there is no hope to bridge it!
   It is dread without a promise. It is despair without an end! Sinner,
   pray God that you may not die. Think not of dying, Man, for if your
   troubles are great here they will be greater hereafter. He that commits
   suicide to get out of trouble leaps into the gulf to escape from the
   water--drowns himself to prevent himself from getting wet. He leaps
   into the fire because he is scorched.

   Do it not, do it not. He that kills himself goes with his hands red
   with blood before his Maker and goes there to his own damnation. But,
   Soul, since you are yet alive may God teach you to confess your sins
   and to seek for mercy. Remember it is to be had for he that believes on
   the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved. Trust Christ with your soul. He
   is worthy of your confidence. He will keep you and will "present you
   faultless before His Father's presence with exceeding great joy."
     __________________________________________________________________

                       The Fullness Of Christ--Received!

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 20, 1861,

   BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON

   "And of His fullness have all we received.'" John 1:16.
   THERE is no occasion to inform the Christian heart who the Person is to
   whom reference is here made. The name of Jesus is to you a household
   word. No, it is the word which will be found written upon your hearts
   when you die. That immortal word shall be the keynote of your eternal
   song when you shall enter into the immortality which remains for God's
   people. Jesus! How sweet is Your name to Your people. It is a sonnet of
   itself. It is the sum of all music summed up in two syllables. It is a
   hallelujah and the groundwork of an eternal hosanna in five letters.
   Jesus! We defy earth to equal it and Heaven itself to excel it. Jesus
   is Heaven's highest melody--as it is earth's sweetest delight.
   The text informs us that there is a fullness in Christ. There is a
   fullness of essential Deity, for "in Him dwells all the fullness of the
   Godhead." There is a fullness of perfect Manhood, for in Him bodily,
   that Godhead was revealed. Partaker of flesh and blood, made in all
   things like unto His brethren, there was nothing lacking that was
   necessary to the perfection of humankind in Him. There is a fullness of
   atoning efficacy in His blood, for "the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son,
   cleans us from all sin." There is a fullness ofjustifying righteousness
   in His life, for "there is therefore now no condemnation to them that
   are in Christ Jesus."

   There is a fullness of divine Providence in His plea, for "He is able
   to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him; seeing He ever
   lives to make intercession for them." There is a fullness of victory in
   His death, for through death He destroyed him that had the power of
   death, that is the devil. There is a fullness of efficacy in His
   resurrection from the dead, for by it "are begotten again to a lively
   hope." There is a fullness of triumph in His ascension, for "when He
   ascended up on high He led captivity captive and received gifts for
   men." There is a fullness of blessings unspeakable, unknown. A fullness
   of grace to pardon, of grace to regenerate, of grace to sanctify, of
   grace to preserve and of grace to perfect.

   There is a fullness at all times. A fullness by day and a fullness by
   night. A fullness of comfort in affliction, a fullness of guidance in
   prosperity, a fullness of every Divine attribute, of wisdom, of power,
   of love. A fullness which it were impossible to survey, much less to
   explore. There is everything summed up in a total--"the gathering
   together of all things in One" in Jesus. "It pleased the Father that in
   Him should all fullness dwell." In vain we strive to recount the holy
   wonder. It were a theme which would exhaust an angel's tongue to
   tell--the fullness which resides in Jesus our Head and ever abides to
   answer our need.

   And now what shall we say to these things? "Of His fullness have all we
   received." The text seems to me to suggest four reflections. First, an
   appeal to our gratitude. "Glory be to Christ! For of His fullness have
   all we received." Secondly, a notion of character, "Thus may you know
   the people of God, for of His fullness have they all received."
   Thirdly, a sentence of admonition to believers, "Be wise, oh you people
   of God, be grateful and be humble, for it is of His fullness you have
   received." And in the last place here is to the sinner a word of sweet
   encouragement, "Come, all the saints invite you, for of His fullness
   have all they received."

   1. To begin with the first the text constrains us to say, "GLORY BE
   UNTO CHRIST FOR HIS FULLNESS, for of it have all the saints received."

   Appeal to those who died before the flood. Ask those who trod in the
   steps of Enoch. Go forward to Noah, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Put
   the question to David and Samuel--come on through the Prophets, to
   Isaiah and Jeremy-- ask them all, "From where came your faith? From
   where your power to suffer and your strength to conquer?" With united
   breath they answer, "Of His fullness who as yet had not come in the
   flesh we by faith received." Ask the saints in later times. I summon
   you, oh you bright Apostles of the Lamb, "From where came your noble
   testimony and your unwavering constancy?" They reply with the voice of
   John, their leader, "Of His fullness have all we received."

   Appeal to the martyrs on their racks, on their blood-stained gibbets,
   on their stakes and glowing fires. In their dungeons and damp dying
   places--ask the tenants of ten thousand graves, "From where came your
   triumph?" And they reply at once, "We have overcome through the blood
   of the Lamb." "Of His fullness have all we received." You should go
   through the list of the Reformers. You should ask Luther and Calvin and
   Zwingle and Melancthon and Wickliffe and Huss and Jerome and Knox. And
   there is not one of them who will dare to say that he had anything of
   his own.

   You should turn over the list of the great preachers and summoning them
   one by one, you should say to Augustine, to Chrysostom, to Bernard and
   to those in later days, such as Latimer, Tindal and Hooper and to later
   still the men with Whitfield and with Wesley preached the Word, "From
   where came your boldness in confession? From where your strength to
   bear the calumny of the age and to be the butt of human scorn and yet
   never to flinch, much less to withdraw your testimony." And they all
   reply, "Of His fullness have all we received."

   Brethren, what a fullness must this be--when you think that a multitude
   which no man can number--a company beyond all human count have all
   received Him! And there is not one of them that has received too
   little--they are all, as Rutherford has it--"drowned debtors to His
   grace." Or, as we put it, "over head and ears" in debt to Him. They are
   so indebted that they will never know how much they owe but they feel
   that an eternal song will not be too long to utter their grateful
   praise. Fullness, indeed, must there be in Him when all these streams
   have been continually flowing and yet He is not dry--when all there
   mouths have been filled and yet the granary is not empty. When all
   these thirsty ones have had their drink and yet the well springs up as
   free, as rich, as full as ever.

   But you must note again, to the praise of Christ, not only did they all
   receive of His sense, they all received all that they had. They had
   not, any of them, a part of their own. No Apostle could say, "So far I
   am a debtor. But here I stand and claim the honor for myself." With sin
   begins and ends the whole story of man. But where good appears, there
   grace begins. Or, rather, the grace began before the good. For every
   good desire, for every holy thought, for every well-spoken word, for
   every deed of daring, for every act of self-sacrifice let Christ be
   honored--for everything has come of Him. If there is any virtue, any
   praise--anything that is lovely or of good report--go and cast it at
   His feet, for from Him it came. He sowed the seed out of which it grew.
   He created the nature out of which these good things sprung.

   Oh what must the fullness be from which all the saints received all
   that they have! But there is another way of estimating the fullness--by
   remembering that, albeit, all the saints have received all these
   things, yet it remains undimin-ished--a fullness still. There is not a
   drop less in Christ though oceans have been taken away. There is not a
   spark less in that furnace though many fires have been kindled
   therefrom. There is not a farthing less in that treasury though
   millions of souls have been enriched. There is not a grain less in that
   granary nor shall there be a grain less even when the whole world shall
   be sown--and all these sheaves shall come to the harvest.

   It is always blessed for the child of God to know that in Christ there
   is enough for all the saints, enough for each, enough for evermore. And
   when they have had all and everything that they can have still there is
   as much left as when they began. I noticed in Venice at the wells that
   the people came to them early in the morning because very soon
   afterward they were almost dry and it needed some two or three hours
   for the well to spring up again. Ah, but it is never so with Christ.
   Come early in the morning, O you thousands of seekers and that well is
   full--come you at hot noon tide, O you thirsty ones and the well is
   full--come when the sun is going down, you that are wearied with your
   day of toil, for the well is ever full.

   Ah, come at midnight, you whose sun is set, who are lost in the
   darkness of despair, for still you shall find that the well is
   full--never exhausted. No, never diminished--always springing up,
   always overflowing. So long as there shall be souls found who need to
   drink of His fullness, the supply shall be abundant.

   Though there are many things to say on each division of my subject, you
   must excuse me if I say but little. You must take the text home and
   think of it for yourselves. Spirits around the Throne, I hear you sing
   tonight, "Of His fullness have all we received." Saints on earth,
   speeding your way to the eternal triumphs, join their song and say, "Of
   His fullness have all we received." Let no voice be silent, let no
   tongue be dumb, but let every soul say, "Of His fullness, too, have I
   received and glory be unto His name."

   II. Now for our second point. The text also teaches us HOW TO KNOW WHO
   IS THE CHRISTIAN, for it says, "Of His fullness have all we received."

   There are some in this world who obtain their religion from their
   fathers and mothers. They go to church, or perhaps to chapel, because
   there is a family pew there and all their family used to go. They speak
   about "our church" and "our denomination" as though their grandfather
   had left his religion in his last will and testament for a legacy to
   them. Let such know that religion is not to be inherited. It is a
   personal matter. No man can stand sponsor for another. One of the most
   ridiculous and pestilent of human inventions is the idea of making one
   man stand representative for another, or an adult for a child--everyone
   must appear before God and be judged for ourselves.

   Jesus Christ is the only Surety. Verily, we should have enough to do to
   answer for ourselves at the last, without attempting to make a reply
   for other people. To our own Master we must stand or fall. We have a
   divinely appointed Substitute. Therefore we shall all gather around the
   judgment seat of Christ. But you have received your grace, you say,
   from your parent. If you have got it anywhere but from Christ then
   please remember you do not belong to the family of Christ. Others there
   are who have a religion of their own--they have got it by good works.
   They have always acted uprightly. They have shut their shops on a
   Sunday. They do not cheat--at least not often, not more than other
   people. They speak the truth and they endeavor to do their best.

   They would not mind helping a poor neighbor. Or if they are in richer
   circumstances, their guinea is always ready whenever the subscription
   list is placed before them. And they say, "Well, if it does not go well
   with me, it will be hard with a great many people." That is quite
   correct--indeed it will go very hard with a great many people. But this
   religion of theirs is of their own making. Then sometimes when men get
   rich they think they will, as it were, put the finest fruit on the top
   of the bushel and they leave a donation to some society. A very good
   plan, indeed, by the way--but a pitiful thing if it is left with the
   view of getting merit by it. So now they say, "It will all be
   well--there will be two or three alms-houses built. I have been a good
   fellow while I have lived and it will surely be well with me at the
   end."

   You do not belong to the same company as the saints who have gone
   before. You have evidently nothing to do with the Apostle John--for his
   fullness came from Christ. It is quite apparent you can never share his
   Heaven. You can never enjoy his bliss. You can never enter into his
   rest. What he had he owed to grace divine. But it seems what you have
   is of your own earning. Your robes are of your own spinning, your fire
   of your own kindling, your coin of your own minting, your merits of
   your own merchandise. Oh, be not deceived, these things will fail you
   at the last and you will find them as a dream when one awakes All your
   fine righteousness shall disappear as a shadow when your conscience is
   aroused upon your dying bed.

   But others have a better sort of religion than this. They do not
   believe the Calvinistic doctrine--that without Christ we can do
   nothing. They acknowledge that without Him we cannot do much--still
   they pretend that with Him they can do just a little. If we cannot save
   ourselves yet we can believe in our own strength. So they take the
   first step. They begin the good work in themselves. And then their
   divines teach them that they must persevere--yes, if they do not, if
   they will not do their part, God will leave them. The grace of God is
   dependent upon their good behavior--so they try to behave themselves to
   keep the grace of God.

   They "use the grace of God" as they call it. They try to hold on to the
   end of themselves. And what does it all come to? To which I say, it is
   very obvious that you do not belong to those old-fashioned saints who
   lived in the Bible times-- for all they had they received from Christ.
   They did not get the beginning from themselves--He was Alpha--they did
   not get the ending--He was Omega. They did not get anything from self.
   They sought and they found Christ for us. If you had asked an old saint
   his opinion about salvation he would have replied in the language of
   Jonah, "Salvation is of the Lord."

   Free will doctrines, creature power and human strength, were unknown in
   Bible times. They were the invention of one Pelagius. They were new
   vamped and made a little tidy by Van Harmin, called Arminius. There are
   some who to this day have adopted "these old shoes and clouted upon
   their feet and old garments upon them and all the bread of their
   provision is dry and moldy." And they appear like Gibeonites in the
   Lord's hosts. I do not say but what many of then shall be saved--but
   they shall be hewers of wood and drawers of water in the midst of the
   congregation in their days-- for they never can come into the liberty
   wherewith Christ makes us free while they believe those adulterated
   doctrines, those traditions of men, instead of the doctrine and
   revelation of Christ Jesus the Lord.

   Now, let us try to find out the true Christian--the enlightened
   Christian. The true Christian has all from Christ. The Heaven-taught
   Christian feels it is so. You remember that the Apostle Paul said of
   himself that he was the chief of sinners. A little while before he says
   he was the least of all the saints and last of all he says, "Though I
   am nothing." John Newton says, "Young Christians think themselves
   little--growing Christians think themselves nothing--full-grown
   Christians think themselves less than nothing." So as we grow up we
   grow down. As Christ increases we must decrease. As He is glorified,
   the flesh gets dishonored in our esteem.

   Now, what do you say, Brothers and Sisters? Did you receive all the
   grace you have from Christ? Is He All in All to you? Are you resting
   wholly and simply and only on Him? Can you say as poor Jack did in that
   story I once told you--

   "I'm a poor sinner and nothing at all, But Jesus Christ is my All in
   All!" Have you learned to depend on Him for all things and on self for
   nothing? Have you seen the rottenness and emptiness of all human merit?
   Have you learned the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of all
   human trust? If so, rejoice, for you belong to that company who can
   say, "Of His fullness have all we received."

   Sometimes the devil will say to us, "Well, you do a great deal in the
   cause of Christ. You do not have a moment's rest from the moment you
   wake in the morning to the time you go to sleep at night--always
   thinking of something for Christ and doing something for Him." And,
   then, proud flesh says, "Ah, you have labored more abundantly than they
   all." No, no, my Brethren. When we come to look upon all our works,
   those of us who have toiled the most for Christ--I am sure we cannot
   find any satisfaction in them. In reviewing all that I have attempted
   to do, I can only say, so far as my own personal experience goes, I am
   as heartily sick of my own righteousness as I am of my sins.

   I feel as much reason to have God's grace over the best deeds as over
   the worst. I often lie down in the very dust of self-abasement feeling
   that I have not anything--no, not a rag of my own--no, not a grain of
   merit, not an atom whereon I can trust. As abject a sinner as there is
   out of Hell--if I look into myself--it is my only satisfaction that I
   am enabled to look to Christ and to Christ alone. All that is of
   Nature's spinning must be unraveled. All that is of Nature's
   manufacture must be broken in pieces. We must unhoof the horses and
   burn the chariots of human strength in the fire, for thus says the
   Spirit, "I will stain the pride of all glory and bring into contempt
   all the excellent of the earth." "Yes, doubtless and we count all
   things His for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our
   Lord." Here is our struggle--"that we may win Christ and be found in
   Him, not having our own righteousness which is of the Law, but the
   righteousness which is of God by faith."

   III. Thirdly, we draw from the text A SENTENCE OF ADMONITION TO THE
   BELIEVER--"Of His fullness have all we received."

   Should not the believer be of all men the most honorable? I have heard
   sometimes of a man being a Christian and yet being proud. Now a proud
   Christian is a singular contradiction. Yet you do know some--you would
   not say they were not godly people--but then, their coat is made of the
   best broad cloth and they think it would be a little going down if they
   were to speak to those who wear fustian or white coats during the week.
   They are a little better off in the world and so they do not receive
   their poorer Brethren. This is the most silly pride in the world. I
   have not a word to say about it. It is too mean to be worth a man's
   words spent upon it.

   But there is some pride which a Christian man will entertain and almost
   think it is humility. It is a pride about his experience--a pride of
   having grown wise at last. He thinks he has learned too much ever to be
   proud, which proves that he is puffed up beyond measure. He says,
   "Well, those young people are very self-conceited." He looks down on
   beginners and says, "Their greatest danger is to be lifted up with
   pride." While as for himself--good sober man, so old and
   experienced--it is not possible that he should be proud--yet proud all
   the while. To such we say, "What have you that you have not received?"
   I know people say it is more respectable to owe thirty thousand pounds
   than it is to break for three. But if I must be in debt, methinks I
   would rather be the smaller debtor.

   Yet how many there are because they have received more from God than
   others--that is they are greater debtors than others--they are proud.
   You have more gifts than I have. Well, it only means you have got twice
   as much work to do as I have. So you have got more wealth than I. That
   means you are more in debt to God than I and are you proud of being in
   debt? Let the Christian be a humble-minded man. We talk of humility.
   What a lump of pride we are--fussy, stuck-up, wanting to have respect
   paid to us. If somebody comes between the wind and our nobility, we are
   upset. If somebody abuses us, what a state we are in. And oh, if
   anybody calls us ill-names, how harshly we consider ourselves treated.

   If we thought less of ourselves we should not be quite so sensitive.
   Where should dust go but on the dunghill? And where should they put the
   man who knows himself to be vile but in the worst place? Yes, let them
   put us there--they will not give us worse than we deserve if we come to
   know ourselves in the sight of God. Yes, we may say of the slanderer,
   "Man, you have not hit it, you have not found out my fault. If you knew
   me better you could hit me harder." Yes, we might sometimes say to some
   cruel enemy, "You have made some mistake there, for I am innocent of
   that before God. But if you had read my heart and known how false I
   have been to my Lord and how unbelieving, you might have exposed me and
   hit me in a sore place and smitten me under the fifth rib."

   I think we ought always to say, "Well, we do not deserve it for that,
   but we deserve it for something else, so we will take it patiently and
   be willing that men should wipe their shoes on us if it will but
   glorify Christ." Yes, let them call us devils if we may but help to do
   angel's work in redeeming men. Let them scout us, hiss at us and say,
   "Yah! there goes a hypocrite!" or anything else they like, if we may
   but magnify Christ while living and enjoy Him when we shall come to
   die. Be humble Christian, for what have you that you have not received?

   Next, let us be grateful. All that we have we have received from
   Christ. Let us love Him. When our friends give us love we give them
   love in return. But what is that which we owe mother, father, husband,
   wife, or friend compared with what we owe to Christ? Let your hearts
   burn, let your love be inflamed. Fall at His dear feet--embrace them
   with affection. Spend and be spent for Him. Live unto Him and be ready
   to die for Him. For all you have you have received of His fullness. I
   think that what we want as a Church is more recognition of the gifts we
   have as coming from Christ. I do not think we have the gratitude we
   ought to have to Him. We do not make sacrifices for Him. We give, it is
   true, to this cause and to that, but are there half-a-dozen Christians
   here that have ever made a sacrifice for Christ?

   He gives us blood and we give Him a few tears. He gives us sweat and we
   give Him cold services. He gives us groans and we give Him languishing
   hymns. He gives us life and death, body, soul and spirit and we give
   Him only what we can spare after we have first looked to ourselves--and
   not all that in most cases. Let us feel, O God, let us feel gratitude
   to Christ--a fire within our bones and a flame within our hearts and a
   sevenfold strength in our spirits--not only to believe in His name, but
   also to suffer for His sake. Let gratitude be the inspiration of our
   lives.

   IV. I have not time nor strength to enlarge further upon these points.
   Therefore the last and not the least important.

   The text seems to me to be A MOST SWEET INVITATION--A MOST BLESSED
   ENCOURAGEMENT TO POOR NEEDY SINNERS.

   So, Sinner, you need tonight a new heart. You will never be able to
   make your heart new yourself--He must give it to you. So, Sinner, you
   need repentance--you can never repent of yourself. He is exalted on
   high to give repentance. So you need a sense of your own sin and
   sinfulness--He can make you feel it, for He felt it all Himself. So you
   do feel your sin, you say and you want to have it pardoned--He can
   pardon it and without exception He has power to forgive sins on earth.
   Tell me not how vile you have been--He can pardon you. Say you are
   guilty of aggravated crimes--He can forgive you. Tell me not, even,
   that you have stained your hands with blood--He is able to wash out
   that stain and make you whiter than snow.

   Sinner, Sinner, Sinner! Do you need tonight to have your aching heart
   filled with peace?--He can do it. Of His fullness have all the host in
   Heaven received. Of His fullness have all the saints on earth received.
   And you, poor weeping Sinner, you may, you shall receive, too. They had
   nothing to bring to Him any more than you have. They came to Him black
   in sin--as black as you and He washed them. They came to Him lost--lost
   as you can possibly be--He saved them and He can save you. He asks you
   to do nothing of yourself, but to trust Him and Him alone. He is God.
   Oh, trust the Omnipotent One. He is perfect Man. Oh, trust the
   Meritorious One. He died. Oh, trust His dying sacrifice.

   He lives. Oh, trust His authoritative plea. Sinner, if we asked you to
   trust a man, we should think it right that you should object. If he
   pretended to be a priest and asked you to trust him, you might turn
   upon your heel with a sneer. But I bid you trust in no mere man but in
   Him that died upon the Cross. And He is worthy of your trust. Yonder
   millions redeemed from death and Hell will tell you, "Worthy is the
   Lamb!"--and thousands here below will tell you, too, "That He is worthy
   of all your confidence." May the Spirit of God graciously lead you out
   of self into Christ and enable you once for all to put your trust in
   Him.

   I will tell you, tonight, an anecdote which I think I have repeated
   before, but not in this house. There was a poor man who had been a long
   while burdened in spirit--one night he had a dream. To dreams we attach
   no importance. But this dream happens to be an allegory. He dreamed
   that he stood at the gates of Heaven, longing to enter but he dared not
   and could not, for sin had shut him out. He was longing to come but he
   dared not. At length he saw approaching the pearly gates a company of
   men who came on singing. They were goodly to look upon, dressed in
   white robes.

   So he stepped up to one of them and he said to them, "Who are you?" And
   they replied, "We are the goodly fellowship of the Prophets." He said,
   "Alas! I cannot enter with you." And he watched them until they had
   passed the gates and he heard from outside the voice of song as they
   were received with welcome. Cast down and troubled, he watched until he
   saw another company approach and they came with music and rejoicing. He
   said to them, "Who are you?" They were great hosts who had washed their
   robes and they replied, "We are the noble army of martyrs." He said, "I
   cannot go with you." And when he heard the shouts a second time
   ascending from within the gates, his heart was heavy within him at the
   thought that it was not possible for him to enter there.

   Then came a third company and he detected in the main the Apostles and
   after them there came mighty preachers and confessors of the Word. He
   said in his heart, "Alas! I cannot go with you, for I am no preacher
   and I have done nothing for my Master." His heart was ready to break,
   for they entered and were lost to his sight. And he heard the
   triumphant acclamations as the Master said, "Well done, enter into the
   joy of your Lord." But as he waited, he saw a greater company
   approaching. He marked in the forefront Saul of Tarsus, Mary Magdalene,
   the thief that died upon the Cross. And they came streaming on.

   So he said to one of them, "Who are you?" And they replied, "We are a
   company of sinners whom no man can number. We are saved by
   blood--through the rich, free, sovereign grace of God." Indeed, all the
   companies might have said the same and the dream would have been more
   complete. But as this poor man, with the tears in his eyes heard this
   word, he said, "Thank God, I can go with you, for I am a sinner like
   you and like you I trust in the merit of Him that died on Calvary." So
   he joined their ranks and was about to enter but he said in his heart,
   "When we come, there shall be no songs. They will admit us, but it will
   be in silence, for we bring no honor to God. We have done nothing for
   Him--there will be no voices of music when we come in."

   But to his surprise the acclaim was louder, the music was more
   melodious and the shouts of acclamation were louder far, while they
   said, "Here are they who come to complete the number of the host whom
   Jesus bought with His blood."

   Now, Sinner, let your ear be attentive and let your heart bow down to
   listen while I admonish you. What? Though you are a poor sinner--if you
   believe in Christ, you can come in as a poor sinner! Indeed, this is
   the way we all must come, for there are not, after all--though our
   imagination, like the dream, may suggest it--there are not two ways of
   entrance. We all come to Him empty--to be filled-- naked, to be
   clothed--lost to be saved. Let me, then, just put the way of salvation
   plainly to you all.

   "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved." So said Christ. This
   was the commission which He gave to His Apostles. What is it to
   believe? To believe is to trust Christ. To put it as the Negro said,
   "Massa, I fall flat down on de promise." That is to believe--to fall
   flat on the finished work and sure promise of Christ.

   The Lord enable you to be rid of self and self-confidence and to trust
   Christ. Then let Hell roar, let earth rage, let the Law thunder, let
   the precept threaten, let condolence accuse. But oh, let the Son of God
   arise. Bound by His Word, He will display a strength proportioned to
   your day. He will never suffer you to perish, neither shall any pluck
   you out of His hand. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                              The Shield Of Faith

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 27, 1861,

   BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to
   quench all the fiery darts of the wicked." Ephesians 6:16.

   LIKE the Spartans, every Christian is born a warrior. It is his destiny
   to be assaulted. It is his duty to attack. Part of his life will be
   occupied with defensive warfare. He will have to defend earnestly the
   faith once delivered to the saints. He will have to resist the devil,
   he will have to stand against all his wiles--and having done all, still
   to stand. He will, however, be but a sorry Christian if he acts only on
   the defensive. He must be one who goes against his foes as well as
   stands still to receive their advance. He must be able to say with
   David, "I come against you in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of
   the armies of Israel whom you have defied."

   He must wrestle not with flesh and blood but against principalities and
   powers. He must have weapons for his warfare--not carnal--but "mighty
   through God to the pulling down of strongholds." He must not, I say, be
   content to live in the stronghold though he is then well guarded and
   munitions of stupendous strength his dwelling place may be. But he must
   go forth to attack the castles of the enemy and to put them down, to
   drive the Canaanite out of the land.

   Now, there are many ways in which the Christian may to a great degree
   forget his marshal character. And alas, there are not a few who, if
   they are Christians at all, certainly know but very little of that
   daily warfare to which the Captain of our salvation calls His
   disciples. They will know most of fighting who cleave closest to king
   David. They who are willing not merely to be with him when he is in
   Saul's court with his fingers amid the strings of the harp, but going
   in and out before the people and behaving discreetly, so that "all
   Israel and Judah loved David because he went out and came in before
   them."

   They must be men who are willing to go with David into the cave of
   Adullam when he is outlawed, when his character has become a stench in
   the nostrils of every proud hypocrite and when Saul the king--in his
   day the representative of that worldly religion which is not of God,
   but stands in the strength of man--when he hunts David to seek his
   life. Thus the men who are willing to follow Christ in the midst of an
   ungodly and perverse generation must come right out from it and be
   separate. Their life will have to be like the life of the men of
   Napthali who hazarded their lives onto the death in the high places of
   the field.

   You will remember that Jonathan, one of the sweetest characters in the
   Word of God, is one of whom, after all, there is little to be said. His
   life was inglorious from the very time that he forsook David and his
   death was among the slain of the Philistines upon the dewless mountains
   of Gilboa. Alas, poor Jonathan--he could give David his bow--but he
   could not draw the bow for David. He could give David his garments,
   even to his armor--but he could not put on the armor for David. The
   attraction of his father's court was too much for him and there he
   stayed.

   In that Book of the Chronicles, where the Holy Spirit has recorded the
   names of the mighty men that were with David in Adullam we find not the
   name of Jonathan. We find the names of those who broke through the
   Philistines to give David a drink of the water of the well of
   Bethlehem. We find the name of the man who went down into the pit in
   the time of winter and smote the lion. But Jonathan has not the honor
   to stand recorded in the list of the great host which was like the host
   of God. And there are Christians of that kind nowadays. They have a
   soft religion--religion which shuns opposition, a reed-like religion
   which bows before every blast??unlike that cedar of godliness which
   stands aloft in the midst of the storm and claps its boughs in the
   hurricane for very joy of triumph, though the earth be all in arms
   abroad.

   Such men, like those who shunned David in Adullam, lack the faith that
   shares the glory. Though saved, yet their names shall not be found
   written among the mighty men who for our Great Commander's sake are
   willing to suffer the loss of all things and to go forth without the
   camp bearing His reproach. Those Christians too, who having come clean
   out from the world--diligently engaged in building up the Church--will
   have to fight more than others who are rather built up than builders.

   You remember, in Nehemiah's day, how the Jews worked when they built
   the walls of Jerusalem. With one hand they held the trowel and in the
   other they held a weapon. "The builders, everyone had his sword girded
   by his side and so built." Moreover there were master masons along the
   wall and the laborers all actually worked. But here and there you might
   see a sentinel ready to sound the trumpet so that the workmen might
   prove warriors and rush to the fray and drive away their foes.

   Be very diligent in doing good to the Church of Christ and you shall
   soon have reason to defend your cause. Serve your Master zealously and
   diligently and let the Lord's blessing rest upon your labors, the
   Lord's blessing will entail

   Satan's curse, the smile of God will necessarily incur the frown of
   man. According to your nonconformity to the world, your daring to be
   singular--when to be singular is to be right--according to your
   diligence in building up the wall of Jerusalem, you shall be compelled
   to recognize your soldierly character. To you the text shall come with
   greater emphasis than to more cowardly souls. "Above all, take the
   shield of faith wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery
   darts of the wicked."

   Having treated the character of the persons who will most require the
   shield provided in the text, let us proceed at once to discuss the
   words before us. We will do so thus. First, let us expound the
   comparison. Secondly, enforce the exhortation. And thirdly, propound it
   as a word of comfort to any trembling sinners who are now specially
   attacked with the faith of the fiery darts of the wicked.

   I. First, then, let us EXPOUND THE METAPHOR. Faith is here compared to
   a shield. There are four or five particulars in which we may liken
   faith to a shield.

   The natural idea which lies upon the very surface of the simile is that
   faith, like a shield, protects us against attack. Different kinds of
   shields were used by the ancients but there is a special reference in
   our text to the large shield which was sometimes employed. I believe
   the word which is translated "shield," sometimes signifies a door,
   because their shields were as large as a door. They covered the man
   entirely. You remember that verse in the Psalms which exactly has the
   idea, "You, Lord will bless the righteous, with favor will You compass
   him as with a shield."

   As the shield enveloped the entire man, so, we think faith envelopes
   the entire man and protects him from all missiles wherever they may be
   aimed against him. You will remember the cry of the Spartan mother to
   her son when he went out to battle. She said, "Take care that you
   return with your shield, or upon it." Now, as she meant that he could
   return upon his shield dead, it shows that they often employed shields
   which were large enough to be a bier for a dead man and consequently
   quite large enough to cover the body of a well man. Such a shield as
   that is meant in the text. That is the illustration before us.

   Faith protects the whole man. Let the assault of Satan be against the
   head, let him try to deceive us with unsettled notions in theology, let
   him tempt us to doubt those things which are verily received among us.
   A full faith in Christ preserves us against dangerous heresies and
   enables us to hold fast those things which we have received, which we
   have been taught and have learned and have made our own by experience.
   Unsettledness in notion generally springs from a weakness of faith. A
   man that has strong faith in Christ has got a hand with such a grip on
   the doctrines of grace that you could not unclasp it.

   He knows what he has believed. He understands what he has received. He
   could not and would not give up what he knows to be the Truth of God,
   though all the schemes that men devise should assail him with their
   most treacherous art. While faith will guard the head, it will also
   guard the heart. When temptation to love the world comes in, then faith
   holds up thoughts of the future and confidence of the reward that
   awaits the people of God. Faith enables the Christian to esteem the
   reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt and
   so the heart is protected.

   Then when the enemy makes his cut at the sword-arm of a Christian, to
   disable him if possible from future service, faith protects the arm
   like a shield. And he is able to do exploits for his Master and go
   forth, still conquering and to conquer, in the name of Him that has
   loved us. Suppose the arrow is aimed at his feet--the enemy attempts to
   make him trip in his daily life--endeavors to mislead him in the
   uprightness of his walk and conversation? Faith protects his feet and
   he stands fast in slippery places. Neither does his foot skip, nor can
   the enemy triumph over him.

