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        Title: Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 12: 1866
   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
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                                Unity In Christ

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 7, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in
   Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in
   Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may
   believe that You sent Me." John 17:20,21.

   FOR several years I have thankfully received the text of the first
   Sabbath in the year from a venerable clergyman of a parish in the
   suburbs of our city. Spared by a gracious Providence, my good Brother
   has sent me, with his Christian salutations, these two verses for my
   subject. As we have enjoyed together for several years a true communion
   of spirit in the things of God, I can only hope, that until one or the
   other of us shall be taken up to dwell above, we may walk together in
   holy service, loving each other fervently with a pure heart.

   The most tender and touching prayer of the Master contained in this
   chapter opens up to us His inmost heart. He was in Gethsemane and His
   passion was just commencing. He stood like a victim at the altar where
   the wood was already laid in order and the fire was kindled to consume
   the sacrifice. Lifting up His eyes to Heaven, with true filial love
   gazing upon His Father's Throne, and resting in humble confidence upon
   Heaven's strength, He looked away for a moment from the strife and
   resistance unto blood which was going on below. He asked for that upon
   which His heart was most fully set. He opened His mouth wide that His
   God might fill it.

   This prayer, I take it, was not only the casual expression of the
   Savior's desire at the last, but is a sort of model of the prayer which
   is incessantly going up from Him to the Eternal Throne. There is a
   difference in the mode of its offering. With sighs and tears He offered
   up His humble suit below--but with authority He now pleads enthroned in
   Glory! But the plea is the same--that which He desired while still
   below is that which His soul pants after now that He is taken up and is
   glorified above. It is significant, Beloved, that the Savior should, in
   His last moments, not only desire the salvation of all His people, but
   should plead for the unity of the saved ones--that being saved they
   might be united.

   It was not enough that each sheep should be taken from the jaw of the
   wolf. He would have all the sheep gathered into one fold under His own
   care. He was not satisfied that the members of His body should, each of
   them, be saved as the result of His death--He must have those members
   fashioned into a glorious body! Unity lying so very near the Savior's
   heart at such a time of overwhelming trial must have been held by Him
   to be priceless beyond all price! It is of this unity that we shall
   speak this morning--on this wise--first of all, we will have a little
   to say upon the unity desired. Then upon the work necessary--namely,
   that the chosen be gathered in. Thirdly, upon prayer offered. Fourthly,
   upon the result anticipated, and fifthly, upon the question suggested.

   I. First, then, UPON THE UNITY DESIRED. These words of the Savior have
   been perverted to the doing of a world of mischief. Ecclesiastics have
   fallen asleep, which, indeed, is their ordinary condition. And while
   asleep they have dreamed a dream--a dream founded upon the letter of
   the Savior's words of which they discern not the spiritual sense. They
   have proved in their own case, as has been proved in thousands of
   others, that the letter kills, and only the spirit gives life.

   Falling asleep, I say, these ecclesiastics have dreamed of a great
   confederation presided over by a number of ministers, these again
   governed by superior officers, and these again by others, and these
   topped at last by a supreme visible head who must be either a person or
   a council. This great confederacy, containing within itself kingdoms
   and nations, becomes so powerful as to work upon States, to influence
   politics, to guide councils and even to gather together and to move
   armies. True, the shadow of the Savior's teaching, "My kingdom is not
   of this World," must have caused an occasional nightmare in the midst
   of their dream, but they dreamed on!

   And what is worse, they turned the dream into a reality, and the time
   was when the professed followers of Christ were all one. When looking
   north, south, east, west--from the center at the Vatican--one united
   body covered all Europe! And what was the result? Did the world believe
   that God had sent Christ? The world believed the very opposite! The
   world was persuaded that God had nothing to do with that great
   crushing, tyrannous, superstitious, ignorant thing which called itself
   Christianity.

   And thinking men became infidels, and it was the hardest possible thing
   to find a genuine intelligent Believer north, south, east, or west. All
   professors were one, but the world believed not--the fact being that
   this was not the unity which Jesus had so much as thought of. It was
   never His intention to set up a great united body to be called a Church
   which should dominate and lord everywhere over the souls of men. He
   never intended a Church within its ranks, kings, princes and statesmen
   who might be worldly, ungodly, hateful, sensual, and devilish. It was
   never Christ's design to set up a conscience-crushing engine of
   uniformity.

   And so the great man-devised machine, when it was brought to perfection
   and set to work with the greatest possible vigor, instead of working
   out that the world should believe that the Father had sent Christ,
   worked out just this--that the world did not believe anything at
   all--but became infidel, licentious, and rotten at the core! And the
   system had to be abated as a common nuisance and something better
   brought into the world to restore morality. Yet people dream that dream
   still--even good people do so!

   The Puritans, after they had been hunted and hauled to prison in this
   country, fled to New England, and no sooner had they seated themselves
   upon the shore than they began to say, "We must all be one! There must
   be no schism!" And the big whip was brought out for the Quaker's back,
   and the manacles for the Baptist's bleeding wrists, because these men,
   somehow or other, would not be one after this kind of fashion, but
   would think for themselves and obey God rather than man.

   Nowadays Dr. Pusey dreams that the Anglican and the Russian Church may
   be united, and then perhaps the Romish may chime in--and so once more
   all may be one. A mere dream! A mere chimera of a kindly but whimsical
   brain! If it should ever come to be a reality it would prove to be an
   upas tree at the roots of which every honest man must at once lay his
   axe. But what did the Savior mean, "That they all may be one, as You,
   Father, are in Me"?

   We must begin at the beginning. What were the elements of this unity
   which Christ so anxiously desired? The answer is very distinctly given
   us in this chapter. The unity was to be composed of the people who are
   here called "they." "That they all may be one." Will you let your eyes
   run down the chapter to see who they are? Look in the second verse:
   "That He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him."

   The unity, then proposed, is of persons specially given to Jesus by the
   Father! Not, then, of all men who happen to dwell in any particular
   province, district, or city--but a unity of persons who have received,
   not common life as all have--but life eternal. Special persons, then,
   who have been quickened by God the Holy Spirit and have been brought
   into vital union with the Person of the Lord Jesus are to be one.

   Further, they are described in the sixth verse as persons to whom God's
   name has been manifested--people who have seen what others never
   saw--and have beheld what others cannot know. They are men given out of
   the world, so the verse tells us--chosen men, taken out from the
   ordinary mass--not, then, the multitude. Not kingdoms, states,
   empires--but selected persons. They are persons who have been schooled
   and have learned unusual lessons--"Now they have known that all things
   whatever You have given Me are of You." And they have learned their
   lesson well, for we find it written, "They have kept Your Word. They
   have believed that You did send Me."

   They are described in the ninth verse as being prayed for by Christ in
   a sense in which He never prays for the world at all. They are people,
   according to the tenth verse, in whom God is glorified--in whom the
   name of Jesus shines with resplendent luster. Look the whole chapter
   through and you will discover that the unity which the Master intended
   was that of chosen persons who, by the Holy Spirit conferring life upon
   them, are led to believe in Jesus Christ! They are spiritual-minded men
   who live in the realm of spirit, prize spiritual things, and form a
   confederacy and a kingdom which is spiritual and not of this world.

   Here is the secret. Carnal minds hear that Jesus is to wear a crown of
   pearls--they find pearls in shells--they try to join the oyster shells
   together and what strange thing they make! But Jesus will have no union
   of the shells--the shells must be struck off as worthless things! The
   jewels, and the jewels, only, are to be joined together! It is rumored
   that the

   King is to wear a crown and that pure gold is to form that brilliant
   circlet. Straightway men bring their huge nuggets and would fashion the
   diadem of masses of rock, earth, quartz, and I know not what. But the
   King wears no such crown as that! He will refine the gold. He will melt
   away the earth. The crown is to be made of pure gold, not of the
   material with which that gold happens to be united.

   The one Church of God--of what is it composed, then? Is it composed of
   the Church of England, the Congregational Union, the Wesleyan
   Conference and the Baptist body? No, it is not. Is not, then, the
   Church of England a part of the Church of Christ, and the Baptist
   denomination a part? No! I deny that these bodies, as such unrefined
   and in the gross, are a part of the great unity for which Jesus prayed.
   But there are Believers united with the Church of England who are a
   part of the body of Christ. And there are Believers in all
   denominations of Christians. Yes, and many in no visible Church at all,
   who are in Christ Jesus, and consequently in the great unity.

   The Church of England is not a part of Christ's true body, nor any
   other denomination as such. The spiritual unity is made up of spiritual
   men, separated, picked out, cleared away from all the mass with which
   they happen to be united. I have spoken very boldly perhaps, and may be
   misunderstood. But I mean this--that you cannot take out any visible
   Church, however pure, and say that as it stands it belongs to the
   spiritual unity for which Jesus prayed. There are in the visible
   Churches a certain number of God's elect, and these are of the body of
   Jesus Christ. But their fellow professors, if unconverted, are not in
   the mystical union. Christ's body is not made up of denominations, nor
   of presbyteries, nor of Christian societies--it is made up of saints
   chosen of God from before the foundation of the world--redeemed by
   blood, called by His Spirit and made one with Jesus.

   But now, passing on, what is the bond which keeps these united ones
   together? Among others, there is the bond of the same origin. Every
   person who is a partaker of the life of God has sprung from the same
   Divine Father. The Spirit of God has quickened all the faithful alike.
   No matter that Luther may be very dissimilar from Calvin--Luther is
   made and created a new creature in Christ Jesus by that same fiat which
   created Calvin. No matter that Juan de Valdes, in the same age, may
   hide himself in the Court of Spain and scarcely be recognized as a
   Believer, yet when we turn over his volume today we find in his, "One
   Hundred Considerations," the very same spirit of Divine Grace which
   breathes in Calvin's "Institutes," or in Luther's "Bondage of the Human
   Will."

   And we discover there the same life in each--they have been quickened
   by the same Spirit and made to live by the same energy! And though they
   knew it not, they were still one. No, more--all true Believers are
   supported by the same strength! The life which makes vital the prayer
   of a Believer today is the same life which quickened the cry of a
   Believer two thousand years ago. And if this world shall last so long
   as another thousand years, the same Spirit which made the tear trickle
   from the eyes of a penitent then is that which this day makes us bows
   before God Most High.

   Moreover, all Believers have the same aim and object. Every true saint
   is shot from the same bow and is speeding towards the same target.
   There may be, there will be much that is not of God about the man, much
   of human infirmity, defilement and corruption--but still the inward
   spirit within him which God has put there is forcing its way to the
   same perfection of holiness, and is, meanwhile, seeking to glorify God!

   Above all, the Holy Spirit, who indwells in every Believer, is the true
   fount of oneness. Some of the Christians in this land of ours two
   hundred years ago were strangely different in outward manners from
   their Brethren of 1866. But when we talk with them through their old
   folios and octavos, we find, if we are the Lord's people, that we are
   quite at home with them. Though the manifestation may vary, yet the
   same Spirit of God works the same Graces, the same virtues, the same
   excellencies--and thus helps all saints to prove themselves to be of
   one tribe.

   I meet an Englishman anywhere in the wide world over and I recognize in
   him some likeness to myself. There is some characteristic or other
   about him by which his nationality is betrayed. And so I meet a
   Christian five hundred years back in the midst of Romanism and
   darkness, but his speech betrays him. If my soul shall traverse space
   in one hundred years to come, although Christianity may have assumed
   another outward garb and fashion, I shall still recognize the
   Christian! I shall still detect the Galilean brogue. There will be
   something which will show to me that if I am an heir of Heaven I am one
   with the past and one with the future--yes, one with all the saints of
   the living God.

   This is a very different bond from that which men try to impose upon
   each other in order to create union. They put straps round the outside.
   They tie us together with many knots and we feel uneasy. But God puts a
   Divine life inside of us and then we wear the sacred bonds of love with
   ease. If you get the limbs of a dead man you can tie them together and
   then if you send the body on a journey and the carriage jolts, a leg
   will slip out of its place and an arm may be dislocated. But get a
   living man and you may send him where you will and the ligatures of
   life will prevent his dropping asunder. In all the truly elect children
   of God who are called, and chosen, and faithful, there is a bond of
   Divine mysterious love running right through the whole. And they are
   one and must be one--the Holy Spirit being the life which unites them.

   There are tokens which evidence this union and prove that the people of
   God are one. We hear much moaning over our divisions. There may be some
   that are to be deplored among ecclesiastical confederacies, but in the
   spiritual Church of the living God I am really at a loss to discover
   the divisions which are so loudly proclaimed. It strikes me that the
   tokens of union are much more prominent than the tokens of division.

   But what are they? First there is a union in judgment upon all vital
   matters. I converse with a spiritual man and no matter what he calls
   himself, when we talk of sin, pardon, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and such
   like themes, we are agreed. We speak of our blessed Lord. My Friend
   says that Jesus is fair and lovely: so do I. He says that he has
   nothing else to trust to but the precious blood: nor have I anything
   else. I tell him that I find myself a poor, weak creature: he laments
   the same. I live in his house a little while: we pray together at the
   family altar--you could not tell which it was that prayed-- Calvinist
   or Arminian. We pray so exactly alike and when we open the hymn book,
   very likely if he happens to be a Wesleyan he chooses to sing, "Jesus,
   lover of my soul." I will sing it, and then next morning he will sing
   with me, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me."

   If the Spirit of God is in us we are all agreed upon great points. Let
   me say that among true saints the points of union, even in matters of
   judgment, are ninety-nine, and the points of difference are only as
   one. In experimental points, as face answers to face, so does the heart
   of man to man. Only get upon experimental topics concerning
   soul-dealings with God--leave the letter and get to the spirit, crack
   the shells and eat the kernel of spiritual truth--and you will find
   that the points of agreement between genuine Christians are something
   marvelous!

   But this union is to be seen most plainly in union of heart. I am told
   that Christians do not love each other. I am very sorry if that is
   true, but I rather doubt it, for I suspect that those who do not love
   each other are not Christians. Where the Spirit of God is there must be
   love, and if I have once known and recognized any man to be my Brother
   in Christ Jesus, the love of Christ constrains me no more to think of
   him as a stranger or foreigner, but a fellow citizen with the saints.

   Now I hate High Churchism as my soul hates Satan. But I love George
   Herbert, although George Herbert is a desperately High Churchman. I
   hate his High Churchism, but I love George Herbert from my very soul
   and I have a warm corner in my heart for every man who is like he is.
   Let me find a man who loves my Lord Jesus Christ as George Herbert did
   and I do not ask myself whether I shall love him or not! There is no
   room for question, for I cannot help myself--unless I can leave off
   loving Jesus Christ, I cannot cease loving those who love Him!

   Here is George Fox, the Quaker--a strange sort of body it is
   true--going about the world making much noise and stir. But I love the
   man with all my soul because he had an awful respect for the Presence
   of God and an intense love for everything spiritual. How is it that I
   cannot help loving George Herbert and George Fox who are, in some
   things, complete opposites? Because they both loved the Master! I will
   defy you, if you have any love to Jesus Christ, to pick or choose among
   His people. You may hate as much as you will the shells in which the
   pearls lie, and the dross with which the gold is mixed, but the true,
   the precious blood-bought gold, the true pearl, Heaven-dyed, you must
   esteem! You must love a spiritual man wherever you may find him.

   Such love exists among the people of God, and if anybody says it does
   not I can only fear that the speaker is unfit to judge. If I come
   across a man in whom there is the Spirit of Christ, I must love him. If
   I did not I should prove I was not in the union. Oneness in judgment,
   in experience, and in heart are some of the evidences of this union.
   But if you want more plain and palpable union, which even carnal eyes
   can see, note the unity of Christian prayer. Oh, how slight the
   difference there! Well-taught Believers address the Throne of Grace in
   the same style, whatever may be the particular form which their Church
   organization may have assumed.

   So is it with praise. There, indeed, we are as one, and our music goes
   up with sweet accord to the Throne of the heavenly Grace. Beloved, we
   are one in action--true Christians anywhere are all doing the same
   work. Here is a Brother preaching. I do not care about that white thing
   he has on, but if he is a genuine Christian, he is preaching Christ
   Crucified. And here am I, and he may not like me because I have not
   that white rag on, but still I delight to preach Christ

   Crucified. When you come to the real lifework of the Christian, it is
   the same in every case, it is holding up the Cross of Christ.

   "Oh," you say, "but there are many Christians in the world preaching
   this and that and the other." I am saying nothing of them or about
   them. I am saying nothing about their ecclesiastical belongings. I am
   saying nothing about those who merely cling to the Church. I am
   speaking of the elect, the precious ones, the simpleminded
   Christ-taught men and women. Their motive of action is the same and
   there is among them a true union which is the answer to our Lord's
   prayer. He did not plead in vain--what He sought He has obtained--and
   the truly quickened are this day one, and shall evermore remain so.

   I think I hear someone saying, "But I cannot see this unity." My answer
   is, "One reason may be because of your lack of information." I saw a
   large building the other day being erected. I do not know that it was
   any business of mine, but I did puzzle myself to make out how that
   would make a complete structure. It seemed to me that the gables would
   come in so very awkwardly. But I dare say if I had seen a plan, there
   might have been some central tower or some combination by which the
   wings, one of which appeared to be rather longer than the other, might
   have been brought into harmony. The architect, doubtless, had a unity
   in his mind which I had not in mine.

   So you and I have not the necessary information as to what the Church
   is to be. The unity of the Church is not to be seen by you today--do
   not even think it--the plan is not worked out yet. God is building over
   yonder and you only see the foundation. In another part the top stone
   is all but ready but you cannot comprehend it. Shall the Master show
   you His plan? Is the Divine Architect bound to take you into His studio
   to show you all His secret motives and designs? Not so! Wait awhile and
   you will find that all these diversities and differences among
   spiritually-minded men, when the master plan comes to be worked out,
   are different parts of the grand whole! And you, with the astonished
   world, will then know that God has sent the Lord Jesus!

   I go into a great factory. There is a wheel spinning a way in which it
   is perfectly indifferent and careless of every other wheel. There is
   another wheel going in an opposite direction! All sorts of motions
   concentric and eccentric--and I say, "What an extraordinary muddle this
   all seems!" Just so--I do not understand the machinery. So when I go
   into the great visible Church of God, if I look with the eyes of my
   spirit I can see the inner harmony. But if with these eyes I look upon
   the great outward Church, I cannot see it, nor will it ever be seen
   till the hidden Church shall be made manifest at the appearing of the
   Lord.

   The reason why you do not see the unity of the Church may be because of
   the present roughness of the material. See yonder a number of
   stones--here, a number of trees. I cannot see the unity. Of course not.
   When these trees are all cut into planks--when these stones are all
   squared--then you may begin to see them as a whole. The various stones
   of the Divine building of the Church are all out of shape at
   present--they are not polished. We shall never be one till we are
   sanctified. The unity of Christ is a unity of holy, not unholy beings.
   And as we, each of us, grow more and more prepared by the work of
   Christ for our own place, we shall discover more and more the unity of
   the Church.

   Perhaps, too, let me say, we cannot see the unity of the Church because
   we ourselves cannot see anything. Is that a hard saying? Who can bear
   it? There are thousands of professors who cannot see anything. Do not
   suppose, dear Friends, that the unity of the Church is a thing that is
   to be seen by these eyes of ours. Never! Everything spiritual is
   spiritually discerned. You must get spiritual eyes before you can see
   it. Many people say there is no unity. I should be astonished if there
   were any which they could see or feel! They are not in Christ
   themselves. Their hearts have never felt what spiritual life means--how
   should they be able to understand that into which they have never
   entered?

   See what carnal-mindedness does with Christ's teaching. Christ teaches
   His people that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood.
   Carnal-Mind Says, "I know what that means." And straightway he runs to
   the pantry and brings out a loaf of bread and a cup of wine. Spiritual
   men weep at such ignorance. Jesus says, "That they all may be one, as
   You, Father, are in Me." "I know what that means," says
   Carnal-Mind--"They are all to worship after the same fashion, and use
   the same ritual." That is all poor Carnal-Mind knows about it! He
   confuses the outward with the inward and misses the Lord's meaning.

   But, Beloved, you know better than this! You do know, I trust, and feel
   this very day in your soul that the true saints of the living God are
   one with each other at this very moment. You understand that they
   recognize and discover this unity in proportion as they become like
   their Lord and Master, and are conformed to His image, and made fit for
   the place which they are to occupy. Just as Professor Owen can take up
   a bone, and from that one bone can discover the whole structure of the
   entire animal, I do not doubt but what there is a mutual dependence and
   consistency between every Christian and his fellows. And it is such
   that if we understood the science of spiritual comparative anatomy, as
   we may do in Heaven, we should be able to form from any one Christian
   the fashion of the entire Church of God from the mutual dependence of
   one upon the other!

   But it would not be according to the fashion of the beast that was, and
   now is, and is yet to come, which calls itself the Church of Christ,
   and is nothing better than Antichrist. It would take the fashion of the
   Lord from Heaven, of whose body we are members.

   II. I have talked too long upon this matter of unity to spare much time
   for the other points, and therefore only a hint at them. The second
   head was to be, THE WORK THAT IS TO BE DONE BEFORE THIS UNITY CAN BE
   COMPLETE. There are many chosen ones who have not yet believed in Jesus
   Christ and the Church cannot be one till these are saved. Here is work
   to be done--work to be done by instruments. These chosen ones are to
   believe--that is a work of Divine Grace, but they are to believe
   through our work. Brethren, if you would promote the unity of Christ's
   Church, look after His lost sheep--seek out wandering souls.

   If you ask what is to be your work, the answer is in the text--it is to
   be concerning Christ. They are to believe in Him. Every soul that
   believes in Christ is built into the great Gospel unity in its measure,
   and you will never see the Church as a whole while there is one soul
   left unsaved for whom the Savior shed His precious blood. Go out and
   teach His Word! Tell of the doctrines of Grace as He has given you
   ability. Hold up Christ before the eyes of men and you will be the
   means in God's hand of bringing them to believe in Him--and so the
   Church shall be built up and made one.

   Here is work for the beginning of the year! Here is work till the end
   of the year! Do not sit down and scheme and plot and plan how this
   denomination may melt into the other--you leave that alone. Your
   business is to go and--

   "Tell to sinners round What a Savior you have found," for that is God's
   way of using you to complete the unity of His Church. Unless these are
   saved the Church is not perfect. That is a wonderful text that, "They
   without us cannot be made perfect." That is to say, saints in Heaven
   cannot be perfect unless we get there. What? The blessed saints in
   Heaven not perfect except the rest of Believers come there? So the
   Scripture tells us, for they would be a part of the body and not a
   whole body--they cannot be perfect as a flock unless the rest of the
   sheep come there.

   They beckon us from the battlement of Heaven and say to us, "Come up
   here, for without you we cannot be one as Jesus Christ is one with His
   Father. We are an imperfect body till you come." And we, from our
   position of Grace, turn round to the sinful world and we say to the
   chosen of God from among that sinful world, "Come to Jesus! Trust
   Jesus! Believe in Him! For without you we cannot be perfect, nor can
   the heavenly ones themselves be, for there must be one complete Church!
   The city must be walled all round--if there is one gap in the wall the
   city will not be one. Come, then, put your trust in Jesus, that His
   Church may be one."

   III. The third point was to be, HERE IS PRAYER OFFERED. Beloved, Christ
   prays for the unity of His Church that all saints who have gone to
   Heaven in days gone by--that all saints who live now--that all who ever
   live may be brought into the unity of the one life in Himself. I fear
   We do not attach enough importance to the power of Christ's prayer. We
   think of Joshua fighting in the valley, but we forget our Moses with
   hands outstretched upon the hill.