   Or suppose the arrow is aimed at the knee and Satan seeks to make him
   weak in prayer and tells him that God will shut out his cry and never
   listen to the voice of his supplication? Then faith protects him and in
   the power of faith, with confidence, he has access to God and draws
   near unto His Mercy Seat. Or let the arrow be aimed at his conscience
   and let it be winged with the remembrance of some recent sin. Yet faith
   protects the conscience, for its full assurance of atonement quenches
   the fiery darts with that delightful text, "The blood of Jesus Christ
   His Son cleans us from all sin."

   So there is no part of a man which is not secure. Although Satan will
   certainly attack him in every direction--let him come where he will--

   "He that has made his refuge God,
   Shall find a most secure abode."

   Nor does faith only protect the whole man, but if you will think for a
   moment you will see that the Apostle suggests the idea that it protects
   his armor, too. After not counting various pieces, he says, "Above
   all." The man of God is to put on the girdle and the breastplate and he
   is to be shod and he is to wear his helmet. But though these are all
   armor, yet faith is an armor for his armor. It is not only a defense
   for him but a defense for his defenses. Thus faith not only shields the
   man but shields his graces, too.

   You may easily perceive how this is. Satan sometimes attacks our
   sincerity. He tries to cut the girdle of Truth which is about our
   loins. But faith enables us to be all sincere, like Moses who forsook
   Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king and refused to be called the
   son of Pharaoh's daughter. Then the enemy will often make an attack
   against our righteousness and try to batter our breast-plate. Yet does
   faith come in and enable us like Joseph to exclaim, "How can I do this
   great wickedness and sin against God." Or like Job we cry, "Till I die
   I will not remove my integrity from me."

   Or like David we can cry, even in the worst of slanders, "You Lord that
   delivered me out of the jaw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear,
   will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine." You see how faith
   guards the breast-plate and protects the girdle? All our virtues are
   unable to live of themselves--they need grace to preserve them and that
   grace is given us through faith. Are you meek? Cover your meekness with
   faith, or else you will give way to a hasty speech. Are you full of
   decision? Let your decision be shielded with confidence in God or else
   your decision may waver and your firmness may give way.

   Have you the spirit of love and gentleness? Take care that you have the
   shield of faith, or your gentleness may yet turn to anger and your love
   be changed to bitterness. We must protect our graces with faith as well
   as the nature they adorn. It is not simply the head but the helmet, not
   the feet merely, but the shoes. Not the loins, but the blade--all must
   be shielded and secured by this all-covering, all-protecting,
   all-triumphant shield of faith.

   In the second place, let me suggest that faith like a shield receives
   the blows which are meant for the man himself Some Christians think
   that faith would enable them to escape blows--that if they had faith
   everything would be quiet, everything would be peaceful and calm. I
   know how young Christians imagine this. They think as soon as ever they
   have come out of their first convictions of their own sinfulness and
   found the Savior, oh, now they are going to ride softly to Heaven,
   singing all the way. Why did they put their armor on at all if there
   were to be no battles? Why have they put their hand to the plow if they
   are not to plow to the end of the furrow and often to wipe the sweat
   from their face through their hard toil?

   Why enlist, young men, if you are not wanted to fight? What is the good
   of a fair-weather soldier--one who stays at home to feed at the public
   expense? No, let the soldier be ready when war comes. Let him expect
   the conflict as a part and necessary consequence of his profession. But
   be armed with faith--it receives the blows. The poor shield is knocked
   and hammered and battered like a hen house exposed in the time of
   storm. Blow after blow comes rattling upon it and though it turns death
   aside, yet the shield is competent itself to bear the cut and the
   thrust.

   So must our faith do--it must be cut at, it must bear the blows. Some
   people, instead of using the shield of faith to bear the blow, use the
   skulking place of cowards. Ashamed of Christ they make no profession of
   Him--or having professed Christ, ashamed of the profession--they hide
   themselves by deserting their colors, by conformity to the world.
   Perhaps they are even called to preach the Gospel but they do it in so
   quiet and gentle a way--like men that wear soft raiment and ought to be
   in kings' houses. Unlike John the Baptist, they are "reeds shaken with
   the wind."

   Of them no one says anything ill because they have done no ill to
   Satan's kingdom. Against them Satan never roars--why should he? He is
   not afraid of them, therefore he need not come out against them. "Let
   them alone," he says, "thousands such as those will never shake my
   kingdom." But this is not to use the shield of faith. This, I repeat
   it, is to use the sulking-places of an ignoble coward. Others use the
   shield of presumption. They think it is right with them when it is not.
   They are proof, not against the attacks of Satan, but against the
   weapons of our spiritual warfare.

   Seared in their conscience as with a hot iron they fear not the rebukes
   of God's Law. Deadened even to the voice of love they bow not before
   the invitations of Christ. They go on their way caring for none of
   those things. Presumption has made them secure. Such people have no
   blows to suffer. Their shield lets them go through the world quietly,
   saying, "Peace, peace, where there is no peace." But only uplift the
   shield of faith, bearing the blood-red emblem of the Cross and there
   are plenty of the knights of Hell who are ready to unhorse you. On,
   Champion, on! In the name of Him that is with you. No lance can pierce
   that shield. No sword shall ever be able to cut through it. It shall
   preserve you in all battle and in all strife--you shall bring it home
   yourself--through it you shall be more than conqueror. Faith, then, is
   like a shield because it has to bear the blows.

   Thirdly, faith is like a shield because it has good need to be strong.
   A man who has some pasteboard shield may lift it up against his
   foe--the sword will go through it and reach his heart. Or perhaps in
   the moment when the lance is in rest and his foe is dashing upon him he
   thinks that his shield may preserve him--and lo it is dashed to shivers
   and the blood gushes from the fountain and he is slain. He that would
   use a shield must take care that it be a shield ofproof He that has
   true faith, the faith of God's elect, has such a shield that he will
   see the swords of his enemies go to a thousand shivers over it every
   time they smite the shield of faith.

   And as for their spears, if they but once come in contact with this
   shield, they will break into a thousand splinters, or bend like reeds
   when pressed against the wall--they cannot pierce it, but they shall
   themselves be quenched or broken in pieces. You will say, how then are
   we to know whether our faith is a right faith and our shield a strong
   one? One test of it is it must be all of one piece. A shield that is
   made of three or four pieces in this case will be of no use. So your
   faith must be all of one piece--it must be faith in the finished work
   of Christ. You must have no confidence in yourself or in any man but
   rest wholly and entirely upon Christ else your shield will be of no
   use.

   Then your faith must be of Heaven's forging or your shield will
   certainly fail you. You must have the faith of God's elect which is of
   the operation of the Holy Spirit who works it in the soul of man. Then
   you must see to it that your faith is that which rests only upon Truth,
   for if there is any error or false notion in the fashioning of it--that
   shall be a joint in it which the spear can pierce. You must take care
   that your faith is agreeable to God's Word--that you depend upon true
   and real promises, upon the sure word of testimony--and not upon the
   fictions and fancies and dreams of men.

   And above all, you must mind that your faith is fixed in the Person of
   Christ--nothing but a faith in Christ's divine Person as "God over all,
   blessed forever" and in His proper manhood when as the Lamb of God's
   Passover He was sacrificed for us--no other faith will be able to stand
   against the tremendous shocks and the innumerable attacks which you
   must receive in the great battle of spiritual life. Look to your
   shield, Man. Not so fast there with that painted God! Not so fast there
   with that proud heraldic symbol which has no strength in it. See to
   your shield! See if it is like the shields of Solomon which were borne
   before the king, each one made of gold. Or at least let them be like
   the shields of Rehoboam, every one of the best brass, so that there be
   found no wooden shield in your hand which may be dashed in pieces when
   you need its help most.

   But to pass on--for we must not pause long on any one particular--faith
   is like a shield because it is of no use except it is well handled. A
   shield needs handling and so does faith. He was a silly soldier who,
   when he went into the battle said he had a shield but it was at home.
   So there are some silly professors who have a faith but they have not
   got it with them when they need it. They have it with them when there
   are no enemies. When all goes well with them, then they can believe.
   But just when the pinch comes, then their faith fails.

   Now there is a sacred art in being able to handle the shield of faith.
   Let me explain to you how that can be. You will handle it well if you
   are able to quote the promises of God against the attacks of your
   enemy. The devil says, "One day you shall be poor and starve." "No,"
   says the believer, handling his shield well, "He has said 'I will never
   leave you, nor forsake you.' " He has said, "Bread shall be given you
   and your water shall be sure." "Yes," says Satan, "but you will one day
   fall by the hand of the enemy." "No," says faith, "for I am persuaded
   that He that has begun a good work in me will perform it until the day
   of Jesus Christ."

   "Yes," says Satan, "but the slander of the enemy will overturn you."
   "No," says faith, "He makes the wrath of man to praise Him. The
   remainder of wrath does He restrain." "Yes" says Satan, as he shoots
   another arrow, "you are weak." "Yes," says faith, handling his shield,
   "but 'my strength is made perfect in weakness.' Most gladly therefore
   will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may
   rest upon me." "Yes," says Satan, "but your sin is great." "Yes," says
   faith, handling the promise, "but He is able to save to the uttermost
   them that come unto God by Him."

   "But," says the enemy again, drawing his sword and thrusting, "God has
   cast you off." "No," says faith, "He hates putting away, He does not
   cast off His people, neither does He forsake His heritage." "But I will
   have you, after all," says Satan. "No," says faith, dashing the enemy's
   jaws, "He has said, 'I give unto My sheep eternal life and they shall
   never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of My hand.' " This is
   what I call handling the shield.

   But there is another way of handling it, not merely with the promises,
   but with the doctrines. "Ah," says Satan, "what is there in you that
   you should be saved? You are poor and weak and mean and foolish!" Up
   comes faith handling the shield doctrinally, this time and says, "God
   has chosen the base things of this world and things which are despised
   has God chosen, yes and things which are not, to bring to nothing the
   things that are," for "not many wise men after the flesh, not many
   mighty, not many noble are called." "Has not God chosen the poor of
   this world, rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He has
   promised to them that love Him?"

   "Yes," says Satan, "if God should have chosen you, yet after all you
   may certainly perish!" And then, Christian handling his shield of faith
   doctrinally again, says "No, I believe in the final perseverance of the
   saints, for is it not written, 'the righteous shall hold on His way and
   he that has clean hands shall wax stronger' "? "Those that You gave Me
   I have kept and none of them is lost," and so forth. So by well
   understanding the doctrines of grace there is not a single doctrine
   which may not in its way minister to our defense against the fiery
   darts of the wicked.

   Then the Christian soldier ought to know how to handle the shield of
   faith according to the rules of observation. "Yes," says the enemy,
   "your confidence is vain and your hope shall soon be cut off." "No,"
   says faith, "I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the
   righteous forsaken." "Yes, but you have fallen into sin and God will
   leave you." "No," says faith, "for I saw David and he stumbled, but yet
   the Lord surely brought him out of the horrible pit and out of the miry
   clay." To use this shield in the way of observation is very profitable
   when you mark the way whereby God has dealt with the rest of His
   people. For as He deals with one, so He will deal with the rest and you
   can throw this in the teeth of your enemy.

   I remember the ways of God. I call to remembrance his deeds of old. I
   say has God cast off His people, has He forsaken one of His chosen? And
   since He has never done so, I hold up my shield with great courage and
   say He never will. He changes not. As He has not forsaken any, He will
   not forsake me.

   Then there is another blessed way of handling this shield and that is
   experimentally. When you can look back, like the Psalmist, to the land
   of Jordan and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar. When you can
   return to those days of old and call to remembrance your song in the
   night. When your spirit can say, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, why
   are you disquieted within me? Hope you in God, for I shall yet praise
   Him." Why, Brethren, some of us can talk of deliverances so many that
   we know not where to end, scarcely do we know where to begin. Oh, what
   wonders has God done for us as a Church and people! He has brought us
   through fire and through water.

   Men did ride over our heads, but up to now all things have worked
   together for our good. His glory has appeared amidst all the villainies
   and slanders of men to which we have been exposed. Let us handle our
   shield, then, according to the rules of past experience! And when Satan
   tells us that God will fail us at the last, let us reply, "Now you lie
   and I tell it to you to your face, for what our God was in the past, He
   will be in the present and in the future and so on even to the end."
   Young soldiers of Christ, learn well the art of handling your shield.

   Lastly for the matter of the figure. The shield in olden times was an
   emblem of the warrior's honor and more especially in later days than
   those of Paul. In the age of chivalry, the warrior carried his
   escutcheon, his shield. Now, faith is like a shield, because it carries
   the Christian's glory, the Christian's coat of arms, the Christian's
   escutcheon. And what is the Christian's coat of arms? Well, good Joseph
   Irons used to say it was a Cross and a crown, with the words "No Cross,
   no crown"--a most blessed coat of arms, too.

   But methinks the Christian's best coat of arms is the Cross of his
   Savior--that bloodied Cross. Always stained, yet never stained. Always
   dyed in blood, yet always resplendent with ruby brightness. Always trod
   on, yet always triumphant. Always despised, yet always glorified.
   Always attacked, yet always without resistance, coming off more than
   conqueror. Some of the old Reformers used to have an anvil for their
   coat of arms and a significant one, too, with this motto, "The anvil
   has broken many hammers." By which they meant that they stood still and
   just let men hammer at them till their hammers broke of themselves.

   Another old coat of arms with some of the Reformers was likely to be a
   candle with a great many enemies all puffing to blow it out. Although
   they all blew as hard as they could, yet the candle did but burn the
   brighter. Out of darkness came light and from all their attacks the
   light grew stronger. This morning put your coat of arms upon your
   shield and lift it up. Let that blood-red Cross be your choice. Then
   when your battle is over, they will hang your escutcheon up in Heaven.
   And when the old heraldries have gone and the lions and tigers and
   beasts and all manner of strange things have vanished from remembrance,
   that Cross and your old shield indented with many a blow shall be
   honorable with many a triumph before the Throne of God. Above all
   things, then, take the shield of faith.

   II. I now leave the expounding of the figure in haste and pass on to
   ENFORCE THE EXHORTATION.

   "Above all taking the shield of faith." If you sent a servant upon an
   errand and you said to him, "Get so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so,
   but above all now see to such-and-such a thing," he would not
   understand that he should not neglect any. He would perceive that there
   was some extra importance attached to one part of his mission. So let
   it be with us. We are not to neglect our sincerity, our righteousness,
   or our peace--but above all, as the most important, we are to see to it
   that our faith is right--that it is true faith and that it covers all
   our virtues from attack. The necessity of true faith is clearly
   explained by the text.

   Faith is here said to have a quenching power. The ancients were likely
   to use small arrows, perhaps light cane arrows which were tinged with
   poison. They would be called fiery darts, because they no sooner
   touched the flesh or even graced the skin than they left a fiery poison
   in the veins. Sometimes, too, they employed darts which were tipped
   with tow that had been dipped in some inflammable spirit and were
   blazing as they flew through the air in order to set the tents of their
   antagonists on fire, or burn down houses in besieged cities. Now faith
   has a quenching power--it sees the temptation or the blasphemy, or the
   insinuation coming against it with poison and with fire in it to take
   away its life or to burn up its comforts.

   Faith catches the dart--not only receives it--but takes away its sting
   and quenches the fire. Oh it is wonderful how God sometimes enables His
   people to live in the midst of temptations and tribulations as though
   they had none of them! I believe that some of the martyrs, when they
   were burned in the fire, suffered hardly any pain because the joy and
   peace which God gave them delivered them from the vehement heat. This I
   know. There are times when everybody is speaking well of some of us and
   we are wretched by reason of the world's fawning. We do not want to be
   called "Son of Pharaoh's daughter."

   And yet there are other times when, though every one speaks ill, our
   peace is like a river and our righteousness like the waves of the sea.
   Truly at such times we can say, "Now I am in my proper place. This is
   where I should be--outside the camp bearing the reproach of Christ."
   The praise of man is deadly and damnable. His censure is goodly and
   godlike. Let it come. It cannot dishonor, it does but ennoble. Thus
   does it often happen that faith quenches the fire of attack. No,
   more--it turns the attack itself into comfort, extracts honey from the
   nettle and sweets of joy from the wormwood and the gall. "Above all,
   take the shield of faith."

   Another commendation which the text gives is this--that faith alone,
   out of all the pieces of armor, is able to quench all the darts. The
   helmet can only keep off those that are aimed against the head. The
   foot is only and alone protected by the sandals. The breast alone is
   guarded by the breastplates, but faith protects against all attacks.
   Have all other virtues, but most of all have faith, for faith is the
   cure-all, it is the universal remedy. It is good not only for the heat
   of fever, but for the shaking of fever. It is good for everything--good
   for the timid to make them strong. Good for the rash to make them wise.
   It is good for those who are desponding to make them brave and good for
   those who are too daring, to make them discreet. There is no respect in
   which faith is not useful to us. Therefore, whatever you leave out, see
   to your faith. If you forget all besides, be careful above all that you
   take the shield of faith.

   And then, again, we are told above all to take the shield of faith
   because faith preserves from all sorts of enemies. The fiery darts of
   the wicked! Does that refer to Satan? Faith answers him. Does it refer
   to wicked men? Faith resists them. Does it refer to one's own wicked
   self? Faith can overcome that. Does it refer to the whole world? "This
   is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith." It matters
   not who the enemy may be--let the earth be all in arms abroad-- this
   faith can quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. Above all then,
   take the shield of faith.

   I know there are some ministers who seem to teach doubting as a duty. I
   cannot. I dare not. Above all, take the shield of faith. You know in
   the old Grecian contest the aim of the enemy was to get near enough to
   push aside the shield and then to stab under the armor. And that is
   what Satan wants to do. If he can knock aside the shield and get under
   it, then he can stab us mortally. Take care of your shield. Do not
   fight in perpetual unbelief. Be not always cast down. Pray unto your
   God till you can say--"I know in whom I have believed and am persuaded
   that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him."

   Oh, the old saints were not always doubting. "My Beloved is mine and I
   am His," said Solomon. David said--"Say unto my soul, I am your
   salvation." "The Lord is my salvation." "The Lord is my shepherd." Job,
   too, could say, "I know that my Redeemer lives." Paul could speak very
   confidently in many places. And why should we be content to say--"I
   hope, I trust"--when they said they knew and were persuaded all was
   well between God and their souls? Let it be so with us. Unbelief
   dishonors us, weakens us, destroys our comforts, prevents our
   usefulness. Faith will make us happy and make us useful and what is
   best of all, it will enable us to honor God on earth and to enjoy His
   presence while yet we are in the low-lands of this present world.

   III. Lastly, I have a word or two to say by way of conclusion to some
   POOR SINNER WHO IS COMING TO CHRIST BUT WHO IS GREATLY VEXED WITH THE
   FIERY DARTS OF THE WICKED ONE.

   You remember how John Bunyan in his Pilgrim's Progress represents
   Christiana and Mercy and the children coming to knock at the gate? When
   they knocked, the enemy who lived in a castle hard by sent out a big
   dog which barked at them at such a rate that Mercy fainted and
   Christiana only dared to knock again. And when she obtained entrance,
   she was all in a tremble. At the same time, hard by in the castle there
   were men who shot fiery darts at all who would enter. And poor Mercy
   was exceedingly afraid because of the darts and the dog.

   Now it generally happens that when a soul is coming to Christ the devil
   will dog him. As sure as ever he feels his need of a Savior and is
   ready to put his trust in Christ, it will be true of him as of the poor
   demoniac child. As he was a coming the devil threw him down and beat
   him. Now, poor tempted Sinner, there is nothing that can bring joy and
   peace into your heart but faith. Oh, that you may have grace this
   morning to begin to use this shield. "Ah Sir," you say, "I have been
   looking within and I cannot see anything that is good. I have been
   looking to my experiences and I am afraid I have never felt as
   So-and-So did."

   That is the way to ruin yourself. Did you ever hear of a man who in
   cold winter's weather got warm by rolling on the ice and saying, "I
   don't feel any heat as some people do." No, because he is looking in
   the wrong place to get the heat. If you expect to get anything in
   yourself you expect more than Paul ever got, for he said after he had
   long known his Master, "I know that in me--(that is, in my
   flesh)--there dwells no good thing." "Oh, Sir," you reply again, "I
   find I am willing to do a great many things, but I cannot. And when I
   would be what I should be, I find a resistance somewhere within my own
   breast."

   Well and what of that? Even so did the Apostle--"When I would do good,
   evil is present with me." The fact is you have no business to look
   there. These things are not shields against Satan. What cares he for
   your experiences? Were they ever so good he would still roar at you.
   What he is afraid of is your faith. Throw down these things, then,
   which only encumber you and expose you and lay your breast bare to his
   attacks and take up the shield of faith. What has Satan said to you?
   "You are too great a sinner to be saved." Well, quote this text, "Him
   that comes unto Me, I will in nowise cast out."

   I had a lesson this week in the case of a good Christian man who
   through feebleness of mind has fallen at last into the deepest despair.
   I never met with a person in such awful despair as he was and you
   cannot tell how it puzzled me to give him any sort of comfort. Indeed,
   I failed after all. He said, "I'm too big a sinner to be saved." So I
   said, "But the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleans us from all sin."
   "Yes," he said, "but you must remember the context, which says, 'If we
   walk in the light as He is in the light we have fellowship one with
   another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleans us from all sin.'

   "Now, I do not walk in the light," he said. "I walk in the dark and I
   have no fellowship with the people of God now and therefore it does not
   apply to me." "Well," I said, "but He is able to save to the uttermost
   them that come unto God by Him." "That is the only text," he said, "I
   never can get over, for it says 'to the uttermost,' and I know I cannot
   have gone beyond that and still it does not yield me comfort." I said,
   "but God asks nothing of you but that you will believe Him. And you
   know if you have ever so feeble a faith you are like a child--the
   feeble hand of a child can receive. And that is the mark of a
   Christian--of His fullness have all we received--and if you only
   receive with your hand, that is enough."

   "Yes," said he, "I have not the hand--I have not the hand of faith."
   "Very well," I said, "you have the mouth of desire. You can ask, if you
   cannot receive with the hand." "No," said he, "I have not. I do not
   pray, I cannot pray. I have not the mouth of desire." "Then," I said,
   "all that is wanted is an empty place, a vacuum, so that God can put it
   in." "Ah, Sir," said he, "you have got me there! I have a great deal of
   vacuum. I have an aching void--a vacuum. If ever there was an empty
   sinner in this world, I am one." "Well," I said, "Christ will fill that
   vacuum. There is a full Christ for empty sinners."

   Let me now say the same to you as I said to that poor man. All God
   wants is a vacuum. You have got a vacuum. This is not much to
   have--simply to be empty, to be pumped dry, to have nothing at all in
   you. But then, "He fills the hungry with good things and the rich He
   sends empty away." All that is wanted is to be down there on the
   ground. It is not hard work. It is not to sit up, nor to stand up, nor
   to kneel--but to lie there at His feet. And when He sees the soul flat
   on its face before Him, He will have mercy upon you.

   Now, Soul, for that shield of faith, say to Satan, "In the name of God
   I dare believe." "You are a great sinner," says he. "Yes, but I believe
   He is a great Savior." "But you have sinned beyond all hope." "No,
   there is forgiveness with Him, that He may be feared." But he says,
   "You are shut out." "No," you say, "though He slay me, yet will I trust
   Him." "But your disease is of long standing." "Yes, but," you say, "if
   I but touch the hem of His garment, I shall be clean." But says Satan
   again, "How dare you? Would you have the impudence?" "Well," you say,
   "if I perish I will trust Christ and I will perish only there."

   Have it fixed in your soul that in the teeth of everything you will
   trust Christ--that be you such a sinner or not, still you will trust
   Christ--that whether Satan's accusations are true or false, you mean to
   have done answering them and simply trust Christ. Ah, Soul, then you
   shall have such joy and peace that nothing shall be like it. O that you
   would believe on Jesus now! Leave your feelings, leave your doings and
   your works--and trust Christ.

   "I dare not," says one. Dare it, Man, dare it! You cannot do wrong for
   He commands you. This is the commandment, "that you believe on Jesus
   Christ whom He has sent." "Oh, but I may be lost even if I do." You
   will be lost if you do not, for "he that believes not shall be dammed."
   "But I am afraid of being condemned if I were to believe." "He that
   believes not is condemned already." You are like the poor lepers at the
   gate. You are dying and you say, "Let us fall to the Syrians--if they
   kill us we can but die and if they save us alive we shall live."

   Say, as Benhadad did concerning king Ahab, "We have heard that the
   kings of Israel are merciful kings, but let us put ropes upon our heads
   and go out to the king of Israel--perhaps he will save our life." So
   say you to God, "I have heard that You are merciful, if there is a
   wretch out of Hell that deserves to be in it, I am that sinner. If
   there is one that now feels that earth is provoked against him and the
   ground says, swallow him up--I am he. If there is one which Heaven is
   provoked against him and cries, let the lightning flash destroy him.
   And the sea says, drown him. And the stars say, smite him with
   pestilence. And the sun says, scorch him.

   "If there is one which the moon says let him be blasted. And the mildew
   says, let me devour his crops. And fever says, let me cut off the
   thread of his life--if there is such a wretch out of Hell, I am he."
   Yet, say but to God, "By Your grace I believe in Your mercy, I believe
   in Your promise, I believe in your Son Jesus. I believe in His precious
   blood and here I am--do with me as seems good in Your sight." Say but
   this and you shall have mercy and pardon and peace. My dear Hearers,
   shall I say this for myself and not for you? No, but may God grant that
   many a score of you this morning may be led to put your trust in Him
   who has said, "They that trust in Me shall never be confounded."
     __________________________________________________________________

                          Scourge For Slumbering Souls

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 3, 1861,

   BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion." Amos 6:1.
   IN itself considered it is no ill thing to be at ease. No, it is a
   great blessing to be at ease in Zion in the healthy sense and meaning
   of that word. Is it not one of the invitations of Christ--"Come unto Me
   all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest?" Is
   not this one of the promises made to the believer--"His soul shall
   dwell at ease and his seed shall inherit the earth"? (Psa. 25:13). Is
   not this the privilege which is accorded to the Church of God, in the
   words of Isaiah--"Your eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation"?
   (Isa. 33:20). And still more in the prophecy of Jeremiah 46:27--"Jacob
   shall return and be in rest and at ease and none shall make him
   afraid!"

   To have perfect quietness in Christ is indeed a privilege which only
   belongs to those who have entered into that which is within the veil!
   Oh to enter into our rest! For "they that have believed do enter into
   rest." They have found in the finished work of Christ enough for their
   soul's repose. They see in the faithfulness and power of God enough
   support for the future whatever troubles it may bring. They see in the
   precious blood of Christ sufficient atonement for the past whatever its
   sins may have been. And in communion and fellowship with the Father and
   with His Son, Jesus Christ, abundant joy for the present whatever may
   be its trials, its difficulties its straits, or its fears.

   It is a blessed thing then, understanding the word "ease" in its good
   sense, to be at ease in Zion. So good a thing that it is denied to the
   wicked, for "the wicked are like the troubled sea which cannot rest,
   whose waters cast up mire and dirt." And of the wicked it may be said,
   "And among these nations shall you find no ease, neither shall the sole
   of your foot have rest. But the Lord shall give you there a trembling
   heart and failing of eyes and sorrow of mind" (Deut. 28:65). Oh beloved
   Brothers and Sisters, it is a thing worth praying for and worth
   striving after, that our spirit may have perfect rest.

   The kingdom of God is peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Jesus is King
   of Salem and Prince of Peace, "and the work of righteousness shall be
   peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever"
   (Isa. 32:17). Peace, peace to you, you troubled one. In the world you
   shall have tribulation, but in Christ you shall have peace.

   But it seems there is also another sense in which the word "ease" may
   be used, for the text says, "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion."
   This is a carnal ease, a fleshly security. It is not the confidence of
   a man who is pardoned but the ease of a hardened wretch who has learned
   to despise the gallows. It is not the assurance of one who is on the
   rock, but the ease of a senseless drunkard whose house is tottering
   from its sandy foundations and yet he riots at full speed. It is not
   the calm of a soul at peace with God but the ease of a madman, who,
   because he has hidden his sin from his own eyes, thinks he has
   concealed it from God.

   It is the ease and peace of one who has grown callous, hardened,
   brutalized, stupid, sullen and careless. One who has begun a sleep
   which God grant may soon be broken or else it will surely bring him
   where he shall make his bed in Hell.

   As I know there are many in this congregation who are at ease in
   Zion--I shall not draw the bow at a venture this morning, but in the
   name of God shall aim straight at the heart. I shall first of
   all--laboring all the morning long as God's servant to wake up those
   that are at ease in Zion--try to wake them by calling out their
   names--for that is said to be an admirable method of waking sleeping
   men.

   Secondly, by shedding a light upon their eyes, for there are many who
   can sleep in the night who will not sleep so comfortably in the day.
   And then, thirdly, by sounding the trumpet in their ears. Yes and such
   a trumpet that if God the Holy Spirit is here, it shall sound like the
   blast of the archangel and make them quiver with fright even if they
   turn not unto God. But all these things will fail unless the Holy
   Spirit who quickens those that are dead in trespasses and sins, shall
   be present to wake and to save these sleepers.

   1. First, in order to the arousing of the many that are at ease in
   Zion, we will CALL OUT THEIR NAMES--which are to be found in the
   chapter before us.

   The name of the first sleeper in Zion is Presumptuous. His character is
   described in the first verse--"They trust in the mountain of Samaria,
   which are named chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel
   came." Alas, proud Heart, you come to this house and you go from it
   quite content and easy because you say to yourself, "I am rich and
   increased in goods and have need of nothing." "Let the drunkard
   tremble," you say, "/have always been moral. Let the dishonest bow
   their heads, I have always walked in integrity before men."

   And so you wrap yourselves in your good works and hope thus to stand
   complete before God. So you trust in your mountain of Samaria and say,
   "My mountain stands firm. I shall never be moved." I can hardly
   understand your being at ease in self-righteousness--if you occupy
   these seats often--for there are none against whom we hurl such
   thunderbolts as those workmongers, those merit-trusters who boast of
   themselves that they are righteous and deceive both themselves and
   others. Against no man do we utter sterner anathemas than against him
   who, going about to establish his own righteousness, has not submitted
   himself to the righteousness of Christ.

   Why, Man, your purest works are only dross and dung in the sight of
   God. Your best performances are defiled with the marks of your
   sin-black hands. They cannot even bear the twilight of an awakened
   conscience. How, then, will they bear the sevenfold sunlight of God's
   great Judgment Day--when He shall bring all things before Him and
   everything shall be naked and open? He that trusts in his own works
   leans upon a broken reed. As well attempt to cross the storm-tossed
   ocean upon a child's paper boat, or mount to the Heaven of God in the
   philosopher's balloon. As well attempt to put out the fire of a blazing
   prairie by carrying in your hand a little water scooped from the
   neighboring stream, as hope by any means to get rid of your own
   iniquities by doing better, or of your past sins by future holiness.

   I tell you, Man, your prayers, your alms-giving, your fasting, your
   repenting, your church-going, your chapel-going are all as nothing in
   the eye of Him who demands perfect obedience and will never accept
   anything short of perfect righteousness from man. Away, away, away with
   these gaudy rags! They will be unraveled before long. You may toil at
   the loom night and day but your work shall be rent in pieces and not a
   shred shall be left--you are spinning nothing but a spider's web which
   Justice shall tear in pieces and like Adam, whose fig leaves could
   never cover him, you shall cry before God, "I knew that I was naked and
   I hid myself." Woe, then, to those that are at ease in Zion, whose name
   is Presumptuous.

   But the great mass of you escape while I speak thus. "No," you say, "We
   do not belong to that class, we know the Gospel better than that. We
   are orthodox Protestants and stand fast with good Martin Luther and
   believe that a man is justified by faith and not by the works of the
   Law." Remember, you may believe that and yet not be justified yourself.
   You may hold the doctrine plainly enough--but it is one thing to
   believe in the justification of the ungodly--and quite another thing
   for an ungodly man to be justified.

   2. A second name is put before us in the roll and that is Not-now, or
   Procrastination. Surely there are hundreds of you who will recognize
   your own surname. See how you are described in the third verse--"You
   that put far away the evil day." Yes, you are only young apprentices at
   present and when your time is out you think it will be early enough to
   attend to matters of soul-interest. Or you are only journeymen at
   present and when you have earned sufficient money to set you up in
   business, then will be the time to think of God. Or you are little
   masters and have just begun business--you have a growing family and are
   struggling hard and this is your pretense for procrastination.

   You promise that when you have a nest egg and can quietly retire to a
   snug little villa in the country and your children have grown up--then
   you will repent of the past and seek God's grace for the future. All
   these are such delusions of the grossest kind. For you will do no such
   thing. What you are today you will probably be tomorrow and what you
   are tomorrow you will probably be the next day. And unless a miracle
   shall happen, that is to say, unless the supernatural grace of God
   shall make a new man of you, you will be at your last day what you now
   are--without God, without hope--and a stranger to the commonwealth of
   Israel.

   Procrastination is the greatest of Satan's nets. In this he catches
   more unwary souls than in any other. "Not now. Not now. Not now. Time
   enough. Time enough. Time enough," says Satan. "Taste the world's
   pleasure first. Come, take your swing, go to the end of your tether and
   then pull up of a sudden and repent." Well knows he that then he will
   have the same cry for them--"Not now. Not now, until they come into the
   jaws of death and then he will turn round and hiss into their ears the
   awful words--"Too late! Too late! Too late!" Though he will be as much
   a liar then as he is now, for it is never too late if the Lord make
   bare His arm.

   Now might I not look around these galleries and down upon these pews
   below and remember many of you who for these seven or eight years have
   been hearers of the Gospel from my lips? There have been many times
   when you have trembled and been alarmed. You felt like Felix, but like
   he you cried--"Go your way for this time. When I have a more convenient
   season I will send for you." Ah, that convenient season has not come
   yet and I fear it never will. Bless the Lord, there have been many
   hundreds of you whose own season never came--but the Lord made you come
   at His convenient season and not at yours.

   May it be so with others of you! But alas, alas, how large a proportion
   of those who come into this house of prayer still say, "Not now, not
   now," and put off the day and will not come. They think they are to
   live forever, imagining that the Judgment Day will never approach, that
   they shall never have to give an account before God. And so they go on
   in their sins till the chapter shall end and the finis shall be written
   in black letters--for, "Depart you cursed!" shall be their sentence.

   3. The third name is Evil-doer or Sin-lover. "They cause the seat of
   violence to come near." Into the house of God there are many who still
   persevere in their sins, though not so comfortably as they would have
   done if they had neglected the means of grace. Many I know have come
   here, who at last said, "Well, this will not do. I cannot hear the
   Gospel and have the shop open on Sunday. I cannot act as I have done in
   my business and yet be a seat-holder there--one of the two must be
   given up."

   And God has given them grace to serve Jehovah and renounce Baal. But
   ah, there is a large proportion who are undecided. Where were you last
   night? Here you sit and who would know but that you are the greatest
   saints out of Heaven? But, perhaps, some time or other last week you
   sat where none would know that you were the basest sinners out of Hell.
   Many attend the synagogue of Satan as well as the synagogue of God.
   Some can give the right hand to religion, while the left hand clasps
   their iniquity. Oh, those sweet sins, those darling sins that men hug
   and press to them. They might as well put a viper in their bosom and
   hug it there, while all the while it infused its venom into their
   veins.

   How many must indulge their sins! They would have Christ, but they must
   have their cups, too. They would follow the Savior, but they must have
   their chambering and wantonness They would be Christians, but oh, it is
   a hard road and a narrow one and they cannot give up their sweet lusts.
   O Soul, am I not calling out your name now? Do I not now describe your
   character to the very life? Lover of sin the day shall come when you
   will hate your sin because of the punishment it shall bring you--for he
   that woos sin, woos punishment. He that loves iniquity drinks a cup
   which is sweet at the brim--but the dregs! The dregs! The dregs!--which
   must be drained! How direful shall be that burning draught! Oh, the
   draining of those dregs will last throughout eternity, an eternity of
   Hell.

   4. The next name is Love-self. "They lie upon beds of ivory and stretch
   themselves upon their couches and eat the lambs out of the flocks and
   the calves out of the midst of the stall." This was not wrong, if they
   had a bed of ivory there was no more objection to their lying upon that
   than to their lying upon a common couch. There can be no reason why
   persons blest with rank in life where they can use these things should
   not use them, for every creature of God is good and nothing to be
   despised, but to be received with thankfulness.

   Their fault was this--they lived only for self-indulgence. They come
   under the category of those described by the Apostle--"Whose God is
   their belly." They lived only to eat and to drink, to be merry and to
   make merry with their friends. You know I am no ascetic, my humor is
   far too warm and genial for me to claim association with John the
   Baptist, whose meat was locusts and wild honey. My sympathies run with
   the Master, of whom it is said, "The Son of Man came eating and
   drinking." But still I must, even as He did, protest against those who
   live only for the flesh, who are simply strainers for meat and drink,
   whose life-work is to provide food and raiment, who are satisfied so
   long as they have the richest dainties and the choicest wines.

   I must protest against those who even come up to the house of God
   because they love to have their ears regaled with sweet sound and even
   God's Prophet is to them as one that plays a goodly turn upon a
   pleasant instrument. Self-indulgence! Oh, this is the God of many! They
   live not for Christ--what do they do for Him? They live not for His
   Church--What care they for that? They live for self and for self only.
   And mark--there are such among the poor as well as among the rich--all
   classes have this evil leaven. Self-honor, self-seeking, these be your
   gods, O Israel and multitudes dance and sing in honor of the beloved
   deities.

   Fullness of bread often brings on emptiness of heart and there are many
   who are like the Israelites in the wilderness. While their meat is yet
   in their mouth the wrath of God comes upon them--because their meat is
   the offering which they offer at the shrine of their god--and that god
   is their belly. Do I not speak to some such here this morning? Probably
   those to whom this most applies will say, "Well I do not think that is
   for me." Probably it is for you, then, for this is a charge to which no
   man would like to plead guilty.

   Among all the sins that are confessed nobody ever confessed
   covetousness. No, he only exercises a proper discretion in taking care
   of himself. He thinks that the excellent of the earth ought to be
   provided for. He puts himself down among them and therefore takes care
   that he should have not only his bread and his water given him, but
   whatever else he may desire besides. O self-lover, remember there are
   no pampered tables and office confectioneries in Hell. Awake, then,
   from your dreams!

   5. It seems that among those who were at ease in Zion, was one called
   Careless, an individual who belongs to a very large family--we may give
   him another name, giddy, light-hearted. He is described in the fifth
   and sixth verses, "That chant to the sound of the viol and invent to
   themselves instruments of music, like David. That drink wine in bowls
   and anoint themselves with the chief ointments." You know how many we
   have, even among those who frequent our sanctuaries, who say, "Begone,
   dull care." They never sit down for half an hour and turn over the Word
   of God to see whether these things are so. "No," they say, "let well
   enough alone." They are happy. They are comfortable for the present.

   And like butterflies, while it is a bright summer's day, they think the
   winter is far off. Their whole life is spent in levity. We may call
   them the froth of society. There is nothing solid in them. They are not
   solid enough even to be desperately wicked. Even their religion is
   carelessness. They sing a hymn as though it were a song. When prayer is
   offered--and they will sometimes go to prayer meetings--they are
   criticizing the terms which are used before the mighty God. Sometimes
   they venture to make a profession of religion. But you might hope to
   build a palace with pillars of smoke or adorn a queen's brow with
   dewdrops sooner than find any Truth in their godliness.

   Their convictions are always superficial--a sort of scratching of the
   soil as with the old plows, but there is no subsoil plowing--no turning
   up and breaking the clods--no tearing up of the vitals of their
   consciences, no revelation of themselves to themselves. Like
   stony-ground hearers, they receive the Word with gladness but they have
   no depth of earth and after a little while, when the seed springs up,
   it withers away. Not here and there do we find such, but there are very
   many careless souls who never will give themselves the healthy exercise
   of thought. Woe unto you, woe unto you, if thus you are at ease in
   Zion!

   6. And now to call out the last name in the list, there is one called
   Crossless. He is described in the sixth verse, "And they are not
   grieved for the affliction of Joseph." It is an awful thing to live in
   this world without a cross! I have heard of one who, being told of
   another that he had never any trials, said he should not like to live
   in the same town, for he was sure something terrible would happen to
   him. I was once preaching in a country village where there was an
   estimable pastor who seemed to have a very quiet and nourishing little
   Church. I said to him, "Now, yours is the course of life I should
   prefer, to be quiet and secluded and not to have an excess of labor.
   You," I said, "seem to have no trials."

   Ah, it was not long after, he had the most crushing of trials that
   could happen to man and his brain reeled beneath it. And so, no doubt,
   if a child of God should be a little while without a trial, it is only
   because there is another one coming and he is having a little respite
   because a very heavy blow is about to fall upon him. As John Bunyan
   says in his doggerel rhyme--

   "A Christian man is seldom long at ease, When one trouble's gone
   another does him seize." It is written of the ungodly--"Moab has been
   at ease from his youth, he has not been emptied from vessel to vessel."
   There are such in this congregation. You never had a great trouble in
   your lives. Some little things that you have elevated into trials by
   sentimentalism have fallen upon you. But you have never had any great
   racking of mind, no great temptations, or trials, or losses, or
   crosses. And you are comfortably saying--"I am favored because I have
   none of these." Methinks I may add that you are highly abhorred--for
   only they escape the rod whom God disowns!

   Just as a man dare not chasten another man's child, but is sure to
   chastise his own, if he loves him, you have escaped crossless till now.
   Take care, your being at ease in Zion on this account is very
   dangerous. Oh, may God arouse you as I thus describe your ease and call
   out your name!

   II. And now, having thus passed through their names we come to SHED
   SOME LIGHT UPON THESE SLEEPERS' EYES.

   Ah, Brethren, this time we have a hopeless errand! It is of no use
   shedding any light upon these people's eyes. That will not wake them,
   for, to tell the truth, they are sleeping with the sun of Heaven
   shining upon their eyelids, for the text says they are "at ease in
   Zion." They were not at ease in Ethiopia where they have never heard
   the Gospel. They were not at ease in Sheba, or the ends of the earth
   where no warning Prophets had been sent.

   They were at ease in Zion where Wisdom cried aloud in the streets,
   where her oracles were in every house and where her servitors stand at
   every door. What is the use of bringing light to these people? We shall
   not waken them so but perhaps we may do it by reminding them of this
   light. And oh,! while I do this, my dear Hearer, if there is any value
   in your soul and if it is worth while to be saved, I pray you hear for
   yourself. "He that has ears to ear, let him hear," while I do in God's
   name, perform the sorrowful task of endeavoring to wake you out of your
   sleep.

   In the first place you are asleep, but you know not your danger. Ah,
   how many of you foster the sins which you know will destroy your souls.
   You put your hands into the fire knowing it will burn you, yes, and you
   have the festering blisters still upon you where you were burnt before.
   You leap into the furnace knowing that you must be consumed, while you
   can hear the cries of those who, as your companions, have already felt
   the heat. Oh, I beseech you to remember that to sin in the light is to
   sin with vengeance. To sin against knowledge is to sin seven times
   over. He that sins in Sidon or in Tyre is but a petty offender compared
   with sinners in Chorazin or Bethsaida.

   According to the degree of privilege is the degree of sin. He that
   leaps over hedge and bar and post to destroy himself, is a
   self-destroyer indeed. He that starves with bread in his hand deserves
   to starve. He that cries of sickness when the physician lives next door
   and he refuses to call him in, deserves to die. He that perishes when
   Christ's Cross is lifted up, when the brazen serpent is held up before
   his eyes and he is bidden to look to it deserves that the fiery serpent
   should bite him and that the poison should rankle in his veins. Oh, sin
   not, I pray you. For you cannot sin so cheaply as others. Strange
   paradox--to die in the light is to die in the thickest darkness.

   But again--you frequently have arousings. Oh, I pray God I may never be
   found among the list of those sleepy preachers who will let their
   congregations continue peacefully in their sins. I appeal to you--what
   man's smile have I ever courted--or what man's frown among you have I
   feared? Have I always been harping upon some sweet doctrine, saying,
   "Peace, peace, where there is no peace"? Have I not told you what sin
   will bring upon you? Have not these eyes wept over you, while I have
   cried, "Oh, that you knew your end, that you would consider these
   things"? Has not this throat been hoarse when I have called out after
   you in God's name as you were going along the downward path?

   I have heard of a preacher, who in order to be spiritual, gave up his
   ministry because he said it was written, "In the sweat of your brow
   shall you eat bread." Little was he fit for a minister, for he would
   soon have known that ministry is the hardest of toil. He who does not
   know how to combine the two things, to minister and yet to eat his
   bread with the sweat of his brow, is not a minister of God. If I have
   preached in such a way that I have found my ministry a light labor. If
   the preaching of a sermon has been to me but a trifle to be played
   with--then God be merciful to me for this great evil!

   But be assured it is not so. I have come forth some Sunday mornings
   with the burden of the Lord upon my heart till I have been bowed down
   with the weight. And there is not a Sunday night and has not been for
   many a day, when I do not come on this platform in such a state both of
   body and soul that I pity a dog who has to suffer what I have, under
   the terror and the weight of the awful responsibility of having to
   preach to such a crowd as this. If you perish, any one of you, it is
   not because I have not warned you. It is not because I have not shunned
   to use plain language, or have selected courtly phrases to make you
   think me eloquent.

   I have come down upon your consciences as with a sledge hammer. I have
   sought to dash at your hearts that you might turn unto the Lord my God.
   Woe, then, to those that are at ease under a faithful, laborious and
   earnest ministry! God have mercy on such! They need it. O Lord, we pray
   You lay not this to their charge!

   But more than this. Have you ever thought of it--you that are unsaved
   in this congregation and yet are so continually here--that everything
   in this place cries out against you? As often as the pool beneath me is
   opened and the ordinance of baptism is administered--every candidate
   descending into the pool bears witness against you. As they say--"I am
   on the Lord's side," they leave you behind and you have this
   reflection--oh that you would let it work in you--that you dare not
   confess Christ. And tonight, when that table shall be spread with the
   blessed emblems of His body and of His blood, they will cry out against
   you.

   The bread will say to you--"You have never eaten the flesh of Christ."
   The blood will cry to you--"You have never been able to drink of His
   blood." The whole communion as it sets forth the dying of the Lord will
   say to you--"You have no interest in Calvary--you have no part or lot
   in this matter. You are still in the gall of bitterness and in the
   bonds of iniquity." And as each shall partake of that ordinance, you
   will see the hoary-head receive it and he will speak to you
   hoary-headed sinners, old in sin but not yet babes in grace, groveling,
   like sere-wood, only the more ready for the fire.

   And as the young come and take it, they will say to you--"I am young
   and I know the Savior. You are twice my age and yet you are strangers
   to Him." You go quickly onwards, but not staying to think of Him who
   shed His blood for men. But perhaps you say that there are hypocrites
   among them. Then the very hypocrites warn you and silently testify,
   watch yourself that you be not a hypocrite. Why, look at this morning's
   service. If you are still at ease in Zion every part of it has been
   accusing you. We sung this morning--"Welcome sweet day of rest." Is it
   the day of rest for you? That is to say, in a spiritual sense can you
   rest yourself in Christ?

   Do you feel any comfort in the rising of the Lord from the tomb? Could
   you join in the last verse--

   "Sit and sing myself away, To everlasting bliss?"

   Why, was it not a lie upon your lips, unless you are a believer in
   Christ? And then came the reading of the Word. Was not every verse a
   thunderclap against those that are at ease in Zion? And then came the
   prayer and while we prayed for God's people and your heart wandered,
   was not the prayer an accusation before Almighty Heaven against you?
   And now comes the sermon and oh, if that, too, should be slighted and
   despised, do you think God shall despise it and slight it? No, "We are
   unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved and in them
   that perish--to the one we are the savor of death unto death and to the
   other the savor of life onto life." And do you not see, my dear
   Hearers, that this very house of prayer, if you are at ease in Zion,
   accuses you?

   When last Sabbath evening I saw the crowds outside--the many
   hundreds--I might say the thousands who stood waiting there and never
   gained an entrance though they were willing to tug and strive and have
   their garments rent from their backs in the struggle--if they might but
   enter and hear the Word--I thought of some of you who come so
   comfortably into your seats and yet grow none the better by it. Oh, it
   were better for you that you had never been born, if you thus sit and
   hear the Word and hear it ringing in your very soul and yet go away and
   despise it!

   Many of those outside will rise up in judgment against you. "That man,"
   say they, "had a seat I might have had. That man kept me out. And I
   hearing the Word--who can tell!--I might have received it, but I could
   not hear and he heard it and despised it." He that has the child's
   bread and treads it under foot deserves to starve. He that has the
   river of the water of life and will not drink it, but muddies it with
   his foot, deserves to die of thirst. And what shall we say of many here
   present? Do they despise their privileges? Look at the very seat you
   are sitting in. Why, it cries out against you. How many times have you
   sat upon it and how many times have you gone away unblessed?

   On the week-night when you were absent, there has been a sinner sat
   there and was saved. You have occupied that place--well, not so very
   many times, for we have not been in this house long--but add up the
   times when you occupied your seat in Park Street and at the Surrey
   Music Hall, or Exeter Hall. How many sermons have been wasted on you?
   How many invitations to dead ears, warnings to stony hearts? How many
   cries of God to ears that would not hear, the weeping of an earnest
   ministry over that were as flints and the earnest exhortation and
   admonition of a tender heart to hearts as that were as adamant and
   would not feel?

   Ah, to be at ease in Zion is to be damnably at ease. To be at ease
   under a faithful ministry is to be at ease in the jaws of Hell. To be
   at ease when the House and the Gospel and the Sabbath are all crying
   out against us is to be at ease while God is making ready His sword
   against us. But I cannot stay longer, nor do I wish to do so! Oh that
   my heart had language and could speak without my lips! Oh that I might
   fling myself at your feet and say to you--"Why will you die, O house of
   Israel, why will you die?"

   I call you to witness that in putting the things of God far from you,
   you are guilty of willful and aggravated wicked-ness--for you have been
   warned not once nor twice, nor twenty times, but so many times as there
   are Sabbaths in the year! But this is not enough for me merely to say
   that I am clear from your blood. Oh that you may be clear of it
   yourselves! Oh, sovereign grace, renew the heart! Oh, Jesus, Conqueror,
   lead them captive at the chariot-wheels of Your love and make them bow!
   No human power can do it, but You can do it, Lord, do it for Your
   glory's sake!

   III. And now I come to my last point. God give me strength to urge it
   and may the Holy Spirit send it home. The last point is this--TO SOUND
   THE TRUMPET IN THE EARS OF THE SLEEPERS.

   My trumpet has no great variety of sound. It has but one note. Not one
   which I give to it, but one which is ordained of God in the text. It
   sounds--"Woe! Woe! Woe!" There is not a man living among us that knows
   the full meaning of that word--"Woe." No, there is not a damned spirit
   in Hell who has got to the bottom of that word--for there is an
   eternity of damnation. --to as we are in an infinity of misery. "Woe,
   woe to them that are at ease in Zion." I shall bring out but the
   gentler parts of the note and first I say--woe to you, woe to you, for
   how is it at all likely that you ever will be saved?

   When a man has not attended the house of God and is suddenly brought
   in, we say, "Well, I am glad to see that man come in, who can
   tell?--the ministry may be blessed." I have noticed that in the
   innumerable cases of conversion which we have had in this place, the
   majority have been persons who had not heard the Word long. There have
   been some few persons who have for five, or six, or ten years, been
   regular attendants, but these are not many. The majority of cases are
   those out of the streets and the world who had lived in the habitual
   neglect of the Word of God. They came in and the Word was with power to
   their souls. / am not to account for that! I have only noticed it and I
   state it as the result of a pretty wide observation.

   Now how are you to expect to be blessed? I know God can do all things.
   We are not to limit the Holy One of Israel-- but what are the means to
   be used with you? "Sickness," you say, "perhaps will bless me." But you
   have been sick, you have had a fever, perhaps the cholera and you
   thought you repented, but you did not. Why should you be smitten any
   more? You will revolt more and more. Perhaps you say--"If I had another
   ministry it might be blessed to me." Oh, I pray you to go and find
   another. I pray you for your souls' sake find another if you think so.

   But if it is that you have heard a faithful and earnest ministry
   already, then remember God's great means has been used, His greatest
   means--the preaching of the Word. How then can you hope to be saved at
   all? And then another thought comes in. You say you have been twenty
   years a hearer and you are not saved--now is there any probability that
   you ever will be? God is Sovereign, He can save you. We are only
   speaking now of probabilities. Does it not seem very probable that if
   when the Gospel was very new to you and you took a lovely interest in
   it and still it was not blessed to you, that now when your ears have
   got accustomed to our voice till you can go to sleep under it--does it
   not seem probable that you will never have a blessing under it at all?

   Does it not seem probable that the next twenty years, if you live so
   long, will be as profitless as the twenty that are passed and so you
   will go unsaved to your graves? I think it was Christmas Evans who used
   the simile of the blacksmith's dog, which when his master first set up
   in trade was very much frightened with the sparks. But at last he got
   to be so used to them that he went to sleep under the anvil. "And so,"
   said the good preacher, "there are many that go to sleep under the
   Gospel, with the sparks of damnation flying about their nostrils." And
   certainly there are such here.

   I am told that when they are making the great boilers at Bankside, when
   a man has to go inside for the first time and hold the hammer the noise
   is so frightful that his head aches and his ears seem to have lost all
   power of hearing for a long time afterwards. But I am also told that
   after a week or two a person can go to sleep in the midst of these
   boilers while the workmen are hammering outside and he would sleep none
   the less for the noise. So I know there is such a thing as going to
   sleep under the most thundering ministry.

   I know that men get used to these things--used to being invited, used
   to being warned, used to being thundered at. They have been pleaded
   with until they sleep under it. Yes, I doubt not they would sleep even
   if the world were blazing, if the sun were turned into darkness and the
   moon into blood. And I think that even the trumpet of the archangel
   would not suffice to wake them from their lethargy, if they heard it
   long enough to be accustomed to it. Oh, then, shall we give you up as
   hopeless? I think we almost may. If you have heard so long and been
   unblest there is no great likelihood that you ever will be blessed. But
   you will go on as you have been going, till at last you perish.

   But, remember--for I must sound this trumpet one moment longer--that
   being at ease in Zion you are at ease where God will come first.
   Judgment must begin at the house of God. His fan is in His hand and He
   will thoroughly purge His floor. He begins with His own floor. He shall
   purify the sons of Levi. He will begin with them that are in His house
   so that judgment will have to begin with you. What a place to be asleep
   in! Not asleep in the far ends of that country where the invasion can
   only come after due and proper notice--but asleep on the coast--when
   Justice is on board its vessel and is ready to land on the shore. This
   is to sleep, indeed.

   Remember, too, you are asleep where God is most severe. Certain it is,
   according to Scripture, that it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and
   Gomorrah at the day of judgment than for Capernaum, where Christ was
   preached. Why, you are asleep where Justice deals its heaviest
   blow--asleep where its sword is keenest, where its battle is hottest
   and its doom is the most dreadful. Well, if you are sleeping here,
   methinks you will sleep anywhere and if the thundering of God's great
   woe cannot suffice to wake you up what can? O God Almighty! What can?
   You can do it Yourself. O that You would do it! But it shall be a
   miracle indeed and a wonder of grace if these sleepers shall be made to
   wake.

   And now I send you not home with the word "woe" in your ears alone. Do
   you feel the force of what has been said? O my Hearers! Do you feel
   that it is a solemn thing to have been at ease so long? Do you tremble?
   Are you saying, "O that I might be saved! O that God would have mercy
   upon me!" He will do it. HE WILL! The Gospel is free to you still as it
   always has been and lo, we preach it to you. All He asks of you is to
   believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. He has not
   asked an impossible thing--a hard thing--that which takes weeks to do.
   It is done in an instant and when His Spirit is present, it is done at
   once and completely.

   "But what is to believe in Christ?" you say. It is to trust Him--trust
   Him with your soul--trust Him with your soul just as it is. Trust Him
   with it now. I do not say to you, "Go home and pray," though I hope you
   will--that is not my errand. I have to say, "Believe on the Lord Jesus
   Christ." That is the way to salvation and you have no need to go home
   to do that. If the Spirit of God has shown you your need of Christ,
   that can be done where you are--in the pew. O may the Spirit enable you
   in your soul thus to cry to God--"I am guilty of all that has been
   said. I am guilty. I acknowledge it with sorrow. I feel I cannot save
   myself and that the means of grace cannot save me, for they have been
   tried and they have failed.

   "Lord, I have such a stony heart that nothing can break it but
   Yourself. I am such a careless, good-for-nothing sinner that the most
   earnest ministry is lost upon me. I have been pleaded with long, but I
   have not turned. I confess that all this has aggravated my guilt. I
   acknowledge it. And now, if You destroy me, Lord, You would be just.
   But, O save me! Save me!--not for any good thing I have, for, 'All
   unholy and unclean, I am nothing else but sin.' But Father, Jesus died.
   I believe that He is able and that He is willing to save to the
   uttermost them that come unto You by Him. Just as I am, I put my case
   into His hands, I am guilty. Lord, I feel it. Oh that I could feel it
   more, but Lord, I trust in Him."

   Are you touching the hem of His garment and putting your trust in what
   He did and what He is? Then your sins which are many are all forgiven
   you. Go in peace. "There is therefore, now no condemnation to them that
   are in Christ Jesus." You are saved the moment you believe in Christ.
   You are saved. His finished work is yours. It needs not a stitch to be
   added to it. His complete atonement is yours. It needs no blood of
   bullocks, no tears of man to complete it. It is done. You are saved by
   His grace. Clap your hands and go in peace.
     __________________________________________________________________

                              Bread For The Hungry

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 10, 1861,

   BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And He humbled you and suffered you to hunger and fed you with manna,
   which you knew not neither did your fathers know; that He might make
   you know that man does not live by bread only but by every Word that
   proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord does man live."

   Deuteronomy 8:3.

   THIS notable text shall teach us two lessons this morning. Its first
   utterance shall be concerning Providence and its second, concerning the
   life of grace in the heart. Our blessed Lord once used this text with
   regard to Providence and therefore, we shall be justified in so
   interpreting it. When the foul fiend suggested to the hungry Savior
   that He should work a "preposterous miracle" to supply His needs,
   saying, "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made
   bread," the Master met him, not with the wooden sword of human reason,
   but with this true Jerusalem blade, the sword of the Spirit, which is
   the Word of God, replying to him, "It is written, man shall not live by
   bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

   Our glorious David took this smooth and shining stone out of the clear
   and silvery brook of Scripture and threw it at Goliath's head--an
   example to us to meet temptations with the weapons of Scripture--not
   with the words or traditions of men.

   I. Let us for one moment, that we may get the meaning of this text,
   with regard to PROVIDENCE, reflect upon the children of Israel in the
   wilderness. They were an exceeding great host, numbering somewhere
   between two and three millions. They had come forth out of Egypt on a
   sudden. They were poor, they were not therefore in circumstances to
   provide themselves with food even for a long march, much less for forty
   years. They had each of them brought what provender they had, for we
   read, "They took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading
   troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders."

   They crossed the Red Sea by miracle. Very soon afterwards all their
   provisions must have been exhausted. Picture their position--the
   kneading troughs are empty, the sterile wilderness of Sinai can hardly
   yield blades of grass enough for their flocks. How could it provide
   them with any sustenance for themselves? They have a long journey
   before them and where have they to look? There is no possibility of
   commerce by which to purchase food, neither can the land yield any.
   Every door is shut save one and that is the door of Heaven. All means
   have failed, but the God who works with the means can work without them
   if He pleases and therefore He opens the windows of Heaven and instead
   of a shower of rain there is a shower of food.

   A substance like coriander seed fell round about the camp--"manna"--so
   they called it, for they were not sure what it was. They gathered it.
   They found it dainty to the taste, exceedingly nourishing and wholesome
   and they fed upon this bread of Heaven for forty years! Nor did the
   manna cease till they came unto the land of Canaan where they ate the
   corn of the land and had no need of miraculous supplies. The hunger
   which was thus supplied had its design--for, as hunger tames the wild
   and savage beast--so this was sent to humble the proud and carnal minds
   of the Israelites--an object of no mean importance.

   But that was not the only lesson. The Lord taught them that the
   sustaining power by which man's life is preserved is not necessarily in
   any one substance, but is dependent upon the Word of God. It is true
   that bread nourishes. And the philosopher would say that there is a
   nutritive power resident in it. But really there is no power of any
   sort anywhere but in God. The power of nourishing and sustaining bodily
   life is of God and He, by a continual flowing of His omnipotence, pours
   the nutritive quality into bread. But if He chose to, He could pour it
   into stones. If it were His will, He could make the very dust of the
   earth nutritious and supply the lack of man by new means, for He is no
   more shut up to bread now than He was in times that have gone by.

   Naturalists speak of laws of nature--there is no power in a law, write
   it as you like, it has no power--the laws of nature are simply the Lord
   operating in a certain manner, producing certain effects by certain
   means. This is what we call Law--it is God in action--and the reason
   why bread sustains the body is because God puts His potency into it, by
   which it receives nutritive virtues and the body is sustained. Now the
   Lord, by the manna, said to the children of Israel, "Man is not fed by
   bread only. He is fed by God's power that comes from Him into the bread
   and when the bread is lacking, He can infuse that power into the very
   dews of the night. And they, as they distil, shall become manna full of
   nutritive energy to sustain your frame and you shall know that the
   power to nourish is not in the second cause, but in the great First
   Cause--not in the corn, not in the bread--but in the Lord God Himself."
   This was the lesson which they were required to learn.

   Now, Brethren, this is a doctrine which may be rendered exceedingly
   useful to us. God has power to supply our needs and therefore there can
   be no necessity for us to do wrong in order that we may be fed for He
   is not tied to any means. He can supply the wants of His children, not
   in one way, but in fifty ways. No, not in fifty ways, but in ways as
   countless as the sands upon the sea shore. You know how in olden times
   the Lord occasionally showed this power in miracles. When Moses, Elijah
   and our great Lord Himself fasted forty days, their natural lives were
   sustained without food.

   How was this? We cannot tell the exact mode, but we can think of
   several methods. He could have done it by modifying the exhausting
   processes of nature. He could bid those powers which consume material
   work at a slower rate and whereas the body now expends itself daily by
   ounces, he could make it expend itself by drachms. He could prevent, as
   it were, the furnace of human life from consuming its coal and yet the
   vital spark need not be quenched. Or if He pleased, He could give the
   material necessary for the maintenance of the frame by miraculous
   means. He could fit and square the stones for the temple of the body
   and put them in their place without those masons--the teeth--or those
   builders--the digestive organs.

   He could give to the different secretive glands just that which they
   required and find, if it were necessary, the substances in the earth,
   or in the air, or in the sky so that still without the necessity for
   bread, man might live. Or He could, if He chose to vary the miracle,
   increase the nutritive power of the food already received, as in
   Elijah's case, so that a man might go in the strength of one day's meat
   for forty days. At any rate, God has proved by miracle, that although
   He chooses to act usually according to certain rules and nourish the
   body with bread and with meat, yet He is not tied to rules. He is
   absolute King and Master and can do as He wills. Even in the subtle
   processes by which food is digested and assimilated to the flesh and
   blood and bone and sinew, He can work without the means of ordinary
   chemistries. He can dissolve without distilling devices and fuse
   without crucibles.

   "But," you say, "that cannot concern us, for He never works miracles
   now." Yes, but I reply, it is most marvelous for God to be able to do a
   miraculous thing without a miracle. Do you comprehend me? I think that
   the working of a miracle is not so wonderful as when that end is gained
   by ordinary laws and methods--gained without the cessation of any power
   in nature-- simply by Providence overruling the powers just as they
   are. To be miraculous without miracles is the miracle of miracles. I
   have seen many miracles which were not miracles, but yet all the more
   miraculous.