   We are looking at the wheels of the machine--go back to our old
   figure--and we are thinking that this wheel, and that, and the other,
   is wanting more oil, or not working exactly to its point. Ah, but let
   us never forget the engine, that mysterious motive force which is
   hidden and concealed, upon which the action of the whole depends!
   Christ's prayer for His people is the great motive force by which the
   Spirit of God is sent to us and the whole Church is kept filled with
   life! And the whole of that force is tending to this one thing--unity!
   It is removing everything which keeps us from being one. It is working
   with all its Divine Omnipotence to bring us into a visible unity when
   Christ shall stand in the latter days upon the earth.

   Beloved, let us have hope for sinners yet unconverted! Christ is
   praying for them! Let us have hope for the entire body of the faithful!
   Christ is praying for their unity, and what He prays for must be
   effected! He never pleads in vain! He prays that the Church may be one,
   and it is one! He prays that they may be perfect and complete, and it
   shall be amidst eternal hallelujahs!

   IV. Then, there was THE RESULT ANTICIPATED FROM THE WHOLE. "That the
   world may believe that You have sent Me." The effect of sight of the
   complete Church upon human minds will be overwhelming. Angels and
   principalities will look at Christ's perfect Church with awe. They will
   all exclaim, "What a marvel! What a wonder! What a masterpiece of
   Divine power and wisdom!" When they saw the foundation laid in the
   precious blood of Christ, they gazed long and wistfully--but when they
   see the whole Church complete, every spire and pinnacle, and the great
   top-stone brought out with shouting, all built of precious jewels and
   pearls, fashioned like the similitude of a palace-- why they will make
   Heaven ring again and again!

   When the world was made they sang for joy. But how shall the vaults of
   Heaven echo when the Church is all complete and the new creation shall
   have been perfected? What will be the effect upon men? Astonishment
   will be the effect upon angels, but what upon men? Why the world, that
   wicked world which rejected Christ, that wicked crucifying world which
   would have none of Him and which now will have none of His people--that
   wicked world which hates His saints and has strived with all its might
   to pluck down the walls of His Church will BELIEVE! They will be
   compelled to believe that God has sent His Son!

   They will bite their tongues with rage! They will gnash their teeth
   with horror! But there will be no doubt about it. Do not suppose that
   the world will ever be convinced so as to believe in Christ and to be
   saved by the unity of the Church. It is not anticipated in this chapter
   that the world ever will be saved! That is not dreamed of the whole
   chapter through--the world is spoken of as something for which Christ
   does not pray--whose enlightenment is not anticipated. But that world,
   though it weeps, and wails, and curses, and abhors, shall be made
   distinctly to recognize the divinity of Christ's mission when it shall
   see the entire unity of the Church!

   Why, before my astonished gaze this morning there seems to me to rise
   up as from a great sea of confusion a wondrous building! I see the
   first stone sunk into the depths of that sea dyed with blood. I see the
   top of it just emerging above lofty waves of strife and confusion. Now
   I see other stones built on that, all of them dyed with blood--the
   first Apostles--all of them martyrs. I see stone rising upon stone as
   age succeeds age. At first nearly all the foundations are laid in the
   fair vermilion of martyrdom, but the structure rises! The stones are
   very different--they come from Asia, Africa, America, Europe--they are
   taken from among princes and from among peasants.

   These stones are very diverse. Perhaps while they were here they
   scarcely recognized that they belonged to the same building, but there
   they are--and for 1860 years that building goes on, and on, and
   on--building--every stone being made ready! We know not how many more
   years that masterly edifice will take, but at the last, despite all the
   frowns of Hell and all the power of devils, that edifice will be
   completed--not a single stone being lost, not one elect child of God
   being absent--and not one of those stones having suffered any injury
   nor been put out of its place! And the whole so fair, so matchless,
   such a display of power and wisdom and love, that even the hateful ones
   whose hearts are hard as adamant against the Most High will be
   compelled to say God must have sent Christ! They cannot restrain that
   confession when all the Church shall be one as the Father is one with
   Christ. O happy day!

   V. The concluding suggestion was to be this--ARE WE PARTS OF THAT GREAT
   UNITY? There is the question! It is not this morning, Are you members
   of a Christian Church? "I know how you get at it," you say, "Well, a
   certain number of Churches are evangelical and orthodox. They make up
   orthodox Protestantism. Now, I am a Baptist. Very well. I am a Baptist,
   and the Baptist churches are orthodox, therefore I am a Christian. I am
   an Episcopalian, and Episcopacy is one branch of Protestantism. Very
   well, I am a Protestant, I am a Christian."

   Ah, that is your carnal way of talking! You may be very grievously
   mistaken if that is your argument. But if you can go another way to
   work and say, "I have received eternal life for I have believed in the
   Lord Jesus Christ and I am given of the Father unto Him." Why then,
   Beloved, you come at it directly! Being one with Christ you are one
   with His people! But do not, when you are looking for this unity, look
   for an outward but for an inward thing. Do not look for a matter that
   is to be written on sheets of paper, on rolls and books--look for a
   bond written on hearts, and consciences, and souls!

   Do not be looking for all saints in one room, but in Christ! All living
   upon heavenly bread, and drinking of the wines on the lees well refined
   that come from Christ Jesus. Look for a spiritual union and you will
   find it! If you look for the other thing you will not find it, and if
   you did find it, it would be a great and awful thing from which you
   might pray God to deliver His Church. As spiritual men, look for
   spiritual unity--but first begin by asking whether you are spiritual
   yourselves. Have you been born into the family? Have you been washed
   with the blood? Have you passed from death unto life? If not, even if
   you could be in the body you would be as a dead substance in the body
   working a fester, a gangrene--necessitating pain and suffering--you
   would be a thing accursed to be cast away.

   But are you alive by the life of Christ? Does God dwell in you, and do
   you dwell in Him? Then, my dear Brother, give me your hand! Never mind
   about a thousand differences if you are in Christ and I am in Christ!
   We cannot be two, we must be one. Let us love each other fervently with
   a pure heart. Let us live on earth as those who are to live together a
   long eternity in Heaven. Let us help each other's spiritual growth. Let
   us aid each other as far as possible in every holy, spiritual
   enterprise which is for the promotion of the kingdom of the Lord.

   And let us chase out of our hearts everything which would break the
   unity which God has established. Let us cast from us every false
   doctrine, every false thought of pride, enmity, envy, bitterness that
   we, whom God has made one, may be one before men as well as before the
   eyes of the heart-searching God.

   May the Lord bless us, dear Friends, as a Church. May He make us one,
   and keep us so. It will be the dead stuff among us that will make the
   divisions. It is the living children of God that make the unity! It is
   the living ones that are bound together. There will be no fear about
   that--Christ's prayer takes care of us--that we shall be one. As for
   those of you who are joined with us in visible fellowship and are not
   one with Christ, may the Lord save you with His great salvation, and
   His shall be the praise. Amen and Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                        Open Heart For The Great Savior

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 17, 1865,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But as many as received Him, to them ga ve He power to become the sons
   of God, even to them thatbelieve on His name: who were born, not of
   blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
   God." John 1:12.

   DIVINE Truth is one, but it is many-sided. When you have looked at it
   from one point of view you may reverse your position, and, though the
   Truth at which you look will be the same, you will marvel at its
   freshness as seen from another aspect. This morning we sought to show
   you how Jesus Christ received sinners [Volume 11, Sermon #665--Open
   House for All Comers.] Tonight it shall be our endeavor, as the Holy
   Spirit may enable us, to set forth how sinners receive Christ.

   It is perfectly true that the work of salvation lies first and mainly
   in Jesus receiving sinners to Himself to pardon, to cleanse, to
   sanctify, to preserve, to make perfect. But, at the same time the
   sinner also receives Christ. There is an act on the sinner's part by
   which, being constrained by Divine Grace, he opens his heart to the
   admission of Jesus Christ and Jesus enters in and dwells in the heart,
   and reigns and rules there. To a gracious readiness of heart to
   entertain the Friend who knocks at the door, we are brought by God the
   Holy Spirit, and then He sups with us and we with Him.

   We shall take, tonight, the view of the subject opened up before us by
   this text. We shall begin by simply and shortly describing how the
   sinner receives Christ. Secondly, the privilege, or power, which is
   conferred as the result of this reception of Christ. And thirdly, the
   great change which is involved in the fact that the sinner has received
   Christ, the fact that the sinner has been born again from above, "not
   of the will of man, but of God."

   I. As briefly, then, as may be, and very simply, indeed, we will
   describe WHAT IT IS FOR THE SINNER TO RECEIVE CHRIST. This receiving
   Christ lies in several things. If a man would receive Christ he must,
   first of all, receive Him in His Person as He is revealed in the Sacred
   Scriptures. We are taught over and over again in Scripture that Jesus
   Christ is Immanuel, God with us, God manifest in the flesh, Jehovah's
   equal in fashion as a man.

   The "WORD"--that "Word" of which it is said, "the Word was God"--was
   "made manifest" in flesh among men, and they "beheld His glory." Though
   He "thought it not robbery to be equal with God," yet "He made Himself
   of no reputation, but took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made
   in the likeness of men." This was a new and startling doctrine when
   first preached to heathen sages, that God should take humanity into so
   intimate a connection with Himself, as really and truly to be Man and
   God in the same Person.

   But it is a doctrine which must be received by you or else you cannot
   receive Christ. My Master will not be satisfied with the acknowledgment
   that His Character is lovely, His doctrine pure, and His moral teaching
   super-excellent. He will not be content with your admission that He is
   a Prophet greater than any Prophet that ever came before or after Him.
   He will not rest satisfied with your admission that He is a teacher
   sent from Heaven, and a Being who, on account of His virtues, is now
   peculiarly exalted in Heaven.

   All this is well, but it is not enough! You must also believe that He,
   who as Man was born of the Virgin, and was dandled upon her lap at
   Bethlehem, was as God none other than the everlasting Lord, without
   beginning of days or end of years. You do not receive Christ in very
   deed and truth unless you believe in His proper humanity and actual
   Godhead. Indeed, what is there for you to receive if you do not receive
   this? A Savior who is not Divine can be no Savior for us! How can a
   mere man, however eminent, deliver his fellows from sins such as yours
   and mine? How can he bear the burden of our guilt any more than we can
   ourselves bear it, if there is no more about him than about any other
   singularly virtuous man?

   An angel would stagger beneath the load of human criminality, and much
   more would this be the case with even a perfect man. It needed those
   mighty shoulders--"Which bear the earth's huge pillars up," to sustain
   the weight of human sin, and carry it into the wilderness of
   forgetfulness! You must receive Christ, in order to be saved by Him, as
   being God though man. But, my dear Friends, the mere belief of this
   doctrine will not save anybody! There are many persons who have no need
   to fear the curses of the Athanasian Creed, nor the test of any other
   dogmatic way of expressing the fact of the Deity of Christ. But they
   are, nevertheless, very far from having received Christ Jesus Himself!
   A man may believe another to be a clever physician, and yet if he has a
   personal objection to him, he may refuse to receive him as such.

   If a man would receive Jesus rightly, he must, in the next place,
   accept Him in all His offices. Our blessed Lord has three main offices.
   We find Him spoken of as "Prophet," "Priest," and "King," and men must
   be willing to take Him in each and all of the three. As a "Prophet" He
   teaches--what He has received of God He manifests to man. Am I willing
   to abide by His teaching? Do I take His words, and the words which He
   delivered by His Apostles, as being my directory and rule? I have a
   certain "doxy" which some call, "heterodoxy," but which, perhaps, I
   think to be "orthodoxy." Can I sincerely say that Jesus Christ is the
   Dictator of my orthodoxy?

   Do I take Him and His teaching to be the Truth by which I will abide? I
   find one Church holding one creed, and another Church holding another.
   Do I look at all these standards of faith, and say of them, "I will
   follow them as far as they follow Christ, but neither to cardinal,
   bishop, synod, nor presbytery will I yield my faith"? I must first know
   whether the teaching of these men is in accordance with the teaching of
   Him whom I take to be my Master and my Teacher. Whether you are
   Calvinists, or Arminians, or anything else, dear Friends, be first and
   chiefly Christians-- Christians following Christ--receiving Him as the
   great Expositor to you of God, and of the great Truths of Revelation.

   You will tell me you have your "bodies of divinity." There never was
   but one "body of divinity," and that was the "body" of the Man, Christ
   Jesus! Do you, abating all prejudices and self-formed opinions, receive
   our Lord as the great embodiment of Truth? The truest and the best
   system of theology is Jesus Christ! If you learn Him you have all
   Truth-- you have nothing in excess, and nothing is omitted. He is the
   mold of Truth into which your prepared mind must be delivered to
   receive form and shape from His perfect wisdom. Our hearts must receive
   Him as the Truth of God--

   "You are the Truth, Your Word alone True wisdom can impart. To You I
   yield a willing mind, And open all my heart."

   If I receive Jesus as "Prophet," I must also take Him as "Priest."
   Herein, indeed, mainly lies His work. He came to purify men from sin.
   He stood before God offering a sacrifice of propitiation by which the
   guilt of man is removed. If I am not willing to receive Him as an
   atoning sacrifice, it is in vain for me to esteem Him as an exemplar.
   His Cross of Atonement is inseparable from Himself. We must not only
   glory in Christ but in Him Crucified, or else we shall surely be led
   forth with His enemies. Jesus must be my only ground of confidence for
   pardon. I must leave all human priests. I must have done with all
   trusting in priest-craft in any shape or form, whether it is in the
   Popish, Anglican, or any other fashion.

   I must neither make myself a priest, nor look upon any other man as
   being priest for me. I must look upon Jesus Christ as being the only
   Priest in whom I confide--for, mark you--my Master claims the sole
   prerogative of priesthood and He only permits us, His people, to hold
   it as being in Him. And then we all, without exception, can say--"He
   has made us kings and priests unto God." But any special form of
   priesthood, peculiar to a certain class, is as alien to the spirit of
   Christianity as any dogma can possibly be. Every regenerated man
   becomes a priest by virtue of his union with Christ Jesus. But out of
   this union, it is treason to think of priesthood.

   You have not received Christ as the truly regenerated children of God
   have received Him unless you have accepted Him as the Anointed of God,
   the only Priest in whom to trust for the salvation of your soul--

   "I other priests disclaim,
   And laws, and offerings, too.
   None but the bleeding Lamb
   The mighty work can do.
   He shall have all the praise, for He
   Has loved, and lived, and died for me."

   If I yield to the Lord Jesus Christ as Prophet and Priest, I must also
   give Him allegiance as my "King." He will reign where He purifies. He
   is not content to teach me, but He will also govern me. What do you
   say, my Hearers? Will you give yourself up, body and soul, to be ruled
   absolutely by Christ? Shall His Laws be binding upon your conscience
   and carried out in your life?

   Do you say now, as before the Searcher of all hearts--"I desire in
   everything to be guided by Him, to submit myself to His absolute
   control"? You cannot really and truly receive the Savior unless you are
   willing to do this. God has not sent His Son to be the messenger of
   sin! He will forgive your past offenses, but you must in the future
   submit yourselves to His gentle sway. "Kiss the Son," is one of the
   first Gospel commands--"Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish
   from the Way when His wrath is kindled but a little." Remember the doom
   of those men who said, "We will not have this Man to reign over us."

   Take His easy yoke. Bow before His Throne of love. Touch the silver
   scepter of His Divine Grace. "He is your Lord, and worship Him." Crown
   Him in the palace of your soul and set Him on the throne of your
   affections, for He is the King of angels and should be the King of
   men--

   "My King supreme, to You I bow,
   A willing subject at Your feet.
   All other Lords I disavow,
   And to Your government submit.
   My Savior King this heart would love,
   And imitate the blest above."

   Can we, dear Friends, thus accept Christ tonight, as Prophet, Priest,
   and King? If not, it is idle to talk about receiving Jesus Christ--we
   do not know Him--and are not known of Him! Our Lord is not to be
   divided and parceled out. You must have Him altogether or not at all.
   You must admit Him in all His offices, or He will not come under your
   roof.

   But a man may agree to all this and yet not receive Christ! All this is
   necessary as a steppingstone, but we must go on to something more. I
   must receive Jesus Christ as being all this to me. I must give myself
   to Him and take Him as mine, as having near relationship to me and
   influence upon me. Another man's Christ will not save you. He must be
   your Christ. You have been accustomed to go to a place of worship and
   you think, perhaps, "Well, I have gone with the rest, and therefore it
   is all right with me." And when you have heard a sermon it has been
   addressed to the congregation in the plural and you have been content
   to get a little share of it, but a very little one, indeed.

   Now, you have never heard aright unless the Truth has come to you in
   the singular number, as to you alone. The gate of salvation is too
   narrow for two persons to go through arm-in-arm. You must all singly
   and separately pass the portal of Eternal Life just as you did the
   portal of natural life. You must feel not only that such and such
   things are true, but that they are true to you. If you receive our dear
   Redeemer as a Prophet, He begins to exercise that office by telling you
   that you are naturally lost, ruined, and undone. Do you believe this?
   Do you believe it to be true of you--not of chimney-sweeps, not of
   streetwalkers, not only of thieves in prison, but of you--that you are
   condemned under the Law of God? Do you take home the doctrine of the
   Fall, and of the depravity of human nature as being true to you?

   He tells you, next, that the only way to remove your sin is by His
   precious blood. Has that blood any reference to you? Have you trusted
   it? Has it washed you from sin? You have not taken the Lord Jesus as a
   Priest unless you have believed in His blood as presenting a
   propitiation for your sins, and as cleansing you before the holy
   Presence of the Most High God. You have not truly accepted Jesus as
   King unless you have personally submitted yourself to Him. In
   everything else people are so selfish that nothing but personal
   possession will content them! Why are they not thus careful in
   religious matters?

   They do not rejoice in the gold in the bank cellars--they aspire to
   have a good account at their own bank account. They do not consider
   themselves fed because there may happen to be a fine dinner provided at
   the London Tavern--they wish to see a feast on their own tables. But in
   eternal matters of infinitely more importance, men are, alas, so
   satisfied with generalities. "Yes! Oh yes, we are a Christian nation."
   Wonderfully so! "Of course, we, as a family always go to a place of
   worship. We are not heathens! We were born in a Christian land." A
   "Christian land." It is, we must all admit, a very Christian land!

   Very Christian, indeed! Look at our gin palaces and our divorce courts!
   But what of that? How can national religion content private conscience
   any more than national wealth can console personal poverty? Still, the
   most of men care so little about their souls that they are satisfied
   with generalities! They do not come to particulars, to personalities.
   Why should they be so particular in other matters and not in religion?
   Why seek a personal interest in gold and land and estates, and then
   leave

   Heaven and the eternal world to be matters of universal speculation?
   You have not received Christ truly if you have not gripped Him with
   your own hands and claimed Him as your own!

   You must get right hold of Him for yourselves. There is no receiving a
   thing unless the thing received is held by the receiver. Water is
   poured into a vessel and anything received is contained within the
   thing receiving it. So Christ Jesus must come right into you, into
   personal, conscious relationship with your own spirit so as to act upon
   you and influence you or else you have not received Him! I hope I shall
   not make what is very plain, very difficult.

   One is sometimes afraid, in giving explanations, that one may do what a
   good Divine did with Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" which he edited with
   explanatory notes. He went round among his flock and said to one good
   woman, "Do you understand Mr. Bunyan's Pilgrim?" "Oh yes, Sir," was the
   answer, "very well, indeed. And I hope that one day I shall be able to
   understand your explanations." So, perhaps, you will say of me, that
   you understand the text very well, and you hope that one day you will
   be able to understand my explanations!

   Well, I really do not know how to make it more plain. My desire is to
   say very distinctly that we must receive the Lord Jesus Christ as a
   Divine Being--receive Him in all His offices--and receive Him to
   ourselves in all those offices. The pith and marrow of receiving Christ
   we find in the next remark: we must trust Him. The true reception of
   Christ is explained in the text, "Even to them that believe on His
   name." To "receive" then, is to "believe," or, in other words, to
   credit, to rely upon, to trust.

   Now this is the simplest matter in all the world, and yet, by reason of
   its simplicity, it is the hardest possible act for human nature to
   perform. So hard, that although faith still remains the act of man, it
   is an act which he never performs till he receives faith as the gift of
   God. We do not naturally care for a plan of salvation so simple and
   devoid of merit--but there it is and we cannot alter it--nor ought we
   desire to do so. As many as trust Christ, to them He gives power to
   become the sons of God. The whole act of faith lies in the simple
   matter of believing that Jesus is God's appointed Savior, and then
   throwing ourselves upon Him to save us.

   You know what trust is in earthly matters. You rely upon a friend in
   cases of difficulty, and then you do not trouble yourself about the
   matter any more. A person offers to pay your debts and you go home and
   consider yourself out of debt-- you trust the person. Now Jesus says to
   you, "I have suffered for the sin of all Believers. God can now forgive
   sin and yet be a just God. He has punished Me instead of sinners who
   believe on Me. Trust Me. Rely upon Me and your reliance will be at once
   evidence to you that I died for you--that I carried your sin--that God
   punished Me for you. He, therefore, never can punish you because in
   justice He cannot punish both Substitute and offender for one and the
   same sin."

   God can never punish Christ for your sin and then lay the sin at your
   door. He will not send your Substitute to the wars for you and then
   demand you to go for whom the Substitute has already gone. The act of
   trusting Jesus Christ is the act which brings a soul into a state of
   Grace and is the mark and evidence of our being bought with the blood
   of the Lord Jesus. Do you trust Him, dear Hearers? Then, if so, you
   receive Him. When the soul has thus trusted Christ there comes another
   form of reception. The outer golden door of faith being first opened,
   the inner pearly gate of affection is next thrown open. They who trust
   Christ, love Christ--

   "Sure Imust love, or are my ears Still deaf, nor will my passions move?
   Lord! Melt this flinty heart to tears-- This heart shall yield to death
   or love." I do not love Christ first, and then trust Him. I, in the
   dawn of spiritual life, trust Him to save me. I find He does save me
   and I then love Him because He first loved me. I trust Him to deliver
   me out of the bondage of my daily sins. And then I find that I am
   stronger against those sins than I ever was before--that I can tread a
   corruption under foot when I trust Jesus, which I could not battle with
   before I trusted Him. I find He really does come to my rescue, and
   therefore I then say to him, "I love You, O my Helper and Friend." And
   from that time on Jesus Christ lives in my heart!

   We cannot help using expressions such as, "Christ living in us," "Jesus
   formed in us," and the like, when talking about these things. And to
   spiritual men they are very simple, but to the carnal mind they are
   very difficult. Let us in a word expound them. Just as when a man is
   attached to a certain friend, that friend is said to, "live in his
   heart." So Jesus lives in the hearts of His people because they love
   Him.

   And, just as when a man has devoted himself to the pursuit of science,
   that science fills his soul, lives in his soul, makes an abode of it,
   makes a kingdom of it where it will rule and reign. So, love to Jesus,
   faith in Him, and devotion to His cause enter into the soul of the
   Believer and fill it, and thus that soul receives Him. The first door
   is the door of simple faith--a door which has been opened in many a
   sinner's heart by the loving hand of the Holy Spirit--a door, which we
   pray, may be opened in yours tonight. Oh, how gently does the door of
   faith turn on its hinges! A babe taught of God may push it open!

   You may not understand all the doctrines of the Bible but you can
   understand this--if you trust in Jesus Christ you will be a son of God!
   You cannot perform a complex act of an educated mind. Sympathy with
   poetic imagery and enjoyment of metaphysical refinements are quite
   beyond you. But if the Holy Spirit teaches you, you will see that the
   act of faith is not a complex act, but a very simple one, indeed! It is
   so simple that children of three and four years of age have doubtless
   been capable of it. And there have been many persons but very little
   removed from absolute idiocy who have been able to believe.

   A doctrine which needs to be reasoned out may require a high degree of
   mental development--but the simple act of trusting requires nothing of
   the kind. If you cannot read a letter in a book you may believe
   this--that God came down from Heaven in the Person of Jesus Christ and
   suffered for sin Himself that He might forgive sin and yet be just. I
   wonder that a man can hear it and not believe it! It is an amazing
   thing that such good news is not at once believed. Let me repeat it,
   and oh, may the blessed Spirit work faith in you who hear it! God was
   so just that He could not forgive sin without violating His Nature! He
   must award punishment to transgression.

   But to make mercy consistent with the severest justice, the Lawgiver
   came Himself among men and gave His own shoulders to the scourge, and
   stretched out His own hands to feel the nails, to suffer, bleed, and
   die! And now if you trust God in the Person of Christ, and do rely upon
   Him to put away your sin. And if you take Him from now on to be your
   King and Ruler, you shall be saved! God be thanked that we have so
   simple a Gospel to preach and may the Lord bring many to receive it,
   that they may become His sons!

   II. We now turn to THE GREAT PRIVILEGE, which is said in the text to be
   given to those who trust in the Son of God. "But as many as received
   Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." The word "power"
   here may be translated "privilege," and one of the older commentators
   and translators renders it "honor." "To them gave He the honor to
   become the sons of God." Now, what is it to be a "son of God"? This
   theme demands a seraph to discourse upon it! Yes, even an archangel
   might fail to describe what it is to be a son of God!

   Certainly it is a point of dignity beyond what any angel ever attained.
   "Unto which of the angels said He at any time, You are My son, this day
   have I begotten you?" But every man, woman, and child that believes in
   Jesus Christ is from that time on a child of God. You know what it is
   to be the son of a good man and true, and some of you would not
   willingly renounce your birthright. You claim from your father a
   child's privileges. You expect, that being a son, you shall inherit
   certain rights, and those rights you will duly receive.

   If I could stand here tonight and say I were a king's son, many would
   be wonderfully envious. But what do you say to this--I claim to be one
   of the sons of God? Does no man's heart aspire to this felicity? Are
   there no spirits which pine for this dignity? Oh, the stolid baseness
   which does not rise to a desire after this glory! Do not suppose that
   when we say "son of God," we merely use a metaphor without meaning! No,
   every person who believes in Christ Jesus is entitled to all rights and
   privileges which go with son-ship relationship in any case, but which
   emphatically go with son-ship in the case of a son of God!

   What, then, are we entitled to, and what do we receive? A complete list
   I cannot attempt to make out for you, but as my mind suggests the gifts
   of adoption, they shall come before you. If we are the sons of God, we
   are dearly beloved of God. Did you ever try to get that thought into
   your mind, that God loves you? I can understand that God pities me--
   that is a feeling which so vastly superior a Being might well feel to
   so inferior an existence--but that He loves me is scarcely conceivable,
   although it is most sure and certain! Who can drink this well dry? Who
   can bear home this fruitful sheaf of delights, this purple cluster of
   Eshcol?

   Sons of God are loved of their Father with a love surpassing thought!
   They are, indeed, intimately related as well as dearly loved. There is
   a union between God and His sons. There is the same Nature in the son
   as there is in the Father, for we become "partakers of the Divine
   Nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through
   lust." These are no words of mine, but of the Holy Spirit! One would
   not have dared to have uttered them if inspiration had not made them
   ready to our hand. We are most near and dear to the blessed God who
   fills all in all. Being sons we are graciously treated. "Like as a
   father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him." "He
   spares them as a man spares his own son that serves him." Goodness and
   mercy shall follow us all the days of our life and we shall dwell in
   the house of the Lord forever.

   Being sons, again, we are wisely educated. Parents do not think they
   have done their duty unless they bring their children up to understand
   knowledge, and to be fitted to take their part with full grown men. We
   are trained in the school of God. We receive chastisement and are made
   to smart under His rod. We read in the illuminated Book of His Grace,
   and are "made meet," when fully educated, "to be partakers of the
   inheritance of the saints in light." "All your children shall be taught
   of the Lord." There is no school like that in which love is the head
   master. As children we are admitted to a familiarity which servants
   cannot know. A child may say and do to his father what no stranger
   could.

   God manifests Himself to us as He does not unto the world. The secret
   of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will show them His
   Covenant. We have access to God at all hours! The Father's door is
   never locked against His much-loved children. Our cry He knows even as
   a father knows his child's cry from every other sound. All our needs
   are provided for, and our Father's loving heart watches over all our
   wanderings and forgives all our offenses. Remember that a father's
   relationship is one which cannot be suspended.

   I know the old proverb says, "A father's a father till he gets a new
   wife," which implies that he is not afterwards, but that only means as
   to his actions, for he must be a father always. He cannot break off
   that relationship. He must cease to be before he can cease to be a
   father so long as his children live. When I have heard people say that
   you may be a child of God one day and a child of the devil the next, I
   have felt inclined to buy them a dictionary so that they might know the
   meaning of the word "father." What a mistake! What a misuse of words do
   they commit! If I am my father's child I am so, and there is no power,
   human or Divine--I speak with reverence--that can disown me!

   Adoption might cease to operate, but birth, never! I must be the child
   of him that begat me. And so, if I am a child of God, begotten unto God
   by the incorruptible seed of His Word, there is no power, infernal or
   Divine, that can possibly rob me, as a child of God, of this privilege!
   As a child I am, and a child I must be. So then, we have honorable
   standing, safe, abiding, blessed inheritance, and perfected education
   all belonging--to whom? Why, to as many as receive Christ! That is, to
   as many as trust Him! Poor trembling Soul, why should not you be in
   that number?

   III. The third point was to be, THE GREAT WORK, WHICH IS NECESSARILY
   INVOLVED IN THIS ACT OF

   RECEIVING CHRIST. Every man who trusts the Lord Jesus has been born
   again. The question was once argued in an assembly of Divines as to
   whether a person first had faith or regeneration, and it was suggested
   that it was a question which must forever be unanswerable. The process,
   if such it is, must be simultaneous--no sooner does the Divine life
   come into the soul than it believes on Christ. You might as well ask
   whether in the human body there is first the circulation of the blood
   or the heaving of the lungs--both are essential ingredients in life,
   and must come at the same time.

   If I believe in Jesus Christ I need not ask any question as to whether
   I am regenerated, for no unregenerate person ever could believe in the
   Lord Jesus Christ! And if regenerated I must believe in Jesus, for he
   who does not do so is clearly dead in sin. See, then, the folly of
   persons talking about being regenerated who have no faith! It cannot
   be! It is impossible! We can have no knowledge of such a thing as
   regeneration which is not accompanied with some degree of mental motion
   and consciousness.

   Regeneration is not a thing which takes place upon matter--it is a
   thing of spirit. The birth of the spirit must be the subject of
   consciousness, and though a man may not be able to say that at such and
   such a moment he was regenerated, yet the act of faith is a
   consciousness of regeneration. The moment I believe in Jesus Christ my
   faith is an index to me of a work that has gone on within. And the
   secret work within, and the open act of faith which God has joined
   together let no man put asunder. Those who believe not are
   unregenerate, though they may have been sprinkled by the best priest
   who ever had Episcopal hands laid on his head!

   If a man believes not he is unregenerate, whether baptized or not. But
   if he believes, he is regenerate, though he may never have been
   baptized at all. Baptism may outwardly express regeneration after it
   has been received, and then the symbol becomes valuable--but without
   faith there can be no regeneration, even though Baptism is administered
   a thousand times!

   Observe what kind of new birth it is which all Believers have received.
   It is one which comes "not of bloods," (so the original has it).
   Neither by the blood of circumcision, nor of the Passover, nor
   especially by the blood of descent. Sin runs in the blood, if you will,
   but Divine Grace does not. We are not born Christians by the mere fact
   of our being the children of godly Christian people. Neither are we
   born Christians "of the will of man." The best men in the world cannot
   create us anew--if they pray for us ever so much--the power of their
   will apart from the will of God cannot avail.

   We are not born "of the will of the flesh," that is to say, our own
   free will does not cause it. If a man could will himself into a state
   of newness of heart, the fact of his being willing to be in such a
   state would, I suppose, be evidence of his being in that state
   already--but the human will is powerless in itself to produce
   regeneration. We must be born again from above! The Holy Spirit must,
   by His Divine energy, enter into us and make us new creatures--for such
   a heavenly birth is essential to eternal life.

   Now, I think I hear some troubled conscience saying, "When you said
   just now that if I trusted in Christ I should be saved, I rejoiced, but
   when you say we must be born again, that saying seems so mysterious
   that I am troubled." My dear Friend, there is no need to be troubled.
   If you trust in Christ, then you are born again! I have already told
   you that there is no possibility of a soul ever truly relying upon the
   Savior unless there has been a previous new birth to produce his faith.

   If you are, tonight, able to put your whole trust in Jesus Christ as
   God's dear Son, and to take Him to be yours, though your new birth may
   be too mysterious a thing for you to know much about it, for, "the wind
   blows where it likes, and you hear the sound of it, but can not tell
   from where it comes, and where it goes." Yet, your faith is a
   sufficient index that you are really a partaker of the new birth. I do
   not want to open the boiler of a steam engine for the sake of knowing
   what quantity of water there is in it--I am perfectly satisfied by
   looking at the "tell-tale."

   Now faith is the "tell-tale" of the human soul! Where there is faith
   there is new life. Where there is no faith there is no life. There is
   no need to dissect a man, anatomize him, and cut him up in order to
   find out his spirit--you would destroy him in so doing. But when you
   see the man has action, motion, energy--when you put your hand upon his
   breast and feel the heaving of the lungs--you know that there is life.
   Now, if I may so say, faith is the heaving of the spiritual lungs! If
   you believe in Jesus Christ you are a living man--you have been born,
   "not of the will of man, but of God."

   I should like to ask one question before I am done--have all of you
   received Christ? "Yes," or "No"? You good people up in the gallery
   there, I am not going to ask you where you worship generally, nor to
   what Church you belong, but have you received Christ? "Well, Sir, we
   were baptized." I do not care a farthing at this moment whether you
   were baptized or not! I leave that question till we have settled an
   earlier one. Have you received Christ? "Well, we take the sacrament."
   Never mind that! Have you received Christ? Do you trust Him and Him
   only?

   To the point now--can your soul say--

   " On Christ the solid Rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand"?
   Have you received Jesus Christ, each one of you? And if you have not,
   why not? Is there anything so hard in receiving Him? I have sometimes
   thought I should like to tell the tale of the Cross for the first time
   to a number of savages who would just have sufficient culture to
   understand it--God was made flesh and dwelt among us. And rather than
   men should suffer God suffered Himself! And because Justice required
   punishment, "He bore the punishment instead" of sinners. Why, I think I
   see their eyes glistening, and I think their hearts must melt!

   But you have heard the tale so often that it has become an old story to
   you! However, I would like to put the question to you again--have you
   received Jesus Christ? "Well, I have not had much experience," laments
   one, and another says, "I do not know much," and another cries, "We
   have had family prayer for twenty years," and another says, "My name is
   down for twenty guineas in several charitable institutions." Well, all
   that is very well, but I do not care about any of these matters
   tonight! All I want to know is, have you received Christ?

   "Oh!" says one, "Of course! I was always brought up to it." But you
   cannot be "brought up to it." You must be brought down to it by being
   born again! There must be a change in your nature. We do not preach the
   Gospel, as I have said before, to the depraved and debauched alone. We
   preach it to you good, excellent people--you whose honesty in trade,
   and whose moral character set you on high among your fellows, as upon a
   pinnacle. Even YOU must be born again! Ladies and Gentlemen, you must
   be born again, as well as the lowest of the low and the poorest of the
   poor. We have the same Gospel to preach to Her Majesty the Queen as we
   have to the sinners in a refuge or the rogues in a reformatory. We know
   of no difference in this matter between any of you. A difference of
   morality there is, and we are thankful for it--but you must be born
   again as much as the worst rebels in the world!

   And you below here, have you received Christ? I know that many of you
   have, and that your hearts leap at the sound of His name. You can say--

   "Jesus, the very thought of You, With rapture fills my breast."

   But there are some of you who have not received Christ--I mean not
   merely you who are occasional hearers--but my constant hearers. You
   have received me--you believe what I say--but you have not received
   Christ, and you do not believe what HE tells you. It is one thing to
   believe in your minister, but quite another to believe in Jesus Christ!
   I pray you never stop short in receiving anything because we say it, or
   because we seem to prove it--you must get it burned into you as with a
   red-hot iron by God the Holy Spirit's power or else it will be of no
   service to you.

   I stood a few hours ago at the bedside of one of our Brethren in Christ
   who seemed sorely sick and at the point of death. He could not speak
   aloud but the soft and gentle words which he whispered in my ear were
   very precious. He had not his peace to make with God in his last
   hour--he had not then to seek Christ--but was full of perfect peace and
   rejoicing in unbroken calm. "He will not leave me, will He?" he
   asked--"He cannot deny Himself. I may sink, but I cannot sink lower
   than He will go, for underneath me are the everlasting arms."

   Oh, my Brothers and Sisters, the mere letter of Gospel doctrine will
   not do to die on--you must have the spirit of it in your heart or you
   cannot be comforted by it! Believe me, it is stern work to die. A
   Christian dies peacefully, but it is no child's play, even to him. Some
   of us, when we have been sick and racked with pain, know that we have
   had to search for our evidences with much care and anxiety. I have
   turned over many a moldy old deed that laid by in the chest of my
   evidences to try if I could--

   "Read my title clear To mansions in the skies," and glad enough have I
   been to light on some such word as this--

   "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in You,"

   and to sing--

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

   But, my Hearers, what of some of you? The day is coming when the great
   assemblies of this house will seem but as nothing--when this immense
   gathering will be but as a drop in a bucket compared with that greater
   gathering! The trumpet, ringing through earth and Heaven, shall awaken
   the dead! The righteous and the wicked shall stand in judgment. We
   shall all be there--this company shall have no exception--there shall
   be no excuse for being absent on that tremendous day, and then there
   will be no question which will have so much weight as this one--HAVE
   YOU RECEIVED CHRIST?

   I think I see the Reaper coming. He is hastening to gather the vintage
   of the world, for the grapes are fully ripe. The ungodly must be
   gathered first and there they are--thrown in clusters into the
   winepress of the wrath of God--while the dread angels of avenging
   Justice tread the grapes until the blood flows out. Will you be there
   among the accursed clusters of Sodom and Gomorrah? Will you be there,
   you men of London, you dwellers in Newington and Walworth, who hear the
   Gospel constantly--will you be cast into the winepress of Jehovah's
   wrath? And shall the streets be red with your blood?

   Or will you be yonder, where, with golden sickle, trusting no angel to
   do the work, Christ Himself shall reap His golden corn, ear after ear,
   and take it all home with shouts of delight to His Father's garner?
   Will you see Him, in that day, as the God that died for you? Will you
   see Him with exultation? Will you meet Him in the air, and so be
   forever with the Lord? If so, then receive Jesus, and He will receive
   you. Take Him into your hearts and He will take you into Heaven. Take
   Him, His Cross, His people, His Gospel, His doctrines! Take Him, to
   "have and to hold" Him, "for better and for worse," and then not even
   "death" shall "part" you, but you shall be with Him "in the day of His
   appearing."

   May the Lord seal His Word with His own blessing!
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 Frost And Thaw

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 24, 1865,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He gives snow like wool; He scatters the frost like ashes; He casts
   out His hail like morsels. Who can stand before His cold? He sends out
   His word and melts them; He causes His wind to blow, and the waters
   flow." Psalm 147:16-18.

   LOOKING out of our window one morning we saw the earth robed in a white
   mantle--in a few short hours the earth had been covered to a
   considerable depth with snow. We looked out again in a few hours and
   saw the fields as green as ever and the plowed fields as bare as if no
   single flake had fallen! It is no uncommon thing for a heavy fall of
   snow to be followed by a rapid thaw. These interesting changes are
   worked by God, not only with a purpose toward the outward world, but
   with some design toward the spiritual realm. God is always a teacher.
   In every action that He performs He is instructing His own children and
   opening up to them the road to inner mysteries.

   Happy are those who find food for their Heaven-born spirits, as well as
   for their mental powers in the works of the Lord's hand. I shall ask
   your attention, first, to the operations of nature spoken of in the
   text. And, secondly, to those operations of Divine Grace of which they
   are the most fitting symbols.

   I. Consider first, THE OPERATIONS OF NATURE. We shall not think a few
   minutes wasted if we call your attention to the hand of God in frost
   and thaw, even upon natural grounds.

   1. Observe the directness of the Lord's work. I rejoice as I read these
   words, to find how present our God is in the world. It is not written,
   "the laws of nature produce snow," but, "HE gives snow," as if every
   flake came directly from the palm of His hand. We are not told that
   certain natural regulations form moisture into frost--no, but as Moses
   took ashes of the furnace and scattered them upon Egypt, so it is said
   of the Lord, "HE scatters the frost like ashes." It is not said that
   the Eternal has set the world going, and by the operation of its
   machinery ice is produced. Oh no, but every single granule of ice
   descending in the hail is from God--"HE casts out His hail like
   morsels."

   Even as the slinger distinctly sends the stone out of his sling, so the
   path of every hailstone is marked by the Divine power. The hail is
   called, you observe, "His hail." And in the next sentence we read of
   His cold. These words make nature strangely magnificent. When we look
   upon every hailstone as God's hail, how precious the watery diamonds
   become! When we feel the cold nipping our limbs and penetrating through
   every garment, it consoles us to remember that it is His cold. When the
   thaw comes, see how the text speaks of it--"He sends out His word."

   He does not leave it to certain forces of nature, but like a king, "He
   sends out His word and melts them; He causes HIS wind to blow." He has
   a special property in every wind--whether it comes from the north to
   freeze, or from the south to melt--it is HIS wind! Behold how in God's
   temple everything speaks of His Glory. Learn to see the Lord in all
   scenes of the visible universe, for truly He works all things.

   This thought of the directness of the Divine operations must be carried
   into Providence. It will greatly comfort you if you can see God's hand
   in your losses and crosses. Surely you will not murmur against the
   direct agency of your God! This will put an extraordinary sweetness
   into daily mercies, and make the comforts of life more comfortable
   still, because they are from a Father's hand. If your table is scantily
   furnished it shall suffice for your contented heart when you know that
   your Father spread it for you in wisdom and love. This shall bless your
   bread and your water! This shall make the bare walls of an
   ill-furnished room as resplendent as a palace, and turn a hard bed into
   a couch of down.

   My Father does it all. We see His smile of love even when others see
   nothing but the black hand of Death smiting our best beloved. We see a
   Father's hand when the pestilence lays our cattle dead upon the plain.
   We see God at work in mercy when we ourselves are stretched upon the
   bed of languishing. It is ever our Father's act and deed! Do not let us
   get beyond this--but rather let us enlarge our view of this Truth of
   God and remember that this is true of the little as well as of the
   great. Let the lines of a true poet strike you--"If pestilence stalks
   through the land, you say the Lord has done it--has He not done it when
   an aphid creeps upon the rosebud? If an avalanche tumbles from its Alp,
   you tremble at the will of Providence--is not that will as much
   concerned when the sere leaves fall from the poplar?" Let your hearts
   sing of everything--Jehovah-Shammah--the Lord is there.

   2. Next, I beg you to observe with thanksgiving the ease of Divine
   working. These verses read as if the making of frost and snow were the
   simplest matter in all the world! A man puts his hand into a wool-pack
   and throws out the wool. God gives snow as easily as that! "He gives
   snow like wool." A man takes up a handful of ashes and throws them into
   the air so that they fall around. "He scatters the frost like ashes."
   Frost and snow are marvels of nature! Those who have observed the
   extraordinary beauty of the ice crystals have been enraptured, and yet
   they are like morsels--just as easily as we cast crumbs of bread
   outside the window to the robins during wintry days!

   When the rivers are frozen hard, and the earth is held in iron chains,
   then the melting of the whole--how is that done? Not by kindling
   innumerable fires, nor by sending electric shocks from huge batteries
   through the interior of the earth--no--"He sends forth His word and
   melts them; He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow." The whole
   matter is accomplished with a word and a breath. If you and I had any
   great thing to do, what puffing and panting, what straining and tugging
   there would be! Even the great engineers who perform marvels by
   machinery make much noise and stir about it.

   It is not so with the Almighty One. Our globe spins round in 24 hours,
   and yet it does not make so much noise as a humming top! And yonder
   ponderous worlds rolling in space track their way in silence. If I
   enter a factory I hear a deafening dropping over a wheel. There is a
   never ceasing click-clack, or an undying hum--but God's great wheels
   revolve without noise or friction! Divine machinery works smoothly.
   This case is seen in Providence as well as in nature. Your heavenly
   Father is as able to deliver you as He is to melt the snow, and He will
   deliver you in as simple a manner if you rest upon Him. He opens His
   hand and supplies the want of every living thing as readily as He works
   in nature. Mark the ease of God's working--He does but open His hand.

   3. Notice in the next place the variety of the Divine operations in
   nature. When the Lord is at work with frost as His tool, He creates
   snow, a wonderful production--every crystal being a marvel of art. But
   then He is not content with snow--from the same water He makes another
   form of beauty which we call frost, and yet a third lustrous sparkling
   substance, namely glittering ice! And all these by the one agency of
   cold. What a marvelous variety the educated eye can detect in the
   several forms of frozen water!

   The same God who solidified the flood with cold soon melts it with
   warmth. But even in thaw there is no monotony of manner--at one time
   the joyous streams rush with such impetuosity from their imprisonment
   that rivers are swollen and floods cover the plains. At another time,
   by slow degrees, in scanty driblets, the drops regain their freedom.
   The same variety is seen in every department of nature. So in
   Providence the Lord has a thousand forms of frosty trials with which to
   try His people, and He has ten thousand beams of mercy with which to
   cheer and comfort them!

   He can afflict you with the snow trial, or with the frost trial, or
   with the ice trial if He wills. And another time He can, with His word,
   relax the bonds of adversity, and that in countless ways. Whereas men
   are tied to two or three methods in accomplishing their will, God is
   infinite in understanding and works as He wills by ways unknown of
   mortal minds.

   4. I shall ask you, also, to consider the works of God in nature in
   their swiftness. It was thought a wonderful thing in the days of
   Ahasuerus that letters were sent by post upon swift horses. In our
   country we thought we had arrived at the age of miracles when the axles
   of our cars glowed with speed, and now that the telegraph is at work we
   stretch out our hands into infinity! But what is our speed compared
   with that of God's operations? Well does the text say, "He sends forth
   His commandment upon earth: His word runs very swiftly." Forth went the
   word, "Open the treasures of snow," and the flakes descended in
   innumerable multitudes. And then it was said, "Let them be closed," and
   not another snow-feather was seen.

   Then spoke the Master, "Let the south wind blow and the snow be
   melted," and it disappeared at the voice of His word. Believer, you
   cannot tell how soon God may come to your help. "He rode upon a cherub
   and did fly," says David, "Yes, He did fly upon the wings of the wind."
   He will come from above to rescue His beloved. He will rend the heavens
   and come down! With such speed will He descend that He will not stay to
   draw the curtains of Heaven, but He will rend them in His haste and
   make the mountains flow down at His feet--that He may deliver those who
   cry unto Him in the hour of trouble. That mighty God who can melt the
   ice so speedily can take to Himself the same eagle wings and hasten to
   your deliverance. Arise, O God! And let Your children be helped, and
   that right quickly!