   The poor have lacked bread, stones were not turned into bread for them,
   but they had their bread as much by miracle as if rocks had crumbled
   into food. We have seen the poor merchant reduced to distress and he
   said, "Now I cannot see any hope for me. God must rend His heavens and
   put His hand through the very windows to deliver me." No heavens were
   rent, but the deliverance came.

   Now, the Lord can this day without a miracle work such a miracle that
   we shall have all our wants supplied, for "man does not live by bread
   alone, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." You
   have heard the story of the martyr who was condemned to die. The judge
   said railingly--"You will be in prison. I shall make you no allowance
   for food and what can your God do for you? How can He feed you?" "Why,"
   said the poor prisoner, "if He wills it, He can feed me from your
   table"--and it was so--though unknown to his cruel judge. For until his
   day of burning came the wife of the judge, touched with sympathy,
   always secreting food and fed him abundantly even from the persecutor's
   table.

   Perhaps you may have read in "Fox's Acts and Monuments" the wonderful
   story of Mr. Samuel who by the Bishop of Norwich was condemned to die.
   He was tied up by a chain about his middle and then condemned to
   starvation, having about two mouthfuls of bread and two or three drops
   of water each day until his frame became dry and shriveled. The pains
   of thirst and hunger were intense for some days, but after that he said
   he fell into a kind of swoon and he thought he heard a voice saying,
   "Fear not, Samuel, for from this day you shall never hunger nor thirst
   again." And from that hour, though it was several days before he went
   to Heaven in the fiery chariot from the stake, he never knew what it
   was to thirst or to hunger though he had no greater supplies than
   before.

   I have no doubt the physician would tell us it is possible that as
   nature will often, after excessive pain, become its own balm by
   deadening sensibility. So in this case, God was pleased not by
   miracles, but in the ordinary course of nature to cast the man into a
   peculiar state in which he was not conscious of the wants of his body.
   And while no doubt all the ordinary operations were going on which
   cause hunger and thirst, yet he was not conscious of it and so the Lord
   was pleased without a miracle to work a miracle, proving that, "man
   shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds out of
   the mouth of

   God."

   There are several very interesting illustrations of this great Truth in
   the Life of Mr. Henry Erskine. "He was often in great straits and
   difficulties. Once when he and his family had supped at night, there
   remained neither bread, meal, meat, nor money in the house. In the
   morning the young children cried for their breakfast and their father
   endeavored to divert them. He did what he could at the same time to
   encourage himself and wife to depend upon that Providence that hears
   the young ravens when they cry. While thus engaged, a countryman
   knocked hard at the door and called for someone to help him off with
   his load.

   "Being asked from where he came and what he would have, he told them he
   came from Lady Reaburn with some provisions for Mr. Erskine. They told
   him he must be mistaken and that it was more likely to be for another
   Mr. Erskine in the same town. He replied, No, he knew what he said, he
   was sent to Mr. Henry Erskine and cried, 'Come, help me off with my
   load, or else I will throw it down at the door.' Whereupon they took
   the sack from him and on opening it, found it well stored with fish and
   meat.

   "At another time, being in Edinburgh, he was so reduced that he had but
   three halfpence in his pocket. When he was walking about the streets,
   not knowing what course to steer, one came to him in a countryman's
   habit, presented him with a letter in which were enclosed several
   Scotch ducatoons, with these words written, 'Sir, receive this from a
   sympathizing friend. Farewell.' Mr. Erskine never could find out from
   where the money came. At another time, being on a journey on foot, his
   money failed and he was in danger of being reduced to distress. Having
   occasion to fix his walking-stick in some marshy ground among the
   rushes, he heard something tinkle at the end of it. It proved to be two
   half-crowns, which greatly assisted in bearing his charges home. In
   days of persecution and poverty, God wonderfully interposes for His
   people."

   I could myself write a Book of Providences quite as remarkable as
   William Huntingdon's Bank of Faith. God does supply His people's needs.
   This is not a matter of fancy or superstition. We have tried it and
   have proved it and we have as much evidence to prove that Truth as to
   prove any fact which is taken for granted in science or in philosophy.
   Man does not to this day live by bread alone, not by ordinary channels
   of Providence--but God does still supply the lack of His children--and
   none of them that trust in Him shall be desolate.

   I have a consciousness that I am addressing someone this morning who
   little expected to be here, who nevertheless is in such straits that,
   though a Christian man, he is severely tempted and sternly tried by
   Satan to do what he knows is wrong, but which he thinks is necessary,
   because he says, "We must live." My Brother, let me influence you, as
   God's ambassador, do not break a way for yourself. Stand still and see
   the salvation of God--it can never be right to do a wrong thing. This
   is a trial for your faith. Oh, let not your faith fail you, but seek
   help from God this morning, that you may say, "I can starve, but I
   cannot sin." And you may rest assured that God who delivered the three
   holy children out of the very midst of the fire, when they would not
   bow down before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up, will surely
   deliver you and if not, yet let your resolution be still firmly
   fixed--"I will not do this great wickedness and sin against God."

   II. I now turn to the second part of the discourse. The text, evidently
   enough, has A SPIRITUAL BEARING.

   Man shall not live by bread alone. That does but nourish the mere
   coarse fabric of clay--he lives by every Word which proceeds out of the
   mouth of God--that nourishes the immortal spirit, that sustains the
   heavenly flame which God has put there by the work of regeneration and
   conversion.

   1. Now, in the first place, the text speaks of a hunger and of its
   consequences. Very many of you who are now present understand what this
   hunger means. There was a time when the world suited us well enough--if
   we had enough to eat and to drink and wherewithal we might be clothed
   like the rest of the Gentiles. This was all that we sought after. But
   suddenly God put a new life into us, we knew not how. The first
   evidence we had of that life was that we began to hunger, we were not
   satisfied. We were discontented, we were unhappy, we wanted something,
   we did not know what it was. But this we knew, that it was a something
   which we must have, or die.

   The soul was conscience of sin and hungered for pardon, conscious of
   guilt and hungered for purity, conscious of absence from God and
   hungered and thirsted after His presence. It was that blessed hunger
   which the Savior spoke of upon the Mount, when He said, "Blessed are
   they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
   filled." Now, speaking of that hunger, you that know of it can bear
   witness that it was a most painful thing when first we knew it. It was
   so painful to some of us that we could not rest--it was a hunger that
   pinched us in our sleep, in our business, in the fields and in the
   streets. We cried, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him! Oh that I
   were saved!" And we cried out, "Oh that" and "Would that" and "Ah," and
   "Oh!"

   Groans that could not be uttered came up even from our soul after a
   something which we could not explain. We wanted Christ, we had come to
   know the meaning of that line of our hymn--"Give me Christ or else I
   die." What a painful hunger it was! Never did a starving wretch, who
   could count his bones and almost see through his hands, suffer more
   anguish than we knew when God had taken away from us the very staff of
   life and our soul was melted within us by reason of sore famine and
   straitness of bread.

   Then that hunger, moreover, was utterly insatiable--nothing could stop
   it. Friends said, "You must take worldly amusement." It was like
   endeavoring to fill a hungry man with shadows. The legalist said, "You
   must perform such-and-such duties." It was like attempting to fill a
   soul with bubbles. Still our hunger cried like the horse-leech, "Give,
   give, give us something more substantial, more Divine than this." Oh,
   how some people try to appease hungry souls with music, pictures,
   riches, honors, fame. Poor fools! Did they once know what spiritual
   hunger means, they would renounce their idle and ridiculous attempts.
   None but Jesus, the Bread of Heaven, can satisfy a hungry soul. Happy
   are they that have hungered thus, but cursed are they who have never
   known what it is to hunger and thirst insatiably after Christ.

   Next--this hunger is impetuous. Sometimes it will come at inconvenient
   seasons. Master Henry Smith--an old preacher at St. Paul's Cross,
   preaching upon the text--"As new-born babes desire the sincere milk of
   the Word that you may grow thereby"--observes, "When hunger assails
   infants, they neither regard leisure, nor necessity, nor willingness of
   their mothers--all excuses and business set apart--as soon as they cry
   for food, they must be fed." So is it with a man who has begun to feel
   the need of Christ. It may be said to him, "You can have your religion
   at home. You do not want to be moping about the shop with it." Ah, but
   he cannot help it. He is hungry and hunger knows no clocks. It comes
   when it likes and, having come, it will not be turned back.

   It is of no use saying, "When I have a more convenient season I will
   satisfy you." But hunger says, "Now, now, now--I must eat, I must be
   stopped." So is it with the truly hungry soul--it wants Christ now. If
   it is not Sunday, if it is not time to go up to worship, it longs to
   steal away into the cellar, or the attic, or anywhere that it may cry
   to God its heavenly Father and get some food, for its hunger is of that
   impetuous character--it is in season and out of season. And then it is
   so impetuous that the truly hungry soul is like a hungry man, of whom
   it is said in the Proverb, "Hunger breaks through stone walls."

   "Oh, it is a wet Sunday!" Ah, but the soul is hungry and must go, wet
   or dry. "Yes, but the streets are miry and muddy." Well, but the soul
   is hungry and must go if it is knee-deep in mud. "Yes, but the place is
   far off." If it were ten times as far, it must go. "Oh, but there is
   another place handy." Yes, but that is the place where they sell
   philosophic plaster of Paris and the soul says, "I cannot go to be fed
   on such stuff as that--I must go where there is milk for babes and
   bread for strong men." And then they will crowd the place where the
   bread of Heaven is dispensed and some say, "Why do they crowd the place
   so?"

   Oh, if they knew how hungry the people were, they would not wonder. If
   there were a baker's shop in the parish and all the people were
   starving, you would not marvel if you saw them crowd the door in the
   morning to get bread. It has been always so where the Lord sends a true
   Gospel ministry. The Lord never sends bread without sending mouths to
   eat it. Where the Word is preached there will be ears to hear and
   hearts to receive it. It is no use to try to stop one of these hungry
   souls--they must have the Word which proceeds out of the mouth of God.
   This hunger, I may add, is of an increasing character. The longer a man
   stays, the more hungry he gets--his hunger does not decline. Conviction
   of sin does not grow less and less, but sharper and sharper.

   Just as hunger gnaws and gnaws the very coats of the stomach, so does
   this spiritual hunger gnaw into the man's heart. He is wretched beyond
   expression, his cry grows shriller and more piercing, till he seems as
   if he would cut through Heaven itself to get at what he wants. "Mercy,
   Lord, mercy, mercy, mercy!" And you may say to him, "Why do you clamor
   thus?" His only answer will be, "Mercy, Lord, mercy, mercy! Give me
   Christ, give me Christ, or else I die!"

   Now, what is the blessed result of this hunger? Why it makes a man
   humble. These hungry sinners are never proud--they have not the stomach
   to play the proud and haughty scorner. Souls that are filled with their
   own good works and puffed up with their own empty boastings--these
   high-stomached sinners can boast against Christ and His Gospel--but as
   for these hungry ones, they are willing to be anything and to do
   anything so that they may but be saved. But now they love to hear the
   word "grace"--there was a time when they could not endure it, but now
   they are so hungry that the word "grace" sounds like a bell that
   summons them to their needed meals. They love to hear of Divine
   sovereignty, they are quite willing that God shall be King, so long as
   they may be but fed.

   Now they have no objection to election, if they may but have an
   interest in the Covenant of Grace. Now they have no objection to
   justification by free grace by the righteousness of Christ for they are
   emptied of anything of their own. They are humble and therefore they
   are in a proper state to receive Christ, for, "To this man will I look
   and with that man will I dwell, with him that is poor and of a contrite
   spirit and that trembles at My word." Blessed hunger! You that do not
   have it today, may God soon satisfy you, He will do it sooner or later.
   And you that have had it, though I hope it will never be renewed to you
   in all its painfulness, yet I pray that you may always be craving and
   longing, as new-born babes, desiring the sincere milk of the Word, that
   you may grow thereby.

   2. And this brings me to notice, in the second place, the heavenly
   bread and its surpassing excellency. This bread, you see, is the Word
   of God. Now, the Word is given to us first here in the Bible, as it is
   written. It is given to us, secondly, from the lips of God's own chosen
   and appointed ambassadors. He that despises either of these two will
   soon find himself growing lean in spirit. The book, the Word, is like
   the flour, but the sermon is the bread, for it is through the sermon
   that the Word is, as it were, prepared for human palates and brought so
   that human souls may be able to receive it. The moment the Church of
   God shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her.

   It has been through the ministry that the Lord has always been pleased
   to revive and bless His Churches and you will notice that these
   revivals in which it was boasted that there were no ministers engaged,
   have come to nothing before long. For those that stand are those in
   which God gets to Himself glory and honor, by using instrumentality. It
   is a wrong idea altogether that God is glorified by putting
   instrumentality aside. That is not His glory. His glory is that in our
   infirmity He still triumphs and that with His own right hand He is able
   to lay hold upon some jaw-bone of an ass and yet slay therewith heaps
   upon heaps of Philistines. It is the weakness of the instrumentality
   used that has a tendency to glorify God and hence He very seldom is
   pleased to work without some means or other. Most Christians who have
   grown rich in grace, have been great frequenters of the house of
   prayer.

   But now, why is it that we need this food at all? Why is it that we
   need the Word of God? I answer first, we need it to sustain the life
   which we have received. When God planted Eden, He did not leave it
   without watering it, for you read in Genesis, "There went up a mist to
   water the garden of Eden." And yet it is a very strange thing and you
   ought to notice, too, that God made the grass of the fields before He
   bade the sun, moon and stars shine upon the earth. So there was the
   loving thing before there was that upon which it was to depend for its
   sustenance--to show that He could maintain life without the external
   means--and that even the grass was not to live by the outward alone,
   but by the sustaining energy and secret omnipotence of God.

   Now, if Eden in perfection needed to be watered, much more do we. We
   are plants of the Lord's right-hand planting, but like roots in a dry
   ground we need the river of God, which is full of water, to flow hard
   by our roots. We need the dew which fed upon the mountains of Hermon to
   moisten us every hour, lest like dewless Gilboa we should be bleak and
   barren, without any lush greenery to make glad the heart of God or man.
   As life spiritual depends upon God to give it, so upon God to sustain
   it. Only He who makes us Christians can keep us so and hence the need
   of Divine food.

   We need this Divine food not only to keep us barely alive, but to make
   us grow and as Peter says, "As new-born babes," we need to grow. Now,
   how shall we grow without food? Supposing it possible to retain life,
   do we wish always to be babes? Would we always be little children? No,
   let us pray that we may become young men in Christ and grow up to the
   stature of perfect men in Christ Jesus. But how shall this be unless
   the Word of God becomes our spiritual food?--unless in hearing it we
   see Christ and eat His flesh and drink His blood?

   You do not expect your children to grow without feeding them and you
   must not expect to grow yourself. Besides, this food is necessary to
   strengthen us when we have grown up. A full grown man, though he is a
   perfect man, may still be very imperfect in many matters. He is
   perfectly a man, but still he is weak. How can we wonder that a man is
   weak if he does not eat? It is no wonder if Christians find themselves
   weak in prayer, weak in suffering, weak in action, weak in faith and
   weak in love if they neglect to feed upon the Word of God. O Souls,
   there are many among you that are sick and some that are ready to die
   because you have shut your mouths against the bread of Heaven and have
   gone day by day without sitting down at the banqueting table and
   feeding upon the marrow and fatness of the promise.

   Moreover, we need to have spiritual food also for our joy as well as
   for our strength. How often do you see a man sad and troubled, who, if
   he had sufficient sustenance would soon have sparkling eyes and a
   shining face? Many Christians, I do not doubt, are very low and
   miserable because they do not feed upon the Word. If they ate the roll
   as Ezekiel did, they would soon find it like honey for its sweetness.
   If we did but lean more upon the breast of Christ and eat more often
   from His table and drink from His cup, our peace would flow like a
   river and our righteousness like the waves of the sea.

   Are you starving your souls? If so, there is no wonder that your joys
   are dead and hang their heads like wilted and withered things. I trust,
   my dear Brethren, many of us know what it is to feed to the full upon
   the Word of God. And do you not bear me witness that it is rich food?
   There is nothing in the whole world that can so content the spirit as
   the Word of God. We have read many books, we have listened to the
   maxims of philosophers, we have gathered up the lessons of experience
   but put them altogether--they are not equal to one text of Scripture.
   It is said of one Christian man, who had spent a great part of his life
   in translating Livy, that when he came to die he wished he had spent
   that time in reading the Word of God.

   Those who translate the Bible into foreign tongues always say it is a
   great blessing to them. Instead of growing tired through having to stop
   long over one word to find out its meaning, they find the word more
   sweet than before. There is rich food both in the printed Word and in
   the spoken Word. Then again, what plain food it is! There is nothing
   like plain food. But some people come in to listen to the Gospel
   minister and they say, "Ah, it is not intellectual enough for me!" Such
   infants would like to live on sponge-cakes, or filthy gingerbread. But
   we think the plainer the food, the better. We had rather have it just
   as it is, without any flavoring or seasoning, just as we find it here.

   But, while it is plain food, yet to those who know it, it is very sweet
   food. Though some say, "It is light bread," as they did in the
   wilderness, you never loathe this bread. It never palls upon your
   taste--you are satisfied and you are even satiated with fatness--you
   are never disgusted through having too much of it. You feel that you
   would like to swim in a river of such wine as this. You would like to
   be shut up in a granary of this heavenly corn. You would be but too
   glad to have nothing else to think upon but Jesus and Him crucified. No
   other book to read but that Word. No other light to read it by but the
   light of the Spirit and I think I may add, you would wish to live in no
   other house but in God's house--for your desire is, "Lord, evermore
   give us this bread."

   The Word of God, then, is rich food, but it is plain food. And let us
   add, it is wholesome food. The man that feeds on God's Word will not be
   puffed up with pride, or sloth, or lust. You may feed on the best of
   men's books and soon grow warped in your judgment, but feed on the pure
   Word of God and you will surely find nothing that is common or unclean
   in it, but everything that shall make you grow up to be strong men in
   Christ Jesus. And then, once more, this food of the Word of God is
   abundant food. Millions live upon it and there is enough for millions
   more. We have great appetites sometimes and we want great promises. Oh,
   and there are great promises for us.

   "What more can He say than to you He has said, You who unto Jesus for
   refuge have fled?"

   Our great trials make very great draws upon the treasury, but the
   treasury never will be emptied for all that. We are great spenders, but
   bless the Lord, we have great incomes. The great income of the promise
   is far more than the outgoing of our trials or our afflictions can ever
   need. There is abundant bread and oh, it is bread that we love. We want
   no change in it. You have been feeding on it, some of you, these forty
   years and I might turn to some that have lived on it for sixty years,
   yet you do not want any new-fangled doctrines--you want none of the
   neology of the times--you want the old Word as much as ever you did.
   And I can say, though I am but a young believer in Christ, that that
   same Gospel note which some twelve years ago made glad these ears, is
   just as glorious a note as it was then. And I feel as I grow older, a
   closer attachment to the doctrines of grace, a more complete
   satisfaction with the written Word and a more intense delight in
   telling it forth to the ears of the people.

   3. And now, lastly, a great privilege involving a consequent duty. We
   have been made to eat manna, as angels' food which we did not know. It
   was far above our carnal judgments, yet they who feared the Lord said
   it was like wafers made with honey. Israel found it to be very sweet
   and indeed it is said by the Rabbis that the manna had such a
   peculiarity about it, that it was always the flavor that a man wished
   it to be. And I think it is very much so with Gospel preaching--if a
   man chooses it to be disagreeable to him, it will be--but if he desires
   it to be sweet to him, it will be. He will be sure to be fed if he
   wants to be fed. For so is it with the precious Book--very much of its
   flavor is in our own mouths and when our mouths are out of taste we
   think the Bible has lost its savor. But it has not. It is our mouths
   which are to blame, not the Word of God. It is often your ears that are
   to blame, not the preacher. Do not be so quick to blame him, but be a
   little more rapid in examining yourself.

   "Neither did our fathers know." By nature, however much we may respect
   them, they are no better than ourselves and they knew nothing about
   this subtle, mysteriously generous way by which God supplies the needs
   of the souls of His people. Well now, if God has given us such food as
   this, Brothers and Sisters, I think the least thing we can do is to go
   and gather it, for when the manna fell, you know, it did not fall into
   their tents, much less into their mouths. No, it fell round about the
   camp so that every man had to get his basket and go forth and gather
   it. He that gathered much had nothing over, he that gathered little had
   no lack, but they all had to gather it.

   And, mark, they had to gather it every day. They were not, having
   gathered once, to say, "Now I have all I want," for it bred worms and
   stank if they kept it. They must gather it fresh and fresh. Now this is
   what we ought to do with God's Word. We ought to read it and having
   read it once we must recollect that what we have read will breed worms
   unless we go and read again. It is not what we gathered yesterday that
   will serve for today, we must gather it today--so we must open our
   Bibles every morning with this prayer--"Give me this day my daily
   bread." We must get some choice text to fill our basket--if we read a
   chapter we shall have nothing over--if we read a verse we shall have no
   lack.

   Then we put the Word in our memories and we shall surely find, perhaps
   not the first hour, but some other hour in the day that it will taste
   like wafers made with honey to us. It is astonishing how much a man may
   know of the Bible by learning a text a day and how much he may know
   experimentally by watching the events of the day and interpreting them
   in the light of the text. If you cannot retain by memory a whole
   passage, never mind that--take a short text and let it be under your
   tongue all day--and be looking out for a commentary upon it.

   I do not mean Matthew Henry or Scott, or Gill. I mean your own daily
   experience. Be looking out to see how the Lord translates that text to
   you by His own Providence and you will frequently see a striking
   relation between the text that was given you in the morning and the
   trials or the mercies that are given you during the day. At any rate,
   let the Word of God be the man of your right hand. Don't become so busy
   reading magazines, newspapers and new books and so forth, that you
   forget this--this new Book, this that is always new and always
   old--always having a freshness in it.

   Like a well, it is always springing up--not with musty, stale
   water--but with fresh water that has never sparkled in the sun before
   and in all its virgin luster of purity scatters jewels on the right
   hand and on the left. Let us go to this fountain and drink fresh and
   fresh. You will not find the Word of God dropped into your mouth. You
   must go and gather it outside the tents. Sometimes the Lord will apply
   a promise without your having read it yourselves, but this is not
   generally the case. You must dig in this field where lies hidden the
   pearl of price unknown and digging there you shall discover it to your
   heart's delight.

   And then let us mind also that we be much in the hearing of the Word as
   well as in the reading of it. Let us, when we come up to the house of
   God, come there to be fed. Oh, there are many who think that it is mere
   form to spend a Sunday in God's house. I do not know but what these are
   the worst of Sabbath-breakers, after all, for what do they do? They say
   the Table of the Lord is contemptible and His house is despicable and
   they snuff at it and say, "What a weariness it is, what dry dull days
   Sundays are!" It is not so with the child of God. He comes up to the
   house of God with this prayer on his heart and on his tongue--"Lord,
   give Your servant food for my soul today."

   Beloved, when you are in a right state, you are like birds in the
   nest--when the mother bird comes with the worm, the babies are all
   stretching their necks to the food, for they are all hungry and want
   it. And so should hearers be ready to get hold of the Word, not wanting
   that we should force it down their throats--but waiting there, opening
   their mouths wide that they may be filled--receiving the Word in the
   love of it, taking in the Word as the thirsty earth drinks in the rain
   of Heaven. Hungry souls love the Word. Perhaps the speaker may not
   always put it as they may like to hear it, but as long as it is God's
   Word, it is enough for them.

   They are like persons who are sitting at the reading of a will. The
   lawyer has a squeaking voice, perhaps. Or he mispronounces the words,
   but what of that?--they are listening to see what is left to them. So
   is it with God's people. It is not the preacher, but the preacher's God
   that these hungry ones look to. Why, if when you were very poor, some
   benevolent neighbor should send you a loaf of bread by a man who had a
   club foot--you would not look at the foot--you would look at the bread!
   And so is it with the hearers of the Word. They know if they wait until
   they get a perfect preacher, they will get no preacher at all. But they
   are willing to take the man, imperfections and all, provided he brings
   the Master's bread. And though he is but a lad and can bring but a few
   barley loaves and fishes, yet since the Master multiplies the
   provision, there is enough for all and they feed to the full.

   But now I am speaking to some who never feel this hunger. Ah, poor
   Souls, you are all flesh and you have a fleshly hunger and that
   satisfied, it is enough. Well, remember that it is only spirit that can
   see the kingdom of God and as there is no spirit in you, where God is
   you can never come. If there were that new principle in you--the new
   nature, the spirit--you would have a spiritual hunger. But the natural
   man discerns not the things that are of God and while you are thus
   merely what you were born, a natural man, without the spirit, you will
   never hunger after spiritual things, for the flesh shall be satisfied
   and that will be enough for you. But in the next world, your hunger
   will come and your thirst, too.

   Scarcely need I remind you of the text, "In Hell he lifted up his eyes
   being in torment and he said, Father Abraham, send Lazarus that he may
   dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue." Better to
   thirst now than thirst forever. Better to hunger now than to hunger
   where bread will be denied. Do you feel your need of Christ this
   morning? Do you confess your sin? Remember, the gate of Heaven's
   granary is never locked, it is always open. If there is a soul here
   that desires to be saved, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you
   shall be saved." To believe on Him is to let Him be for you what you
   never can be for yourselves, that is--an atonement for your sin by His
   blood--a righteousness for your covering by His good works.

   Believe in Him--give yourself up to Him--trust Him--be saved according
   to His way and His will--and if the Lord has made you willing to be
   nothing that Christ may be everything, you are saved! He that brings a
   man into such a state as that has brought him into salvation. Trust in
   Jesus, poor hungry Sinner and faith shall feed you to the full. Empty
   though you are, open the mouth of prayer and stretch out the hands of
   faith and He will give you water out of the brook, yes, out of the
   flinty rock and with bread from Heaven shall He sustain you.

   The Lord grant, by His grace, that we may be among those of whom Christ
   said, "Blessed are they that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!"
     __________________________________________________________________

                                The Roaring Lion

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 17, 1861,

   BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring
   lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in
   the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your
   brethren that are in the world." 1 Peter 5:8,9.

   SATAN, who is called by various names in the Scriptures, all
   descriptive of his bad qualities, was once an angel of God-- perhaps
   one of the chief among the fiery ones--

   "Foremost of the sons of light, Midst the bright ones doubly bright."
   Sin, all-destroying sin, which has made an Aceldama out of Eden, soon
   found inhabitants for Hell in Heaven itself, plucking one of the
   brightest stars of the morning from its sphere and quenching it in
   blackest night.

   From that moment this evil spirit despairing of all restoration to his
   former glories and happiness has sworn perpetual hostility against the
   God of Heaven. He has had the audacity openly to attack the Creator in
   all His works. He stained creation. He pulled down man from the throne
   of Glory and rolled him in the mire of depravity. With the trail of the
   serpent he despoiled all Eden's beauty and left it a waste that brings
   forth thorns and briers--a land that must be tilled with the sweat of
   one's face. Not content with that--inasmuch as he had spoiled the first
   creation--he has incessantly attempted to despoil the second.

   Man once made in the image of God, he soon ruined. Now he uses all his
   devices, all his crafts, all the power of his skill and all the venom
   of his malice to destroy twice-made man created in the image of Christ
   Jesus. With ceaseless toil and untiring patience he is ever occupied in
   endeavoring to crush the Seed of the woman. There is no believer in
   Christ, no follower of that which is true and lovely and of good
   repute, who will not find himself, at some season or other, attacked by
   this foul fiend and the legions enlisted in his service.

   Now, behold your adversary. Yes, though you cannot see his face, or
   detect his form, believe that such a foe withstands you. It is not a
   myth, nor a dream, nor a superstitious imagination. He is as real a
   being as ourselves. Though a spirit, he has as much real power over
   hearts as we have over the hearts of others, no, in many cases far
   more. This is, I repeat it, no vision of the night--no phantom of a
   disordered brain. That wicked one is as sternly real this day as when
   Christ met him in deadly conflict in the wilderness of temptation.
   Believers now have to fight with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation.

   Woe to the professors of godliness who are defeated by this deadly
   antagonist. They will find it a terrible reality in the world to come.
   Against this prince of darkness we utter afresh this morning the
   warning of the Apostle, "Whom resist steadfast in the faith."

   I shall now speak to four points. First of all, Satan's incessant
   activity --"He walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may
   devour." Secondly, we will dwell awhile upon his terrible roaring.
   Thirdly, upon his ultimate aim, seeking to devour God's people. And
   then, lastly, let us take up the exhortation of Peter--and show how
   Satan is to be overcome.

   I. First then, SATAN'S PERPETUAL ACTIVITY. Only God can be omnipresent,
   hence, Satan can only be in one place at one time.

   Yet, if you will consider how much mischief he does, you will easily
   gather that he must have an awful degree of activity. He is here and
   there and everywhere tempting us here and anon scattering his
   temptations in the countries which are antipodes to us--hurrying across
   the sea or speeding over the land. We have no means of asserting what
   are his means of flight. But we may easily infer from his being so
   constantly in all places that he must travel with inconceivable
   velocity. He has, besides, a host of fallen spirits who fell with him.
   This great dragon drew with his tail the third part of the stars of
   Heaven--and these are ready to execute his will and obey his behests,
   if not with the same potency and force which belongs by hereditary
   right to their great leader, still with something of his spirit, his
   malice and his cunning.

   Think for awhile how active he must be! We know that he is to be found
   in every place! Enter the most hallowed sanctuary and you shall find
   him there. Go where men congregate upon the Exchange and you shall lack
   no signs of his being present there. Retire into the quietude of the
   family circle and you will soon detect in bickerings and jealousies
   that Satan has scattered handfuls of evil seed there. No less in the
   deep solitude of the hermit's cave might you find the impress of his
   cloven foot. You shall sail from England to America and find him there
   amidst the clashing of swords.

   You shall come back and journey across the mighty empire of Russia and
   find him there in the tyrant's heart and perhaps, too, even in the
   enmity which is excited in the breasts of those who are oppressed. You
   shall go into the wilds where foot of Christian missionary never trod,
   but you shall find that Satan has penetrated into the far interior and
   tutored the untutored barbarian. You shall go where the name of Jesus
   is as yet unknown, but you shall find Satan having dominion there. He
   is the prince of the power of the air. Wherever the breath of life is
   inhaled the poisonous miasma of temptation is a thing familiar. They
   that dwell in the wilderness bow before him--the kings of Seba and of
   Sheba offer him gifts--yes and the dwellers in the isles acknowledge
   him too often as their king.

   Then remember, that as he is found in all places, so you have often
   found him in all your duties. You have sought to serve God in your
   daily avocations but strong temptations--furious suggestions of evil
   have followed you there. You have come home from your business almost
   broken-hearted with your slips. You have come into the family and
   sought to magnify your Master in the social circle--but perhaps in the
   best moment, when you seemed about to achieve the greatest work, you
   were clipped up by the heels. Your easily besetting sin overturned you
   and Satan exulted at your fall. You found him even there.

   You have said, "I will go to my bed," but in your tossing at midnight
   you have found him there. You have risen and said, "I will go into my
   closet and shut the door." But who among us has not met the foul fiend
   even there in solitary conflict? When we wished to be wrestling with
   the angel of God we have had to contend with the fiend of Hell. Look
   upon any of your duties, Christian and will you not see upon them marks
   of sin--and on some not only marks of sin--but marks of Satan's
   presence, too? Satan is not in all sin. We sin of ourselves. We must
   not lay too much upon Satan's shoulders. Sin grows in our hearts
   without any sowing just as thorns and thistles will grow in fallow
   furrows. But still there are times when Satan himself must have been
   present and you have had to know it and feel it.

   On some of the old bricks of Egypt and of Babylon there has been found
   the mark of a dog's foot. When the brick was made, while it was left to
   dry, the creature passed over it and left the imprint of his foot upon
   it. And now thousands of years afterwards when we pull down the wall we
   find the dog mark. Thus has it been often with us. While our duties
   were in such a state that they were yet impressible--before they were
   yet sun-burned and dried and ready to be built up for real practical
   purpose--that dog of Hell has passed over them and left the footprint
   on the best things that we ever did. As we look back years afterwards
   we perceive what we might not have seen at the time--that he really
   marred and stained the best performance of our most willing hands.

   Ah, when I think how Satan follows us in all places and in all duties I
   am sometimes almost ready to apply to him the language of David when he
   spoke of the omnipresent God--"Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or
   where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, You
   are there--if I make my bed in Hell, behold, You are there. If I take
   the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
   even there shall Your hand lead me and Your right hand shall hold me.
   If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be
   light about me." But glory be to God, if I climb to Heaven Satan is not
   there. There I can escape him. Beyond the reach of his roaring my
   spirit shall find her rest in God.

   We must observe also how ready Satan is to vent his spite against us in
   all frames of heart. When we are depressed in spirit--perhaps some
   bodily illness has brought us low. Our animal spirits have ebbed and we
   feel ready to sink--then that old coward Satan is sure to attack us. I
   have always noted as a matter of experience that he prefers rather to
   attack some of us when we are in a low and weak state than at any other
   time. Oh, how temptation has staggered us when we have been sick! We
   have said--"Ah, if this had but come when I was well then I could have
   caught it on the shield at once. In fact I would have laughed at it and
   broken it in pieces." But Satan avails himself of our sad and weak
   frames in order to make his fiery darts find their mark more
   effectively.

   On the other hand, if we are joyous and triumphant and are something in
   the frame of mind that David was when he danced before the ark, then
   Satan knows how to set his traps by tempting us to presumption--"My
   mountain stands firm, I shall never be moved." Or to carnal
   security--"Soul, take your ease, you have much goods laid up for many
   years." Or else to self-righteousness--"My own power and goodness have
   exalted me." Or else he will even attempt to poison our joys with the
   spleen of evil forebodings. "Ah," says he, "this is too good to hold,
   you will soon be cast down and all these fine plumes of yours shall yet
   be trod like the mire of the streets."

   He well knows how, in every frame of mind to make our condition
   minister to his devouring purposes. He will follow you, Christian, when
   your soul is all but despairing and he will whisper in your ears--"God
   has forsaken you and given you over to the will of your enemies." And
   he will track your upward course, riding as it were on cherub's wings.
   When you tread the starry pathway of communion he will dog your
   footsteps even upon Tabor's summit and climb with you to Pisgah's brow.
   On the temple's pinnacle he will tempt you, saying, "Cast yourself
   down," and on the mountain's highest peak he will attack you with, "Bow
   down and worship me."

   And ah, remember how well he knows how to turn all the events of
   Providence to our ill. Here comes Esau, hungry with hunting--there is a
   mess of pottage ready--that he may be tempted to sell his birthright.
   Here is Noah, glad to escape from his long confinement in the ark--he
   is merry and there is the wine-cup ready for him--that he may drink.
   Here is Peter, his faith is low but his presumption is high. There is a
   maiden ready to say--"You also were with Jesus of Nazareth." There is
   Judas and there are thirty pieces of silver in the priestly hand to
   tempt him, yes, and there is the rope afterwards for him to hang
   himself with.

   No lack of means. If there is a Jonah, wishing to go to Tarshish rather
   than to Nineveh there is a ship ready to take him. Satan has his
   providences as if to counterfeit the Providence of God. At least he
   knows how to use God's Providence to serve his own ends. One of the
   greatest mercies God bestows upon us is His not permitting our
   inclinations and opportunities to meet. Have you not sometimes noticed
   that when you had had the inclination to a sin there has been no
   opportunity--and when the opportunity has presented itself you have had
   no inclination towards it? Satan's principal aim with believers is to
   bring their appetites and his temptations together--to get their souls
   into a dry seared state and then to strike the match and make them
   burn.

   He is so crafty and wily with all the experience of these many
   centuries that man, who is but of yesterday, can scarcely be thought of
   as a match for him. Did he not drag down the wise man, even Solomon,
   whose wisdom was more excellent than any of the sons of men? Did he not
   lay the Royal Preacher like a helpless victim at his feet? Did he not
   cast down the strong man, Samson--who could slay a thousand
   Philistines, but who could not resist the dallying of Delilah? Did he
   not bring down even the man after God's own heart by a most sorrowful
   fault? Let us sorrowfully remember that we have hardly met with a
   perfect and an upright man against whom Satan has not vented his spleen
   and over whom Satan has not in some degree triumphed.

   Well I have thus spoken of Satan's terrible activity--of his following
   us into all places and attending us wherever we may go. I am sure that
   no Christian heart here thinks this to be a mere trifle. Of course
   there are skeptics. There are some who will not believe in the
   existence of this evil spirit. Too generally I have noticed that when a
   man has no devil he has no God. Usually when a man does not believe
   there is a devil, it is because he never experiences his attacks and
   probably never will--for the devil does not take the trouble to go and
   look after those he is sure of. "Oh, no," he says, "let them take their
   ease. I do not need to tempt them."

   But I say this, if a man has ever met Satan, as John Bunyan describes
   Christian meeting Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation, he will have
   no doubt of the existence of a devil. When I have stood foot to foot
   with that arch-tempter in some dire hour of conflict, I could no more
   doubt his being shown struggling and wrestling within than a soldier
   who has been cut and scarred and grounded--while bleeding and
   faint--doubt that there must have been an antagonist to indict those
   wounds. Experience will be to man, after all, the best proof of this
   and we cannot expect that those who have never known the joys of the
   Holy Spirit will know much about the attacks of the Evil Spirit.

   Nor that those who doubt that there is a God can ever be much tormented
   with the devil. "Oh," says Satan, "let them alone, they will fall into
   the ditch of themselves. There is no need that I should go abroad after
   them." I think I remember telling you of Mr. Beecher's illustration.
   When the Negro went out with his master to catch wild ducks, one of the
   ducks being a little wounded, the master made the most desperate
   efforts to get it. But he observed that when it was dead and had fallen
   down, his master did not bother much about it because he could pick it
   up at any time. And so it is with dead souls. The devil can pick them
   up at any time. It is those that are wounded--that have some life left
   that he is afraid of losing. Such as these he is sure to pursue. He
   will be ever striving to get them safe in his grasp. II. And now we
   turn, secondly, to SATAN'S ROARING.

   The Destroyer has many ways of mischief. Here in the text he is
   compared to a roaring lion. In some passages of Scripture you will
   remember he is compared to a fowler. Now a fowler makes no noise. It
   would altogether defeat his end if he were to frighten the birds. But
   as quietly as possible he sets his lure and with sweet notes he seeks
   to enchant his victim till it is taken in the trap. That is quite a
   different thing from the roaring lion of the text. In another passage
   it is said that he knows how to transform himself into an angel of
   light and then, plausibly and smoothly, he teaches false doctrine and
   error and all the while appears to have a holy zeal for Truth--and the
   most earnest love for that which is delicate and lovely and of good
   repute.

   We have plenty of specimens in these days of the devil teaching
   morality. You sometimes take up a newspaper and read of the skeptic or
   scorpion school, whose writers hate all true religion as much as the
   devil hates virtue--and you find a most unctuous article upon the
   indelicacies of some honest preacher, or a very pious lamentation over
   the presumed follies of an earnest minister. Never let the devil accuse
   Christians of cant and hypocrisy again--let him find his answer in his
   own dear allies who can plead for the sanctity of places which they
   abhor and for a solemnity which they despise. Of all devils the most
   devilish is the saintly hypocrite loving sin and yet pleading against
   it in order to promote it.

   In this text, however, he is not an angel of light, but a roaring lion.
   I think it was Rutherford who said that he liked the devil best in this
   shape. I remember in one of his letters he thanks God that He had given
   him a roaring devil to deal with. Now what is the peculiar temptation
   which is intended under the metaphor of a roaring lion? Again we repeat
   it--not the slouching gait of a prowling lion who is seeking after its
   prey and will only roar when it ready to lunge--but a lion that roars
   till he makes the very forest startle and shakes the hills which gird
   the prairie.

   These roaring of Satan are threefold. Perhaps Peter here alluded to the
   roaring of persecution. How Satan roared with persecutions in Peter's
   days. He roared and roared and roared again till none but stout hearts
   dared to show themselves valiant for Christ. There were the underground
   prisons filled with frogs and serpents and toads, where breath or fresh
   air never chased away the noxious smell and pestilential vapor. There
   were racks and gibbets. There was the sword for beheading and the stake
   for burning. There was dragging at the heels of the wild horse. There
   was smearing over with pitch and then setting the body still alive to
   burn in Nero's garden. There were torments which must not be
   described--the very pictures of which are enough to make one's eyes
   weep blood as you look upon them.

   There was nothing for the Christian then but banishment and
   imprisonment--these were the lowest penalties. "They were stoned, they
   were sawn in sunder, they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins,
   destitute, afflicted, tormented." These were the roaring of the lion in
   good Peter's day. Since then, from his old den at Rome, what roaring
   has Satan given forth, like thunders indeed to all except the men who
   knew the difference between the mimic thunders of Hell and the real
   thunder of the God of Heaven! Let Smithfield testify to the roaring of
   this lion! Let our cemeteries and graveyards which still bear the
   memorial of our myriad martyrs testify how the lion has roared at us!

   And let our denomination especially, persecuted alike by Protestant and
   Romanist, hunted both by good and bad upon the face of the earth--let
   the thousands that have been drowned in the rivers of Holland and
   Germany--let the multitudes who have there been put to the most
   exquisite torture merely because they would hold God's holy ordinance
   and would not prostitute it at will of the Pope or prelate--let all
   these speak and tell how Satan has roared in days of old! He has not
   half the roar in him now that he had then! Why, he can do nothing at
   all against us! His roars now-a-days are like the hissings of some
   angry cat. All he can do is but to use cruel mockings.

   Now and then a wicked slander, or a jeer, or a caricature, or a witty
   sentence. What are these? Oh, if we cannot bear these, what would we
   have done when the lion used to roar in real lion-like style? Well,
   well, he may growl again yet before some of us have gone off the face
   of the earth, for we know not what may happen. But let him roar. We
   know, blessed be God, that He who is for us is more than all they that
   is against us.

   But there is another kind of furious attack--the roaring of strong and
   vehement temptation. This some of us have felt. Do you know what it is,
   Christian--I hope you do not--do you know what it is sometimes to be
   caught hold of by the clutch of some frightful temptation which you
   hate, loathe, detest and abominate? And yet the clutch of the hand is
   seconded by an arm so terrific in its strength that it drags you right
   on against your will. You look at the sin, look it in the very face.
   You feel you cannot do this great wickedness and sin against God--and
   yet the impulse strong and stern, mysterious and irresistible-- drags
   you on till you come to the edge of the precipice and look down upon
   the yawning gulf which threatens to swallow you up. And in the last
   moment, by God's grace, as by the very skin of your teeth, you are
   delivered and your foot does not slip-- neither do you fall into the
   hand of the Destroyer. You have had reason to say--"My steps had almost
   gone, my feet had well-near slipped."

   Have you known what it is to have this temptation come again and again
   and again, till you were in agony? You felt that you had rather die
   than thus be perpetually assaulted for you feared that in an evil hour
   you might leave your God and turn unto perdition. You have been like
   good Mr. Stand-Fast in Bunyan's Pilgrim, when tempted by Madam Bubble
   he fell at last down upon his knees and with sighs and cries to God he
   begged Him to deliver him. And He that comes to the help of the feeble
   at last delivered His servant. Have you ever known this? This is one of
   Satan's roaring at you--thrusting his temptation against you like the
   torments to which they put some of the early martyrs--when they laid
   them down and poured filthy water down their throats in such immense
   quantities that they were at last killed. Though they loathed the
   filthy liquid yet their enemies continued to pour on and on.

   So has Satan done with us--pouring down his filth--cramming us with his
   mire, constraining us as much as possible to yield to temptation. My
   peculiar temptation has been constant unbelief. I know that God's
   promise is true and that He that said it will do it. He that has
   performed of old changes not and will be firm and faithful even to the
   end. Yet does this temptation incessantly assail me--"Doubt Him.
   Distrust Him. He will leave you yet." I can assure you when that
   temptation is aided by a nervous state of mind it is very hard to stand
   day by day and say, "No, I cannot doubt my God. He that has been with
   me in days gone by is with me still. He will not forsake His servant,
   nor put him away." That perpetual assaulting, that perpetual stabbing
   and cutting and hacking at one's faith is not so easy to endure. O God,
   deliver us, we pray You and make us more than conquerors by Your
   Spirit's power!

   Once more--Satan has another way of roaring. I do not suppose that one
   in ten of God's people knows anything about this--and they need not
   wish to--Satan can roar also in the Christian's ears with blasphemies.
   I do not allude now to those evil thoughts which spring up in the minds
   of men who, in their childhood and their early youth went far into sin.
   I know that you will sometimes, when in prayer, be troubled with the
   snatch of an old song which you once used to sing. And perhaps, when
   you would be most free from every unhallowed thought, some coarse
   expression which you heard in your former haunts will return again and
   again and again. Why the verse of a hymn may suggest to you some unholy
   thing or a text of Scripture bring up some of those old recollections
   which you have longed to forget.

   I allude now more especially to those yet more ferocious attacks of
   Satan when he will inject blasphemous thoughts into the minds of
   believers who never thought such things before. You know how Bunyan
   describes it--"Good Christian had to pass through the valley of the
   shadow of death. About the midst of this valley he perceived the mouth
   of Hell to be and just when he was come over against the mouth of the
   pit, one of the wicked ones got behind him and stepped up softly to him
   and whisperingly suggested many grievous blasphemies to him which he
   verily thought had proceeded from his own mind. This put Christian more
   to it than anything he had met with before--even to think that now he
   should blaspheme Him that he so much loved before. Yet, if he could
   have helped it he would not have done it. But he had not the discretion
   either to stop his ears or to know from where those blasphemies came."

   Seldom does the ministry allude to these matters. But, inasmuch as they
   trouble some of the people of God I believe it to be the duty of a
   faithful shepherd of the flock to minister to those who are called to
   pass through this dark and dismal state. Oh, the horrors and terrors
   which Satan has sometimes caused God's people, by the thoughts that
   were not theirs--but proceeded from himself--or from some of his
   fiends! First, he suggested the thought so vividly that they cried with
   David-- "Horror has taken hold of me, because of the wicked that keep
   not Your Law." And then when the thought had flashed for a moment upon
   the soul, he gave a second horror by saying, "Ah, you are not a child
   of God or you would not have so vile a nature."

   Whereas you never thought it at all. It was his suggestion, not yours.
   And then, having laid his sin at your door, he has turned accuser of
   the Brethren and has sought to cast down your faith from its excellency
   by making you imagine that you had committed the unpardonable sin. Now
   if he roars against you, either with persecution, or with temptation,
   or with diabolical insinuations--take the language of our Apostle
   here--"whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same
   afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world."

   III. I now turn to my third point which is SATAN'S ULTIMATE
   AIM--"Seeking whom he may devour."

   Nothing short of the total destruction of a believer will ever satisfy
   our adversary. Nothing less than the perfection and complete salvation
   of a Christian is the heart's desire of our Savior. He will never see
   the full fruition of the travail of His soul till all His people are
   completely saved. The reverse is true of Satan. He can never be content
   till he sees the believer utterly devoured. He would rend him in pieces
   and break his bones and utterly destroy him if he could. Do not,
   therefore, indulge the thought that the main purpose of Satan is to
   make you miserable. He is pleased with that--but that is not his
   ultimate end. Sometimes he may even make you happy for he has dainty
   poisons sweet to the taste which he administers to God's people.

   If he feels that our destruction can be more readily achieved by sweets
   than by bitters, he certainly would prefer that which would best effect
   his end--

   "More the treacherous calm I dread Than tempests rolling overhead,"
   said Toplady. And much in the same spirit said a Puritan Divine of
   old--"There is no temptation so hard to bear as not being tempted at
   all."

   Indeed, it is a stern temptation to be left at ease. When we think we
   have no occasion for our sword we begin to unbuckle it from our side.
   We strip off our armor piece by piece and then it is that we become
   most exposed to the attack of our enemies. Satan will be glad enough,
   no doubt, to see your faith weakened, but his aim is to destroy that
   faith so that you may not believe in God to the saving of your soul. He
   will be pleased enough if he can throw mire into the eyes of your hope
   so that you can no more look to the goodly land that is beyond Jordan.
   But he will never be satisfied till he puts those eyes out altogether
   and sends you, like Samson, to grind at the mill.

   Let us take this for our comfort. If it is Satan's desire that we may
   be utterly destroyed--in that at least he is certain to be defeated.
   When it comes to a question who shall have the victory, Christ, the
   Eternal Son of God, or Satan, the prince of the power of the air--we
   need have no doubt as to which shall succeed. The devil is but a
   creature, finite in his nature and limits are laid upon his prowess. If
   the battle were between Satan and man, then, indeed, woe the day to us!
   We might quit ourselves like men and be strong but before this giant
   all the host of Israel must flee. But the battle is not ours. It is the
   mighty God's. He that once broke this serpent's head still wages war
   with him.

   Yes and Christ Himself must be defeated. The glory of His Cross must be
   dimmed. His arm must be broken, the crown of sovereignty must be
   snatched from His head--and His Throne must reel beneath Him--before
   one of those for whom He died and on whom He set his love, should ever
   be cast away or be given up to the power of His adversary. In this,
   then, tried Believer, count it your joy that Satan may worry, but he
   cannot rend. He may wound, but he cannot kill. He may get his foot upon
   you to make a full end of you, but you shall yet start up with fresh
   strength and say, "Rejoice not against me, O my enemy--when I fall, I
   shall arise. When I sit in darkness the Lord shall be a light unto me."

   IV. With the fourth point, we now draw to a close--WHAT WE SHOULD DO IN
   ORDER THAT WE MAY OVERCOME THIS ADVERSARY?

   "Whom steadfast in the faith" This is our first means of defense. When
   Satan attacks us as an angel of light we need not so much resist by
   open antagonism as by flight. There are some temptations which are only
   to be overcome by running away from them--but when Satan roars we most
   raise the shout and the war-cry. To run then would be cowardice and
   must entail certain destruction. Suppose now that Satan roars with
   persecution, (and it is a poor roar that he can raise in that way now)
   or, suppose you are slandered, vilified, abused--will you give way?
   Then are you undone. Will you say, "No, never. By Him that called me to
   this work, I will see this battle out and in the name of Him who has
   been my Helper up to now, I set up the banner. And I
   cry--Jehovah-Nissi--the Lord of Hosts is our Banner, the God of Jacob
   is our Refuge." You have done well--you have resisted--and you will win
   the day.

   Has he assailed you with some temptation obnoxious to your spirit?
   Yield an inch and you are undone, but become more watchful and more
   vigilant over yourself in that particular sin and resistance must
   certainly bring victory. Or has he injected blasphemy? Resist. Be more
   prayerful every time he is more active. He will soon give it up if he
   finds that his attacks drive you to Christ. Often has Satan been
   nothing but a big black dog to drive Christ's sheep nearer to the
   Master. Often has he been like a tremendous crested billow which has
   just lifted the poor shipwrecked mariner on to the Rock and from very
   fear has made him cling the more tightly there. If he thrusts you thus,
   match him by turning even his temptations to good account and he will
   soon give up that mode of warfare and exchange it for another.

   Resist him. But how resist him? "Steadfast in the faith." Seek to
   obtain a clear knowledge of the doctrines of the Gospel and then get a
   good grip of them. Be ready to die sooner than give up a particle of
   God's revealed Truth. This will make you strong. Then take hold of the
   promises of God which are yes and amen in Christ Jesus. Be ready for
   every attack of Satan's commencing with, "Is it written?"--answer Satan
   with "Thus says the Lord"--"Steadfast in the faith." Remember all the
   water outside of a ship cannot sink it. It is the water inside that
   perils its safety.

   So, if your faith can keep its hold and you can still say, "Though He
   slay me yet will I trust in Him," Satan may batter your shield, but he
   has not wounded your flesh--

   "Amidst temptations sharp and long, My soul to this dear Refuge flies;
   Hope is my anchor, firm and strong, While tempests blow and billows
   rise. The Gospel bears my spirits up; A faithful and unchanging God
   Lays the foundation for my hope,

   In oaths and promises and blood."

   The conflict may be long, but the victory is absolutely sure. Oh poor
   Soul! Do but keep near to the Cross and you are safe. Throw your arms
   around the dying Savior. Let the droppings of His blood fall on your
   sins and even if you can not see Him, still believe Him. Still say, "I
   know that He came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief,
   and I will cling to the sinner's Savior as my only hope and trust."
   Then let Satan roar--he cannot hurt. Let him rage--his fury is in vain.
   He may but show his teeth, for he certainly cannot bite. "Whom resist,
   steadfast in the faith."

   But there is another word added for our comfort--"Knowing that the same
   afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world."
   This is well sketched by John Bunyan in that picture I have already
   alluded to, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. "As Christian was
   going along the exceedingly narrow pathway, with a deep ditch on one
   side and a dangerous quay upon the other, he came to a stand and he had
   half a thought to go back and then again he thought he might be
   half-way through the valley so he resolved to go on. And while he
   pondered and mused, he heard the voice of a man as going before him,
   saying, 'Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
   I will fear no evil, for You are with me.'

   "Then he was glad and that for these reasons. He gathered from thence
   that some who feared God were in this valley as well as himself and
   that God was with them though they perceived Him not. He hoped to have
   company by-and-by so he went on and called to him that was before, but
   he knew not what to answer for that he also thought himself to be
   alone." Here honest John has our experience to the life. It is likely
   enough that as I am speaking this morning some of you will say, "I did
   not think that anybody ever felt as I feel." And though I tell you
   these things and know that many of you have heard Satan roar, I am
   compelled to confess that I have frequently said in my own heart, "I do
   not believe that any other man ever had this temptation before me."

   Well, this text stands to refute our supposition--"The same afflictions
   are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world." Martin Luther
   was wont to say that next to Holy Scripture the best teacher for a
   minister was temptation--he put affliction next--but temptation he kept
   first in his view. When we have been tempted and tried ourselves we
   know how to succor others. I grant you it is hard to have the
   conviction on one's mind that you are standing in a perilous place
   where never man stood before and tempted as never man was tempted
   before you. Come, Believer, we will talk this matter over for two or
   three seconds. Certainly your Lord has been there before for He was
   tempted in all points like as you are. Scripture says that all your
   Brethren have had some participation in your trials.

   Now mark--as they suffered as you suffer--no temptation has overtaken
   you but such as is common to man. As they came through the temptation
   safe and unharmed, so shall you. As they testified that their light
   afflictions worked out for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight
   of glory--so that shall be your testimony. As they have overcome and
   now circle the Throne of God clothed in pure white garments--so will
   you. And inasmuch as their temptations have left no tears upon their
   brow, no stains upon their robes, no rent in their royal mantles--so
   neither shall Satan be able to disfigure or to mutilate you--you shall
   come out of every trial and of every struggle, losing nothing therein
   save that which it is well to lose--your dross and your tin, your chaff
   and your bran. You shall come forth from the deep waters washed,
   cleansed and purified. God grant that so it may be with you--but it can
   only be so by your resisting Satan--steadfast in the faith.

   And now I am addressing some this morning whom the precept does not
   reach for they have no faith in which to stand fast. If you knew what a
   blessed thing it is to be a Christian you would weep your eyes out that
   you are not Christians yourselves. "Oh," you say, "but you have
   described to us the temptations of Satan." Just so, but it is a blessed
   thing to be a Christian in his very worst state. As I look sometimes
   upon those pictures which are drawn by the artist to illustrate the
   Pilgrim's Progress--even when I have seen poor John up to his neck in
   the mire--I have thought I would sooner be Christian in the Slough of
   Despond, than Pliable on the dry land on the other side.

   I would sooner be Christian when the dragon hurled all his darts at him
   though he smiled not all the day long--sooner be Christian then, than
   be Hypocrisy or Formality climbing over the wall to go by some other
   way. It is a good thing to be a Christian even in his very worst state
   and what must it be in his best? Young men and young women, as one of
   your own age, I bear my testimony that to follow Christ is the most
   blessed and pleasant thing, even in this present evil world--

   "I would not change my blessed estate For all the world calls good or
   great; And while my faith can keep her hold, I envy not the sinner's
   gold."

   But who am I, that I should say this? Why nothing but a poor miserable
   sinner who looks for all in Christ. With nothing in my hand, I simply
   cling to His Cross. Nor am I an inch forwarder than I was twelve years
   ago in this respect. My cry then was, "None but Jesus, none but Jesus,"
   and it is my cry now and shall be my cry even to the end. And what are
   you today but a lost, guilty sinner? But do not despair. Trust Jesus!
   Trust Jesus!--and the joys and privileges of the Christian are yours.
   Now--this moment--cast yourself on Him. Look to his agony and bloody
   sweat, His Cross, His passion, His death, His burial, His resurrection,
   His ascension and you shall find a balm for every fear, a cordial for
   every distress. All that you want and all that your heart can ever
   desire is most surely to be found in Christ Jesus your Lord.

   May God grant us to be partakers of that grace which is in His most
   blessed name--that we may not be destroyed by the Destroyer!
     __________________________________________________________________

                          Abram And The Ravenous Birds

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 24, 1861,

   BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But when the fowls came do wn upon the carcasses, Abram drove them
   away."

   Genesis 15:11.

   WE might use this text, if we chose, as a picture of the ease with
   which faith repels all attacks that are made upon Christ, the great
   sacrifice of the new Covenant. Ainsworth tells us that the original
   word which we translate "drove" has in it the force of "puffed" them
   away. As if with a very puff of breath these kites and vultures and
   eagles, were at once driven away from the bodies of the victims. Faith
   knows how, when skeptical kites when blaspheming vultures, when
   speculative eagles come down to attack the sacrifice of Christ, to
   chase them away with but a puff of her breath. "We know whom we have
   believed."

   Let the earth shake, our confidence in Him cannot move. He is to us as
   real a Person as ourselves. No, we might doubt our own existence, but
   Jesus, His power, His love, His precious blood, His prevalent atonement
   we dare not doubt. One puff of the breath of prayer and questions and
   taunts are gone. One puff of the breath of holy faith in praise and
   every skeptical attack is scattered to the winds as far as we are
   concerned. When these fowls come down upon the body of Christ, like
   Abram by faith we "puff" them away.

   But I do not intend to use the text with such an object this morning,
   though one might legitimately do so. It seems to me to represent to us
   our duty when distracting thoughts invade the sanctity of our holy
   worship. Here is Abram. He has killed the victims according to Divine
   order. He has laid them in their places according to heavenly rule. He
   is waiting until God shall over those victims make and ratify the
   covenant. But meanwhile the buzzards and kites and vultures scent the
   bodies from afar and hasten to devour the flesh of the bullock and the
   ram. Abram chases them away that so his sacrifice may not be spoiled
   and he may have real fellowship with God.

   Brothers and sisters, we never attempt to worship God without finding
   many difficulties in the way.

   "What various hindrances we meet, In coming to a mercy seat!"

   We in our assemblies are like the angels in theirs, "When the sons of
   God came together, Satan came also among them." We find that wherever
   we may be and in whatever frame of mind or with whatever earnestness we
   may attempt to worship God, there always is a servant with us who must
   be told to stop at the foot of the mountain white we go and worship
   God. If not, our offerings will not be profitable to ourselves, nor
   acceptable before God.

   I shall attempt this morning, in dealing with this subject, first to
   enumerate some of those foul birds which come upon our sacrifice.
   Secondly, to show the necessity in driving them away. And thirdly, how
   we are to do it.

   I. First then, LET US MENTION SOME OF THOSE WELL-KNOWN INTRUDERS WHICH
   ARE PERPETUALLY MOLESTING OUR PEACE AND DISTURBING OUR SERVICE.

   First, there are wicked thoughts--the sons of Satan. These respect no
   sacred places. The sanctity of our closet has been violated with
   thoughts of lust--the dignity of the mercy seat has not sufficed to
   repress the vile insinuations of blasphemy. Wickedness, though it
   dwells no more in the heart of the believer, yet seeks to find a
   lodging there. And well does it effect its purpose at times for it
   tarries like a wayfaring man for a night, lingering there sufficiently
   long to mar our devotion and to prevent our having joy in fellowship
   with God. Have you not found these thoughts intruding into your house
   and on the Sabbath have not unhallowed things vexed you in the
   Sanctuary of God itself? Have you not found the sons of Belial still
   tormenting you? You would sing God's praise--perhaps a snatch of some
   unholy song suggests itself.

   You would pray unto God, but in your very access to the mercy seat you
   meet some fiend-like doubt. You would listen to the voice of God with
   all attention but wicked temptations distract you. You would thank God
   with all your soul, but folly comes in to shut your mouth and prevent
   your praise. The very best of the saints have need to hold up their
   shield to keep off the fiery darts of Satan. Upon the best ground that
   ever was plowed with the Gospel plow Satan will scatter the worst seed.
   Tares will come up in God's most fruitful field--there will be spots,
   even in our solemn feasts-- there will be these birds upon our most
   hallowed sacrifices.

   But we must resolutely resist these harpies. These evil ones are not to
   be allowed at any time--but much less in the service of God. We must
   guard against them at all times and in all seasons, but much more when
   we stand in the presence of Him who says, "Put off your shoes from off
   your feet, for the place whereon you stands is holy ground." In company
   with these foul vultures fly those ravenous kites called worldly
   thoughts which spring from the force of habit. The wheels have been
   running the last six days in this direction--it is not quite so easy to
   reverse the action and to make them go the other way. We have been
   sinking, sinking, sinking in the miry clay of daily business--it is not
   very easy for the soul that lies cleaving to the dust to rise at once
   towards Heaven.

   It is no wonder when you have so many things to think of in this acre
   of competition that the ledger should lie there in front of the pew
   instead of the Bible--and that at times the day-book should come in
   when your hand holds the hymnbook, or that you should be thinking of a
   bad debt, or of a long account which is rather precarious--instead of
   meditating upon the faithfulness of God and of pardons bought with
   blood. These traffickers molest the very temple and we have not always
   the scourge of small cords to drive them out nor the commanding
   presence of the Savior, to say, "Take these things hence, it is
   written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made
   it a den of thieves."

   How many a mother comes here with all her tribe of children on her
   shoulders? How many a father comes here with thoughts of where he shall
   apprentice his eldest son or what shall become of his younger daughter?
   How many a merchant comes in and every wind that makes the windowpanes
   rattle reminds him of his ships at sea? How many a farmer is thinking
   of his land and the fitful gleams of sunshine and returning showers
   make him remember his cattle and his crops? Shops and stalls, bushels
   and scales, silks and cottons, horses and cows and even meaner things
   intrude into your house, O King of kings! Brethren, how often do some
   of you indulge in them? I hope there are none of you who keep your
   account books on Sunday and yet how common is this in London!

   There are some who shut up their shop in front and keep it open at the
   back--as if they would serve the devil and cheat the Lord! If you
   register your ledgers on Sunday, why not open your shop? You might as
   well be in the shop as in the country house--the sin is just the
   same--only you now add hypocrisy to it--by pretending to serve God when
   you do not. But how many there are, sure believers in Christ, who would
   scorn to look at the ledger on the Sunday--and yet their mind is
   hampered with accounts and debtor and creditor will be striking
   balances continually in their brain?

   Some professors on the Sabbath afternoon will be talking about the
   state of the markets and asking, "What do you think of the rise and
   fall of Consols?" "When will this terrible American war be over?" "When
   is it likely the Manchester factories will obtain full employment by
   the arrival of ship loads of cottons," or "How will Louis Napoleon pay
   his debts?" When they come up to the house of God in the evening they
   wonder how it is they do not get on with the preacher. The preacher
   might wonder how he could be of any service to such hearers. They
   wonder that the Sabbath is not a refreshment to them. But how is it
   likely to be when they still continue in their worldly
   employments--giving their hearts really to the world--though they
   profess to give their bodily presence to the service of Christ?

   Besides wicked and worldly thoughts, another set of ravens will be
   croaking over us. I mean anxious thoughts which are the fruits of our
   unbelief. "Oh," says one, "how can I help it? If you knew my condition
   in business, you would not marvel that care will come in today! Loss
   after loss, continually going backward, though with energy and
   perseverance I seek to make progress. A large family--a once extensive
   connection--the constant fear of ruin--how can I hope to chase away
   anxious thoughts and carking cares on the day of rest?" My Brother, I
   make many excuses for you. But while I make all excuses, let me remind
   you that it is written, "Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares
   for you."