   5. One other thought. Consider the goodness of God in all the
   operations of nature and Providence. Think of that goodness negatively.
   "Who can stand before His cold?" You cannot help thinking of the poor
   in a hard winter--only a hard heart can forget them when you see the
   snow lying deep. But suppose that snow continued to fall! What is there
   to hinder it? The same God who sends us snow for one day could do the
   like for fifty days if He pleased. Why not?

   And when the frost pinches us so severely, why should it not be
   continued month after month? We can only thank the goodness which does
   not send "His cold" to such an extent that our spirits expire.
   Travelers towards the North Pole tremble as they think of this
   question, "Who can stand before His cold?" For cold has a degree of
   omnipotence in it when God is pleased to let it loose. Let us thank God
   for the restraining mercy by which He holds the cold in check.

   Not only negatively, but positively there is mercy in the snow. Is not
   that a suggestive metaphor? "He gives snow like wool." The snow is said
   to warm the earth. It protects those little plants which have just
   begun to peep above ground and might otherwise be frostbitten. As with
   a garment of down the snow protects them from the extreme severity of
   cold. Watts sings, in his version of the hundred-and-forty-seventh
   Psalm--

   "His flakes of snow like wool He sends, And thus the springing corn
   defends."

   It was an idea of the ancients that snow warmed the heart of the soil,
   gave it fertility, and therefore they praised God for it. Certainly
   there is much mercy in the frost, for pestilence might run a far longer
   race if it were not that the frost cries to it, "Up to here shall you
   come, but no farther." Noxious insects would multiply until they
   devoured the precious fruits of the earth if sharp nights did not
   destroy millions of them so that these pests are swept from off the
   earth. Though man may think himself a loser by the cold, he is a great
   ultimate gainer by the decree of Providence which ordains winter!

   The quaint saying of one of the old writers that, "snow is wool, and
   frost is fire, and ice is bread, and rain is drink," is true, though it
   sounds like a paradox. There is no doubt that frost, in breaking up the
   soil, promotes fruitfulness, and so the ice becomes bread. Thus those
   agencies which for the moment deprive our workers of their means of
   sustenance, are the means by which God supplies every living thing.
   Mark, then, God's goodness as clearly in the snow and frost as in the
   thaw which clears the winter's work away.

   Christian, remember the goodness of God in the frost of adversity. Rest
   assured that when God is pleased to send out the biting winds of
   affliction He is in them, and He is always love--as much love in sorrow
   as when He breathes upon you the soft south wind of joy. See the
   loving-kindness of God in every work of His hand! Praise Him--He makes
   summer and winter--let your song go round the year! Praise Him--He
   gives day and sends night--thank Him at all hours! Cast not away your
   confidence, it has great recompense of reward.

   As David wove the snow, and rain, and stormy wind into a song, even so
   combine your trials, your tribulations, your difficulties and
   adversities into a sweet Psalm of praise, and say perpetually--

   "Let us, with a gladsome mind, Praise the Lord, for He is kind."

   Thus much upon the operations of nature. It is a very tempting theme,
   but other fields invite me.

   II. I would address you very earnestly and solemnly upon THOSE
   OPERATIONS OF GRACE OF WHICH FROST

   AND THAW ARE THE OUTWARD SYMBOLS. There is a period with God's own
   people when He comes to deal with them by the frost of the Law. The Law
   is to the soul as the cutting north wind. Faith can see love in it, but
   the carnal eye of sense cannot. It is a cold, terrible, comfortless
   blast. To be exposed to the full force of the Law of God would be to be
   frostbitten with everlasting destruction. Even to feel it for a season
   would congeal the marrow of one's bones and make one's whole being
   stiff with fear. "Who can stand before His cold?"

   When the Law comes forth thundering from its treasuries, who can stand
   before it? The effect of law-work upon the soul is to bind up the
   rivers of human delight. No man can rejoice when the terrors of
   conscience are upon him. When the Law of God is sweeping through the
   soul, music and dancing lose their joy--the bowl forgets its power to
   cheer--and the enchantments of earth are broken. The rivers of pleasure
   freeze to icy despondency. The buds of hope are suddenly nipped and the
   soul finds no comfort.

   It was satisfied once to grow rich, but rust and canker are now upon
   all gold and silver. Every promising hope is frost-bitten, and the
   spirit is winter-bound in despair. This cold makes the sinner feel how
   ragged his garments are. He could strut about when it was summer
   weather and think his rags right royal robes--but now the cold frost
   finds out every tear in his garments, and in the hands of the terrible
   Law he shivers like the leaves upon the aspen. The north wind of
   judgment searches the man through and through. He did not know what was
   in him, but now he sees his inward parts to be filled with corruption
   and rottenness.

   These are some of the terrors of the wintry breath of the Law. This
   frost of Law and terrors only tends to harden. Nothing splits the rock
   or makes the cliff tumble like frost when succeeded by thaw, but frost
   alone makes the earth like a mass of iron breaking the plowshare which
   would seek to pierce it. A sinner under the influence of the Law of
   God, apart from the Gospel, is hardened by despair and cries, "There is
   no hope, and therefore I will go after my lusts. Whereas there is no
   Heaven for me after this life, I will make a Heaven out of this earth!
   And since Hell awaits me, I will at least enjoy such sweets as sin may
   afford me here."

   This is not the fault of the Law--the blame lies with the corrupt heart
   which is hardened by it. Nevertheless, such is its effect. When the
   Lord has worked by the frost of the Law, He sends the thaw of the
   Gospel. When the south wind blows from the land of promise bringing
   precious remembrances of God's fatherly pity and tender
   loving-kindness, then straightway the heart begins to soften and a
   sense of blood-bought pardon speedily dissolves it. The eyes fill with
   tears, the heart melts in tenderness, rivers of pleasure flow freely
   and buds of hope open in the cheerful air! A heavenly spring whispers
   to the flowers that were sleeping in the cold earth--they hear its
   voice, and lift up their heads, for "the rain is over and gone. The
   flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come,
   and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

   God sends His Word, saying, "Your warfare is accomplished, and your sin
   is pardoned." And when that blessedly cheering Word comes with power to
   the soul and the sweet breath of the Holy Spirit acts like the warm
   south wind upon the heart, then the waters flow and the mind is filled
   with holy joy, and light, and liberty!--

   "The legal wintry state is gone, The frosts are fled, the spring comes
   on. The sacred turtledove we hear Proclaims the new, the joyful year."
   Having shown you that there is a parallel between frost and thaw in
   nature and Law and Gospel in Grace, I would utter the same thoughts
   concerning Grace which I gave you concerning nature.

   1. We began with the directness of God's works in nature. Now, beloved
   Friends, remark the directness of God's works in Grace. When the heart
   is truly affected by the Law of God. When sin is made to appear
   exceedingly sinful. When carnal hopes are frozen to death by the Law.
   When the soul is made to feel its barrenness and utter death and
   ruin--this is the finger of God! Do not speak of the minister. It was
   well that he preached earnestly--God has used him as an instrument--but
   God works all.

   When the thaw of Divine Grace comes, I pray you will discern the
   distinct hand of God in every beam of comfort which gladdens the
   troubled conscience, for it is the Lord, alone, who binds up the broken
   in heart and heals all their wounds! We are far too apt to stop in
   instrumentalities. Folly makes men look to sacraments for
   heart-breaking or heart-healing, but sacraments all say, "It is not in
   us." Some of you look to the preaching of the Word and look no higher.
   But all true preachers will tell you, "It is not in us."

   Eloquence and earnestness at their highest pitch can neither break nor
   heal a heart. This is God's work! Yes, and not God's secondary work in
   the sense in which the philosopher admits that God is in the laws of
   nature--but God's personal and immediate work. He puts forth His own
   hand when the conscience is humbled, and it is by His own right hand
   that the conscience is eased and cleansed. I desire that this thought
   may abide upon your minds for you will not praise God otherwise. Nor
   will you be sound in doctrine.

   All departures from sound doctrine on the point of conversion arise
   from forgetfulness that it is a Divine work from first to last--that
   the faintest desire after Christ is as much the work of God as the gift
   of His dear Son--and that our whole spiritual history through, from the
   Alpha to the Omega, the Holy Spirit works in us to will and to do of
   His own good pleasure. As you have evidently seen the finger of God in
   casting forth His ice and in sending thaw, so I pray you recognize the
   handiwork of God in giving you a sense of sin and in bringing you to
   the Savior's feet. Join together in heartily praising the
   wonder-working God who does all things according to the counsel of His
   will--

   "Our seeking Your face Was all of Your Grace!
   Your mercy demands and shall have all the praise:
   No sinner can be Beforehand with You,
   Your Grace is preventing, almighty and free."

   2. The second thought upon nature was the ease with which the Lord
   worked. There was no effort or disturbance. Transfer that to the work
   of Divine Grace. How easy it is for God to send law-work into the soul!
   You stubborn Preacher, you cannot touch him! And even Providence has
   failed to awaken him. He is dead--altogether dead in trespasses and
   sins! But if the glorious Lord will graciously send forth the wind of
   His Spirit, that will melt him.

   The swearing reprobate, whose mouth is blackened with profanity--if the
   Lord does but look upon him and make bare His arm of Irresistible
   Grace--shall yet praise God and bless His name! And he will live to His
   honor. Do not limit the Holy One of Israel. Persecuting Saul became
   loving Paul, and why should not that person be saved of whose case you
   almost despair? Your husband may have many points which make his case
   difficult, but no case is desperate with God! Your son may have
   offended both against Heaven and against you, but God can save the most
   hardened. The sharpest frost of obstinate sin must yield to the thaw of
   Divine Grace. Even huge icebergs of crime must melt in the Gulf stream
   of infinite love.

   Poor Sinner, I cannot leave this point without a word to you. Perhaps
   the Master has sent the frost to you, and you think it will never end.
   Let me encourage you to hope, and yet more, to pray for gracious
   visitations. Miss Steele's verses will just suit your mournful, yet
   hopeful state--

   "Stern winter throws his icy chains,
   Encircling nature round.
   How bleak, how comfortless the plains,
   Late with bright verdure crowned!
   The sun withdraws his vital beams,
   And light and warmth depart.
   And, drooping lifeless, nature seems
   An emblem of my heart--
   My heart, where mental winter reigns
   In night's dark mantle clad,
   Confined in cold, inactive chains!
   How desolate and sad!
   Return, O blissful sun, and bring
   Your soul-reviving ray--
   This mental winter shall be spring,
   This darkness cheerful day."

   It is easy for God to deliver you. He says, "I have blotted out like a
   thick cloud your transgressions." I stood the other evening looking up
   at a black cloud which was covering all the heavens and I thought it
   would surely rain. I entered the house and when I came out again the
   sky was all blue--the wind had driven the clouds away. So may it be
   with your soul. It is an easy thing for the Lord to put away sin from
   repenting sinners. All obstacles which hindered our pardon were removed
   by Jesus when He died upon the Cross, and if you believe in Him you
   will find that He has cast your sins into the depths of the sea! If you
   can believe, all things are possible to him that believe.

   3. The next thought concerning the Lord's work in nature was the
   variety of it. Frost produces a sort of trinity in unity--snow, frost,
   ice--and when the thaw comes its ways are many. So is it with the work
   of God in the heart. Conviction comes not alike to all. Some
   convictions fall as the snow from Heaven--you never hear the flakes
   descend-- they alight so gently one upon the other. There are softly
   coming convictions--they are felt, but we can scarcely tell when we
   began to feel them. A true work of repentance may be of the gentlest
   kind.

   On the other hand, the Lord casts forth His ice like morsels--the
   hailstones rattle against the window and you think they will surely
   force their way into the room! And to many persons convictions come
   beating down till they remind you of hailstones. There is variety. It
   is as true a frost which produces the noiseless snow as that which
   brings forth the terrible hail. Why should you want hailstones of
   terror? Be thankful that God has visited you, but do not dictate to Him
   the way of His working.

   With regard to the Gospel thaw. If you may but be pardoned by Jesus, do
   not stipulate as to the manner of His Grace. Thaw is universal and
   gradual, but its commencement is not always discernible. The chains of
   winter are unloosed by degrees--the surface ice and snow melt--and
   by-and-by the warmth permeates the entire mass till every rock of ice
   gives way. But while thaw is universal and visible in its effects you
   cannot see the mighty power which is doing all this. Even so you must
   not expect to discern the Spirit of God.

   You will find Him gradually operating upon the entire man, enlightening
   the understanding, freeing the will, delivering the heart from fear,
   inspiring hope, waking up the whole spirit, gradually and universally
   working upon the mind and producing the manifest effects of comfort,
   and hope, and peace. But you can no more see the Spirit of God than you
   can see the south wind. The effect of His power is to be felt, and when
   you feel it, do not marvel if it is somewhat different from what others
   have experienced. After all, there is a singular likeness in snow and
   frost and ice, and so there is a remarkable sameness in the experience
   of all God's children! But there is still a great variety in the inward
   operations of Divine Grace.

   4. We must next notice the rapidity of God's works. "His word runs very
   swiftly." It did not take many days to get rid of the last snow. A
   contractor would take many a day to cart it away, but God sends forth
   His word and the snow and ice disappear at once. So is it with the
   soul--the Lord often works rapidly when He cheers the heart. You may
   have been a long time under the operation of His frosty Law, but there
   is no reason why you should be another hour under it. If the Spirit
   enables you to trust in the finished work of Christ, you may go out of
   this house rejoicing that every sin is forgiven!

   Poor Soul, do not think that the way from the horrible pit is to climb,
   step by step, to the top! Oh, no! Jesus can set your feet upon a rock
   before the clock shall have gone round the dial. He can, in an instant,
   bring you from death to life, from condemnation to justification.
   "Today shall you be with Me in Paradise," was spoken to a dying thief,
   black and defiled with sin. Only believe in the atoning sacrifice of
   Jesus Christ and you shall be saved!

   5. Our last thought upon the operation of God was His goodness in it
   all. What a blessing that God did not send us more law-work than He
   did! "Who can stand before His cold?" Oh, Beloved, when God has taken
   away from man natural comfort and made him feel Divine wrath in his
   soul, it is an awful thing! Speak of a haunted man--no man need be
   haunted with a worse ghost than the remembrance of his old sins.

   The childish tale of the sailor with the old man of the mountain on his
   back who pressed him more and more heavily is more than realized in the
   history of the troubled conscience. If one sin does but leap on a man's
   back it will sink the sinner through every standing place that he can
   possibly mount upon! He will go down, down, under its weight till he
   sinks to the lowest depths of Hell. There is no place where sin can be
   borne till you get upon the Rock of Ages--and even there the joy is not
   that you bear it--but that Jesus has borne it all for you!

   The spirit would utterly fail before the Law if it had full sway. Thank
   God, "He stays His rough wind in the day of His east wind." At the same
   time, how thankful we may be that we ever felt the law frost in our
   soul. The folly of self-righteousness is killed by the winter of
   conviction. We should have been a thousand times more proud and
   foolish, and worldly than we are if it had not been for the sharp frost
   with which the Lord nipped the growths of the flesh.

   But how shall we thank Him sufficiently for the thaw of His
   loving-kindness? How great the change which His mercy made in us as
   soon as its beams had reached our soul! Hardness vanished! Cold
   departed! Warmth and love abounded, and the life-floods leaped in their
   channels! The Lord visited us and we rose from our grave of despair
   even as the seeds arise from the earth! As the bulb of the crocus holds
   up its golden cup to be filled with sunshine so did our new-born faith
   open itself to the Glory of the Lord!

   As the primrose peeps up from the sod to gaze upon the sun, so did our
   hope look forth for the promise, and delight itself in the Lord. Thank
   God that spring tide has with many of us matured into summer, and
   winter has gone, never to return. We praise the Lord for this every day
   of our lives, and we will praise Him when time shall be no more in that
   sunny land--

   "Where everlasting spring abides,
   And never withering flowers.
   A thread-like stream alone divides
   That heavenly land from ours."

   Believe in the Lord, you who shiver in the frost of the Law, and the
   law of love shall soon bring you warm days ofjoy and peace. So be it.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          The Reward Of The Righteous

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 21, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "When the Son of Mian shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels
   with Him, then He will sit upon the throne of His glory. All the
   nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from
   another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He willset
   the sheep on His righthand, but the goats on the left. Then the King
   will say to them on His right hand, Come, you blessed of My Father,
   inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
   for I was hungry, and you ga ve Me food; I was thirsty, and you gave Me
   drink; I was a stranger, and you took Me in; I was naked, and you
   clothed Me; was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came
   to Me." Matthew 25:31-36.

   IT is exceedingly beneficial to our souls to mount above this present
   evil world to something nobler and better. The cares of this world and
   the deceitfulness of riches are apt to choke everything good within us
   and we grow fretful, desponding, perhaps proud, carnal. It is well for
   us to cut down these thorns and briars, for heavenly seed sown among
   them is not likely to yield a harvest. I do not know a better sickle
   with which to cut them down than thoughts of the kingdom to come.

   In the valleys in Switzerland many of the inhabitants are deformed and
   dwarfish, and the whole of them wear a sickly appearance for the
   atmosphere is noxious, and is close and stagnant. You traverse those
   valleys as rapidly as you can and are glad to escape from them. Up
   yonder on the mountain you will find a hardy race who breathe the clear
   fresh air as it blows from the virgin snows of the Alpine summits. It
   would be well for their frames if the dwellers in the valley could
   frequently leave their abodes among the marshes and the fever mists and
   get themselves up into the clear atmosphere above.

   It is to such an exploit of climbing that I invite you this morning!
   May the Spirit of God bear us as upon eagles' wings that we may leave
   the mists of fear and the fevers of anxiety and all the ills which
   gather in this valley of earth, and get ourselves up to the mountains
   of future joy and blessedness where it is to be our delight to dwell
   world without end! Oh may God disentangle us now for a little while,
   cut the cords that keep us here below, and permit us to mount! We sit,
   some of us, like chained eagles fastened to the rock, only that, unlike
   the eagle, we begin to love our chain, and would, perhaps, if it came
   really to the test, loath to have it snapped.

   May God now grant us Divine Grace if we cannot at once escape from the
   chain of mortal life as to our bodies, yet to do so as to our
   spirits--and leaving the body like a servant at the foot of the hill,
   may our soul, like Abraham, go to the top of the mountain--and there
   may we have communion with the Most High! While expounding my text, I
   shall ask your attention this morning, first, to the circumstances
   which surround the rewarding of the righteous. Secondly, to their
   portion. And thirdly, to the persons themselves.

   I. There is MUCH OF TEACHING IN THE SURROUNDING CIRCUMSTANCES. We read,
   "When the Son of Man shall come in His glory." It appears, then, that
   we must not expect to receive our reward till by-and-by. Like the
   hireling we must fulfill our day, and then at evening we shall have our
   penny. Too many Christians look for a present reward for their labors.
   And if they meet with success, they begin doting upon it as though they
   had received their recompense.

   Like the disciples who returned saying, "Lord, even the devils are
   subject unto us," they rejoice too exclusively in present
   prosperity--whereas the Master bade them not to look upon miraculous
   success as being their reward, since that might not always be the case.
   "Nevertheless," said He, "rejoice not in this, but rather rejoice
   because your names are written in Heaven." Success in the ministry is
   not the Christian minister's true reward--it is an earnest--but the
   wages still are in the future. You must not look upon the praise from
   your fellow men as being the reward of excellence, for often you will
   meet with the reverse--you will find your best actions misconstrued,
   and your motives ill interpreted.

   If you are looking for your reward here I may warn you of the Apostle's
   words, "If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most
   miserable." Because other men get their reward--even the Pharisee gets
   his--"Verily, I say unto you, they have their reward"--but we have none
   here. To be despised and rejected of men is the Christian's lot! Among
   his fellow Christians he will not always stand in good repute. It is
   not unmitigated kindness nor unmingled love that we receive even from
   the saints.

   I tell you, if you look for your reward from Christ's bride, herself,
   you will miss it! If you expect to receive your crown from the hand,
   even of your Brethren in the ministry who know your labors, and who
   ought to sympathize with your trials, you will be mistaken! "When the
   Son of Man shall come in His glory," then is your time of
   recompense--not today, nor tomorrow, nor at any time in this world!
   Reckon nothing which you acquire, no honor which you gain to be the
   reward of your service to your Master! That is reserved for the time
   "when the Son of Man shall come in His glory."

   Observe with delight the august person by whose hand the reward is
   given. It is written, "When the Son of Man shall come." Brethren, we
   love the King's courtiers--we delight to be numbered with them
   ourselves. It is no mean thing to do service to Him whose head--"Though
   once was crowned with thorns, is crowned with glory now." But it is a
   delightful thought that the service of rewarding us will not be left to
   the courtiers. The angels will be there and the Brethren of the King
   will be there--but Heaven was not prepared by them--nor can it be given
   by them!

   Their hands shall not yield us a coronation--we shall join their songs,
   but their songs would be no reward for us! We shall bow with them and
   they with us--but it will not be possible for them to give us the
   recompense of the reward--that starry crown is all too weighty for an
   angel's hand to bring, and the benediction all too sweet to be
   pronounced, even by seraphic lips!

   The King Himself must say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." What
   do you say to this, my dear Brothers and Sisters? You have felt a
   temptation to look to God's servants, to the approval of the minister,
   to the kindly look of parents, to the word of commendation from your
   fellow worker. All these you value, and I do not blame you--but these
   may fail you--and therefore never consider them as being the reward.
   You must wait till the time when the King comes, and then it will
   neither be your Brethren, your pastors, your parents, nor your helpers,
   but the King Himself who shall say to you, "Come, you blessed."

   How this sweetens Heaven! It will be Christ's own gift! How this makes
   the benediction doubly blessed! It shall come from His lips which drop
   like myrrh and flow with honey! Beloved, it is Christ, who became a
   curse for us, who shall give the blessing to us! Roll this as a sweet
   morsel under your tongues. The Character in which our Lord Jesus shall
   appear is significant. Jesus will then be revealed as truly "the King."
   "When the Son of Man shall come." It was to Him as King that the
   service was rendered, and it is from Him as King that the reward must
   therefore come.

   And so, upon the very threshold a question of self-examination
   arises--"The King will not reward the servants of another prince--am I,
   therefore, His servant? Is it my joy to wait at the threshold of His
   gates and sit like Mordecai at the courts of Ahasuerus--at the entrance
   of His door? Say, Soul, do you serve the King?" I mean not the kings
   and queens of earth--let them have loyal servants for their
   subjects--but saints are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of
   kings--are you so? If you are not so, when the King comes in His glory
   there can be no reward for you.

   I long in my own heart to recognize Christ's kingly office more than I
   have ever done. It has been my delight to preach to you Christ dying on
   the Cross, and, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross."
   But I want, for my own self, to realize Him on His Throne, reigning in
   my heart, having a right to do as He wills with me! I want to get to
   the condition of Abraham, who, when God spoke, though it was to tell
   him to offer up his own Isaac, never asked a question, but simply said,
   "Here am I."

   Beloved, seek to know and feel the controlling power of the King, or
   else when He comes, since you have not known Him as King, He cannot
   know you as servant! And it is only to the servant that the King can
   give the reward which is spoken of in the text--"When the Son of Man
   shall come."

   Now pass on. "When the Son of Man shall come in His glory." The
   fullness of that is impossible to conceive--

   "Imagination's utmost stretch, In wonder dies away."

   But this we know--and it is the sweetest thing we can know--that if we
   have been partakers with Jesus in His shame, we also shall be sharers
   with Him in the luster which shall surround Him. Are you, Beloved, one
   with Christ Jesus? Are you of His flesh and of His bones? Does a vital
   union knit you to Him? Then you are today with Him in His shame--you
   have taken up His Cross and gone with Him outside the camp bearing His
   reproach.