   At least today there is no need that you should carry that burden. Why,
   it will be none the worse for this one day's letting alone--and it
   certainly will be none the better for this blessed day being wasted in
   fretting and worrying yourself. What if the burden is heavy? Is it not
   enough to carry it six days? Why do you need to carry it on the
   seventh? What if the toil is severe--and we will allow that it is--is
   not that the more reason why you should shorten the hours of your labor
   and not give the whole seven days to it?

   On this day pour out before God--empty out your troubles at His feet
   and leave in His hands your difficulties and your trials--believing
   that He knows them all and knows how to make them all work for your
   good. These carking cares must be chased away just as much as wicked
   thoughts, for "after all these things do the Gentiles seek."

   But sometimes in our prayers and in our Sabbath worship we are
   disturbed by those carrion crows called annoying thoughts, the
   offspring of our vanity. I will just mention some of them that you will
   think, perhaps, rather odd. But I have no doubt you know them. We have
   known, sometimes, a sister come to worship and she notices--"Why, Mrs.
   So-and-So is dressed differently from what she was last Sunday and she
   had a new bonnet the Sunday before!" O silly soul, to be allured like a
   butterfly with colors and flowers!

   Then, look at yonder Brother. There is So-and-So sitting in the
   opposite gallery that he did not want to see today at any rate, for he
   does not like the man and he feels that his very presence is a
   detriment and a drawback to the possibility of devotion. Or, perhaps,
   my Brethren, as you came in there was some little mistake at the door
   or when our friend got to the pew he found it occupied by somebody
   else. Or he is not occupying just the door-seat where he likes to sit.
   Or, perhaps, he is standing in an inconvenient place. You know these
   are all trifles, complete trifles, the most despicable of things. But
   how many there are that irritate themselves about them? And why?

   Because they have so high an opinion of their own dignity that they
   think these little things ought not to be endured by them. No, Sir, the
   aisle should be carpeted up which you walk--there should be an air
   cushion always provided, gratis, for you. There should be treadles on
   purpose to show you into the seat--and when you are there--every
   objectionable person in the congregation should be removed and
   everything should be done for your personal comfort! You say, "No, I am
   not so foolish as that." I do not know that, my dear Sir--there is the
   germ of it in most of us.

   We want so many of these little punctilious and if we are not duly
   honored we cannot worship with comfort. The thought of seeing God and
   enjoying the light of His countenance has not sufficient power over the
   carnal hearts of some to make them forget all the little inconveniences
   that must occur in vast assemblies and in a great house like this in
   which we are gathered. There are some fretty-tempered souls that cannot
   worship because some trifle not worth a moment's notice has disturbed
   their minds. Now, these feelings must be striven against--this vanity
   is not to be allowed in any one of us.

   We must denounce it and chase it out--for it only makes us little in
   the esteem of others. And if we could but see ourselves, it wound make
   us contemptible in our own sight. Oh, bless His name, when a soul is
   hungry, it little matters how it gets its Food. When a heart is really
   set on finding Christ, the man will care but little what may be his
   comfort or his discomfort. Only let the Truth of Jesus come into the
   soul, let him feed on its marrow and its fatness and he will say, "I
   would rather be doorkeeper" (and that is a very objectionable office
   for anybody--if any of you tried it you would find it very inconvenient
   to worship God after having kept the door of the Tabernacle). "I would
   rather be a door-keeper in the house of God, than dwell with comfort
   and with ease in the tents of the wicked."

   But I will mention a brood of eagles which will haunt Mount Zion--I
   mean ecclesiastical anxieties. And what do I mean by these? Why, that
   sometimes when our minds should be perfectly free for worshipping
   God--Church business, perhaps Church differences--thrust themselves
   upon us. The deacon thinks he may worry himself a little about
   something that has occurred with the poor. The elder thinks it would be
   justifiable to be thinking over the case of such-and-such a refractory
   individual whose case has troubled him. The member thinks he may be
   fretting about the dullness of the minister. The minister thinks he may
   be groaning because some in the galleries have not joined the Church.
   And mark-- all these are good things in their places--but they have no
   business at all with us when we come up to God's house to worship Him.

   Then these birds, even though they are like the sparrows that build
   under the eaves of the altar, must be driven away. Until we can get rid
   of them all we shall not find the day of rest such as it should be nor
   will our worship be acceptable before the Throne of God. Nor shall our
   own souls derive the joy they ought to have from the service and
   presence of the Lord.

   Probably in this description I have not yet touched your case but I
   will not try again, for I think you can yourself remember many things
   which haunt you. Many a ship has been built here without a dry dock.
   Many a wagonload of corn has been sold here without a sample bag. Many
   a broad acre has been planted in this chapel--many a hundred head of
   oxen has been sold here. Many a loom has been set a-going, many a
   vessel has been navigated, many a new shop front con- structed and many
   a building erected--when you might have been worshipping God. For in
   all our worship there are those who will be sending their minds gadding
   abroad over mountains of vanity when they ought to be sitting still to
   see and to understand the salvation of God.

   II. I have described the birds. I have indicated the intruders. I have
   raised the hue and cry against them. Let me now seek to STIR YOU UP TO
   CHASE THEM AWAY.

   Distracting cares must be driven away, first, for your own sake.
   Brethren, some of us have been alarmed to see how the lunatic asylums
   are everywhere needing fresh wings and the number of inmates so rapidly
   increasing. If there is one reason above all others for this, I venture
   to assert it is the neglect of the Sabbath Day. No human brain can bear
   the perpetual toils of business except it knows how to pause and oil
   the machinery by turning the mind in some other direction. Here we have
   merchants whose brains are exercised from the time they rise till the
   time they go to rest, yes, and their very dreams are disturbed by great
   schemes and plans.

   And then, when the first day of the week comes, they are scheming
   still. Instead of pulling up and letting the horses of the mind take a
   rest so that they may start afresh in the chariot on the next week-
   day, it is on, on, on, on--and then they wonder that the poor creatures
   at last flag with weariness, or even drop dead upon the road. Flog them
   as you will, your minds cannot keep always at this stretch. We, whose
   hardest toil is on this day and who find that the great cares of a
   Church so large as this will follow us to our bed and that all the days
   of the week we are occupied thereby--find it to be one of our sternest
   trials to resist the fear that our reason may reel.

   It is too hard for any man, even for the minister of God, to be always
   thinking, always working--even though that work be for God Himself. You
   know what Solomon says. He says--"If the iron is blunt and he does not
   whet the edge, then must he have more strength--but wisdom is
   profitable to direct," by which he means to say if the man would stop
   and whet his tool, it would be sharp and he would not need to expend
   half the strength--and he would do far more work. But here you have
   some who think the Sunday must be all work, work, work. Instead of
   which, if they were to stop to whet the edge of the tool, they would do
   far more in the end, while their soul would not be half so soon worn
   out.

   You have heard persons say, "I would sooner wear out than rust out."
   There is no occasion for either if we would but keep this day of rest
   as a perfect rest to our heart and soul. But that we can never do
   unless we love Christ for a Sabbath is an impossibility to an
   unconverted man. If we would but, as Christians resting in Christ keep
   this first day of rest--giving our souls thorough ease--there would be
   no fear of the brain giving way. We should labor on, even to a good old
   age and then die in peace and our works would follow us. I cannot
   expect you to believe me if I should say you can carry on your business
   all the days of the week without care, without diligence, without very
   earnest thought. We must be "diligent in business," and you must put
   both your hands to the wheel if you would make it go.

   But do leave the wheel alone today. Now, have done with it. You will
   madden yourself, or, if it come not to so sad a climax as that you will
   destroy your comfort, destroy the acuteness of your mental powers if
   you do not give them rest today. I am no preacher of the old legal
   Sabbath, those who are teachers of the Law insist upon that quite
   enough. As for me, I am a preacher of the Gospel and rejoice that
   believers are not "under the Law, but under grace." A worldling is
   under the Law and it is his duty to remember the seventh day to keep it
   holy for so runs the Law which is his taskmaster.

   But I am not under the Law and therefore I keep this day--not the
   seventh, but the first day of the week on which my Savior rose again
   from the dead--keep it not of Law, but of grace--keep it not as a
   slavish bondage, not as a day on which I am chained and hampered with
   restraints against my will. But I keep it as a day in which I may take
   holy pleasure in serving God and in adoring before His Throne. The
   Sabbath of the Jew is to him a task. The Lord's Day of the Christian,
   the first day of the week, is to him a joy, a day of rest, of peace and
   of thanksgiving. And if you Christian men can earnestly drive away all
   distractions so that you can really rest today it will be good for your
   bodies, good for your souls, good mentally, good spiritually, good
   temporally and good eternally.

   Let me give you a second reason. You will find if you are able to take
   a perfect rest by driving away these evil thoughts when you are
   worshipping God, that you will do your work during the other days of
   the week far better. It was an old Popish folly to try and tell what
   kind of weather there would be by the weather on Sunday--"If it rains
   before mass, rain all the week more or less." Now, we do not believe
   that literally, but we do believe it in a spiritual sense. If you have
   a bad Sabbath-Day, you will have a bad week but if you have a good day
   of rest you will find it good with your souls the whole week long. Not
   that you will be without trouble all the week--that would not be good
   for you--but you shall never be without grace during the week.

   Nor if you have peace on the Sunday shall you be without peace on the
   Monday. The old Puritans used to say, "The first day of the week was
   the market-day." And you know in the country villages in those times,
   their being fewer shops than there are now, they went to market to lay
   in stock for the week and if the good wife bought a small quantity of
   cheese, or meat, why then they were on short commons the whole week
   through. So is it with us. This is our market-day and if we gain but
   little today we shall have slender diet during the other days. But if
   we get the basket loaded well--if we have reason to say, "The Lord has
   satisfied my soul with fatness and caused my spirit to delight in His
   Word"--you will find that during the week your peace shall be like a
   river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.

   And then let me remind you, in the next place, that the character of
   this day demands that you should get rid of these thoughts. This is the
   day on which God said, "Let there be light and there was light." This
   is the day on which Christ rose again from the dead for our
   justification. Christ's finished atonement made an end of sin and
   brought in everlasting righteousness on this blessed day. This is the
   day on which the Holy Spirit came down from Heaven--the day on which
   the rushing mighty wind and the cloven tongues descended upon the
   Apostles. Therefore, according to apostolic custom, do we keep this day
   as the day of light, the day of resurrection, the day of the descent of
   the Holy Spirit the Comforter.

   Now, it is inconsistent with such a day--the day of light--for us to be
   in darkness. It is inconsistent with the day of resurrection for us to
   be raking in this grave of the world. It is inconsistent with this day
   of the descent of the Spirit for us to be thinking of carnal things and
   forgetting the things which are above. It was a Romish tradition that
   on Easter morning the sun always danced--and to my mind on this day
   when Jesus rose and left the dead, if the sun does not dance, our heart
   does. And if the world is not clad in sunlight, yet our soul is. And if
   today the very sea does not clap its hands for gladness, yet shall our
   voices send forth gladsome Psalms.

   Oh, this is not the day of bondage. Go under the whip of Moses who
   choose it to be so. This is the day offreedom and of delight--the day
   of peace and calm and rest and tranquility. Work and thoughts of work,
   doubts, fears, legality, self-righteousness are all inconsistent with
   the spirit of the day, for Christ has said, "It is finished!" So we
   must cease to work, too, not only with our hands but with our
   souls--working no more for life, for that is given. Working no more for
   justification--for that is concluded. But today resting in Christ, for
   "It is finished!" And finding peace in Him, for "there is no
   condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."

   We must leave all our cares with Him, for "nothing can separate us from
   the love of Christ" and then give up our souls to a glorious and
   victorious holy day which shall be a preparation for the eternal
   enjoyment of the perpetual feast of the glorified at the table of God
   in Heaven.

   Now, for this reason--because they are so inconsistent with this day--I
   pray you get rid of all these obnoxious thoughts. George Herbert has
   put all I could say and far more, into two or three of his quaint
   verses, which I will give you--

   "The other days and you
   Make up one man; whose face you are,
   Knocking at Heaven with your brow--
   The working days are the back part;
   The burden of the week lies there,
   Making the whole to stoop and bow,
   Till your release appears.
   Sundays the piilars are,
   On which Heaven's palace arched lies--
   The other days fill up the spare
   And hollow room with vanities.
   They are the fruitful beds and borders
   In God's rich garden--that is bare
   Which parts their ranks and orders.
   You are a day of mirth--
   And where the weekdays trail on ground,
   Your flight is higher, as your birth--
   O let me take you at the bound, Leaping with you from seven to seven,
   Till that we both, being tossed from earth, Fly hand in hand to
   Heaven!"

   Oh that is the true way of living--leaping from seven to seven, passing
   over the six days, that we may get once more to the solid resting place
   of the day of rest. Be it so with you, Brethren, so when the fowls come
   down upon the sacrifice you may chase them away.

   Another argument. The vain or anxious thought, when we are engaged in
   the worship of God, must be striven against because it must be grievous
   to the Holy Spirit. How can we expect that we shall have His presence
   and His assistance if we give Him not our hearts? Good Mr. Manton says,
   "If a man should send to a place of worship a skin stuffed with straw,
   it would be thought to be an insult but he might as well do that as go
   there himself with his mind stuffed with vanities." Was it not a crime
   of old--"This people draws near to Me with their lips, but their heart
   is far from Me"? Can you conceive it enough to make long prayers if
   your minds are occupied all the while about the widow's house, or
   courting the approbation of man?

   It is vain for us to bring these oblations unto God, for His
   requirement is, "My son, give Me your heart." How can the Lord, the
   high and lofty God ever accept the sacrifice where the heart is not
   found? It was considered to be one of the worst omens in the Roman
   sacrifices if the augurs discovered that the victim had no heart. So it
   must always be an ill omen to us, if in our worship our heart is not
   set on God and intently engaged in His service. O Spirit of God! how
   many of us have lost our comfort and the joy and peace of our faith
   because we have not--when we have been upon our knees or engaged in
   sacred Songs, or in listening to the Word--compelled our thoughts to
   keep at home and bow down to the Most High?

   What do you think? If you were in the presence of a king would he
   consider it to be comely or decent if you should forget what you came
   there for? If while you offered your petition your mind should be
   engaged on other matters? Or if you should turn your back upon him to
   gaze out of the windows while His Majesty spoke to you? And what are
   you doing when your soul is looking to worldliness while God's own face
   is speaking to you and His Word is being read in your ears? Oh, this is
   to insult the Most High. Angels veil their faces and shall our eyes be
   gadding abroad? Angels bow themselves before Him and continually cry,
   "Holy, holy, holy" and shall we insult the Divine Majesty by coming
   here with unholy thoughts, or with unhallowed anxieties, not veiling
   our faces, but permitting them to receive all that the light of day can
   reveal to us of vanity, of deceit and of care? O God! Give us grace to
   know what You are--then shall we understand how You are to be
   worshipped in spirit and in Truth!

   I shall add once more--these thoughts and cares must be driven away for
   if you do not strive against them they will increase and multiply. This
   is a growing habit. I have not to complain in this congregation of any
   want of attention during the service but I have had the pain of seeing
   assemblies where the wandering eye has been indulged till at last it
   would be as pleasant and perhaps as profitable to address a load of
   bricks as to address the people who were assembled. They come in
   listlessly, some of them a half-an-hour after the service begins. And
   in some where the habit has grown worse and worse, the minister
   generally knows when to leave off because he sees the friends are
   coming in to see the others go out.

   They come gradually later and later and become more and more careless
   about what is uttered till an angel from Heaven would scarcely make
   them keep open their heavy eyes and a Prophet sent from God could not
   stir their stolid souls. The force of habit is like the velocity of a
   falling stone--it increases in ever multiplying proportions. If I have
   indulged one unbelieving thought, there has always been another to
   follow it. If I have allowed some little disturbance in the
   congregation to cast me down and distract my thoughts there has been
   another and another and another--till I have been in the pitiable
   condition of a minister who has been half afraid of his congregation.

   And it will be so with you. We must strive against it! We must get rid
   of these carking thoughts! We must chase these birds from the
   sacrifice! Away with you! Away with you! We cannot have you here! We
   must, we will worship God and if one effort will not give us quiet, we
   must try again--for it must be done--or else we shall destroy our peace
   and render the Sabbath as hard a day as any of the other days of the
   week, while the service of God will be to us a vanity and to Him a vain
   oblation.

   III. I am now, then, in the last place, to try and briefly SHOW YOU HOW
   TO DO IT.

   And we begin by saying first of all, set your heart upon it, for when
   the soul is set upon a thing then it is likely to accomplish it. Go up
   to God's house, saying, "I must give my soul to eternal matters today
   and I will. My soul cries after God as a thirsty stag in the wilderness
   brays after the water-brooks. O God, my heart is fixed today. I must
   have done with earth, I must begin with Heaven, I must say to all
   cares, sit still and I must say to my soul, Wake up my glory, wake,
   psaltery and harp, I myself will awake right early to praise God. And
   when the soul is thus set upon the matter there will be half the battle
   already fought and the victory almost won.

   But when you have done this, remember next let the preparation of your
   heart before coming to the sacrifice assist you when you shall be
   there. We are told men ought not to preach without preparation.
   Granted. But we add, men ought not to hear without preparation. Which,
   think you, needs the most preparation, the sower or the ground? I would
   have the sower come with clean hands but I would have the ground well
   plowed and harrowed, well turned over and the clods broken before the
   seed is cast in. It seems to me that there is more preparation needed
   by the ground than by the sower--more by the hearer than by the
   preacher.

   But this is forgotten--men come to market having made up their minds
   what they want to sell and what they will buy--and they give their
   attention to how markets go and they act accordingly. But when men come
   into these places of worship they do not know what they want--they come
   they know not what for. Perhaps it is to see the place, or hear the
   preacher--and they go away and they have no spiritual profit. How could
   they? What profit would a man make if he went there without a purpose
   and stayed there without looking after his own interests? Prepare your
   hearts privately by communion with God and you shall have communion
   with Him in public. Meet God in your house and you shall meet Him in
   His house. What if the preacher should not profit you?--it is not the
   preacher you came after, but his God.

   Be but wakeful and you will meet his God in the hymn, or in the
   chapter. Your heart must be in a right state beforehand. You know,
   Brethren, if you have a lake and the water is all rippled, there may be
   a cedar standing on its banks, but there cannot be perfect reflection
   when the water is disturbed. But when the water is as clear as glass,
   then whatever there is on the bank is reflected. Ah, you must bring
   your heart calm and quiet to the house of God or else there cannot be
   an unbroken reflection of the image of God upon your spirits. Oh, seek
   to come up here as a bride adorned for her husband--as wedding guests
   going to the wedding feast with their garments on--expecting that they
   shall be made glad. Come here as hungry ones pleading for food and
   thirsty souls all longing for the Water of Life.

   But, this done, above all, cry to the Spirit of God for help to make
   your spirit rest. You have trouble. He is the Comforter. You have
   infirmities. But "the Spirit itself also helps our infirmities." You
   have sins. But the Spirit of God applies the peace-speaking blood of
   Christ, gives you rest in conscience. Cry unto Him! Cry unto Him as a
   little child cries to its parent when it has attempted something which
   it cannot perform. Say, "Farther, help me! I would worship You-- O
   enable me to do so. I would see You--touch my eyes with heavenly
   eye-salve. I would hear You--open my ears today to Your voice and seal
   them up to all beside. I would feed on You--Lord, open my lips for You,
   the Bread of Heaven and let me feed on nothing save Yourself." This
   done, He is a God that hears prayer and He will grant you the desire of
   your heart.

   Then, when you have thus done and you come up to the house of God,
   still seek to continue in the same frame of mind, remembering in whose
   immediate Presence you are. A Spartan youth was holding the censor at a
   sacrifice when Alexander was offering a victim. It chanced that while
   he held the censor a hot coal fed upon his hand. The youth stood still
   and never flinched, lest by any utterance or cry the sacrifice should
   be disturbed. For he said he was in the presence of Alexander and he
   would not have the sacrifice interrupted for him. And thus he bore the
   pain of the burning coal.

   Let us remember that Spartan youth, but adding to what he said--"We are
   in the Presence of the Almighty God." Then, if there is something which
   annoys us let us bear it unflinchingly, for we stand before Him for
   whom it is blessed to suffer and who will surely reward them that seek
   Him in spirit and in Truth. It is written in Josephus that certain of
   the Jewish priests, at the time of the taking of the temple, were
   standing at the altar. They were waving to and fro the slowed censers
   and offering their prayers and their victims. The Romans rushed in,
   sword in hand. There were shrieks and cries, murders and deaths.

   The pavement was stained with blood. But the priests took no notice
   whatever, nor would they turn from their sacrifice till they were
   themselves slain. Oh, for something of their devotedness to God, that
   even death itself might not interrupt our songs! But when it comes may
   we be found wrapped in meditation, high hymning our great Creator,
   expecting

   His glory and waiting for His appearance. Many instances we might quote
   of the attention which the superstitious heathen paid to their worship.
   Shall we be behind them in the reality and sincerity of our adoration
   of the Most High and Holy God? No, let us, keeping our minds always
   fixed upon beholding the face of God, thus seek to chase away the birds
   from the sacrifice.

   Another means I will give you--take care that your faith is in active
   exercise, or else you cannot chase away those thoughts. Rest in the
   Lord and wait patiently for Him. Be still and know that He is God.
   Trust in Him at all times. Pour out your hearts before Him. Wait on the
   Lord, be of good courage. Depend upon His power and His wisdom and thus
   you shall have no thought to trouble you of what you shall eat, or what
   you shall drink, or whether you shall be clothed. But like the birds of
   the air, the lilies of the valley which keep perpetual Sabbath, so
   shall you sing and rest and Christ shall be glorified in you.

   Take care also that you attend a ministry which draws you from
   earth--for there are some dead ministries which make the Sabbath-Day
   more intolerable than any of the other days of the week. Such are the
   controversial ministries in which the brain is set to ivory and
   exercised and troubled with questions and dilemmas and disputes and
   contentions. I will not say it is wicked to preach such sermons on the
   Sabbath-Day. But I will say it is not consistent with Sabbath rest, for
   that rest is as much for the soul as for the body. The Sabbath was not
   made alone for the animal part of us, but for the spirit, that it might
   have a deep, profound calm, the ante past of the rest which remains for
   the people of God.

   Seek a ministry that is full of Christ, full of Covenant faithfulness.
   A ministry not of "of and "but," but of "shall" and "will." Seek a
   ministry which vindicates the Spirit's power. Which, while it teaches
   fully the sinner's abject helplessness, dwells much upon the absolute
   Omnipotence of God to save. Seek one which preaches a full Christ for
   empty sinners, whose theme is death and resurrection, whose object it
   is to make Christ precious to your heart and so to compel you to trust
   in Him. Thus you shall find it more easy to rest on the Sabbath-Day
   than if you should attend under the legal preaches whose theme is moral
   duties. Or under the mere doctrinal preacher whose object is contention
   and fighting. Or under the mere experimental preacher whose aim shall
   be to stir up the filthy mud of your heart--instead of pouring into you
   the pure clean water of the Truth as it is in Jesus.

   O my Brothers and Sisters! I know how many there are of you who look
   forward all the week long to this day. And there are times when some of
   us, when we awake in the morning can spring from our beds saying,
   "Thank God, this is the day of rest." Today we can say, "Now, I am not
   to go to my toil today--farewell, the bricklayer's trowel or the
   carpenter's hammer--I have not to go to my books today. The high stool
   and the desk and the pen are put away. I am not today to look after the
   servants and the fields and the barn. Not today to walk along the shop
   and see how trade is prospering or how it is receding. It is all over
   now. Just nail up those doors and leave them alone--have nothing to do
   with them.

   "Do not tell me that I have a house, or that I have anything to think
   of, except Christ Jesus, His Father and the Holy Spirit. Get you gone,
   vain thoughts! I cannot meddle with you, keep your distance, I have had
   enough of you. You have had your six days and you have pinched and
   pained me enough. Now my soul has passed through the wilderness, sits
   down at the well of Elim, sends down its pitcher, draws up draughts of
   rest, climbs the tree path, plucks the sweet fruits and enjoys them in
   anticipation of the feast before the Throne of God."

   Ah, this will be good for your bodies, good for your souls, good for
   you in all respects. And my sermon shall not be in vain this morning if
   I have made you think every Sunday, "The birds will come down on the
   carcasses, but I will drive them away." Nor will it be in vain if, by
   God's grace, you will come to look not only on this one day but on your
   seasons of prayer and meditation as being unloading seasons. When the
   ship that has been sinking in the water almost to its edge and seems as
   if it would go down altogether is unloaded--and rises up and floats
   higher than it did before. When the eagle gets the chain untied and
   leaps from the rock, up to its own native eyrie in the skies--when your
   poor bandaged captive soul that has been lying in the dark dungeon
   comes out to perfect liberty and takes its stroll abroad, forgetful of
   the prison and the chain.

   Oh, for those heavens on earth--those precious queens of days! Time is
   the ring and these Sabbaths are the diamonds set in it. The ordinary
   days are but the walks in the garden, hand trod and barren. But the
   Sabbaths are the beds full of rich choice flowers. This day is Care's
   balm and cure, the couch of time, the haven of divine calms. Come, my
   soul, throw yourself upon this couch. For now the bed is long enough
   and the coverlet is broad enough--rest and take your ease-- for you
   have come unto Jesus, to a finished sacrifice, to a completed
   righteousness and your soul may be satisfied in the Lord and your
   spirit may rejoice in the Lord your God. This is to keep Sabbath-Days.

   An unconverted man cannot do this and there are many of you, I fear,
   here present who never knew what Sabbath means--never had a Lord's Day
   in your lives. In vain do you keep the day unless your hearts keep it
   too. Oh, may your hearts know how to find in Christ a perfect rest!
   Then shall the land have rest and shall keep her Sabbaths. May God give
   you grace to know your sin and enable you to fly to the Savior and find
   in Him all your soul wants. May He enable you to rest in Christ today
   and then you shall keep Sabbaths on earth till you keep the eternal
   Sabbath before the Throne, "for thus says the Spirit, They rest from
   their labors."

   "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ" and you shall have rest. Trust Him
   and so shall you be saved and your spirit shall be at ease.
     __________________________________________________________________

                         Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit

   "IT IS FINISHED!"

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 1, 1861,

   BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is
   finished: and He bowed His head and gave up the ghost." John 19:30.

   MY Brethren, I would have you attentively observe the singular
   clearness, power and quickness of the Savior's mind in the last agonies
   of death. When pains and groans attend the last hour they frequently
   have the effect of discomposing the mind so that it is not possible for
   the dying man to collect his thoughts, or having collected them, to
   utter them so that they can be understood by others. In no case could
   we expect a remarkable exercise of memory or a profound judgment upon
   deep subjects from an expiring man. But the Redeemer's last acts were
   full of wisdom and prudence although His sufferings were beyond all
   measure excruciating.

   Remark how clearly He perceived the significance of every type! How
   plainly He could read with dying eye those Divine symbols which the
   eyes of angels could only desire to look into! He saw the secrets which
   have bewildered sages and astonished seers all fulfilled in His own
   body. Nor must we fail to observe the power and comprehensiveness by
   which He grasped the chain which binds the shadowy past with the
   sun-lit present. We must not forget the brilliance of that intelligence
   which threaded all the ceremonies and sacrifices on one string of
   thought, beheld all the prophecies as one great revelation and all the
   promises as the heralds of one Person and then said of the whole, "'It
   is finished," "finished in Me."

   What quickness of mind was that which enabled Him to traverse all the
   centuries of prophecy, to penetrate the eternity of the Covenant and
   then to anticipate the eternal glories! And all this when He is mocked
   by multitudes of enemies and when His hands and feet are nailed to the
   Cross. What force of mind must the Savior have possessed to soar above
   those Alps of Agony which touched the very clouds. In what a singular
   mental condition must He have been during the period of His
   crucifixion--to be able to review the whole roll of Inspiration! Now
   this remark may not seem to be of any great value but I think its value
   lies in certain inferences that may be drawn from it.

   We have sometimes heard it said, "How could Christ, in so short a time,
   bear suffering which should be equivalent to the torments--the eternal
   torments of Hell?" Our reply is we are not capable ofjudging what the
   Son of God might do even in a moment, much less what He might do and
   what He might suffer in His life and in His death. It has been
   frequently affirmed by persons who have been rescued from drowning that
   the mind of a drowning man is singularly active. One who, after being
   some time in the water was at last painfully restored, said that the
   whole of his history seemed to come before his mind while he was
   sinking and that if anyone had asked him how long he had been in the
   water, he should have said twenty years, whereas he had only been there
   for a moment or two.

   The wild romance of Mahomet's journey upon Alborak is not an unfitting
   illustration. He affirmed that when the angel came in vision to take
   him on his celebrated journey to Jerusalem he went through all the
   seven heavens and saw all the wonders thereof. And yet he was gone so
   short a time that though the angel's wing had touched a basin of water
   when they started, they returned soon enough to prevent the water from
   being spilt. The long dream of this epileptic impostor may really have
   occupied but a second of time. The intellect of mortal man is such that
   if God wills it--when it is in certain states--it can think out
   centuries of thought at once. It can go through in one instant what we
   should have supposed would have taken years upon years of time for it
   to know or feel.

   We think, therefore, that from the Savior's singular clearness and
   quickness of intellect upon the Cross it is very possible that He did
   in the space of two or three hours endure not only the agony which
   might have been contained in centuries, but even an equivalent for that
   which might be comprehended in everlasting punishment. At any rate, it
   is not for us to say that it could not be so. When the Deity is arrayed
   in manhood, then manhood becomes omnipotent to suffer. And just as the
   feet of Christ were once almighty to tread the seas, so now was His
   whole body become almighty to dive into the great waters, to endure an
   immersion in "unknown agonies."

   Do not, I pray, let us attempt to measure Christ's sufferings by the
   finite one of our own ignorant reason, but let us know and believe that
   what He endured there was accepted by God as an equivalent for all our
   pains. And therefore it could not have been a trifle, but must have
   been all that Hart conceived it to be, when he says He bore--

   "All that incarnate God could bear, With strength enough, but none to
   spare."

   My discourse will, I have no doubt, more fully illustrate the remark
   with which I have commenced--let us proceed to it at once. First, let
   us hear the text and understand it. Then let us hear it and wonder at
   it. And then, thirdly, let us hear it and proclaim it.

   I. LET US HEAR THE TEXT AND UNDERSTAND IT.

   The Son of God has been made Man. He has had a life of perfect virtue
   and of total self-denial. He has been all that life-long despised and
   rejected of men, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. His
   enemies have been legion. His friends have been few and those few
   faithless. He is at last delivered over into the hands of them that
   hate Him. He is arrested while in the act of prayer. He is arraigned
   before both the spiritual and temporal courts. He is robed in mockery
   and then enrobed in shame. He is set upon His throne in scorn and then
   tied to the pillar in cruelty. He is declared innocent and yet He is
   delivered up by the judge who ought to have preserved Him from His
   persecutors.

   He is dragged through the streets of that Jerusalem which had killed
   the Prophets and would now crimson itself with the blood of the
   Prophets' Master. He is brought to the Cross. He is nailed fast to the
   cruel wood. The sun burns Him. His cruel wounds increase the fever. God
   forsakes Him. "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" contains the
   concentrated anguish of the world. While He hangs there in mortal
   conflict with sin and Satan, His heart is broken, His limbs are
   dislocated. Heaven fails Him, for the sun is veiled in darkness. Earth
   forsakes Him, for "His disciples forsook Him and fled." He looks
   everywhere and there is none to help. He casts His eye around and there
   is no man that can share His toil.

   He treads the winepress alone. And of all the people there is none with
   Him. On, on, He goes, steadily determined to drink the last dreg of
   that cup which must not pass from Him if His Father's will is done. At
   last He cries--"It is finished" and He gives up the ghost. Hear it,
   Christians, hear this shout of triumph as it rings today with all the
   freshness and force which it had eighteen hundred years ago! Hear it
   from the Sacred Word and from the Savior's lips and may the Spirit of
   God open your ears that you may hear as the learned and understand what
   you hear!

   1. What meant the Savior, then, by this--"It is finished"? He meant,
   first of all, that all the types, promises and prophecies were now
   fully accomplished in Him. Those who are acquainted with the original
   will find that the words--"It is finished," occur twice within three
   verses. In the 28th verse we have the word in the Greek. It is
   translated in our version "accomplished," but there it stands--"After
   this, Jesus knowing that all things were now finished, that the
   Scripture might be fulfilled, says, 'I thirst.' " And then He
   afterwards said, "It is finished." This leads us to see His meaning
   very clearly that all the Scripture was now fulfilled, that when He
   said, "It is finished," the whole Book, from the first to the last, in
   both the Law and the Prophets, was finished in Him.

   There is not a single jewel of promise, from that first emerald which
   fell on the threshold of Eden, to that last sapphire-stone of Malachi
   which was not set in the breast-plate of the true High Priest. No,
   there is not a type, from the red heifer downward to the turtle-dove,
   from the hyssop upwards to Solomon's temple itself which was not
   fulfilled in Him. And not a prophecy, whether spoken on Chebar's bank,
   or on the shores of Jordan, not a dream of wise men, whether they had
   received it in Babylon, or in Samaria, or in Judea which was not now
   fully worked out in Christ Jesus. And, Brethren, what a wonderful thing
   it is, that a mass of promises and prophecies and types apparently so
   heterogeneous, should all be accomplished in one Person!

   Take away Christ for one moment and I will give the Old Testament to
   any wise man living and say to him, "Take this. This is a problem, go
   home and construct in your imagination an ideal character who shall
   exactly fit all that which is herein foreshadowed. Remember, He must be
   a Prophet like unto Moses and yet a champion like Joshua. He must be an
   Aaron and a Melchisedek. He must be both David and Solomon, Noah and
   Jonah, Judah and Joseph. No, He must not only be the lamb that was
   slain and the scapegoat that was not slain, the turtle-dove that was
   dipped in blood and the priest who slew the bird, but He must be the
   altar, the tabernacle, the mercy seat and the showbread."

   No, to puzzle this wise man further, we remind him of prophecies so
   apparently contradictory that one would think they never could meet in
   one man--such as these, "All kings shall fall down before Him and all
   nations shall serve Him." And yet, "He is despised and rejected of
   men." He must begin by showing a man born of a virgin mother--"A virgin
   shall conceive and bear a Son." He must be a man without spot or
   blemish, but yet one upon whom the Lord does cause to meet the
   iniquities of us all. He must be a glorious one, a Son of David, but
   yet a root out of a dry ground. Now I say it boldly--if all the
   greatest intellects of all the ages could set themselves to work out
   this problem, to invent another key to the types and prophecies--they
   could not do it.

   I see you, you wise men--you are poring over these hieroglyphs--one
   suggests one key and it opens two or three of the figures. But you
   cannot proceed for the next one puts you at a nonplus. Another learned
   man suggests another clue-- but that fails most where it is most
   needed--and another and another and thus these wondrous hieroglyphs
   traced of old by Moses in the wilderness must be left unexplained, till
   one comes forward and proclaims--"The Cross of Christ and the Son of
   God incarnate"--then the whole is clear, so that he that runs may read
   and a child may understand.

   Blessed Savior! In You we see everything fulfilled which God spoke of
   in old by the Prophets. In You we discover everything carried out in
   substance which God had set before us in the dim mist of sacrificial
   smoke. Glory be unto Your name! "It is finished"--everything is summed
   up in YOU!

   2. But the words have richer meaning. Not only were all types and
   prophecies and promises thus finished in Christ, but all the typical
   sacrifices of the old Jewish Law were now abolished as well as
   explained.

   They were finished--finished in Him. Will you imagine for a minute the
   saints in Heaven looking down upon what was done on earth--Abel and his
   friends who had long ago before the flood been sitting in the glories
   above? They watch while God lights star after star in Heaven. Promise
   after promise flashes light upon the thick darkness of earth. They see
   Abraham come and they look down and wonder while they see God revealing
   Christ to Abraham in the person of Isaac. They gaze just as the angels
   do, desiring to look into the mystery. From the times of Noah, Abraham,
   Isaac and Jacob they see altars smoking, recognitions of the fact that
   man is guilty and the spirits before the Throne say, "Lord, when will
   sacrifices finish?--when will blood no more be shed?"

   The offering of bloody sacrifices soon increases. It is now carried on
   by men ordained for the purpose. Aaron and the high priests and the
   Levites every morning and every evening offer a lamb, while great
   sacrifices are offered on special occasions. Bullocks groan, rams
   bleed, the necks of doves are wrung and all the while the saints are
   crying, "O Lord, how long?--when shall the sacrifice cease?" Year after
   year the high priest goes within the veil and sprinkles the mercy seat
   with blood. The next year sees him do the like and the next and again
   and again and again.

   David offers hecatombs--Solomon slaughters tens of thousands. Hezekiah
   offers rivers of oil, Josiah gives thousands of the fat of fed beasts
   and the spirits of the just say, "Will it never be complete?--will the
   sacrifice never be finished?-- must there always be a remembrance of
   sin?--will not the last High Priest soon come?--will not the order and
   line of Aaron soon lay aside its labor, because the whole is finished?"
   Not yet, not yet, you spirits of the just--for after the captivity the
   slaughter of victims still remains. But lo, He comes! Gaze more
   intently than before--He comes who is to close the line of priests! Lo,
   there He stands, clothed--not now with linen ephod, not with ringing
   bells, nor with sparkling jewels on His breastplate--but arrayed in
   human flesh He stands!

   His Cross, His altar, His body and His soul--the victim Himself--the
   Priest and lo, before His God He offers up His own soul within the veil
   of thick darkness which has covered Him from the sight of men.
   Presenting His own blood He enters within the veil, sprinkles it there
   and coming forth from the midst of the darkness, He looks down on the
   astonished earth and upward to expectant Heaven and cries, "It is
   finished! It is finished!"--that for which you looked so long is fully
   achieved and perfected forever!

   3. The Savior meant, we doubt not, that in this moment His perfect
   obedience was finished. It was necessary, in order that man might be
   saved, that the Law of God should be kept--for no man can see God's
   face except he is perfect in righteousness. Christ undertook to keep
   God's Law for His people, to obey its every mandate and preserve its
   every statute intact. Throughout the first years of His life He
   privately obeyed, honoring His father and His mother. During the next
   three years He publicly obeyed God, spending and being spent in His
   service, till if you would know what a man would be whose life was
   wholly conformed to the Law of God, you may see him in Christ--

   "My dear Redeemer and my Lord, I read my duty in Your Word, But in Your
   life the Law appears Drawn out in living characters."

   It needed nothing to complete the perfect virtue of life but the entire
   obedience of death. He who would serve God must be willing not only to
   give all his soul and his strength while he lives, but he must stand
   prepared to resign life when it shall be for God's glory. Our perfect
   Substitute put the last stroke upon His work by dying and therefore He
   claims to be absolved from further debt, for "it is finished." Yes,
   glorious Lamb of God, it is finished! You have been tempted in all
   points like as we are, yet have You sinned in none! It was finished,
   for the last arrow out of Satan's quiver had been shot at You. The last
   blasphemous insinuation, the last wicked temptation had spent its fury
   on You.

   The prince of this world had surveyed You from head to foot, within and
   without, but he had found nothing in You. Now your trial is over, You
   have finished the work which Your Father gave You to do and so finished
   it that Hell itself cannot accuse You of a flaw. And now, looking upon
   Your entire obedience you say, "It is finished," and we Your people
   believe most joyously that it is even so. Brothers and Sisters, this is
   more than you or I could have said if Adam had never fallen. If we had
   been in the garden of Eden today we could never have boasted a finished
   righteousness--since a creature can never finish its obedience.

   As long as a creature lives it is bound to obey and as long as a free
   agent exists on earth it would be in danger of violating the vow of its
   obedience. If Adam had been in Paradise from the first day until now,
   he might fall tomorrow. Left to himself there would be no reason why
   that king of nature should not yet be uncrowned. But Christ the
   Creator, who finished creation, has perfected redemption. God can ask
   no more. The Law has received all it claims, the largest extent
   ofjustice cannot demand another hour's obedience. It is done, it is
   complete. The last throw of the shuttle is over and the robe is woven
   from the top throughout. Let us rejoice, then, in this that the Master
   meant by His dying cry that His perfect righteousness wherewith He
   covers us was finished.

   4. But next, the Savior meant that the satisfaction which He rendered
   to the justice of God was finished. The debt was now, to the last
   farthing, all discharged. The atonement and propitiation were made once
   and for all and forever--by the one offering made in Jesus' body on the
   Tree. There was the cup, Hell was in it, the Savior drank it--not a sip
   and then a pause--not a draught and then a ceasing. He drained it till
   there is not a dreg left for any of His people. The great ten-thronged
   whip of the Law was worn out upon His back. There is no lash left with
   which to smite one for whom Jesus died. The great cannonade of God's
   justice has exhausted all its ammunition--there is nothing left to be
   hurled against a child of God.

   Sheathed is your sword, O Justice! Silenced is your thunder, O Law!
   There remains nothing now of all the griefs and pains and agonies which
   chosen sinners ought to have suffered for their sins, for Christ has
   endured all for His own Beloved and "it is finished." Brethren, it is
   more than the damned in Hell can ever say. If you and I had been
   constrained to make satisfaction to God's justice by being sent to Hell
   we never could have said, "It is finished." Christ has paid the debt
   which all the torments of eternity could not have paid. Lost souls, you
   suffer today as you have suffered for ages past, but God's justice is
   not satisfied, His Law is not fully magnified.

   And when time shall fail and eternity shall have been flying on, still
   forever--the uttermost never having been paid, the chastisement for sin
   must fall upon unpardoned sinners. But Christ has done what all the
   flames of the pit could not do in all eternity. He has magnified the
   Law and made it honorable and now from the Cross he cries--"It is
   finished."

   5. Once again--when He said, "It is finished," Jesus had totally
   destroyed the power of Satan, of sin and of death. The Champion had
   entered the lists to do battle for our soul's redemption against all
   our foes. He met Sin. Horrible, terrible, all-but omnipotent Sin nailed
   Him to the Cross. But in that deed, Christ nailed Sin also to the tree.
   There they both did hang together--Sin and Sin's Destroyer. Sin
   destroyed Christ and by that destruction Christ destroyed Sin. Next
   came the second enemy, Satan. He assaulted Christ with all his hosts.
   Calling up his Myrmidons from every corner and quarter of the universe,
   he said, "Awake, arise, or be forever fallen! Here is our great Enemy
   who has sworn to bruise my head. Now let us bruise His heel!"

   They shot their hellish darts into His heart. They poured their boiling
   cauldrons on His brain, they emptied their venom into His veins. They
   spat their insinuations into His face. They hissed their devilish fears
   into His ear. He stood alone, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, hounded
   by all the dogs of Hell. Our champion quailed not, but used His holy
   weapons, striking right and left with all the power of God-supported
   manhood. On came the hosts, volley after volley was discharged against
   Him. No mimic thunders were these, but such as might shake the very
   gates of Hell. The Conqueror steadily advanced, overturning their
   ranks, dashing in pieces His enemies, breaking the bow and cutting the
   spear in sunder and burning the chariots in the fire, while he cried,
   "In the name of God will I destroy you!"

   At last, foot to foot, He met the champion of Hell and now our David
   fought with Goliath. Not long was the struggle. Thick was the darkness
   which gathered round them both. But He who is the Son of God as well as
   the Son of Mary, knew how to smite the fiend and He did smite him with
   Divine fury, till, having despoiled him of his armor, having quenched
   his fiery darts and broken his head, He cried, "It is finished" and
   sent the fiend, bleeding and howling, down to bed. We can imagine him
   pursued by the eternal Savior, who exclaims--

   "Traitor! My bolt shall find and pierce you through, Though under
   Hell's profoundest wave You div'st, to seek a sheltering grave." His
   thunderbolt overtook the fiend and grasping him with both His hands,
   the Savior drew around him the great chain. The angels brought the
   royal chariot from on high, to whose wheels the captive fiend was
   bound. Lash the coursers up the everlasting hills! Spirits made perfect
   come forth to meet Him. Sing to the conqueror who drags death and Hell
   behind Him and leads captivity captive! "Lift up your heads, O you
   gates and be you lifted up, you everlasting doors, that the King of
   glory may come in." But stay--before He enters, let Him be rid of this
   His burden. Lo, He takes the fiend and hurls him down through
   illimitable night, broken, bruised, with his power destroyed, bereft of
   his crown, to lie forever howling in the pit of Hell.

   Thus when the Savior cried, "It is finished," He had defeated Sin and
   Satan--nor less had he vanquished Death. Death had come against Him, as
   Christmas Evans puts it, with his fiery dart which he struck right
   through the Savior, till the point fixed in the Cross. And when he
   tried to pull it out again, he left the sting behind. What could he do
   more? He was disarmed. Then Christ set some of his prisoners free. For
   many of the saints arose and were seen of many--then He said to him,
   "Death, I take from you your keys--you must live for a little while to
   be the warden of those beds in which My saints shall sleep but give Me
   your keys."

   And lo, the Savior stands today with the keys of death hanging at His
   girdle and He waits until the hour shall come of which no man knows,
   when the trumpet of the archangel shall ring like the silver trumpets
   of Jubilee and then He shall say, "Let My captives go free." Then shall
   the tombs be opened in virtue of Christ's death and the very bodies of
   the saints shall live again in an eternity of glory--

   "'It is finished!' Hear the dying Savior cry." II. Secondly, LET US
   HEAR AND WONDER.
   Let us perceive what mighty things were effected and secured by these
   words, "It is finished." Thus He ratified the Covenant. That Covenant
   was signed and sealed before and in all things it was ordered well, but
   when Christ said, "It is finished," then the Covenant was made doubly
   sure, when the blood of Christ's heart bespattered the Divine roll.
   Then it could never be reversed, nor could one of its ordinances be
   broken, nor one of its stipulations fail. You know of the Everlasting
   Covenant--God covenants on His part that He would give Christ to see of
   the travail of His soul--that all who were given to Him should have new
   hearts and right spirits. They should be washed from sin and should
   enter into life through Him.
   Christ's side of the Covenant was this--"Father, I will do Your will. I
   will pay the ransom to the last jot and tittle. I will give You perfect
   obedience and complete satisfaction." Now if this second part of the
   Covenant had never been fulfilled, the first part would have been
   invalid--but when Jesus said, "It is finished"--then there was nothing
   left to be performed on His part and now the Covenant is all on one
   side. It is God's, "I will," and "They shall." "A new heart will I give
   you and a right spirit will I put within you." "I will sprinkle clean
   water upon you and you shall be clean." "From all your iniquities will
   I cleanse you." "I will lead you by a way that you know not." "I will
   surely bring them in."

   The Covenant that day was ratified. When Christ said, "It is finished,"
   His Father was honored and Divine justice was fully displayed. The
   Father always did love His people. Do not think that Christ died to
   make God the Father loving. He always had loved them from before the
   foundation of the world, but--"It is finished," took away the barriers
   which were in the Father's way. He would, as a God of love and now He
   could as a God ofjustice, bless poor sinners. From that day the Father
   is well-pleased to receive sinners to His bosom. When Christ said--"It
   is finished," He Himself was glorified. Then on His head descended the
   all-glorious crown. Then did the Father give to Him honors which He had
   not before. He had honor as God, but as Man He was despised and
   rejected--now as God and Man Christ was made to sit down forever on His
   Father's Throne crowned with honor and majesty. Then, too, by "It is
   finished," the Spirit was procured for us--

   "'Tis by the merit of His death
   Who hung upon the tree,
   The Spirit is sent down to breathe
   On such dry bones as we."

   Then the Spirit which Christ had aforetime promised perceived a new and
   living way by which He could come to dwell in the hearts of men and men
   might come up to dwell with Him above. That day, too, when Christ
   said--"It is finished," the words had effect on Heaven. Then the walls
   of chrysolite stood fast. Then the jasper-light of the pearly-gated
   city shone like the light of seven days. Before, the saints had been
   saved as it were on credit. They had entered Heaven, God having faith
   in His Son Jesus. Had not Christ finished His work, surely they must
   have left their shining spheres and suffered in their own persons for
   their own sins.

   I might represent Heaven if my imagination might be allowed a moment as
   being ready to totter if Christ had not finished His work--its stones
   would have been unloosed--massive and stupendous though its bastions
   are. Yet they would have fallen as earthly cities reel under the throes
   of earthquake. But Christ said, "It is finished," and oath and Covenant
   and blood set fast the dwelling place of the redeemed, made their
   mansions safely and eternally their own and bade their feet stand
   immovably upon the Rock. No, more. That word, "It is finished!" took
   effect in the gloomy caverns and depths of HELL. Then Satan bit his
   iron bands in a rage, howling, "I am defeated by the very Man whom I
   thought to overcome! My hopes are blasted. Never shall an elect one
   come into my prison, never a blood-bought one be found in my abode."

   Lost souls mourned that day, for they said--"It is finished! And if
   Christ Himself, the Substitute, could not be permitted to go free till
   He had finished all His punishment, then we shall never be free." It
   was their double death-knell, for they said, "Alas for us! Justice,
   which would not suffer the Savior to escape, will never suffer us to be
   at liberty. It is finished with Him and therefore it shall never be
   finished for us." That day, too, the earth had a gleam of sunlight cast
   over her which she had never known before. Then her hilltops began to
   glisten with the rising of the sun.

   And though her valleys still are clothed with darkness and men wander
   here and there and grope in the noon-day as in the night, yet that sun
   is rising, climbing still its heavenly steeps, never to set and soon
   shall its rays penetrate through the thick mists and clouds and every
   eye shall see Him and every heart be made glad with His light. The
   words "It is finished!" consolidated Heaven, shook Hell, comforted
   earth, delighted the Father, glorified the Son, brought down the Spirit
   and confirmed the Everlasting Covenant to all the chosen seed.

   III. And now I come to my last point, very briefly. "It is finished!"
   LET US PUBLISH IT.

   Children of God, you who by faith received Christ as your All in All,
   tell it every day of your lives that "it is finished." Go and tell it
   to those who are torturing themselves thinking through obedience and
   mortification to offer satisfaction. Yonder Hindu is about to throw
   himself down upon the spikes. Stay, poor Man! Why would you bleed, for
   "it is finished"? Yonder Fakir is holding his hand erect till the nails
   grow through the flesh, torturing himself with fasting and with
   self-denials. Cease, cease, poor wretch, from all these pains, for "it
   is finished!"

   In all parts of the earth there are those who think that the misery of
   the body and the soul may be an atonement for sin. Rush to them, stay
   them in their madness and say to them, "Why do you this? 'It is
   finished.' " All the pains that God asks, Christ has suffered. All the
   satisfaction by way of agony in the flesh that the Law demands, Christ
   has already endured. "It is finished!" And when you have done this, go
   next to the benighted votaries of Rome when you see the priests with
   their backs to the people, offering every day the pretended sacrifice
   of the mass and lifting up the host on high--a sacrifice, they say--"an
   unbloody sacrifice for the quick and the dead." Cry to them, "Cease,
   false priest, cease! For 'it is finished!' Cease, false worshipper,
   cease to bow, for 'it is finished!' "

   God neither asks nor accepts any other sacrifice than that which Christ
   offered once for all upon the Cross. Go next to the foolish among your
   own countrymen who call themselves Protestants but who are Papists
   after all--who think by their gifts and their gold, by their prayers
   and their vows, by their church-goings and their chapel-goings, by
   their baptisms and their confirmations to make themselves fit for God.
   And say to them, "Stop, 'it is finished.' God needs not this of you. He
   has received enough. Why will you pin your rags to the fine linen of
   Christ's righteousness? Why will you add your counterfeit farthing to
   the costly ransom which Christ has paid into the treasure-house of God?
   Cease from your pains, your doings, your performances, for 'it is
   finished!' Christ has done it all."

   This one text is enough to blow the Vatican to the four winds. Lay but
   this beneath Popery and like a train of gunpowder beneath a rock, it
   shall blast it into the air. This is a thunderclap against all human
   righteousness. Only let this come like a two-edged sword and your good
   works and your fine performances are soon cast away. "It is finished."
   Why improve on what is finished? Why add to that which is complete? The
   Bible is finished--he that adds to it never had his name in the Book of
   Life and will never see the Holy City. Christ's atonement is finished
   and he that adds to that must expect the selfsame doom.

   And when you shall have told it thus to the ears of men of every nation
   and of every tribe, tell it to all poor despairing souls. You find them
   on their knees, crying, "O God, what can I do to make recompense for my
   offenses?" Tell them, "It is finished," the recompense is made already.
   "O God!" they say, "how can I ever get a righteousness in which You can
   accept such a worm as I am." Tell them, "It is finished," their
   righteousness is worked out already. They have no need to trouble
   themselves about adding to it, for "it is finished."

   Go to the poor despairing wretch who has given himself up, not for
   death merely, but for damnation--he who says, "I cannot escape from sin
   and I cannot be saved from its punishment." Say to him, "Sinner, the
   way of salvation is finished once and for all." And if you meet some
   professed Christians in doubts and fears, tell them, "It is finished."
   Why, we have hundreds and thousands that are converted who do not know
   that "it is finished." They never know that they are safe. They do not
   know that "it is finished." They think they have faith today but
   perhaps they may become unbelieving tomorrow. They do not know that "it
   is finished."

   They hope God will accept them if they do some things, forgetting that
   the way of acceptance is finished. God as much accepts a sinner who
   only believed in Christ five minutes ago as He will a saint who has
   known and loved Him eighty years for He does not accept men because of
   anything they do or feel, but simply and only for what Christ did and
   that is finished. Oh, poor Hearts! Some of you do love the Savior in a
   measure, but blindly. You are thinking that you must be this and attain
   to that and then you may be assured that you are saved.

   Oh, you may be assured of it today--if you believe in Christ you are
   saved. "But I feel imperfections." Yes, but what of that? God does not
   regard your imperfections--He covers them with Christ's righteousness.
   He sees them to remove them, but not to lay them to your charge. "Yes,
   but I cannot be what I would be." But what if you can not? God does not
   look at you, as what you are in yourself, but as what you are in
   Christ.

   Come with me, poor Soul and you and I will stand together this morning,
   while the tempest gathers, for we are not afraid. How sharp that
   lightning flash! But yet we tremble not. How terrible that peal of
   thunder! And yet we are not alarmed and why? Is there anything in us
   why we should escape? No, but we are standing beneath the Cross--that
   precious Cross--which like some noble lightning rod in the storm takes
   to itself all the death from the lighting and all the fury from the
   storm. We are safe. Loud may you roar, O thundering Law and terribly
   may you flash, O avenging Justice! We can look up with calm delight to
   all the tumult of the elements, for we are safe beneath the Cross.

   Come with me again. There is a royal banquet spread. The King Himself
   sits at the table and angels are the servitors. Let us enter. And we do
   enter and we sit down and eat and drink, but how dare we do this? Our
   righteousness are as filthy rags--how could we venture to come here?
   Oh, because the filthy rags are not ours any longer. We have renounced
   our own righteousness and therefore we have renounced the filthy rags.
   And now, today we wear the royal garments of the Savior and are from
   head to foot arrayed in white, without spot or wrinkle or any such
   thing. We stand in the clear sunlight--black, but comely--loathsome in
   ourselves, but glorious in Him! Condemned in Adam, but accepted in the

   Beloved. We are neither afraid nor ashamed to be with the angels of
   God, to talk with the glorified, no, nor even alarmed to speak with God
   Himself and call Him our Friend.

   And now last of all, I publish this to sinners. I know not where you
   are this morning, but may God find you out. You who have been a
   drunkard, swearer, thief. You who have been a blackguard of the
   blackest kind. You who have dived into the very kennel and rolled
   yourself in the mire--if today you feel that sin is hateful to you,
   believe in Him who has said, "It is finished." Let me link your hand in
   mine, let us come together, both of us and say, "Here are two poor
   naked souls, good Lord, we cannot clothe ourselves." And He will give
   us a robe, for "it is finished." "But, Lord, is it long enough for such
   sinners and broad enough for such offenders?" "Yes," says He, "it is
   finished."

   "But we need washing, Lord! Is there anything that can take away black
   spots so hideous as ours?" "Yes," says He, "here is the bath of blood."
   "But must we not add our tears to it?" "No," says He, "no, it is
   finished. That is enough." "And now, Lord, You have washed us and You
   have clothed us, but we desire to be completely clean within, so that
   we may never sin any more. Lord, is there a way by which this can be
   done?" "Yes" says He, "there is the bath of water which flows from the
   wounded side of Christ." "And, Lord, is there enough there to wash away
   my guiltiness as well as my guilt?" "Yes," says He, "it is finished."
   "Jesus Christ is made unto you sanctification as well as redemption."

   Child of God, will you have Christ's finished righteousness this
   morning and will you rejoice in it more than you have ever done before?
   And oh, poor Sinner, will you have Christ or nothing? "Ah," says one,
   "I am willing enough, but I am not worthy." He does not want any
   worthiness. All He asks is willingness, for you know how He puts it,
   "Whoever will, let him come." If He has given you willingness, you may
   believe in Christ's finished work this morning. "Ah," you say, "but you
   cannot mean me." But I do, for it says, "Ho, everyone that thirsts."

   Do you thirst for Christ? Do you wish to be saved by Him? "Everyone
   that thirsts"--not only that young woman yonder, not simply that
   gray-headed old rebel yonder who has long despised the Savior--but this
   mass below and you in these double tiers of gallery--"Everyone that
   thirsts, come you to the waters and he that has no money come." O that
   I could "compel" you to come! Great God, won't You make the sinner
   willing to be saved? He wills to be damned--and will not come unless
   You change his will! Eternal Spirit, source of light and life and
   grace, come down and bring the strangers home!

   "It is finished." Sinner, there is nothing for God to do. "It is
   finished." There is nothing for you to do. "It is finished," "Christ
   need not bleed." It is finished. "You need not weep." "It is finished."
   God the Holy Spirit need not tarry because of your unworthiness, nor
   need you tarry because of your helplessness. "It is finished." Every
   stumbling block is rolled out of the road, every gate is opened, the
   bars of brass are broken, the gates of iron are burst asunder.

   "It is finished!" Come and welcome, come and welcome! The table is
   laid, the fatlings are killed. The oxen are ready. Lo, here stands the
   messenger! Come from the highways and from the hedges! Come from the
   dens and from the kens of London. Come, you vilest of the vile. You who
   hate yourselves today, come! Jesus bids you! Oh, will you tarry? Oh,
   Spirit of God, won't You repeat the invitation and make it an effectual
   call to many a heart, for Jesus' sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 The Peacemaker

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 8, 1861,

   BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of
   God."

   Matthew 5:9.

   THIS is the seventh of the beatitudes. There is a mystery always
   connected with the number seven. It was the number of perfection among
   the Hebrews and it seems as if the Savior had put the peacemaker
   there--as if He were nearly approaching to the perfect man in Christ
   Jesus. He who would have perfect blessedness, so far as it can be
   enjoyed on earth, must labor to attain to this seventh benediction and
   become a peacemaker. There is a significance also in the position of
   the text, if you regard the context. The verse which precedes it speaks
   of the blessedness of "the pure in heart, for they shall see God." It
   is well that we should understand this.

   We are to be "first pure, then peaceable." Our peaceableness is never
   to be a compact with sin, or an alliance with that which is evil. We
   must set our faces like flint against everything which is contrary to
   God and His holiness. That being in our souls a settled matter we can
   go on to peaceableness towards men. No less does the verse that follows
   my text seem to have been put there on purpose. However peaceable we
   may be in this world, yet we shall be misrepresented and misunderstood
   and no marvel, for even the Prince of Peace, by His very peacefulness,
   brought fire upon the earth.

   He Himself, though He loved mankind and did no ill, was "despised and
   rejected of men, a Man of Sorrow and acquainted with grief." Lest,
   therefore, the peaceable in heart should be surprised when they meet
   with enemies, it is added in the following verse, "Blessed are they
   which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom
   of Heaven." Thus the peacemakers are not only pronounced to be blessed,
   but they are compassed about with blessings. Lord, give us grace to
   climb to this seventh beatitude! Purify our minds that we may be "first
   pure, then peaceable." Fortify our souls, that our peaceableness may
   not lead us into surprise and despair, when for Your sake we are
   persecuted among men.

   Now let us endeavor to enter into the meaning of our text. Thus would
   we handle it this morning, as God shall help us. First, let us describe
   the peacemaker. Secondly let us proclaim his blessedness. Thirdly, let
   us set him to work. And then, fourthly, let the preacher become a
   peacemaker himself.

   I. First, LET US DESCRIBE THE PEACEMAKER.

   The peacemaker, while distinguished by his character, has the outward
   position and condition of other men. He stands in all relations of life
   just as other men do. Thus the peacemaker is a citizen and though he is
   a Christian, he remembers that Christianity does not require him to
   forego his citizenship, but to use and to improve it for Christ's
   glory. The peacemaker, then, as a citizen, loves peace. If he lives in
   this land, he knows that he lives among a people who are very sensitive
   of their honor and are speedily and easily provoked--a people who are
   so fierce in their character that the very mention of war stirs their
   blood and they feel as if they would go at it at once with all their
   force.

   The peacemaker remembers the war with Russia and he recollects what
   fools we were that we should have meddled there--to bring to ourselves
   great losses both in trade and money--and no advantage whatever that is
   perceptible. He knows that this nation has often been drifted into war
   for political purposes and that usually the pressure and burden of it
   comes upon the poor working man--upon such as have to earn their living
   by the sweat of their face. Therefore, though he, like other men, feels
   hot blood--and being an Englishman, feels the blood of the old sea
   kings often in his veins--yet he represses it and says to himself, "I
   must not strive, for the servant of God must be gentle to all men, apt
   to teach, patient."

   So he puts his back against the current and when he hears everywhere
   the noise of war--and sees many that are hot for it--he does his best
   to administer a cooling draught. He says, "Be patient, let it alone, if
   the thing is evil, yet war is worse than any other evil. There was
   never a bad peace yet and never a good war," says he. "And whatever
   loss we may sustain by being too quiet, we shall certainly lose a
   hundred times as much by being too fierce."

   And then in the present case he thinks how ill it would be for two
   Christian nations to go to war--two nations sprung of the same
   blood--two countries which really have a closer relation than any other
   two countries upon the face of the earth. Rivals in their liberal
   institutions--coadjutors in propagating the Gospel of Christ--two
   nations that have within their midst more of the elect of God and more
   of the true followers of Christ than any other nations under Heaven.
   Yes, he thinks within himself, it were ill that the bones of our sons
   and daughters should go again to make manure for our fields, as they
   have done.

   He remembers that the farmers of Yorkshire brought home the mold from
   Waterloo with which to manure their own fields--the blood and bones of
   their own sons and daughters--and he thinks it not meet that the
   prairies of America should be enriched with the blood and bones of his
   children. And on the other hand he thinks that he would not smite
   another man but would sooner be smitten of him and that blood would be
   to him an awful sight. So he says, "What I would not do myself, I would
   not have others do for me and if I would not be a killer, neither would
   I have others killed for me."

   He walks in vision over a field of battle. He hears the shrieks of the
   dying and the groans of the wounded. He knows that even conquerors
   themselves have said that all the enthusiasm of victory has not been
   able to remove the horror of the dreadful scene after the fight and so
   he says, "No, peace, peace!" If he has any influence in the
   commonwealth, if he is a member of the House of Parliament, if he is a
   writer in a newspaper, or if he speaks from the platform, he says, "Let
   us look well to it before we hurry into this strife. We must preserve
   our country's honor. We must maintain our right to entertain those who
   flee from their oppressors.

   "We must maintain that England shall ever be the safe home of every
   rebel who flies from his king, a place from which the oppressed shall
   never be dragged by force of alms. Yet, still," he says, "cannot this
   be and yet no blood?" And he bids the law officers look well to it and
   see if they cannot find that perhaps there may have been an oversight
   committed which may be pardoned and condoned without the shedding of
   blood--without the plucking of the sword from its scabbard. Well, he
   says of war that it is a monster, that at its best it is a fiend, that
   of all scourges it is the worst.