   You shall doubtless be with Him when the Cross is exchanged for the
   crown! But judge yourself this morning! If you are not with Him in the
   regeneration, neither shall you be with Him when He shall come in His
   glory! If you start back from the black side of communion, you shall
   not understand its bright, its happy period when the King shall come in
   His glory and all His holy angels with Him. What? Are angels with Him?
   And yet He took not up angels--He took up the seed of Abraham.

   Are the holy angels with Him? Come, my Soul, then you can not be far
   from Him! If His friends and His neighbors are called together to see
   His glory, what do you think if you are married to Him--shall you be
   distant? Though it is a day of judgment, yet you cannot be far from
   that heart which, having admitted angels into intimacy, has admitted
   you into union. Has He not said to you, O my Soul, "I have betrothed
   you unto Me in faithfulness, and in judgment, and in righteousness"?
   Have not His own lips said it, "I am married to you, and My delight is
   in you"? Then if the angels, who are but the friends and the neighbors,
   shall be with Him, it is abundantly certain that His own beloved
   Hephzibah, in whom is all His delight, shall be near to Him and shall
   be a partaker of His splendor!

   It is when He comes in His glory, and when His communion with angels
   shall be distinctly recognized--it is then that His unity with His
   Church shall become apparent! "Then will He sit upon the throne of His
   glory." Here is a repetition of the same reason why it should be your
   time and my time to receive the reward from Christ if we are found
   among His faithful servants! When He sits upon His throne it were not
   fit that His own beloved ones should be in the mire! When He was in the
   place of shame they were with Him--and now that He is on the throne of
   gold, they must be with Him, too.

   There were no oneness--union with Christ were a mere matter of talk--if
   it were not certain that when He is on the throne they shall be upon
   the throne, too. But I want you to notice one particular circumstance
   with regard to the time of the reward. It is when He shall have divided
   the sheep from the goats. My reward, if I am a child of God, cannot
   come to me while I am in union with the wicked. Even on earth you will
   have the most enjoyment of Christ when you are most separated from this
   world! Rest assured, although the separated path does not seem an easy
   one--and it will certainly entail upon you persecution and the loss of
   many friends--yet it is the happiest walking in the world!

   You conforming Christians who can enter into the world's mirth to a
   certain degree--you cannot--you never can know as you now are, the
   inward joys of those who live in lonely but lovely fellowship with
   Jesus. The nearer you get to the world the further you must be from
   Christ. I believe the more thoroughly a bill of divorce is given by
   your spirit to every earthly object upon which your soul can set
   itself, the more close will be your communion with your Lord. "Forget
   also your own country and your Father's house; so shall the King
   greatly desire your beauty, for He is your Lord, and worship you Him."

   It is significant that not until the King has separated the sheep from
   the goats does He say, "Come, you blessed." And though the righteous
   will have enjoyed a happiness as disembodied spirits, yet as risen from
   the grave in their bodies, their happiness is not fully accomplished
   till the great Shepherd shall have appeared to separate them from all
   association with the nations that forget God, once and for all, by a
   great gulf which cannot be passed.

   Now then, Beloved, these circumstances all put together come to
   this--the reward of following Christ is not today, is not among the
   sons of men, is not from men, is not even from the excellent of the
   earth, is not even bestowed by Jesus while we are here--the glorious
   crown of life which the Lord's Divine Grace shall give to His people is
   reserved for the second advent, "when the Son of Man shall come in His
   glory, and all the holy angels with Him." Wait with patience! Wait with
   joyful expectation, for He shall come, and blessed be the day of His
   appearing!

   II. We have now to turn to the second point--THE PORTION ITSELF. Every
   word is suggestive. I shall not attempt to exhaust, but merely to
   glance at all of them. The reward of the righteous is set forth by the
   loving benediction pronounced to them by the Master, but their very
   position gives some foreshadowing of it. He put the sheep on His right
   hand. Heaven is a position of the most elevated dignity authoritatively
   conferred and of Divine complacency manifestly enjoyed.

   God's saints are always at His right hand according to the judgment of
   faith, but hereafter it shall be more clearly manifested. God is
   pleased to be close to His people, and to place them near to Himself in
   a place of protection. Sometimes it seems as if they were at the left
   hand--they certainly have, some of them, less comfort than the
   worldlings. "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading
   himself like a green bay tree. Their eyes stand out with fatness, they
   have more than heart could wish."

   Whereas His people are often made to drink waters of less than a full
   cup, and their meat and their drink are bitter with wormwood and gall.
   The world is upside down now. The Gospel has begun to turn it the right
   way uppermost, but when the day of Grace is over, and the day of glory
   comes, then shall it be righted, indeed! Then those that wandered about
   in sheepskins and goatskins shall be clothed in glittering apparel,
   being transfigured like the Savior upon Tabor! Then those of whom the
   world was not worthy shall come to a world that shall be worthy of
   them!

   Then those who were hurried to the stake and to the flames shall
   triumph with chariots of fire and horses of fire, and swell the
   splendor of the Master's pompous appearing! Yes, Beloved, you shall
   eternally be the object of Divine complacency, not in secret and
   unknown communion, but your state and glory shall be revealed before
   the sons of men! Your persecutors shall gnash their teeth when they see
   you occupying places of honor at His right hand, and themselves, though
   greater far than you on earth, condemned to take the lowest room!

   How shall Dives bite his fire-tormented tongue in vain as he sees
   Lazarus, the beggar on the dunghill, made to sit at the right hand of
   the King eternal and immortal! Heaven is a place of dignity. "There we
   shall be as the angels," said one, but I know we shall be even superior
   than they! Is it not written of Him who in all things is our
   representative, "You have put all things under His feet"? Even the very
   seraphs, themselves, so richly blessed--what are they but "ministering
   spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation"?

   But now, turning to the welcome uttered by the Judge, the first word is
   "Come." It is the Gospel symbol. The Law said "Go." The Gospel says,
   "Come." The Spirit said it in invitation. The Bride said it in
   intercession. "Let him that hears" say it by constantly, laboriously
   endeavoring to spread abroad the good news! Since Jesus said, "Come,"
   we learn that the very essence of Heaven is communion. "Come!" You came
   near enough to say, "Lord, we believe, help You our unbelief!"

   You looked to Him on the Cross and were lightened. You had fellowship
   with Him in bearing His Cross. You filled up that which was behind of
   the sufferings of Christ for His body's sake, which is the Church.
   Still come! Ever, come! Forever come! Come up from your graves, you
   risen ones! Come up from among the ungodly, you consecrated ones! Come
   up from where you cast yourselves down in your humiliation before the
   Great White Throne! Come up to wear My crown and sit with Me upon My
   Throne! Oh, that word has Heaven lurking within it! It shall be to you
   your joy forever to hear the Savior say to you, "Come."

   I declare before you that my soul has sometimes been so full of joy
   that I could hold no more when my beloved Lord has said, "Come," to my
   soul! For He has taken me into His banqueting house and His banner of
   love has waved over my head. And He has taken me away from the world
   and its cares and its fears, and its trials and its joys, up to "the
   top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon," where He manifested
   Himself to me! When this, "Come," shall come into your ear from the
   Master's lips there shall not be the flesh to drag you back! There
   shall be no sluggishness of spirit, no heaviness of heart--you shall
   come eternally, then--you shall not mount to descend again, but mount
   on and on in blessed joy forever and forever!

   The first word indicates that Heaven is a state of communion--"Come."
   Then it is, "Come, you blessed," which is a clear declaration that this
   is a state of happiness. They cannot be more blessed than they are!
   They have their hearts' desire and their hearts have been enlarged and
   their desires have been expanded by entering into the Infinite. And
   though they are rid of the cramping influences of corruption and of
   time, yet even when their desire shall know no bounds they shall have
   all the happiness that the utmost stretch of their souls can by any
   possibility conceive. This much, and this is all we know--they are
   supremely blessed!

   Their blessedness, you perceive, does not come from any secondary joy
   but from the great primary Source of all good. "Come, you blessed of My
   Father." They drink the unadulterated wine at the winepress itself,
   where it joyously leaps from the bursting clusters! They pluck
   celestial fruits from the unwithering boughs of the immortal tree! They
   shall sit at the well-head and drink the waters as they spring forth
   with unrivalled freshness from the depths of the heart! (If Deity, they
   shall not be basking in the beams of the sun, but they shall be, like
   Uriel, the angel in the sun. They shall dwell in God, and so their
   souls shall be satisfied with favor, and full and more than full with
   His Presence and benediction.)

   Notice, once again, that according to the words used it is a state
   where they shall recognize their right to be there--a state, therefore,
   of perfect freedom and ease and fearlessness. It is--"inherit the
   kingdom." A man does not fear to lose that which he wins by descent
   from his parents. If Heaven had been the subject of earning, we might
   have feared that our merits had not really deserved it and therefore
   suspect that one day a Writ of Error would be issued and that we should
   be ejected. But we do know whose sons we are! We know whose love it is
   that makes glad our spirits, and when we "inherit" the kingdom we shall
   enter it not as strangers or as foreigners, but as sons coming to their
   birthright.

   Looking over all its streets of gold and surveying all its walls of
   pearl we shall feel that we are at home in our own house, and have an
   actual right--not through merit but through Divine Grace--to everything
   that is there! It will be a state of heavenly bliss! The Christian
   shall feel that law and justice are on his side and that those stern
   attributes have brought him there as well as mercy and loving kindness.

   But the word "inherit" here imports full possession and enjoyment. They
   have inherited in a certain sense before, but now as an heir, when he
   has arrived at fall maturity begins to spend his own money, and to farm
   his own acres, so do they enter into their heritage. We are not full
   grown as yet and therefore are not admitted to full possession. But
   wait awhile! Those grey hairs betoken, my Brethren, that you are
   getting ripe. These, these, these my still youthful locks show me,
   alas, that I may have to tarry for a little longer! And yet I know
   not--the Lord may soon permit me to sleep with my fathers. But later or
   earlier, be it as He wills, we shall one day come into possession of
   the goodly land.

   Now if it is sweet to be an heir while you are in youth, what is it to
   be an heir when arrived at perfect manhood? Was it not delightful to
   sing that hymn just now, and to behold the land of pure delight whose
   everlasting spring and never-withering flowers are just across the
   narrow stream of death? Oh you sweet fields! You saints immortal who
   lie down there! When shall we be with you and be satisfied? If the mere
   thinking of Heaven ravishes the soul, what must it be to be there? To
   plunge deep into the stream of blessedness? To dive and find no bottom?
   To swim and find no shore? To sip of the wine of Heaven, as we
   sometimes do, makes our hearts so glad that we know not how to express
   our joy!

   But what will it be to drink deep and drink again, and sit forever at
   the table and know that the feast will never be over and the cups will
   never be empty and that there will be no worse wine to be brought out
   at the last, but if possible better, still, and better still in
   infinite progression?

   The word "kingdom," which stands next, indicates the richness of the
   heritage of saints. It is no petty estate, no alms rooms, no happy
   corner in obscurity. I heard a good man say he should be content to win
   a corner behind the door. I shall not be! The Lord says we shall
   inherit a kingdom. We would not be satisfied to inherit less, because
   less than that would not suit our character. "He has made us kings and
   priests unto God," and we must reign forever and ever, or be as
   wretched as deposed monarchs!

   A king without a kingdom were an unhappy man! If I were a poor servant,
   an alms room would be a joy, for it would consort with my condition and
   degree. But if I am made, by Grace, a king--I must have a kingdom, or I
   shall not have attained to a position equal to my nature! He who makes
   us kings will give us a kingdom to fit the nature which He has bestowed
   upon us. Beloved, strive after, more and more, that which the Spirit of
   God will give you--a kingly heart! Do not be among those who are
   satisfied and content with the miserable nature of ordinary humanity. A
   child's glass bead is all the world is to a truly royal spirit! These
   glittering diadems are only nursery toys to God's kings!

   The true jewels are up there! The true treasury of wealth looks down
   upon the stars. Do not stint your soul! Be not straitened! Get a kingly
   heart--ask the King of kings to give it to you--and beg of Him a royal
   spirit. Act royally on earth towards your Lord, and for His sake
   towards all men. Go about the world not as mean men in spirit and act,
   but as kings and princes of a race superior to the dirt scrapers who
   are on their knees, crawling in the mud after yellow earth. Then, when
   your soul is royal, remember with joy that your future inheritance
   shall be all that your kingly soul pants after in its most royal
   moments. It will be a state of unutterable richness and wealth of soul.

   According to the word "prepared," we may conceive it to be a condition
   of surpassing excellence. It is a kingdom prepared--and it has been so
   long a time prepared, and He who prepares it is so wondrously rich in
   resources--that we cannot possibly conceive how excellent it must be!
   If I might so speak, God's common gifts which He throws away as though
   they were nothing, are priceless. But what will be these gifts upon
   which the infinite mind of God has been set for ages of ages in order
   that they may reach the highest degree of excellence?

   Long before Christmas chimes were ringing mother was so glad to think
   her boy was coming home, after the first quarter he had been out at
   school, and straightway she began preparing and planning all sorts of
   joys for him! Well might the holidays be happy when mother had been
   contriving to make them so. Now in an infinitely nobler manner the
   great God has prepared a kingdom for His people! He has thought, "that
   will please them, and that will bless them, and this other will make
   them superlatively happy."

   He prepared the kingdom to perfection! And then, as if that were not
   enough, the glorious Man, Christ Jesus, went up from earth to
   Heaven--and you know what He said when He departed--"I go to prepare a
   place for you." We know that the infinite God can prepare a place
   fitting for a finite creature, but the words smile so sweetly at us as
   we read that Jesus Himself, who is a Man and therefore knows our
   hearts' desires, has had a finger in it! He has prepared it, too. It is
   a kingdom prepared for you upon which the thoughts of God have been set
   to make it excellent, "from before the foundation of the world."

   But we must not pause. It is a "kingdom prepared for you." Mark that! I
   must confess I do not like certain expressions which I hear, sometimes,
   which imply that Heaven is prepared for some who will never reach
   it--prepared for those who will be driven as accursed ones into the
   place of torment. I know there is a sacred expression which says, "let
   no man take your crown." But that refers to the crown of ministerial
   success, rather than of eternal Glory. An expression which grated on my
   ear the other evening from the lips of a certain good man ran something
   in this fashion: "There is a Heaven prepared for all of you, but if you
   are not faithful you will not win it. There is a crown in Heaven laid
   up for you, but if you are not faithful it will be without a wearer."

   I do not believe it! I cannot believe it! That the crown of Eternal
   Life, which is laid up for the blessed of the Father will ever be given
   to anybody else or left without a possessor, I do not believe! I dare
   not conceive of crowns in Heaven and nobody to wear them! Do you think
   that in Heaven, when the whole number of saints is complete, you will
   find a number of unused crowns?

   "Ah, what are these for? Where are the heads for these?" "They are in
   Hell!" Then, Brother, I have no particular desire to be in Heaven. If
   all the family of Christ are not there, my soul will be wretched and
   forlorn because of their sad loss, because I am in union with them all.
   If one son that believed in Jesus does not get there I shall lose
   respect for the promise and respect for the Master, too. He must keep
   His word to every soul that rests on Him. If your God has gone the
   length of actually preparing a place for His people and has made
   provision for them and been disappointed, He is no God to me, for I
   could not adore a disappointed God!

   I do not believe in such a God! Such a being would not be God at all.
   The notion of disappointment in His eternal preparations is not
   consistent with Deity. Talk thus of Jupiter and Venus if you please,
   but the Infinite Jehovah is, as far as human speech can dishonor Him,
   dishonored by being mentioned in such a connection! He has prepared a
   place for you! Here is personal election. He has made a distinct
   ordinance for every one of His people that where He is, there shall
   they be. "Prepared from before the foundation of the world." Here is
   eternal election appearing before men were created, preparing a crown
   before heads were made to wear it!

   And so God had, before the starry skies began to gleam, carried out the
   decree of election in a measure which when Christ shall come shall be
   perfected to the praise of the glory of His Divine Grace. "Who works
   all things after the counsel of His will." Our portion, then, is one
   prepared from all eternity for us according to the election of God's
   Grace--one suitable to the loftiest character to which we can ever
   attain! One which will consist in nearness to Christ, communion with
   God, and standing forever in a place of dignity and happiness!

   III. And now I have very little time to speak, as I hoped to have
   spoken this morning, about THE PERSONS WHO SHALL COME THERE. They are
   recognizable by a secret and by a public character. Their name
   is--"blessed of My Father"--the Father chose them, gave His Son for
   them, justified them through Christ, preserved them in Christ Jesus,
   adopted them into the family--and now accepts them into His own house.

   Their nature you have described in the word "inherit." None can inherit
   but sons. They have been born again and have received the Nature of
   God. Having escaped the corruption which is in the world through lust,
   they have become partakers of the Divine Nature--they are sons. Their
   appointment is mentioned--"inherit the kingdom prepared for you from
   before the foundation of the world."

   Their name is "blessed." Their nature is that of a child. Their
   appointment is that of God's decree. Their doings, their outward
   doings--these we want to speak upon a minute. They appear to have been
   distinguished among men for deeds of charity, and these were not in any
   way associated with ceremonies or outward observances. It is not said
   that they preached--they did, some of them. It is not said that they
   prayed--they must have done so or they would not have been spiritually
   alive.

   The actions which are selected as their type are actions of charity to
   the indigent and forlorn. Why these? I think because the general
   audience assembled around the Throne would know how to appreciate this
   evidence of their newborn nature. The King might think more of their
   prayers than of their alms, but the multitude would not. He speaks so
   as to gain the verdict of all assembled. Even their enemies could not
   object to His calling those blessed who had performed these actions. If
   there is an action which wins for men the universal consent, it is an
   action by which men would be served. Against this there is no law.

   I have never heard of a state in which there was a law against clothing
   the naked and feeding the hungry. Humanity at once, when its conscience
   is so seared that it cannot see its own sinfulness, yet detects the
   virtuousness of feeding the poor. Doubtless this is one reason why
   these actions were selected. And again, they may have been chosen as
   evidences of Divine Grace, because, as actions, they are a wonderful
   means of separating between the hypocrite and the true Christian.

   Dr. Gill has an idea, and perhaps he is right, that this is not a
   picture of the general judgment, but of the judgment of the professing
   Church. If so, it is all the more reasonable to conclude that these
   works of mercy are selected as the appropriate discerner between the
   hypocrite and the sincere. I fear that there are some of you high
   professors who could not stand the test. "Good praying people" they
   call you, but what do you give to the Lord? Your religion has not
   touched your pockets! This does not apply to some of you, for there are
   many here of whom I would venture to speak before the bar of God that I
   know their substance to be consecrated to the Lord and His poor, and I
   have sometimes thought that beyond their means they have given both to
   the poor and to God's cause.

   But there are others of a very different disposition. Now here I shall
   give you a little plain English talk which none can fail to understand.
   You may talk about your religion till you have worn your tongue out,
   and you may get others to believe you! You may remain in the Church
   twenty years and nobody ever detect in you anything like an
   inconsistency. But if it is in your power and you do nothing to relieve
   the necessities of the poor members of Christ's body, you will be
   damned as surely as if you were drunkards or whoremongers! If you have
   no care for God's Church, what I am about to say applies to you--and
   you will as surely sink to the lowest Hell as if you had been common
   blasphemers!

   That is very plain English, but it is the plain meaning of my text, and
   it is at my peril that I flinch from telling you of it. "I was hungry,
   and you gave me"--what? Good advice? Yes, but no meat. "I was thirsty,
   and you gave me"--what? A tract? And no drink. "I was naked, and you
   gave me"--what? Your good wishes? But no clothes. I was a stranger
   and--you pitied me, but you did not take me in. I was sick--you said
   you could recommend me a doctor, but you did not visit me. I was in
   prison, I, God's servant, a persecuted one, put in prison for Christ's
   sake and you said I should be more cautious! But you did not stand by
   my side and take a share of the blame and bear with me reproach for the
   Truth for God's sake!

   You see, this is a very terrible winnowing fan to some of you cowardly
   ones whose main object is to get all you can and hold it fast! But it
   is a fan which frequently must be used. Some may deceive you and spare
   you--but by the Grace of God I will not--but will labor to be more bold
   than ever in denouncing sin. "Well," says one, "what are those to do
   who are so poor that they have nothing to give away?" My dear Brothers
   and Sisters, do you notice how beautifully the text takes care of you?
   It hints that there are some who cannot give bread to the hungry, and
   clothes to the naked, but what about them? Why, you see, they are the
   persons spoken of as, "My Brethren," who receive the kindness, so that
   this passage comforts the poor and by no means condemns them!.

   Certain of us honestly give to the poor all we can spare, and then, of
   course, everybody comes to us! And when we say, "Really, I cannot give
   any more," somebody snarls and says, "Call yourself a Christian?" "Yes,
   I do. I should not call myself a Christian if I gave away other
   people's money. I should not call myself a Christian if I gave away
   what I have not got--I should call myself a thief--pretending to be
   charitable when I could not pay my debts." I have a very great pity,
   indeed, for those people who get into the Bankruptcy Court. I do not
   mean the debtors. I have seldom much sympathy with them--I have a good
   deal for the creditors who lose by having trusted dishonest people!

   If any man should say, "I will live beyond my means in order to get a
   good character," my dear Brothers and Sisters, you are wrong. That
   action is in itself wrong. What you have to give must be that which is
   your own. "But I shall have to pinch myself," says one, "if I do it."
   Well, pinch yourself! I do not think there is half the pleasure in
   doing good till you get to the pinching point. This remark, of course,
   applies only to those of us of moderate means who can soon distribute
   our alms and get down to the pinch point.

   When you begin to feel, "Now, I must go without that. Now I must
   curtail these in order to do more good," oh, you cannot tell--it is
   THEN when you can really feel--"Now I have not given God merely the
   cheese parings and candle ends that I could not use, but I have really
   cut out for my Master a good piece of the loaf! I have not given Him
   the old crusts that were getting moldy, but I have given Him a piece of
   my own daily bread, and I am glad to do it if I can show my love to
   Jesus Christ by denying myself!"

   If you are doing this. If you are thus, out of love to Jesus, feeding
   the hungry and clothing the naked, I believe that these are put down as
   tests--because they are such blessed detectives between the hypocrites
   and the really godly people. When you read "for" here, you must not
   understand it to be that their reward is because of this, but that they
   are proven to be God's servants by this. And so, while they do not
   merit it because of these actions, yet these actions show that they
   were saved by Grace, which is evidenced by the fact that Jesus Christ
   worked such works in them. If Christ does not work such things in you,
   you have no part in Him! If you have not produced such works as these
   you have not believed in Jesus.

   Now somebody says, "Then I intend to give to the poor in the future in
   order that I may have this reward." Ah, but you are very much mistaken
   if you do that. The Duke of Burgundy was waited upon by a poor man, a
   very loyal subject, who brought him a very large root which he had
   grown. He was a very poor man, indeed, and every root he grew in his
   garden was of consequence to him. But merely as a loyal offering he
   brought to his prince the largest his little garden produced. The
   prince was so pleased with the man's evident loyalty and affection that
   he gave him a very large sum.

   The steward thought, "Well, I see this pays! This man has got fifty
   pounds for his large root. I think I shall make the duke a present." So
   he bought a horse and he reckoned that he should have in return ten
   times as much for it as it was worth, and he presented it with that
   view. The duke, like a wise man, quietly accepted the horse and gave
   the greedy steward nothing. That was all. So you say, "Well, here is a
   Christian man, and he gets rewarded. He has been giving to the poor,
   helping the Lord's Church, and see he is saved! The thing pays, I shall
   make a little investment."

   Yes, but you see the steward did not give the horse out of any idea of
   loyalty, or kindness, or love to the duke, but out of very great love
   to himself--and therefore had no return. And if you perform deeds of
   charity out of the idea of getting to Heaven by them, why it is
   yourself that you are feeding! It is yourself that you are clothing!
   All your virtue is not virtue, it is rank selfishness! It smells strong
   of selfhood, and Christ will never accept it! You will never hear Him
   say, "Thank you" for it. You served yourself, and no reward is due.