   And he looks upon soldiers as the red twigs of the bloody rod and he
   begs God not to smite a guilty nation thus, but to put up the sword
   awhile that we be not cast into trouble, overwhelmed with sorrow and
   exposed to cruelty which may bring thousands to the grave and
   multitudes to poverty. Thus the peacemaker acts and he feels that while
   he does so, his conscience justifies him. And he is blessed and men
   shall one day acknowledge that he was one of the children of God.

   But the peacemaker is not only a citizen, but a man. If sometimes he
   lets general politics alone, yet as a man he thinks that the politics
   of his own person must always be those of peace. There, if his honor is
   stained, he stands not up for it-- he counts that it were a greater
   stain to his honor for him to be angry with his fellow than for him to
   bear an insult. He hears others say, "If you tread upon a worm it will
   turn," but he says, "I am not a worm, but a Christian and therefore I
   do not turn except to bless the hand that smites and to pray for those
   that despitefully use me."

   He has his temper, for the peacemaker can be angry and woe to the man
   who cannot be--he is like Jacob halting on his thigh--for anger is one
   of the holy feet of the soul when it goes in the right direction. But
   while he can be angry, he learns to "be angry and sin not," and "he
   suffers not the sun to go down upon his wrath." When he is at home, the
   peacemaker seeks to be quiet with his servants and with his household.
   He puts up with many things sooner than he will speak one uncomely word
   and if he rebukes, it is ever with gentleness, saying, "Why do you do
   this?--Why do you do this!"--Not with the severity of a judge, but with
   the tenderness of a father.

   The peacemaker may learn a lesson perhaps, from a story which I met
   with last week in reading the life of Mr. John Wesley. Going across in
   a ship to America with Mr. Oglethorpe, who was to be the governor of
   Savannah, he one day heard a great noise in the governor's cabin. So
   Mr. Wesley went there and the governor said, "I dare say you want to
   know what this noise is about, Sir. I have good occasion for it. You
   know, Sir," said he, "that the only wine I drink is Cyprus wine and it
   is necessary for me. I put it on board and this rascal, my servant,
   this Grimaldi, has drunk all of it.

   "I will have him beaten on the deck and the first ship of war that
   comes by, he shall be taken by press and enlisted in His Majesty's
   service and a hard time he shall have of it, for I will let him know
   that I never forgive." "Your honor," said Mr. Wesley, "then I hope you
   never sin." The rebuke was so well put, so pointed and so needed, that
   the governor replied in a moment, "Alas, Sir, I do sin and I have
   sinned in what I have said. For your sake he shall be forgiven. I trust
   he will not do the like again." So the peacemaker always thinks that it
   is best for him, as he is a sinner himself and responsible to his own
   Master, not to be too hard a master on his servants, lest when he is
   provoking them he may be also provoking his God.

   The peacemaker goes abroad also and when he is in company he sometimes
   meets with slurs and even with insults-- but he learns to bear
   these--for he remembers that Christ endured much contradiction of
   sinners against Himself. Holy Cotton Mather, a great Puritan Divine of
   America, had received a number of anonymous letters in which he was
   greatly abused. Having read them and preserved them, he put a piece of
   paper round them and wrote upon the paper when he put them on a shelf,
   "Libels--Father forgive them!" So does the peacemaker do. He says of
   all these things, "They are libels--Father, forgive them!" And he does
   not rush to defend himself, knowing that He whom he serves will take
   care that his good name will be preserved, if only he himself be
   careful how he walks among men.

   He goes into business and it sometimes happens to the peacemaker that
   circumstances occur in which he is greatly tempted to go to the law.
   But he never does this, unless he is compelled to it, for he knows that
   law-work is playing with edged tools and that they who know how to use
   the tools yet cut their own fingers. The peacemaker remembers that the
   law is most profitable to those who carry it on. He knows, too, that
   where men will give sixpence to the ministry for the good of their
   souls and where they pay a guinea to their physician for the good of
   their bodies, they will spend a hundred pounds, or five hundred as a
   refresher to their counsel in the Court of Chancery.

   So he says, "No, better that I be wronged by my adversary and he get
   some advantage, than that both of us should lose our all." So he lets
   some of these things go by and he finds that on the whole he is none
   the loser by sometimes giving up his rights. There are times when he is
   constrained to defend himself but even then he is ready for every
   compromise, willing to give way at any time and at any season. He has
   learned the old adage, that "an ounce of prevention is better than a
   pound of cure." And so he takes heed to it--to agree with his adversary
   quickly while he is yet in the way-- letting strife alone before it is
   meddled with. Or when it is meddled with, seeking to end it as quickly
   as may be, as in the sight of God.

   And then the peacemaker is a neighbor and though he never seeks to
   meddle with his neighbor's disputes, more especially if it is a dispute
   between his neighbor and his wife, for well he knows that if they two
   disagree, yet they will both agree very soon to disagree with him, if
   he meddles between them. If he is called in when there is a dispute
   between two neighbors, he never excites them to animosity, but he says
   to them, "You do not well, my Brethren. Why do you strive with one
   another?" And though he takes not the wrong side but seeks ever to do
   justice, yet he tempers ever his justice with mercy and says unto the
   one who is wronged, "Can not you have the nobility to forgive?"

   And he sometimes puts himself between the two, when they are very angry
   and takes the blows from both sides. For he knows that Jesus did so
   --who took the blows from His Father and from us also--that so by
   suffering in our place, peace might be made between God and man. Thus
   the peacemaker acts whenever he is called to do his good offices and
   more especially if his station enables him to do it with authority. He
   endeavors, if he sits upon the judgment seat, not to bring a case to a
   trial if it can be arranged otherwise. If he is a minister and there is
   a difference among his people, he enters not into the details, for well
   he knows that there is much idle tittle-tattle, but he says, "Peace" to
   the billows and "Hush" to the winds. And so he bids men live.

   They have so little while, he thinks, to dwell together, that it were
   meet they should live in harmony. And so he says, "How good and
   pleasant a thing it is for Brethren to dwell together in unity!" But
   once again the peacemaker has for his highest title, that he is a
   Christian. Being a Christian, he unites himself with some Christian
   Church--and here, as a peacemaker, he is as an angel of God. Even among
   Churches there are those that are bowed down with infirmities and these
   infirmities cause Christian men and Christian women to differ at times.
   So the peacemaker says, "This is unseemly, my Brother. Let us be at
   peace."

   And he remembers what Paul says, "I beseech Euodias and I beseech
   Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord." And he thinks
   that if these two were thus besought by Paul to be of the same mind,
   unity must be a blessed thing and he labors for it. And sometimes the
   peacemaker, when he sees differences likely to arise between his
   denomination and others, turns to the history of Abram. and he reads
   how the herdsman of Abram did strive with the herdsman of Lot.

   And he notes that in the same verse it is said, "And the Canaanite and
   the Perizzite dwelled in the land." So he thinks it was a shame that
   where there were Perizzites to look on, followers of the true God
   should disagree.

   He says to Christians, "Do not do this, for we make the devil sport. We
   dishonor God. We damage our own cause. We ruin the souls of men." And
   he says, "Put up your swords into your scabbards. Be at peace and fight
   not one with another." They who are not peacemakers, when received into
   a Church, will fight upon the smallest notion--will differ about the
   minutest point. We have known Churches rent in pieces and schisms
   committed in Christian bodies through things so foolish that a wise man
   could not perceive the occasion. Things so ridiculous that a reasonable
   man must have overlooked them.

   The peacemaker says, "Follow peace with all men." Specially he prays
   that the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of peace, might rest upon the
   Church at all times. Banding believers together in one--that they being
   one in Christ, the world may know that the Father has sent His Son into
   the world, heralded as His mission was with an angelic song-- "Glory to
   God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men."

   Now I trust in the description which I have given of the peacemaker, I
   may have described some of you. But I fear the most of us would have to
   say, "Well, in many things I come short." However, this much I would
   add--if there are two Christian men here present who are at variance
   with each other, I would be a peacemaker and bid them be peacemakers,
   too. Two Spartans had quarreled with each other and the Spartan king,
   Aris, bade them both meet him in a temple. When they were both there he
   heard their differences and he said to the priest, "Lock the doors of
   the temple, these two shall never go forth till they be at one," and
   there, within the temple, he said, "It is unmeet to differ."

   So they compounded at once their differences and went away. If this
   were done in an idol temple, much more let it be done in the house of
   God and if the Spartan heathen did this, much more let the Christian,
   the believer in Christ do it. This very day, put aside from you all
   bitterness and all malice and say one to another, "If in anything you
   have offended me, it is forgiven. And if in anything I have offended
   you, I confess my error, let the breach be healed and as children of
   God, let us be in union with one another." Blessed are they who can do
   this, for "blessed are the peacemakers!"

   II. Having thus described the peacemaker, I shall go on to DECLARE HIS
   BLESSEDNESS. "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the
   children of God." A three-fold commendation is implied.

   First, he is blessed. That is, God blesses him and I know that he whom
   God blesses is blessed. And he whom God curses, is cursed. God blesses
   him from the highest heavens. God blesses him in a god-like manner. God
   blesses him with the abundant blessings which are treasured up in
   Christ. And while he is blessed of God, the blessedness is diffused
   through his own soul. His conscience bears witness that as in the sight
   of God through the Holy Spirit, he has sought to honor Christ among
   men. More especially is he most blessed when he has been most assailed
   with curses. For then the assurance greets him, "So persecuted they the
   Prophets that were before you."

   And whereas he has a command to rejoice at all times, yet he finds a
   special command to be exceedingly glad when he is ill-treated.
   Therefore he takes it well, if for well-doing he is called to suffer
   and he rejoices thus to bear a part of the Savior's Cross. He goes to
   his bed, no dreams of enmity disturb his sleep. He rises and goes to
   his business and he fears not the face of any man, for he can say, "I
   have not in my heart anything but friendship towards all." Or if he is
   attacked with slander and his enemies have forged a lie against him, he
   can nevertheless say--

   "He that forged and he that threw the dart, Has each a brother's
   interest in my heart." Loving all, he is thus peaceful in his own soul
   and he is blessed as one that inherits the blessing of the Most High.

   And not infrequently it comes to pass that he is even blessed by the
   wicked. For though they would withhold a good word from him, they
   cannot. Overcoming evil with good, he heaps coals of fire upon their
   heads and melts the coldness of their enmity till even they say, "He is
   a good man." And when he dies, those whom he has made at peace with one
   another, say over his tomb, "It were well if the world should see many
   of his like, there were not half the strife, nor half the sin in it if
   there were many like he."

   Secondly, you will observe that the text not only says he is blessed,
   but it adds, that he is one of the children of God. This he is by
   adoption and grace--but peacemaking is a sweet evidence of the work of
   the peaceful Spirit within. As the child of God, moreover, he has a
   likeness to his Father who is in Heaven. God is peaceful, longsuffering
   and tender, full of loving kindness, pity and compassion. So is this
   peacemaker. Being like God, he bears his Father's image. Thus does he
   testify to men that he is one of God's children. As one of God's
   children, the peacemaker has access to his Father.

   He goes to Him with confidence, saying, "Our Father which are in
   Heaven," which he dare not say unless he could plead with a clear
   conscience. "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." He feels
   the tie of brotherhood with man and therefore he feels that he may
   rejoice in the Fatherhood of God. He comes with confidence and with
   intense delight to his Father who is in Heaven, for he is one of the
   children of the Highest, who does good both to the unthankful and to
   the evil.

   And still, there is a third word of commendation in the text. "They
   shall be called the children of God." They not only are so, but they
   shall be called so. That is, even their enemies shall call them so,
   even the world shall say, "Ah, that man is a child of God." Perhaps,
   Beloved, there is nothing that so strikes the ungodly as the peaceful
   behavior of a Christian under insult. There was a soldier in India, a
   big fellow, who had been, before he enlisted, a prizefighter and
   afterwards had performed many deeds of valor. When he had been
   converted through the preaching of a missionary all his mess-mates made
   a laughingstock of him. They counted it impossible that such a man as
   he had been should become a peaceful Christian.

   So one day when they were at mess, one of them wantonly threw into his
   face and bosom a whole basinful of scalding soup. The poor man tore his
   clothes open to wipe away the scalding liquid and yet self-possessed
   amidst his excitement, he said, "I am a Christian, I must expect this,"
   and smiled at them. The one who did it said, "If I had thought you
   would have taken it in that way, I would never have done it. I am very
   sorry I ever did so." His patience rebuked their malice and they all
   said he was a Christian. Thus he was called a child of God. They saw in
   him all evidence that was to them the more striking, because they knew
   that they could not have done the same.

   When Mr. Kilpin, of Exeter, was one day walking along the streets, an
   evil man pushed him from the pavement into the ditch and as he fell
   into the ditch, the man said, "Lay there, John Bunyan--that is good
   enough for you." Mr. Kilpin got up and went on his way and when
   afterwards this man wanted to know how he took the insult, he was
   surprised that all Mr. Kilpin said was that he had done him more honor
   than dishonor, for he thought that being called John Bunyan was worth
   being rolled in the ditch a thousand times. Then he who had done this
   said that he was a good man.

   So that they who are peacemakers are "called the children of God." They
   demonstrate to the world in such a way that the very blind must see and
   the very deaf must hear that God is in them. O that we had grace enough
   to win this blessed commendation! If God has brought you far enough, my
   Hearer, to hunger and thirst after righteousness, I pray you never
   cease your hunger till He has brought you so far as to be a peacemaker,
   that you may be called a child of God.

   III. But now, in the third place, I am to try and GET THE PEACEMAKER TO
   WORK.

   You have much work to do, I doubt not, in your own households and your
   own circles of acquaintance. Go and do it. You remember well that text
   in Job--"Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt? Or is there
   any taste in the white of an egg?"--by which Job would have us know
   that unsavory things must have something else with them, or else they
   will not well be pleasant for food. Now, our religion is an unsavory
   thing to men--we must put salt with it and this salt must be our
   quietness and peace-making disposition. Then they who would have
   eschewed our religion alone, will say of it, when they see the salt
   with it, "This is good," and they will find some relish in this "white
   of an egg."

   If you would commend your godliness to the sons of men--in your own
   houses make clear and clean work, purging out the old leaven--that you
   may offer sacrifices to God of a godly and heavenly sort. If you have
   any strifes among you, or any divisions, I pray you, even as God, for
   Christ's sake forgave you, so also do you. By the bloody sweat of Him
   who prayed for you and by the agonies of Him who died for you and in
   dying said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,"
   forgive your enemies. "Pray for them that despitefully use you and
   bless them that curse you." Let it be always said of you, as a
   Christian, "That man is meek and lowly in heart and would sooner bear
   injury himself than cause an injury to another."

   But the chief work I want to set you about is this. Jesus Christ was
   the greatest of all peacemakers. "He is our Peace." He came to make
   peace with Jew and Gentile, "for He has made both one and has broken
   down the middle wall of partition between us." He came to make peace
   between all striving nationalities, for we are "no more Greek,
   barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is All in All." He came
   to make peace between His Father's justice and our offending souls and
   He has made peace for us through the blood of His Cross. Now, you who
   are the sons of peace, endeavor as instruments in His hands to make
   peace between God and men.

   For your children's soul, let your earnest prayers go up to Heaven. For
   the souls of all your acquaintance and kinsfolk let your supplications
   never cease. Pray for the salvation of your perishing fellow creatures.
   Thus will you be peacemakers. And when you have prayed, use all the
   means within your power. Preach, if God has given you the ability--
   preach with the Holy Spirit sent down from Heaven--the reconciling Word
   of Life.

   Teach, if you cannot preach. Teach the Word. "Be instant in season and
   out of season." "Sow beside all waters." For the Gospel "speaks better
   things than the blood of Abel," and cries peace to the sons of men.
   Write to your friends of Christ and if you cannot speak much, speak a
   little for Him. But oh, make it the object of your life to win others
   for Christ. Never be satisfied with going to Heaven alone. Ask the Lord
   that you may be the spiritual father of many children and that God may
   bless you to the ingathering of much of the Redeemer's harvest.

   I thank God that there are so many among you who are alive to the love
   of souls. It makes my heart glad to hear of conversions and to receive
   the converts. But I feel most glad when many of you, converted by my
   own instrumentality, under God, are made the means of the conversion of
   others. There are Brothers and Sisters here who bring me constantly
   those who have been brought first to this house by them, over whom they
   watched and prayed and at last have brought them to the minister, that
   he may hear their confession of faith.

   Blessed are such peacemakers! You have "saved a soul from death and
   hidden a multitude of sins." "They that turn many to righteousness
   shall shine as the stars forever and ever." They, indeed, in Heaven
   itself "shall be called the children of God." The genealogy of that
   Book, in which the names of all the Lord's people are written, shall
   record that through God the Holy Spirit they have brought souls into
   the bond of peace through Jesus Christ.

   IV. The minister has now, in the last place, TO PRACTICE HIS OWN TEXT,
   AND ENDEAVOR THROUGH GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT TO BE A PEACEMAKER THIS
   MORNING.

   I speak to many a score of persons this morning who know nothing of
   peace. For "there is no peace, says my God, to the wicked." "The wicked
   is like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire
   and dirt." I speak not to you with any desire of making a false peace
   with your souls. Woe to the prophets who say, "Peace, peace, when there
   is no peace!" Rather let me, first of all, that we may make sound work
   in this matter, expose the peaceless, the warring state of your soul.

   O Soul! You are this morning at war with your conscience. You have
   tried to quiet it, but it will prick you. You have shut up this
   recorder of the town of Mansoul in a dark place and you have built a
   wall before his door. But still, when his fits are on him, your
   conscience will thunder at you and say, "This is not right. This is the
   path that leads unto Hell, this is the road of destruction." Oh, there
   are some of you to whom conscience is as a ghost, haunting you by day
   and night. You know the good, though you choose the evil. You prick
   your fingers with the thorns of conscience when you try to pluck the
   rose of sin. To you the downward path is not an easy one. It is hedged
   up and ditched up and there are many bars and gates and chains on the
   road but you climb over them, determined to ruin your own souls.

   Oh, there is war between you and conscience. Conscience says, "Turn,"
   but you say, "I will not." Conscience says, "Close your shop on
   Sunday," conscience says, "Alter this system of trade, it is cheating."
   Conscience says, "Lie not one to another, for the Judge is at the
   door." Conscience says, "Away with that drinking cup, it makes the man
   into something worse than a brute." Conscience says, "Rend yourself
   from that unchaste connection--have done with that evil-- bolt your
   door against lust." But you say, "I will drink the sweet though it damn
   me, I will go still to my cups and to my haunts though I perish in my
   sins."

   There is war between you and your conscience! Still your conscience is
   God's vice-regent in your soul. Let conscience speak a moment or two
   this morning. Fear him not, he is a good friend to you. And though he
   speak roughly, the day will come when you will know that there is more
   music in the very roaring of conscience than in all the sweet and siren
   tones which lust adopts to cheat you to your ruin. Let your conscience
   speak.

   But more, there is war between you and God's Law. The Ten Commandments
   are against you this morning. The first one comes forward and says,
   "Let him be cursed, for he denies Me. He has another God besides Me,
   his God is his belly, he yields homage to his lust." All the Ten
   Commandments, like ten great pieces of cannon are pointed at you today
   for you have broken all God's statutes and lived in the daily neglect
   of all His commands. Soul, you will find it a hard thing to go to war
   with the Law. When the Law came in peace, Sinai was altogether on a
   smoke and even Moses said, "I do exceedingly fear and quake."

   What will you do when the Law comes in terror? When the trumpet of the
   archangel shall tear you from your grave? When the eyes of God shall
   burn their way into your guilty soul? When the great books shall be
   opened and all your sin and shame shall be published? Can you stand
   against an angry Law in that day? When the officers of the Law shall
   come forth to devour you up to the tormentors and cast you away forever
   from peace and happiness, Sinner, what will you do? Can you dwell with
   everlasting fires? Can you abide the eternal burning?

   O Man, "agree with your adversary quickly, while you are in the way
   with him--lest at any time the adversary deliver you to the judge and
   the judge deliver you to the officer and you be cast into prison.
   Verily I say unto you, you shall by no means come out from there till
   you have paid the uttermost farthing."

   But, Sinner, do you know that you are this morning at war with God? He
   that made you and was your best Friend you have forgotten and
   neglected. He has fed you and you have used your strength against Him.
   He has clothed you--the clothes you have upon your back today are the
   livery of His goodness--yet, instead of being the servant of Him whose
   livery you wear, you are the slave of His greatest enemy. The very
   breath in your nostrils is the loan of His charity and yet you use that
   breath perhaps to curse Him, or at the best, in lasciviousness or loose
   conversation, to do dishonor to His Laws.

   He that made you has become your enemy through your sin and you are
   still today hating Him and despising His Word. You say, "I do not hate
   Him." Soul, I charge you then, "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ."
   "No," you say, "I cannot, I will not do that!" Then you hate Him. If
   you loved Him, you would keep this, His great command. "His commandment
   is not grievous," it is sweet and easy. You would believe in His Son if
   you did love the Father, for "he that loves the Father loves Him also
   that is begotten of Him." Are you thus at war with God? Surely this is
   a sorry plight for you to be in. Can you meet Him that comes against
   you with ten thousand? Can you stand against Him who is Almighty, who
   makes Heaven shake at His reproof and breaks the crooked serpent with a
   word?

   Do you hope to hide from Him? "Can any hide in secret places, that I
   shall not see him?" says the Lord. Though you dig in Carmel, yet will
   He pluck you from there. Though you dive into the caverns of the sea,
   there shall He command the crooked serpent and it shall bite you. If
   you make your bed in Hell, He will find you out. If you climb to
   Heaven, He is there. Creation is your prison and He can find you when
   He will. Or do you think you can endure His fury? Are your ribs of
   iron? Are your bones brass? If they are so, yet shall they melt like
   wax before the coming of the Lord God of Hosts, for He is mighty and as
   a lion shall He tear in pieces His prey and as a fire shall He devour
   His adversary, "for our God is a consuming fire."

   This, then, is the state of every unconverted man and woman in this
   place this morning. You are at war with conscience, at war with God's
   Law and at war with God Himself. And, now, then, as God's ambassador, I
   come to treat of peace. I beseech you give heed. "As though God did
   beseech you by me, I pray you, in Christ's place, be you reconciled to
   God." "In Christ's place." Let the preacher vanish for a moment. Look
   and listen. It is Christ speaking to you now. Me-thinks I hear Him
   speak to some of you. This is the way He speaks, "Soul, I love you. I
   love you from My heart, I would not have you at enmity with My Father."
   The tear proves the Truth of what He states, while He cries, "How often
   would I have gathered you, as a hen gathers her chickens under her
   wing, but you would not."

   "Yet," says He "I come to treat with you of peace. Come, now and let us
   reason together. I will make an Everlasting Covenant with you, even the
   sure mercies of David. Sinner," says He, "you are bid now to hear God's
   note of peace to your soul, for thus it runs--'You are guilty and
   condemned. Will you confess this? Are you willing to throw down your
   weapons now and say, Great God, I yield, I yield, I would no longer be
   Your foe?' " If so, peace is proclaimed to you. "Let the wicked forsake
   his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him turn unto the
   Lord, for He will have mercy upon him and to our God, for He will
   abundantly pardon."

   Pardon is finely presented to every soul that unfeignedly repents of
   its sin. But that pardon must come to you through faith. So Jesus
   stands here this morning, points to the wounds upon His breast and
   spreads His bleeding hands and says, "Sin, or trust in Me and live!"
   God proclaims to you no longer His fiery Law, but His sweet, His simple
   Gospel--believe and live. "He that believes on the Son is not
   condemned, but he that believes not is condemned already, be- cause he
   has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." "As
   Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of
   Man be lifted up, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish, but
   have eternal life."

   O Soul, does the spirit of God move in you this morning? Do you say,
   "Lord, I would be at peace with You?" Are you willing to take Christ on
   His own terms and they are no terms at all--they are simply that you
   should make no terms in the matter--but give yourself up, body, soul
   and spirit, to be saved of Him? Now, if my Master were here visibly, I
   think He would plead with you in such a way that many of you would say,
   "Lord, I believe, I would be at peace with You."

   But even Christ Himself never converted a soul apart from the Holy
   Spirit and even He as a preacher won not many to Him, for they were
   hard of heart. If the Holy Spirit is here, He may as much bless you
   when I plead in Christ's stead as though He pleaded Himself. Soul, will
   you have Christ or not? Young men, young women, you may never hear this
   word preached in your ears again. Will you die at enmity against God?
   You that are sitting here, still unconverted, your last hour may come,
   before another Sabbath's sun shall dawn. The morrow you may never see.

   Would you go into eternity "enemies to God by wicked works?" Soul, will
   you have Christ or not? Say "No," if you mean it. Say "No, Christ, I
   never will be saved by You." Say it. Look the matter in the face. But I
   pray you do not say, "I will make no answer." Come, give some answer
   this morning--yes, this morning. Thank God you can give an answer.
   Thank God that you are not in Hell. Thank God that your sentence has
   not been pronounced--that you have not received your due deserts. God
   help you to give the right answer! Will you have Christ or not?

   "I am not fit." There is no question of fitness. It is, will you have
   Him? "I am black with sin." He will come into your black heart and
   clean it. "Oh, but I am hard-hearted." He will come into your hard
   heart and soften it. Will you have Him?--you can have Him if you will.
   When God makes a soul willing, it is a clear proof that He means to
   give that soul Christ. And if you are willing He is not unwilling. If
   He has made you willing, you may have Him. "Oh," says one, "I cannot
   think that I might have Christ." Soul, you may have Him now. Mary, He
   calls you! John, He calls you! Sinner, whoever you may be out of this
   great throng, if there is in your soul this morning a holy willingness
   towards Christ, yes, or if there is even a faint desire towards Him, He
   calls you, He calls you!

   O tarry not, but come and trust in Him. Oh, if I had such a Gospel as
   this to preach to lost souls in Hell, what an effect it would have upon
   them! Surely, surely, if they could once more have the Gospel preached
   in their ears, methinks the tears would bedew their poor cheeks and
   they would say, "Great God, if we may but escape from Your wrath we
   will lay hold on Christ." But here it is preached among you, preached
   every day, till I fear it is listened to as an old, old story. Perhaps
   it is my poor way of telling it. But God knows if I knew how to tell it
   better, I would do so.

   O my Master! Send a better ambassador to these men, if that will woo
   them. Send a more earnest pleader and a more tender heart if that will
   bring them to Yourself! But oh, bring them, bring them! Our heart longs
   to see them brought. Sinner, will you have Christ or not? I know this
   morning is the day of God's power to some of your souls. The Holy
   Spirit is striving with some of you. Lord, will them! Conquer them!
   Overcome them! Do you say, "Yes, happy day! I would be led in triumph,
   captive to my Lord's great love?"

   Soul, if so, it is done if you believe. Trust Christ and your many sins
   are all forgiven you--cast yourself before His dear Cross and say--

   "A guilty, weak and helpless worm, Into Your arms I fall; Be You my
   strength and righteousness, My Jesus and my All."

   And if He rejects you, come tell me of it. If He refuses you, let me
   hear about it. There was never such a case yet. He always has received
   those that come. He always will. He is an open-handed and an
   open-hearted Savior. O Sinner! May God bring you to put your trust in
   Him once and for all!

   Spirits above! Tune your harps anew. There is a sinner born to God this
   morning! Lead the song, O Saul of Tarsus! And follow the sinner with
   sweetest music, O Mary! Let music roll up before the Throne today! For
   there are heirs of glory born and prodigals have returned! To God be
   the glory forever and ever! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Genesis

   [4]3:9   [5]15:11   [6]28:16

   Exodus

   [7]33:7   [8]35:25   [9]35:26

   Leviticus

   [10]1:3-9   [11]1:4-11

   Numbers

   [12]10:35   [13]11:23

   Deuteronomy

   [14]8:3   [15]28:65   [16]32:3

   1 Samuel

   [17]12:22

   2 Kings

   [18]4:26

   2 Chronicles

   [19]5:13   [20]5:14   [21]7:1   [22]7:2   [23]7:3

   Job

   [24]1:4   [25]1:5   [26]9:20   [27]21:29-31   [28]23:13   [29]42:10

   Psalms

   [30]24:3   [31]25:13   [32]37:10   [33]37:11   [34]87:6   [35]89:30
   [36]89:34   [37]103:7

   Proverbs

   [38]16:20

   Isaiah

   [39]1:18   [40]8:20   [41]32:17   [42]33:20   [43]43:2   [44]49:15-16

   Jeremiah

   [45]2:18   [46]4:20   [47]23:6   [48]31:3   [49]46:27

   Hosea

   [50]6:1-2   [51]11:9

   Joel

   [52]3:21

   Amos

   [53]6:1

   Zephaniah

   [54]3:17

   Zechariah

   [55]14:20

   Malachi

   [56]3:6

   Matthew

   [57]5:9   [58]11:25   [59]11:26   [60]19:28-29   [61]21:5   [62]24:24

   Luke

   [63]9:61   [64]13:1-5   [65]20:35-36   [66]22:32

   John

   [67]1:16   [68]2:16   [69]3:16   [70]3:18   [71]3:18   [72]3:36
   [73]6:39   [74]6:40   [75]6:44   [76]6:54   [77]10:28   [78]14:17
   [79]17:24   [80]19:30   [81]19:30

   Acts

   [82]5:42   [83]13:39-40   [84]20:19

   Romans

   [85]1:16   [86]1:16   [87]1:16   [88]3:25   [89]5:10   [90]8:17
   [91]8:29   [92]8:30   [93]8:34   [94]8:37   [95]8:38-39

   1 Corinthians

   [96]1:8   [97]1:9   [98]2:14

   2 Corinthians

   [99]1:21-22   [100]5:8

   Ephesians

   [101]1:4   [102]1:4   [103]1:5   [104]1:13   [105]1:13-14   [106]1:14
   [107]6:16

   Philippians

   [108]1:18   [109]2:1   [110]3

   Colossians

   [111]2:12   [112]3:3   [113]4:2

   2 Thessalonians

   [114]2:13   [115]2:13

   1 Timothy

   [116]3:15

   Hebrews

   [117]1:2   [118]6:18-19   [119]6:20   [120]9:24   [121]11:35
   [122]12:14   [123]13:2

   James

   [124]2:5

   1 Peter

   [125]1:23-25   [126]5:8   [127]5:9

   1 John

   [128]1:3   [129]2:1   [130]10:21

   Revelation

   [131]1:12-17   [132]5:9   [133]5:10   [134]20:4   [135]20:5
   [136]20:6   [137]20:12
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture Commentary

   Genesis

   [138]3:9   [139]15:11   [140]28:16

   Exodus

   [141]33:7

   Numbers

   [142]10:35   [143]11:23

   Deuteronomy

   [144]8:3   [145]32:3

   2 Kings

   [146]4:26

   2 Chronicles

   [147]5:13-14

   Job

   [148]1:4-5   [149]9:20   [150]21:29-31   [151]23:13   [152]42:10

   Psalms

   [153]24:3   [154]103:7

   Proverbs

   [155]16:20

   Song of Solomon

   [156]2:16   [157]8:6-7

   Isaiah

   [158]1:18   [159]43:2

   Jeremiah

   [160]2:18   [161]4:20   [162]23:6

   Hosea

   [163]6:1-2

   Joel

   [164]2:12   [165]3:21

   Zechariah

   [166]14:20

   Matthew

   [167]5:9   [168]11:25-26   [169]21:5

   Luke

   [170]9:61   [171]13:1-5

   John

   [172]1:16   [173]3:18   [174]3:18   [175]19:30   [176]19:30

   Acts

   [177]5:42   [178]20:19

   Romans

   [179]3:25   [180]8:17   [181]8:29

   1 Corinthians

   [182]2:14

   2 Corinthians

   [183]5:8

   Ephesians

   [184]1:5   [185]1:13-14

   Philippians

   [186]1:18   [187]2:1

   Colossians

   [188]4:2

   1 Timothy

   [189]3:15

   1 Peter

   [190]1:23-25   [191]5:8-9

   1 John

   [192]1:3

   Revelation

   [193]1:12-17   [194]20:4-6
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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