   You must first come to the Lord Jesus Christ and look to Him to save
   you! You must forever renounce all idea of doing anything to save
   yourself! But being saved, you will be able to give to the poor and so
   on without selfishness mixing with your motive--and you will get a
   reward of Divine Grace for the love token which you have given. It is
   necessary to believe in Christ in order to be capable of true virtue of
   the highest order. It is necessary to trust Jesus and to be, yourself,
   fully saved, before there is any value in your feeding the hungry or
   clothing the naked.

   God give you Grace to go to my Master wounded yonder and to rest in the
   precious Atonement which He has made for human sin. And when you have
   done that, being loved at such a rate, may you show that you love in
   return! Being purchased so dearly, may you live for Him that bought
   you! And among the actions by which you prove it, let these gleam and
   glisten like God-given jewels--the visiting of the sick, the comforting
   of the needy, the relieving of the distressed, and the helping of the
   weak. God accept these offerings as they come from gracious souls, and
   to Him be praise evermore. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                The Ravens' Cry

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING, JANUARY 14, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He gives to the beasthis food, and to the young ravens which cry."
   Psalm 147:9.

   I SHALL open this sermon with a quotation. I must give you, in Caryl's
   own words his note upon ravens. "Naturalists tell us that when the
   raven has fed his young in the nest till they are well fledged and able
   to fly abroad, he thrusts them out of the nest and will not let them
   abide there, but puts them out to get their own living. Now when these
   young ones are upon their first flight from their nest and are little
   acquainted with means how to help themselves with food, then the Lord
   provides food for them.

   "It is said by credible authorities that the raven is marvelously
   strict and severe in this--as soon as his young ones are able to
   provide for themselves, he will not fetch any more food for them. Some
   affirm the old ones will not suffer them to stay in the same country
   where they were bred, and if so, then they must wander. We say
   proverbially, 'Need makes the old wife trot.' We may say, 'and the
   young ones too.' "

   It has been, and possibly is, the practice of some parents towards
   their children, who, as soon as they can shift for themselves and are
   fit in any competency to get their bread, to turn them out of doors as
   the raven does his young ones out of the nest. Now, said the Lord in
   the text, when the young ones of the raven are in this pinch, that they
   are turned off, and wander for lack of meat, who, then, provides for
   them? "Do not I, the Lord? Do not I, who provide for the old raven,
   provide for his young ones, both while they abide in the nest and when
   they wander for lack of meat?"

   Solomon sent the sluggard to the ant, and learned, himself, lessons
   from conies, greyhounds, and spiders! Let us be willing to be
   instructed by any of God's creatures and go to the ravens' nest tonight
   to learn as in a school. To the pure nothing is unclean, and to the
   wise nothing is trivial. Let the superstitious dread the raven as a
   bird of ill omen, and let the thoughtless see nothing but a winged
   thing in glossy black--we are willing to see more, and doubtless shall
   not be unrewarded if we are but teachable.

   Noah's raven brought him back no olive branch, but ours may! And it may
   even come to pass that ravens may bring us meat tonight as of old they
   fed Elijah by Cherith's brook. Our blessed Lord once derived a very
   potent argument from ravens--an argument intended to comfort and cheer
   those of His servants who were oppressed with needless anxieties about
   their temporal circumstances. To such he said, "Consider the ravens:
   for they neither sow nor reap, which neither have storehouse nor barn,
   and God feeds them. How much more are you better than the fowls?"

   Following the Master's logic--which you will all agree must have been
   sound, for He was never untruthful in His reasoning any more than in
   His statements--I shall argue tonight on this wise: Consider the ravens
   as they cry! With harsh, inarticulate, croaking notes they make known
   their needs, and your heavenly Father answers their prayer and sends
   them food! You, too, have begun to pray and to seek His favor--are you
   not much better than they? Does God care for ravens, and will he not
   care for you? Does He not hearken to the cries of the unfledged ravens
   in their nests when they are hungry and cry unto Him to be fed?

   Does He, I say, supply them in answer to their cries, and will He not
   answer you, poor trembling children of men who are seeking His face and
   favor through Christ Jesus? The whole business of this evening will be
   just simply to work that one thought out. I shall aim tonight, under
   the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to say something to those who have
   been praying for mercy but as yet have not received it--who have gone
   on their knees, perhaps, for months, with one exceeding great and
   bitter cry--but as yet know not the way of peace.

   Their sin still hangs like a millstone about their neck. They sit in
   the valley of the shadow of death. No light has dawned upon them and
   they are wringing their hands and moaning, "Has God forgotten to be
   gracious? Has He shut His ear against the prayers of seeking souls?
   Will He be mindful of sinners' piteous cries no more? Will penitents'
   tears drop upon the earth and no longer move His compassion?" Satan,
   too, is telling you, dear Friends, who are now in this state of mind,
   that God will never hear you. That He will let you cry till you die!
   That you shall pant out your life in sighs and tears and that at the
   end you shall be cast into the Lake of Fire!

   I long, tonight, to give you some comfort and encouragement. I want to
   urge you to cry yet more vehemently! Come to the Cross and lay hold of
   it, and vow that you will never leave its shadow till you find the gift
   which your soul covets. I want to move you, if God the Holy Spirit
   shall help me, so that you will say within yourselves, like Queen
   Esther, "I will go in unto the King, and if I perish, I perish." And
   may you add to that the vow of Jacob, "I will not let You go, except
   You bless me!" Here, then, is the question in hand: GOD HEARS THE YOUNG
   RAVENS. WILL HE NOT HEAR YOU?

   I. I argue that He will, first, when I remember that He hears the lowly
   raven cry, and that you, in some sense, are much better than a raven.
   The raven is but a poor unclean bird whose instant death would make no
   sort of grievous gap in creation. If thousands of ravens had their
   necks wrung tomorrow I do not know that there would be any vehement
   grief and sorrow in the universe about them! It would simply be a
   number of poor birds dead, and that would be all.

   But you are an immortal soul! The raven is gone when life is
   over--there is no raven any longer. But when your present life is past,
   you have not ceased to be--you are but launched upon the sea of
   life--you have but begun to live forever. You will see earth's hoary
   mountains crumble to nothingness before your immortal spirit shall
   expire! The moon shall have paled her feeble light, and the sun's more
   mighty fires shall have been quenched in perpetual darkness, and yet
   your spirit shall still be marching on in its everlasting course--an
   everlasting course of misery, unless God hears your cry--

   "Oh, that truth immense, This mortal, immortality shall wear! The pulse
   of mind shall never cease to play; By God awakened, it forever throbs,
   Eternal as His own eternity! Above the angels, or below the fiends: To
   mount in Glory, or in shame descend-- Mankind is destined by resistless
   doom." Do you think, then, that God will hear the poor bird that is and
   is not--is here a moment and is blotted out of existence--and will He
   not hear you, an immortal soul, whose duration is to be co-equal with
   His own? I think it surely must strike you that if He hears the dying
   raven He will also hear an undying man. The ancients said of Jupiter
   that he was not at leisure to mind little things, but Jehovah
   condescends to care for the least of His creatures, and even looks into
   birds' nests! Will He not mercifully care for spirits who are heirs of
   a dread eternity?

   Moreover, I never heard that ravens were made in the image of God! But
   I do find that, defiled, deformed, and debased as our race is, yet
   originally God said, "Let Us make man in Our own image." There is
   something about man which is not to be found in the lower creatures,
   the best and noblest of whom are immeasurably beneath the meanest child
   of Adam. A council was held as to the creation of man, and in his mind,
   and even in the adaptation of his body to assist the mind, there is a
   marvelous display of the wisdom of the Most High.

   Bring here the most deformed, obscure and wicked of the human race,
   and--though I dare not flatter human nature morally--yet there is a
   dignity about the fact of manhood which is not to be found in all the
   beasts of the field, be they what they may. Behemoth and Leviathan are
   put in subjection beneath the foot of man. The eagle cannot soar so
   high as man's soul mounts, nor the lion feed on such royal meat as
   man's spirit hungers after. And do you think that God will hear so low
   and so mean a creature as a raven and yet not hear you, when you are
   one of the race that was formed in His own image?

   Oh, think not so harshly and so foolishly of Him whose ways are always
   equal! I will put this to yourselves. Does not Nature itself teach that
   man is to be cared for above the fowls of the air? If you heard the
   cries of young ravens, you might feel compassion enough for those birds
   to give them food if you knew how to feed them. But I cannot believe
   that any of you would succor the birds, and yet would not fly upon the
   wings of compassion to the rescue of a perishing infant whose cries you
   might hear from the place where it was cast by cruel neglect! If, in
   the stillness of the night, you heard the plaintive cry of a man
   expiring in sickness, unpitied in the streets, would you not arise and
   help him?

   I am sure you would if you are one who would help a raven. If you have
   any compassion for a raven, surely much more would you have pity upon a
   man! I know it is whispered that there are some simpletons who care
   more for houseless dogs than for houseless men and women--and yet it is
   far more probable that those who feel for dogs are those who care most
   tenderly for men. At any rate, I should feel a strong presumption in
   their favor if I needed aid. And do you not think that God, the
   All-Wise One, when He cares for these unfledged birds in the nest, will
   be sure also to care for you?

   Your heart says, "Yes." Then from now on answer the unbelief of your
   heart by turning its own just reasoning against it. But I hear you say,
   "Ah, but the raven is not sinful as I am! It may be an unclean bird,
   but it cannot be so unclean as I am morally. It may be black in hue,
   but I am black with sin! A raven cannot break the Sabbath, cannot
   swear, cannot commit adultery! A raven cannot be a drunkard! It cannot
   defile itself with vices such as those with which I am polluted."

   I know all that, Friend, and it may seem to you to make your case more
   hopeless, but I do not think it really does so. Just think of it for a
   minute. What does this prove? Why, that you are a creature capable of
   sinning, and, consequently, that you are an intelligent spirit living
   in a sense in which a raven does not live. You are a creature moving in
   the spirit-world! You belong to the world of souls in which the raven
   has no portion. The raven cannot sin, because it has no spirit, no
   soul. But you are an intelligent agent of which the better part is your
   soul. Now, as the soul is infinitely more precious than the body! And
   as the raven--I am speaking popularly now--is nothing but body while
   you are evidently soul as well as body--or else you would not be
   capable of sinning--I see even in that black discouraging thought some
   gleam of light!

   Does God care for flesh, and blood, and bones, and black feathers, and
   will He not care for your reason, your will, your judgment, your
   conscience, your immortal soul? Oh, if you will but think of it, you
   must see that it is not possible for a raven's cry to gain an audience
   of the ear of Divine Benevolence and for your prayer to be despised and
   disregarded by the Most High--

   "The insect that with puny wings, Just shoots along one summer's ray.
   The flower which the breath of Spring Wakes into life for half a day.
   The smallest mote, the most tender hair, All feel our heavenly Father's
   care." Surely, then, He will have respect unto the cry of the humble,
   and will not refuse their prayer!

   I can hardly leave this point without remarking that the mention of a
   raven should encourage a sinner. As an old author writes, "Among fowls
   He does not mention the hawk or falcon, which are highly prized and fed
   by princes. But He chooses that hateful and malicious bird, the
   croaking raven, whom no man values but as she eats up the carrion which
   might annoy him. Behold then, and wonder at the Providence and kindness
   of God, that He should provide food for the raven, a creature of so
   dismal a hue and of so untuneable a tone--a creature that is so odious
   to most men, and ominous to some. There is a great Providence of God
   seen in providing for the ant, who gathers her meat in summer--but a
   greater in the raven, who, though he forgets, or is careless to provide
   for himself, yet God provides and lays up for him."

   One would think the Lord should say of ravens, Let them shift for
   themselves or perish! No, the Lord God does not despise any work of His
   hands. The raven has his being from God, and therefore the raven shall
   be provided for by Him. Not only the fair innocent dove, but the ugly
   raven has his meat from God. Which clearly shows that the want of
   excellence in you, you black, raven-like sinner, will not prevent your
   cry from being heard in Heaven! Unworthiness the blood of Jesus shall
   remove, and defilement He shall utterly cleanse away. Only believe on
   Jesus, and you shall find peace!

   II. Then, in the next place, there is a great deal of difference
   between your cry and the cry of a raven. When the young ravens cry I
   suppose they scarcely know what they want. They have a natural instinct
   which makes them cry for food, but their cry does not, in itself,
   express their need. You would soon find out, I suppose, that they meant
   food--but they have no articulate speech--they do not utter so much as
   a single word! It is just a constant, croaking, craving cry and that is
   all.

   But you know what you need, and few as your words are, your heart knows
   its own bitterness and dire distress. Your sighs and groans have an
   obvious meaning. Your understanding is at the right hand of your hungry
   heart. You know that you want peace and pardon. You know that you need
   Jesus, His precious blood, His perfect righteousness. Now, if

   God hears such a strange, chattering, indistinct cry as that of a
   raven, don't you think that He will also hear the rational and
   expressive prayer of a poor, needy, guilty soul who is crying unto Him,
   "God be merciful to me a sinner"? Surely your reason tells you that!

   Moreover, the young ravens cannot use arguments, for they have no
   understanding. They cannot say as you can--

   "He knows what arguments I'd take To wrestle with my God, I'd plead for
   His own mercy's sake, And for a Sa vior's blood."

   They have one argument, namely, their dire necessity, which forces
   their cry from them, but beyond this they cannot go. And even this they
   cannot set forth in order, or describe in language. But you have a
   multitude of arguments ready at hand, and you have an understanding
   with which to set them in array and marshal them to besiege the Throne
   of Grace. Surely, if the mere plea of the unuttered need of the raven
   prevails with God, much more shall you prevail with the Most High if
   you can argue your case before Him and come unto Him with arguments in
   your mouth! Come, despairing one, and try my Lord! I do beseech you,
   now, let that doleful ditty ascend into the ears of mercy! Open that
   bursting heart and let it out in tears if words are beyond your power!

   A raven, however, I fear has sometimes a great advantage over some
   sinners who seek God in prayer, namely in this: young ravens are more
   in earnest about their food than some are about their souls. This,
   however, is no discouragement to you, but rather a reason why you
   should be more earnest than you have been. When ravens need food, they
   do not cease crying till they have it. There is no quieting a hungry
   young raven till his mouth is full, and there is no quieting a sinner
   when he is really in earnest till he gets his heart full of Divine
   mercy. I would that some of you prayed more vehemently! "The kingdom of
   Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force."

   An old Puritan said, "Prayer is a cannon set at the gate of Heaven to
   burst open its gates." You must take the city by storm if you would
   have it! You will not ride to Heaven on a featherbed. You must go on
   pilgrimage--there is no going to the land of Glory while you are sound
   asleep--dreamy sluggards will have to wake up in Hell! If God has made
   you to feel in your soul the need of salvation, cry like one who is
   awake and alive! Be in earnest! Cry aloud! Spare not! And then I think
   you will find that my argument will be quite fair--that in all respects
   a reasonable, argumentative, intelligent prayer is more likely to
   prevail with God than the mere screaming, chattering noise of the
   raven--and that if He hears such a cry as the raven's--it is much more
   certain that He will hear yours.

   III. Remember that the matter of your prayer is more congenial to the
   ear of God than the raven's cry for meat. All that the young ravens
   call for is food--give them a little carrion and they have done. Your
   cry must be much more pleasing to God's ear, for you entreat for
   forgiveness through the blood of His dear Son. It is a nobler
   occupation for the Most High to be bestowing spiritual than natural
   gifts. The streams of Divine Grace flow from the upper springs. I know
   He is so condescending that He does not dishonor Himself even when He
   drops food into the young raven's mouth, but still there is more honor
   about the work of giving peace, and pardon, and reconciliation to the
   sons of men.

   Eternal Love appointed a way of mercy from before the foundation of the
   world, and infinite Wisdom is engaged with boundless power to carry out
   the Divine design. Surely the Lord must take much pleasure in saving
   the sons of men! If God is pleased to supply the beast of the field, do
   you not think that He delights much more to supply His own children? I
   think you would find more congenial employment in teaching your own
   children than you would in merely foddering your ox, or scattering
   barley among the fowls at the barn door because there would be in the
   first work something nobler, which would more fully call up all your
   powers and bring out your inward self.

   I am not left here to conjecture. It is written, "He delights in
   mercy." When God uses His power He cannot be sad, for He is a happy
   God. But if there is such a thing possible as the Infinite Deity being
   more happy at one time than at another, it is when He is forgiving
   sinners through the precious blood of Jesus. Ah, Sinner, when you cry
   to God you give Him an opportunity to do that which He loves most to
   do! He delights to forgive, to press His Ephraim to His bosom, to say
   of His prodigal son, "He was lost, but is found. He was dead, but is
   alive again." This is more comfortable to the Father's heart than the
   feeding of the fatted calf, or tending the cattle of a thousand hills.

   Since then, dear Friends, you are asking for something which will honor
   God far more to give than the mere gift of food to ravens, I think
   there comes a very forcible blow of my argumentative hammer tonight to
   break your unbelief in pieces! May God the Holy Spirit, the true
   Comforter, work in you mightily! Surely the God who gives food to
   ravens will not deny peace and pardon to seeking sinners. Try Him! Try
   Him at this moment! No, stir not! Try Him now!

   IV. We must not pause on any one point when the whole subject is so
   prolific. There is another source of comfort for you, namely, that the
   ravens are nowhere commanded to cry. When they cry, their petition is
   unwarranted by any specific exhortation from the Divine mouth. But you
   have a warrant derived from Divine exhortations to approach the Throne
   of God in prayer!

   If a rich man should open his house to those who were not invited he
   would surely receive those who were invited. Ravens come without being
   bid to come, yet they are not sent away empty! You are commanded to
   come as an invited guest--how shall you be denied? Do you think you are
   not bid to come? Listen to this: "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord
   shall be saved." "Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will
   deliver you, and you shall glorify Me." "Go you into all the world, and
   preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believes and is baptized
   shall be saved. He that believes not shall be damned." "Believe in the
   Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved." "Repent and be baptized,
   every one of you, in the name of the Lord Jesus."

   These are exhortations given without any limitation as to character.
   They freely invite you--no, they bid you come. Oh, after this can you
   think that God will spurn you? The window is open, the raven flies in
   and the God of mercy does not chase it out! The door is open, and the
   Word of Promise bids you come--don't think that He will deny you, but
   believe rather that He will "receive you graciously and love you
   freely," and then you shall "render to Him the calves of your lips." At
   any rate try Him! Try Him even now!

   V. Again, there is yet another and a far mightier argument. The cry of
   a young raven is nothing but the natural cry of a creature, but your
   cry, if it is sincere, is the result of a work of Divine Grace in your
   heart. When the raven cries to Heaven it is nothing but the raven's own
   self that cries--but when you cry, "God be merciful to me a sinner"--it
   is God the Holy Spirit crying in you!

   It is the new life which God has given you crying to the source from
   where it came to have communion and communication with its great
   Original. It needs God Himself to set a man praying in sincerity and in
   truth! We can, if we think about it, teach our children to "say their
   prayers," but we cannot teach them to "pray." You may make a
   "prayer-book," but you cannot put a grain of "prayer" into a book, for
   it is too spiritual a matter to be encased between leaves. Some of you,
   perhaps, may "read prayers" in the family. I will not denounce the
   practice but I will say this much of it-- you may read those "prayers"
   for seventy years and yet you may never once pray--for prayer is quite
   a different thing from mere words.

   True prayer is the trading of the heart with God, and the heart never
   comes into spiritual commerce with the ports of Heaven until God the
   Holy Spirit puts wind into the sails and speeds the ship into its
   haven. "You must be born again." If there is any real prayer in your
   heart, though you may not know the secret, God the Holy Spirit is
   there! Now if He hears cries that do not come from Himself, how much
   more will He hear those that do! Perhaps you have been puzzling
   yourself to know whether your cry is a natural or a spiritual one. This
   may seem very important, and doubtless is so-- but whether your cry is
   either the one or the other, still continue to seek the Lord!

   Possibly you doubt whether natural cries are heard by God. Let me
   assure you that they are. I remember saying something on this subject
   on one occasion in a certain Ultra-Calvinistic place of worship. At
   that time I was preaching to children and was exhorting them to pray. I
   happened to say that long before any actual conversion I had prayed for
   common mercies, and that God had heard my prayers. This did not suit my
   good Brethren of the superfine school! And afterwards they all came
   round me professedly to know what I meant, but really to cavil and carp
   according to their nature and practice.

   "They compassed me about like bees. Yes, like bees they compassed me
   about!" After awhile, as I expected, they fell to their usual amusement
   of calling names. They began to say what rank Arminianism this was! And
   another expression they were pleased to honor me with, was the title of
   "Fullerist"--a title, by the way, so honorable that I could heartily
   have thanked them for appending it to what I had advanced! But to say
   that God should hear the prayer of natural men was something worse than
   Arminianism to them, if, indeed, anything could be worse! They quoted
   that counterfeit passage, "The prayer of the wicked is an abomination
   unto the Lord," which I speedily answered by asking them if they would
   find me that text in the Word of God, for I ventured to assert that the
   devil was the author of that saying, and that it was not in the Bible
   at all.

   "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord" is in the
   Bible, but that is a very different thing from the "prayer of the
   wicked." And moreover there is a decided difference between the word
   wicked there intended and the natural man about whom we were arguing. I
   do not think that a man who begins to pray in any sense can be
   considered as being altogether among "the wicked" intended by Solomon,
   and certainly he is not among those who turn away their ears from
   hearing the Law, of whom it is written that their prayer is an
   abomination.

   "Well, but," they said, "how could it be that God could hear a natural
   prayer?" And while I paused for a moment, an old woman in a red cloak
   pushed her way into the little circle round me and said to them in very
   forcible way, like a mother in Israel as she was, "Why do you raise
   this question, forgetting what God Himself has said! What is this you
   say, that God does not hear natural prayer? Why, doesn't He hear the
   young ravens when they cry unto Him? And do you think they offer
   spiritual prayers?"

   Straightway the men of war took to their heels--no defeat was more
   thorough--and for once in their lives they must have felt that they
   might possibly err! Surely, Brethren, this may encourage and comfort
   you! I am not going to set you just now to the task of finding out
   whether your prayers are natural or spiritual--whether they come from
   God's Spirit or whether they do not--because that might, perhaps,
   discourage you. If the prayer proceeds from your very heart, we know
   how it got there, though you may not. God hears the ravens, and I do
   believe He will hear you, and I believe, moreover, though I do not now
   want to raise the question in your heart, that He hears your prayer,
   because-- though you may not know it--there is a secret work of the
   Spirit of God going on within you which is teaching you to pray.

   VI. But I have mightier arguments and nearer the mark. When the young
   ravens cry, they cry alone. But when you pray you have a mightier One
   than you praying with you! Hear that sinner crying, "God be merciful to
   me a sinner"? Hark! Do you hear that other cry which goes up with his?
   No, you do not hear it because your ears are dull and heavy, but God
   hears it. There is another voice, far louder and sweeter than the
   first, and far more prevalent, mounting up at the same moment and
   pleading, "Father, forgive them through My precious blood."

   The echo to the sinner's whisper is as majestic as the thunder's peal!
   Never sinner prays truly without Christ praying at the same time! You
   cannot see nor hear Him, but never does Jesus stir the depths of your
   soul by His Spirit without His soul being stirred, too. Oh, Sinner,
   your prayer, when it comes before God, is a very different thing from
   what it is when it issues forth from you!

   Sometimes poor people come to us with petitions which they wish to send
   to some Company or great Personage. They bring the petition and ask us
   to have it presented for them. It is very badly spelt, very strangely
   written, and we can but just make out what they mean. But still, there
   is enough to let us know what they need. First of all we make out a
   fair copy for them, and then, having stated their case, we put our own
   name at the bottom. And if we have any interest, of course they get
   what they desire through the power of the name signed at the foot of
   the petition.

   This is just what the Lord Jesus Christ does with our poor prayers! He
   makes a fair copy of them, stamps them with the seal of His own atoning
   blood, puts His own name at the foot, and thus they go up to God's
   Throne. It is your prayer, but oh, it is HIS prayer, too! And it is the
   fact of its being His prayer that makes it prevail. Now, this is a
   sledge hammer argument--if the ravens prevail when they cry all alone,
   if their poor chattering brings them what they need of themselves--how
   much more shall the plaintive petitions of the poor trembling sinner
   prevail who can say, "For Jesus' sake," and who can clench all his own
   arguments with the blessed plea, "The Lord Jesus Christ deserves it! O
   Lord, give it to me for His sake"?

   I do trust that these seeking ones to whom I have been speaking, who
   have been crying so long and yet are afraid that they shall never be
   heard, may not have to wait much longer but may soon have a gracious
   answer of peace! And if they shall not just yet get the desire of their
   hearts, I hope that they may be encouraged to persevere till the day of
   Grace shall dawn. You have a promise which the ravens have not, and
   that might make another argument if time permitted us to dwell upon it.
   Trembler, having a promise to plead, never fear but that you shall be
   heard at the Throne of Grace!

   And now, let me say to the sinner, in closing, IF YOU HAVE CRIED
   UNSUCCESSFULLY, STILL CRY ON. "Go again seven times," yes, and seventy
   times seven! Remember that the mercy of God in Christ Jesus is your
   only hope!

   Cling to it, then, as a drowning man clings to the only rope within
   reach. If you perish praying for mercy through the precious blood, you
   will be the first that ever perished so! Cry on! Just cry on! But oh,
   believe, too! For believing brings the morning star and the day dawn.

   When John Ryland's wife, Betty, lay dying, she was in great distress of
   mind, though she had been for many years a Christian. Her husband said
   to her in his quaint but wise way, "Well, Betty, what ails you?" "Oh,
   John, I am dying, and I have no hope, John!" "But, my Dear, where are
   you going, then?" "I am going to Hell!" was the answer. "Well," said
   he, covering up his deep anguish with his usual humor, and meaning to
   strike a blow that would be sure to hit the nail on the head and put
   her doubts to speedy flight, "What do you intend doing when you get
   there, Betty?" The good woman could give no answer, and Mr. Ryland
   continued, "Do you think you will pray when you get there?"

   "Oh, John," said she, "I should pray anywhere. I cannot help praying!"
   "Well, then," said he, "they will say, 'Here is Betty Ryland praying
   here. Turn her out! We won't have anybody praying here! Turn her out!"
   This strange way of putting it brought light to her soul and she saw at
   once the absurdity of the very suspicion of a soul really seeking
   Christ, and yet being cast away forever from His Presence! Cry on,
   Soul! Cry on! While the child can cry, it lives. And while you can
   besiege the Throne of Mercy, there is hope for you! But hear as well as
   cry, and believe what you hear, for it is by believing that peace is
   obtained.

   But stay awhile, I have something else to say. Is it possible that you
   may have already obtained the very blessing you are crying after? "Oh,"
   you say, "I would not ask for a thing which I had already got! If I
   knew I had it, I would leave off crying, and begin praising and
   blessing God." Now, I do not know whether all of you seekers are in so
   safe a state, but I am persuaded that there are some seeking souls who
   have received the mercy for which they are asking. The Lord, instead of
   saying to them tonight, "Seek you My face," is saying, "Why cry you
   unto Me? I have heard you in an acceptable hour, and in an acceptable
   time have I succored you. I have blotted out your sins like a cloud,
   and like a thick cloud your iniquities. I have saved you. You are Mine.
   I have cleansed you from all your sins. Go your way and rejoice."

   In such a case believing praise is more suitable than agonizing prayer.
   "Oh," you say, "But it is not likely that I have the mercy while I am
   still seeking for it." Well, I do not know. Mercy sometimes falls down
   in a fainting fit outside the gate. Is it not possible for her to be
   taken inside while she is in the fainting fit, and for her to think all
   the while that she is still on the outside? She can hear the dog still
   barking, but ah, poor Soul, when she comes to, she will find that she
   is inside the wicket and is safe!

   So some of you may happen to have fallen into a swoon of despondency
   just when you are coming to Christ. If so, may Sovereign Grace restore
   you, and perhaps I may be the means, tonight, of doing it. What is it
   you are looking after? Some of you are expecting to see bright visions,
   but I hope you never may be gratified for they are not worth a penny a
   thousand. All the visions in the world since the days of miracles, put
   together, are but mere dreams, after all--and dreams are nothing but
   vanity! People eat too much supper and then dream--it is indigestion,
   or a morbid activity of the brain--and that is all! If that is all the
   evidence you have of conversion you will do well to doubt it. I pray
   you never to rest satisfied with it--it is wretched rubbish to build
   your eternal hopes upon.

   Perhaps you are looking for very strange feelings--not quite an
   electric shock, but something very singular and peculiar. Believe me,
   you need never feel the strange motions which you prize so highly. All
   those strange feelings which some people speak of in connection with
   conversion may or may not be of any good to them, but I am certain that
   they really have nothing to do with conversion so as to be at all
   necessary to it!

   I will put a question or two to you. Do you believe yourself to be a
   sinner? "Yes," you say. But supposing I put that word "sinner" away? Do
   you mean that you believe you have broken God's Law, that you are a
   good-for-nothing offender against God's government? Do you believe that
   you have in your heart, at any rate, broken all the Commandments, and
   that you deserve punishment accordingly? "Yes," you say, "I not only
   believe that, but I feel it! It is a burden that I carry about with me
   daily."

   Now something more--do you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ can put
   all this sin of yours away? Yes, you do believe that. Then, can you
   trust Him to save you? You need saving. You cannot save yourself. Can
   you trust Him to save you? "Yes," you say, "I already do that." Well,
   my dear Friend, if you really trust Jesus, it is certain that you are
   saved, for you have the only evidence of salvation which is continual
   with any of us! There are other evidences which follow afterwards, such
   as holiness and the Graces of the Spirit, but the only evidence that is
   continual with the best of men living is this--

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

   Can you use Jack the huckster's verse--

   "I'm a poor sinner and nothing at all,
   But Jesus Christ is my All in All"?

   I hope you will go a great deal farther in experience on some points
   than this, by and by, but I do not want you to advance an inch farther
   as to the ground of your evidence and the reason for your hope. Just
   stop there and if now you look away from everything that is within you
   or without you to Jesus Christ, and trust to His sufferings on Calvary
   and to His whole atoning work as the ground of your acceptance before
   God, you are saved! You do not need anything more! You have passed from
   death unto life. "He that believes on Him is not condemned." "He that
   believes has everlasting life."

   If I were to meet an angel presently in that aisle as I go out of my
   door into my vestry, and he should say--"Charles Spurgeon, I have come
   from Heaven to tell you that you are pardoned," I should say to him--"I
   know that without your telling me anything of the kind! I know it on a
   great deal better authority than yours." And if he asked me how I knew
   it, I should reply, "The Word of God is better to me than the word of
   an angel, and He has said it--'He that believes on Him is not
   condemned.' I do believe on Him, and therefore I am not condemned--and
   I know it without an angel to tell me so."

   Do not, you troubled ones, be looking after angels, and tokens, and
   evidences, and signs. If you rest on the finished work of Jesus you
   have already the best evidence of your salvation in the world! You have
   God's Word for it--what more is needed? Cannot you take God's Word? You
   can take your father's word. You can take your mother's word-- why
   cannot you take God's word? Oh, what base hearts we must have to
   suspect God Himself!

   Perhaps you say you would not do such a thing. Oh, but you doubt God,
   if you do not trust Christ--for, "he that believes not has made God a
   liar." If you do not trust Christ, you do in effect say that God is a
   liar! You do not want to say that, do you? Oh, believe the truthfulness
   of God! May the Spirit of God constrain you to believe the Father's
   mercy, the power of the Son's blood, and the willingness of the Holy
   Spirit to bring sinners to Himself!

   Come, my dear Hearers, join with me in the prayer that you may be led
   by Divine Grace to see in Jesus all that you need--

   "Prayer is a creature's strength, his very breath and being.
   Prayer is the golden key that can open the wicket of mercy.
   Prayer is the magic sound that said to fate, so be it.
   Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscles of Omnipotence,
   Therefore, pray, O creature, for many and great are your needs.
   Your mind, your conscience, and your being, your needs commend you unto
   prayer,
   The cure of all cares, the grand panacea for all pains,
   Doubt's destroyer, ruin's remedy, the antidote to all anxieties."
     __________________________________________________________________

                   Secret Sins Driven Out By Stinging Hornets

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 28, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Moreover the Lord your God will send the hornet among them, until
   those who are left, who hide themselves from you, are destroyed."
   Deuteronomy 7:20.

   LET us spiritualize the story of the conquest of Canaan by the children
   of Israel. Canaan was given to Abraham and to his seed by a covenant of
   salt. Our body, soul, and spirit are given to Christ Jesus to be His
   portion and His heritage-- and the newborn principle within us which
   represents the seed of Israel is to conquer the whole of our manhood
   for Christ that He may have possession of it in all its powers and
   passions, parts and faculties. When our Lord Jesus Christ died, He died
   not only for our souls but also for our bodies--He did not purchase a
   right to a part of us only but to the entire man. He contemplated in
   His passion the sanctification of us wholly--spirit, soul, and
   body--that in this triple kingdom He Himself might reign supreme
   without a rival.

   It is the business of the newborn nature which God has given to the
   regenerate to assert the rights of the Lord Jesus Christ. "My Soul, so
   far as you are a child of God, you must conquer all the rest of
   yourself which yet remains unblest. You must subdue all your powers and
   passions to the silver scepter of Jesus' gracious reign, and you must
   never be satisfied till He who is the King by purchase becomes also the
   King by gracious coronation, and reigns in you supreme."

   Although Israel had Canaan by right, the Jebusites and eight mighty
   nations had it in possession. And alas, we are made painfully to feel
   that though Christ has a right to us and He alone should reign in our
   mortal bodies, yet sin has a dwelling place in us! Those old sins which
   were born with us and seem as if they will never die till we,
   ourselves, are wrapped in our winding sheets, have entered into us and
   will dwell in us. I may say of our nature what was said in Egypt during
   the plague of frogs: "Behold these filthy things have come up into our
   chambers and into our ovens, and our kneading troughs."

   There is no part of our heart too hot or too sacred for sin to intrude
   into it. The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint--from the
   sole of the foot even to the head--naturally--there is nothing but
   wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. Sin has entrenched itself in
   our nature and it is not to be cast out by our mere talking about it
   nor by our best resolutions. Our sins have chariots of iron, as those
   of us know who have to contend with them, and their cities are walled
   up to Heaven their entrenchments are so strong! Our sins have so worked
   themselves into our flesh that our flesh cries out, "Spare them!"

   "Surely the bitterness of death is past," said Agag when he came
   delicately before Samuel. And thus our sins come so delicately to us,
   assume such pleasant shapes, and are so congenial, that something
   whispers, "Let them live!" It is hard to slay them--so difficult to cut
   them up root and branch, for they are in possession--and the new nature
   is but a babe! "But the old nature is the old man, and it is a very
   unequal fight between a babe and an old man!" The new nature has just
   emerged into an atmosphere which is not congenial with it, while the
   old nature has everything to help it--the devil from beneath, the world
   from without, and even the cares of business, of life--all seem to act
   as allies to the old nature.

   Meanwhile the new nature has to fight alone. If the Eternal Spirit were
   not our helper, and if He who is the Father of our new nature were not
   also its support and its succor, long ago it would have died and been
   utterly cut off by the hosts of its foes! Christ and holiness have a
   right to us, but sin is in possession.

   What then, Beloved? Why this--since sin has no right to any part of us,
   we go about a good and legal warfare when we seek, in the name of God,
   to drive it out! O my Body, you are a member of Christ! Shall I take
   you and subjugate you to the Prince of Darkness? O my Soul, Christ has
   suffered for your sins and redeemed you with His most precious blood!
   Shall I suffer your memory to become a storehouse of evil, or your
   passions to become firebrands of iniquity? Shall I surrender my
   judgment to be perverted by error, or my will to be led in fetters of
   iniquity?

   No, my Soul, you are Christ's, and sin has no right to you. Sin shall
   not have dominion over us, for we are not under Law but under Grace.
   Christ has bought us and paid for us! God has willed us over to Christ.
   We belong to Him! We are His portion and His reward. Sin has no legal
   right, then, but it has possession--and you know that is nine points of
   the law. But we will dispute the nine points! We will bring the one
   grand point--that God, the Judge of all, has decided that the
   blood-bought belong to Christ! And we will fight it out even to the
   death against these, our sins!

   We are told if we read this chapter in a spiritual sense that we must
   in no way suffer any kind or sort of truce with sin. I believe that
   many Believers--I hope they are Believers--have given up warring with a
   part of their sins. They are not drunkards, they are not thieves. They
   are not given to uncleanness of walk or language. But theirs may be a
   hasty temper and they do not try to subdue that. They think that that
   is constitutional, and they plead for it as though it must be spared!
   This one tribe--these Jebusites--must be spared according to their
   sinful talk.

   But oh, Beloved, I have no more right as a Christian to suffer bad
   temper to dwell in me than I have to suffer the devil himself to dwell
   there! I know it has been said very often that Divine Grace is often
   grafted on a crab tree stock. So it is. But in this spiritual husbandry
   the graft will influence all below as well as that which is above it.
   What is the fruit of it? Is it a crab tree? No! The fruit does not come
   from the crab tree, but from the better nature! And though I am grafted
   upon a crab tree, yet my fruit must partake of the new nature, and I
   must bring forth sweet fruit.

   Some people think--or perhaps they may not know it--that they are
   naturally troubled with pride, that they have naturally a high spirit,
   or a haughty temper. And when they are told of it they grow rough with
   whomever dares to mention it! And they think this is not a sin. But,
   oh, Beloved, pride in a Christian is one of the most loathsome vices!
   What can there be in you and in me to be proud of? Owing all we have to
   the gift of God--having nothing but what He gives us, and going back to
   our own poverty unless God keeps us--how dare we lift up our head?

   God smote Nebuchadnezzar and made him go and eat grass like the ox, and
   his hair grew like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds
   claws--all because of his pride! And some of God's dear children have
   been suffered to make dreadful falls of it, and all because they were
   lifted up and said, "I shall never be moved, my mountain stands firm."
   We must beware of these sins and not make a truce or parley with them!
   I must not say of any one sin, "I cannot help it, and therefore I will
   not contend with it."

   Beloved, down with them! Down with them all! In the name of God we must
   destroy them, or else they will destroy us! I may say of our sins what
   a Scotch officer said to his soldiers when taken in an ill position.
   Said he, "My lads, there are the enemy! Kill them, or they will kill
   you!" And so must I say of all sins. There they are! Destroy them, or
   they will destroy you! Your only way of entering into eternal life is
   by being more than a conqueror through Him who has loved you. You know
   how it is written, "To him that overcomes will I give to eat of the
   hidden manna," but to such only. "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome
   evil with good."

   And as we are not, thus, to excuse some sins and permit them to live,
   so, above all, we must not fall into a dispirited state of mind and
   suppose we never can drive sins out. I do not think we shall ever be
   perfect in this life, but how near to perfection a Christian may come
   is a question which I should not like to discuss in words, but prefer
   endeavoring to find out in practice. How much a Believer may be like
   Christ I will not venture to affirm, but certainly there have been some
   men upon earth of whom we might say, without exaggeration, that you
   might take them for an example, for their Master seemed to live again
   in them.

   There is no need that you should always give way to pride, or sloth, or
   covetousness, or any other form of sin. You are able to overcome
   them--not in your own strength--the weakest of them would be too much
   for you in that. But you may overcome them through the blood of the
   Lamb! "This is the victory which overcomes the world, even our faith,"
   and our faith will be able to subdue these sins. Just as faith of old
   put to flight the armies of the aliens, so it can even to this day. Do
   not, then, dear Friends, ask, "How shall I dispossess them, for they
   are greater and mightier than I?" Go to the strong for strength and
   wait humbly upon God, and He, the mighty God of Jacob, will surely come
   to the rescue and you shall have to sing of victory through His Grace!

   There is a word of encouragement given in the chapter to those who have
   a tendency to doubt in this matter. Israel was reminded that God
   brought them out of Egypt. He delivered them from the house of bondage.
   And you are reminded, dear Friends, that you are saved! Christ has done
   a greater work for you than remains to be accomplished in you. To bear
   the weight of your sins and to break the iron yoke of spiritual bondage
   from off your necks required that

   Christ should die! And that being done, it is, comparatively, but a
   light work to deliver you from indwelling sin. The greater work is
   done!

   Jehovah became Man in human flesh. He lived on earth. God, the Word,
   was made flesh and dwelt among us, and in due time stooped, in His
   obedience, even to death, the death of the Cross! All your sins have
   been destroyed by Christ and there is no condemnation for you to dread
   since Christ has died. You are forgiven! The yoke is snatched from off
   your shoulders! You are made free by the Son, and you are free, indeed!
   You are in the wilderness, it is true, but you have come through the
   Red Sea where your sins have been drowned. Your enemies, your old sins,
   you shall see no more! The manna falls about your camp. The fiery,
   cloudy pillar leads you through the wilderness.

   And since you have seen what God has done, will you be afraid as to the
   future? Courage, courage! He never begins without intending to finish.
   It shall never be said of Him, "This man began to build, but was not
   able to complete the structure." Courage, courage! He has not brought
   you out of Egypt that you may be destroyed. What would the heathen say
   concerning your God, if, after all, you should fall and perish? You
   shall win the day! You shall have every inch of the promised land--only
   be strong and be very courageous--for the Lord will surely drive out
   your sins and take your body, soul, and spirit as a consecrated and
   holy possession forever.

   But there is a notion among some Christians who are but little
   instructed, and who, knowing nothing of experience, that sanctification
   is an instantaneous work. There are some who think that the moment they
   believe in Jesus they shall never be troubled with any sin again,
   whereas, it is then that the battle begins! The moment sin is forgiven
   it ceases to be my friend and becomes my deadly foe. When the guilt of
   sin is gone then the power of sin becomes obnoxious and we begin to
   strive against it. Every now and then we hear of friends who cannot
   understand my teaching on this point. They say they do not feel any
   sort of uprising sin within themselves.

   Oh, Beloved, I wish you did! For I am afraid you know nothing of the
   Gospel life if you do not. I will not give a penny for your religion if
   it has no inward conflict. Even virtuous heathens have got farther than
   that--for some of them have written that they felt themselves to be as
   two men contending or fighting--and surely Christians have got farther
   still, or ought to have! This, I know, be it what it may with you--I
   have to fight every day to get but one inch nearer to Heaven! And I
   feel I will be wrestling at the last moment--that I shall have a
   scuffle upon Jordan's brink with my corruptions.

   Remember how John Knox had it! He had fought with men--I may say he had
   fought with beasts at Ephesus--and yet at his last expiring moments he
   had the sternest struggle he had ever known with self-righteousness.
   You would have thought, "Surely John Knox could not be self-righteous!"
   The man who had denounced all trusting in good works was yet vexed with
   the very same thing he had denounced. And so it will be with you. No
   matter how near you live to God, or how closely you follow Christ, you
   will have more or less of evil to contend with still. No, I must say
   the more holy you get, the more you will have to fight against sin. The
   whiter a garment becomes, the more easily is a spot seen--and the more
   you get like Christ the more you will detect how unlike Him you are!

   A spiritual sense will be quickened so that you will discover that to
   be sin which you did not think to be evil. And you will often feel,
   when you are most progressing in Grace, you are not growing at all, or
   if so, certainly it seems to be downward. When I think myself most
   unholy, I am most holy--and when I bemoan my own sinfulness, then am I
   most likely to be accepted of God! It is best to think little of one's
   self. But whether you do or not, take this for granted--you will have
   to drive out your sins little by little--they will not all be cast out
   at once--it will be a life's work. And you will never have to take off
   your armor or sheath your sword till you go to the warrior's bed and
   rest in the grave.

   I now wish to call your attention specially to the verse before us. It
   appears that after a long conflict with Canaan, some of these old
   inhabitants still existed. They hid themselves in caves, and so on--but
   they were to be fetched out by a very singular means--hornets. These
   hornets were to discover them and bring them out--perhaps sting them to
   death, or, if not, make them come out to be slain by the children of
   Israel.

   Three things are to be noticed, then, this morning. The first is sins
   which are left and saved in us--even in us who have for many years been
   followers of Christ. Secondly, a singular means of destroying them. And
   then, thirdly, a suggestive lesson for us all--teaching us to examine
   our own hearts for these secret sins.

   I. And first, dear Friends, SINS WHICH ARE LEFT AND HIDDEN. John Bunyan
   very wisely describes the town of Mansoul after it had been taken by
   Prince Immanuel. The Prince rode to the Castle called the Heart and
   took possession of it and the whole city became His. But there were
   certain Diabolonians, followers of Diabolus, who never left the town.
   They could not be seen in the streets. They could not be heard in the
   markets. They never dared to occupy a house, but lurked about in
   certain old dens and caves.

   Some of them got impudent enough even to hire themselves out for
   servants to the men of Mansoul under other names. There was Mr.
   Covetousness who was called Mr. Prudent Thrifty. And there was Mr.
   Lasciviousness, who was called Mr. Harmless Mirth. They took other
   names and lived there, much to the annoyance of the town of Mansoul.
   They skulked about in holes and corners, and only came out on dark days
   when they could do mischief and serve the Black Prince.

   Now in all of us, however watchful we may be, though we may set Mr. Pry
   Well to listen at the door and he may watch, and my Lord Mayor, Mr.
   Understanding, is very careful to search all these out, yet there will
   remain much hidden sin. I think we ought always to pray to God to
   forgive us sins that we do not know anything about. "Your unknown
   agonies," says the old Greek liturgy. And there are unknown sins for
   which those agonies make atonement. Perhaps the sins which you and I
   confess are not a tenth of what we really commit. Our eyes are not
   sufficiently opened to know of the heinousness of our own sin--and it
   is possible that if we could fully know the extent of our own
   sinfulness it would drive us mad!

   It is possible that God, in His mercy, suffers us to be somewhat blind
   to the abominable accursedness of sin. He gives us enough of it to make
   us hate it, but not enough to drive us absolutely to despair. Our sin
   is exceedingly sinful. Now allow me to suggest that among the sins
   which lurk in us there is the old one of unbelief. You have had a very
   great deliverance, my dear Brothers and Sisters, and you think you have
   no more unbelief left in you. You do not know that old villain,
   Unbelief, is never to be taken by the heels, or if he is put in the
   stocks, he soon manages to escape.

   You will have unbelief this very afternoon, if you happen to meet with
   any trouble, and though now you say, "I never can stagger at the
   promise through unbelief," I should not wonder but what a little
   depression of spirits, perhaps weariness in God's service, might make
   you to be as doubting as ever you were in your life! Do not harbor the
   pleasing delusion that your unbelief is dead. It is hidden, but it will
   come out again. Especially among these lurkers I must mention pride.
   Oh, we think, "How could I be proud? Why I have been through such an
   experience of my own weakness and sinfulness that I cannot be proud."
   We little think that all the while we are talking we are saying about
   the proudest thing that we could possibly say!

   I talked once, I remember, with a man who thought himself a very
   eminent Christian. He told me that what with affliction and experience
   the Lord had wiped pride completely out of him. I said, "He must have
   hit you very hard, Brother." I thought, while he was talking, he was
   the incarnation of pride, but I did not remember that I, myself, was
   probably quite as bad for thinking I should not like to have talked as
   he did. Pride is such a cunning thing! It likes to wear the robes of a
   prince but it is satisfied to wear the rags of a beggar if it cannot.
   So long as it may get into our hearts it cares not what shape it
   assumes.

   That detestable sin of pride--we can all condemn it in other
   people--and yet probably we have, each one, got a leaven of it, even in
   our spirits, at this very moment. You are a proud thing, my Brother.
   You are a proud thing, my Sister. There is still pride lurking in us
   all! And beside these there is also a great amount of wrath and ill
   temper in us. Oh, we think there is no one so good-tempered as we
   are--we have not betrayed ourselves into an angry word for months! Yes,
   but it is very easy to be good-tempered when you have it all your own
   way. It is a very easy thing to be amiable, and kind, and loving, and
   never to be angry when the wife is so kind, and the children obedient,
   and the servants attentive, and business prospers!

   But, my dear Brothers and Sisters, how would it be if matters were to
   change, and they may very soon? Suppose you were irritated as Brother
   So-and-So is--what then? Yon know we are not to judge the man by the
   circumstances--we must judge him intrinsically by himself. A barrel of
   gunpowder is not very dangerous to sit upon or to have under one's bed
   at night, or to make a pillow of. It is a very safe thing, indeed,
   provided that there is no fire anywhere about. It has not blown up, and
   yet it has been under one's couch all the while. Ah, but if the sparks
   had happened to fly, as they do fly in your neighbor's house across the
   road, can you say that your powder is quite different from his powder?

   And I think sometimes when we think we have destroyed anger, and put
   down the tendency of wrath, it is only because the Canaanite has hidden
   himself and we cannot see him! But he is still there and may come out
   again one day. So is it often with our discontent and rebellion. I do
   not know that I am discontent--several of you can say the same. You
   feel happy this morning, grateful and thankful. You can sing--

   "I would not change my blest estate For all the earth calls good or
   great."

   Yes, but you must not be too sure that you have no discontent left in
   your heart. Now suppose--and the supposition is so easy to
   make--suppose your best beloved should sicken and die? You can bless a
   giving God--could you bless a taking God? Suppose that your riches took
   to themselves wings, and every one of them should fly away? Could you
   still praise the God who is as good when He takes as when He gives?
   Brethren, we know not of what spirit we are. When we fancy we could run
   with the horsemen, it were well to remember that we have not always
   been able to run with the footmen! And when we fancy such-and-such a
   friend behaved ill in deep affliction, it were well if we remembered
   ourselves often, lest we also should repine--for discontent may be one
   of the sins lurking in our soul.

   Moreover, idolatry is a sin that is often found there. You do not know
   that you idolize your child, and you will never know it until that
   child dies--but then you will find it out. You do not know that you
   idolize your substance. But if it were gone, or you had to give it up
   and were ready, like Job's wife to say, "Curse God and die," you would
   then discover that it was your golden calf. Idolatry has been the sin
   of all ages and all times. Those dear children of God, whose hearts
   should tell of Jehovah, and Jehovah alone, have need to keep careful
   watch lest at the same time they indulge self-confidence which is only
   another form of idolatry--the worship of ourselves instead of God.

   Let us beware lest we indulge in self-satisfaction, and think that our
   righteousness is something satisfactory after all. It is a blessed
   thing to find idolatry out, but it will hide itself if it can. It is
   well to consider the question, "How is it these things hide themselves
   in us? Other people find them out--how is it we cannot find them?" It
   is certain that you can detect other men's faults, but you cannot
   detect your own! The lookers-on often see more than the players, and we
   sometimes perceive more at a distance than when we approach near.

   The fact is that partiality to ourselves blinds us to our own
   imperfections and makes us see the mote in our brother's eye though
   there is a beam in our own! In many cases this ignorance arises from
   want of searching. It is not pleasant work to seek out faults--"take us
   the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines." It is not easy work.
   We do not like finding out sin. Too many of us are lazy about
   religion--we do the work of God deceitfully, we do not search our
   hearts with candles and try ourselves as with crucibles as in a
   furnace--we are not purified seven times over, and so sin escapes for
   want of a hearty search to find it out.

   Besides, sin is so subtle it changes its shape. If Satan cannot shoot
   us from above, he will do it from below. If he cannot assail us in the
   head, he will seek to cast us down by tripping us with the foot. Sins
   of every shape, form and hue come upon us, and the great probability is
   that in trying to kill one sin we shall fall into another. Often in
   aiming to attain to a virtue we have overshot the mark and gone into a
   vice. We have wanted to honor God and humble ourselves, and then we
   have grown mean in spirit. We wanted to be noble and bold, and have
   grown intimidating. We wanted to be loving, and we grew to be falsely
   charitable, tolerating sin. We wanted to be stern against sin, and have
   grown bitter against friends who have fallen into it. We mistake the
   narrow road and break the hedge either on the right hand or on the
   left.

   It is the subtlety of sin that makes it so hard for us to find it out.
   Besides, Beloved, we have fallen into the bad habit of comparing and
   contrasting ourselves with others. We are constantly indulging in the
   supposition, "Oh, well, I am better than some." We look at our fellow
   Christians and see their inconsistencies, and say, "Well, I do not do
   that." The Pharisaic prayer is very common, even among Christians, I am
   afraid, "Lord, I thank You that I am not as other men." The preacher
   himself, though he might preach humility to you, sometimes gets to
   comparing himself with other preachers, and his hearers, he doubts not,
   do the same.

   "Oh," you think, "I am more quick in God's work, more earnest than some
   Christians. I wish they would wake up, too." But, while we are
   censuring them, we are really laying a flattering unction to our own
   souls by supposing we are so much better and that we have cut off so
   much of our own sins. Oh, Beloved, take heed of comparing yourselves
   with others, for this is not wise!

   Come to Christ and look at Him, and then your faults will be apparent.
   View His perfection, and in the light of that your own infirmities will
   soon be discovered. But if you look at your Brother's righteousness,
   which is but little better than yours, and perhaps not as good, you
   will be apt to get proud and lifted up--and so fall into sin. I shall
   not, however, enlarge upon this point. There are, no doubt, in all of
   us, Canaanites still dwelling in the land that will be thorns in our
   side.

   II. Now, secondly, A SINGULAR MEANS FOR THEIR DESTRUCTION--"YOUR GOD
   WILL SEND THE HORNET AMONG THEM." These fellows resorted to caves and
   dens. God employed the very best means for their destruction. I suppose
   these hornets were large wasps--two or three times, perhaps, as large
   as a wasp--with very terrible stings. It is not an unusual historical
   fact to find districts depopulated by means of stinging insects. In
   connection with the journey of Dr. Livingstone, we can never forget
   that strange kind of guest which is such a pest to the cattle in any
   district that the moment it appeared they had either to fly before it
   or to die.

   The hornet must have been a very terrible creature. But it is not at
   all extraordinary that there should have been hornets capable of
   driving out a nation. The hornet was a very simple means. It was no
   sound of trumpet, nor even the glitter of miracles--it was a simple,
   natural means of fetching these people out of their holes. It is well
   known that insects in some countries will sting one race of people and
   not another. Sometimes the inhabitants of a country are not at all
   careful about mosquitoes, or such creatures, when strangers are greatly
   pestered with them.

   God could, therefore, bring hornets which would sting the Jebusites but
   not molest the Israelites, and in this way the Canaanites were driven
   out of their holes. Some died by the stings of hornets and others were
   put in the way of the sharp swords of the men of Israel, and thus they
   died. The spiritual analogy to this is the daily trouble which God
   sends to every one of us. I suppose you have all got your hornets. Some
   have hornets in the family. Your child may be a hornet to you--your
   wife, your husband, your brother, the dearest friend you have--may be a
   daily cross to you. And, though a dead cross is very heavy, a living
   cross is heavier by far.

   To bury a child is a great grief, but to have that child live and sin
   against you is ten times worse. You may have hornets that shall follow
   you to your bedchamber--some of you may know what that means--so that
   even where you ought to find your rest and your sweetest solace, it is
   there that you receive your bitterest stings of trouble. The hornet
   will sometimes come in the shape of business. You are perplexed--you
   cannot prosper--one thing comes after another. You seem to be born to
   trouble more than other people. You have ventured on the right hand,
   but it was a failure. You pushed out on the left, but that was a
   breakdown.

   Almost everybody you trust fails immediately and those you do not trust
   are the people you might have safely relied upon. You seem to be
   infested with those hornets in your business to make everything go ill
   with you. You have perplexity upon perplexity--nothing so serious as to
   be your ruin--but a deal of fretful trouble which keeps you uneasy.
   Others have hornets in their bodies. Some have constant
   headaches--aches and pains pass and shoot along the nerves of others.
   If you could but be rid of it, you think, how happy you would be! But
   you have got your hornet and that hornet is always with you.

   If I tried to get through the whole list of hornets I should need all
   the morning, for there is a particular grief to every man. Each man has
   his own form of obnoxious sting which he has to feel. You will come
   running to your friend sometimes, and say, "Oh, I have such trouble!
   So-and-So has been saying such-and-such a thing of me. If I had not so
   many bad neighbors I should get on. This is the worst trouble a man
   could have." You do not know, you do not know. The heart knows its own
   bitterness. There is a skeleton in every closet. Every man has a shoe
   that pinches more or less-- and there is not a Christian on earth who
   has not a hornet!

   But what are they for? They are sent with the same object with which
   God sent hornets into Canaan, namely, to drive out the Canaanites! And
   I shall have to show you that they do so. Your hornets drive you to
   prayer. Just put in the word hornet into the verse we have been
   singing--

   "Hornets make the promise sweet,
   Hornets give new life to prayer,
   Hornets bring me to His feet,
   Lay me low and keep me there," and you have got the drift of what these
   daily hornets do. You would not pray if you had not trouble! I am
   afraid you would grow lax, cold, indifferent--but these sting you, and
   you say, "I must go to my God for comfort under this pest, this
   nuisance."

   Why, what a blessing that is for you to be stung to your Father's
   feet--blessed sting that brings you there! You would not value the
   promises half as much if it were not for the hornets. You turn to some
   precious Word of God that just suits your case, and you say, "I never
   saw such sweetness in that as I do now. Blessed be God for sending a
   passage so suitable to my condition." The hornets take you to the
   promise, and seem to point you to the place where the milk and honey
   flow.

   And how they also tend to lay you at His feet after you have been hasty
   in temper! After you have felt how proud you must have been, all
   because of the hornet that brought the pride out, you have gone to God
   and said, "Lord, I did not think I was such a fool. I should not have
   believed it. If anyone had said to me yesterday, 'You would do
   so-and-so,' I would have said, 'Is your servant a dog that I should do
   such a thing?' But this has so troubled me, bit me in a sore place,
   irritated me, that I could not bear it that I have done what I would
   not have done for all the world."

   That just shows what there was there before. You see, if sin had not
   been in you, it could not have come out! All the trouble in the world
   does not put sin in the Christian--it brings it out. And just as
   disease is all the better when it is fetched out to the surface, that
   so its power in the interior may be destroyed, so is it a blessing--a
   painful blessing-- when the hornet comes and makes us see the evil that
   otherwise would have lain hidden in us. You know, my dear Friends,
   practically, I dare say what I mean.

   The other day you were in such a heavenly frame of mind--you had had
   half an hour alone, or had just come home from Tabernacle and enjoyed
   the service, and something patted you on the back and said, "How you
   are grown in Divine Grace!" You did not say it in words, but you did
   think, "Well, I am getting on. There is something good in me after
   all." When you got home, perhaps the meat was badly cooked, or there
   was something done the very opposite to what you had wished, and it
   seemed to be done on purpose to irritate you. You thought so, and
   without a moment's consideration you said some very strong words--very
   strong, indeed!

   Then something came and touched you on the other shoulder and said,
   "Ah, is this growing in Divine Grace?" And you felt very humbled, taken
   down a great many notches. And when you went upstairs to bed, if you
   had gone up there without that hornet, your prayer would have been a
   Pharisee's prayer! But as it was, when you got there all you could say
   was, "God be merciful to me a sinner." The hornet had done you a world
   of good! It might have fetched out a little bad temper, but for all
   that it had fetched out your pride and self-conceit.

   The daily troubles we have are meant to drive us to God, to drive us to
   the promise, and also to show us where our weak points are in order
   that we may contend with all our might against them. I believe, my dear
   Friends, that the hardest-hearted, most cross-grained, and most
   unlovely Christians in all the world are those who never have had much
   trouble! And those who are the most sympathizing, loving, and
   Christ-like, are generally those that have the most affliction. The
   worst thing that can happen to any of us is to have our path made too
   smooth, and one of the greatest blessings that ever the Lord gave us
   was a cross.

   "I should never have been able to see," said one, "if I had not been
   blind." And said another, "I should never have been able to run the
   race set before me if I had not broken my leg." Our infirmities are
   channels of blessing! Our difficulties, trials, vexations, and
   perplexities are most sweet and blessed means of Grace to our souls. I
   think we ought to be very thankful to God for the hornet. Says one, "I
   am not." "No trial for the present seems to be joyous but grievous.
   Nevertheless afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."

   When you are in a sane mind, my dear Brothers and Sisters, and God the
   Holy Spirit really teaches you to be wise, you will go and thank God
   for hornets. "Lord, I bless You that You have not left me unchastised.
   I praise You for the cares and troubles which are so unpleasant to my
   flesh, by which that flesh is mortified. I thank You, Father." You
   never hear a child say this, but if it were a wise child it would. "I
   thank You, my Father, for the rod. I thank You, O my God, that You have
   not let me have my own will, that You have blighted my prospects,
   crossed my hopes, marred my plans, cast down my expectations, taken
   away my joys. I thank You, O You great Liberator, for having broken the
   golden bars of my cage to give my spirit liberty, and for having
   snapped the bonds of my captivity which bound me to the earth, that I
   might be able to mount upwards to Yourself." Whenever you are singing
   God's praise, say, "He sent us hornets, for His mercy endures forever:
   let Him be blessed evermore."

   There is one point I want you to notice in the text. It would be guilt
   on my part to pass it without observation, and that is we are expressly
   told the hornets came from God. He sent them. "The Lord your God will
   send the hornet." This will help you, perhaps, to bear their stings
   another time. God weighs your troubles in scales and measures out your
   afflictions, every drachma and scruple of them. And since they come,
   therefore, directly from a loving Father's hand, accept them with
   grateful cheerfulness! And pray that the result which Divine Wisdom has
   ordained to flow from them may be abundantly realized in your
   sanctification--in being made like Christ.

   III. And now I have to close by observing that we have here A VERY
   SUGGESTIVE LESSON TO OURSELVES, a lesson which we have already
   anticipated, but let us repeat it. It is this. What is my particular
   besetting sin? Have I been careful in self-examination? Have I issued a
   constant search warrant against the subtle forms of evil? If not, I
   must expect to have the hornet. God never punishes His children for
   sin, but He chastens them for it paternally. You may often discover
   what your sin is by the chastisement, for you can see the face of the
   sin in the chastisement--the one is so like the other.

   Dear Friend, what is your particular trouble today--what hornet stings
   you? Go to God with Job's request, "Show me why You contend with me."
   If the consolations of God are small with you, it is because there is
   some secret sin in you. Look at the trouble you have today and see if
   you cannot discover the sin. A disobedient child--is it possible that
   you also are living in some act of disobedience to your heavenly
   Father? Is it a servant who annoys you? Is it possible that you also
   are an ill servant of the King, idle and indifferent to His command?

   Is it a loss in business? May it not be possible that you are not
   attending to God's business, and therefore His Church is a loser and
   therefore He makes you a loser in your own business? Is it sickness in
   the flesh? May there not be some spiritual sickness there which is
   necessary to keep in check and to subdue? Has someone else treated you
   haughtily? May you not also be haughty? Has another slandered you and
   are you smarting under it? Have you ever spoken against the children of
   God? May you not have an itching tongue, too, and God is making you
   feel the smart of it so that you may mind how you remove the bridle
   from the unruly tongue?

   Has someone undervalued your labor and spoken depreciatingly of your
   motives? May you not also have had hard thoughts concerning some of
   your Brethren in Christian labors? Do you feel, just now, under great
   depression of spirit? Is it not possible that you have neglected to
   enter into fellowship with Christ in His suffering, and therefore He is
   bringing you down into it by force? I know not how it may be with you,
   Beloved, but this I know--I have not searched my own soul as I would
   desire to do in the future. I would wish to find out everything that is
   within me that is evil--that it may be dragged forth and executed at
   once!

   It is stern work. It is work that never could be done if it were not
   for that precious assurance that God is with us. God, the mighty God of
   Jacob, will have us to be His people. He has prepared a Heaven for a
   perfect people and He will make us perfect that He may neither lose us,
   nor the place He has prepared for us. He has sworn by Himself He will
   never leave you. He will, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm
   drive out your lusts and corruptions till you shall be perfect as your
   Father in Heaven is perfect!

   Come, then, you men of war, take to your harness and buckle on your
   armor, and nerve your souls for combat! "You have not resisted unto
   blood, striving against sin." "Consider Him who endured such
   contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest you be weary" in
   yourselves. And now--from now on, and forever--fight the good fight for
   the crown that fades not away.

   I have been speaking to saved ones, and to saved ones, only. But you
   that are unsaved will have the hornets, too. Only those hornets will be
   of no use to you! They will sting you away from God, rather than to
   Him. Your troubles will only make you dislike and hate the Most High
   the more. Oh that His Grace would visit you and change your heart! And
   then, maybe your trials might be sanctified to fetch you to your
   Father's face. May it be so, and His shall be the glory evermore. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 The Mighty Arm

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 4, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "You have a mighty arm: strong is Your hand, and high is Your right
   hand."

   Psalm 89:13.

   WE are, during the coming week humbly but earnestly to beseech of God
   for days of refreshing and seasons of revival. It is well for us at the
   outset distinctly to remind ourselves of the source from where all the
   strength must come. No genuine revival can ever arise from the flesh.
   "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." Human excitement at the
   utmost, and carnal zeal at its extremity, can do nothing towards the
   real conversion of souls. Here we are taught the lesson, "not by might
   nor by power."

   Disappointments ought to have taught the Church of God this lesson long
   ago. The many revivals which she has had which have proved to be
   spurious--the puffing up of excitement and not the building up of
   Divine Grace--all these should have driven her out of the last relic of
   her self-confidence and have made her feel that it is not of herself to
   do anything in the Lord's cause without His help. "Our help comes from
   the Lord that made Heaven and earth." It is well to be constantly
   convinced of this. We must have God's arm laid to the work or else
   nothing will be accomplished which will stand the solemn tests of the
   last great day.

   Wood, hay, and stubble we may build alone, but gold, silver and
   precious stones are from the King's treasury. "Without Me you can do
   nothing," was the Savior's word to His chosen Apostles! How much more
   applicable must it be to us who are "less than the least of all
   saints"! In vain your holy assemblies! In vain your earnest desires! In
   vain your passionate addresses! In vain your efforts of a thousand
   shapes! Unless God Himself shall step forth from the hiding place of
   His power and set Himself, a second time, to His own glorious work, no
   good can come of all your toils--

   "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it."

   Having reminded ourselves, dear Friends, that our great strength lies
   in the God of Jacob, it is very comforting to notice how great this
   strength is. There is but one arm for us to rest upon, but blessed is
   the assurance--"You have a mighty arm." Oh, if that God upon whom we
   have entirely to depend were stinted in might and had a limit put to
   His strength, we might despair! If the answer to the question, "Is the
   Lord's arm waxed short?" were the doleful reply, "Yes, He is no longer
   mighty to save," then we might give up the work! But stupendous
   strength is with the Most High! The treasury from which we draw is
   inexhaustible! We may come to God with the cheering confidence that we
   cannot possibly ask what it is not in His power to perform!

   We have the mighty God of Jacob to be our arm every morning and our
   salvation every night. I desire to speak of our God as the Almighty
   Lord so that you and I may be strengthened in the work in which we are
   engaged for His name's sake. In speaking upon the Divine power I shall
   have a few words, this morning, upon the power itself. Then a few words
   upon its manifestations. And then I will close up with the lessons to
   be derived from the power and its developments.

   First, then, some few words about the POWER OF GOD itself, having as my
   drift the stirring up of Believers' minds to ask and to expect a great
   display of it. In the first place, God's power is like
   Himself--self-existent and self-sustained. Power in the creature is
   like water in the cistern. Power in the Creator is like water in the
   fountain. The creature is the moon which shines with reflected
   light--the Creator is the Sun whose light is not derived, springing
   from within Himself.

   Naturally and spiritually this statement holds good. All the power that
   you and I have to serve God with must first come from Him! But He
   derives no power whatever from us. All our fresh springs are in God,
   but the rivers of our grace do not minister to His fullness. "My
   goodness extends not to you." The mightiest of men add not so much as a
   shadow of increased power to the Omnipotent One. His scepter is
   established by its own Omnipotence. He sits on no buttressed throne,
   and leans on no assisting arm. His courts are not maintained by His
   courtiers, nor do they borrow their splendor of power from His
   creatures.

   He is Himself the great central Source and Originator of all power. We
   must come, then, to His footstool, feeling that all must come from Him.
   We must bring nothing but our weakness, nothing but our sense of need,
   and come to Him crying, "O God, You are in Yourself all-sufficient. You
   do not need us, nor can we contribute anything to You. Now let Your
   ability flow into us and gird each of us poor weaklings with Your
   might!"

   In the next place, God's power is comprehensive, including within
   itself all the power which resides in all the creatures in the
   universe. "God has spoken once. Twice have I heard this, that power
   belongs unto God." When the wheels of a machine revolve there is power
   in every cog. But all that power originally was in the engine which
   sets the whole in action, and in a certain sense is still there. In a
   far higher sense all power dwells in the Lord, "for in Him we live, and
   move, and have our being."

   Whatever power there may be in the mightiest of God's creatures is
   still inherent in God Himself. So, my Brethren, if the Lord shall be
   pleased to teach some of you how to pray and others how to exhort. If
   He should gird you with might and send you into the midst of this
   Church to work spiritual miracles for Him, the power will still be
   His--to be in an instant withdrawn if it so pleases Him--and especially
   withdrawn if you begin to sacrifice unto your own self and say, "My own
   arm has gotten me this victory."

   All power dwells perpetually and necessarily in the Lord Jehovah. The
   might which resides in any spiritual agency at this present moment,
   whether it is in the Book of God or in the ministry of truth, or in
   prayer, or in what else the Church serves the Lord--all that power is
   still comprehended in the Most High. Come then, Beloved, let us all
   draw near to Him and pray that as all fullness is in Himself, He would
   be pleased to give it to us! And since giving it does not impoverish,
   but the same strength remains in Him still, let us be bold to make
   great drafts upon the Divine storehouse!

   The power of God, I would remind you in the third place, is immutable.
   Whatever He did of old He is able to repeat now. His arm never did
   increase in strength--what more could He be than Almighty? It never did
   decrease--what else can we conceive Him to be than God all-sufficient?
   We talk of changing ages, but we must not dream of a changing God!
   There was the age of gold, the age of silver, and we mournfully say
   that we have fallen upon the age of iron--but the God of all ages--like
   the finest gold, abides ever more most pure and glorious!

   Our God is not the God of the past only, but of the present. Think not
   of Him as did the Syrians, that Jehovah is God of the hills and not the
   God of the valleys. The era of great men had no other God than He who
   watches over their humble sons. He is the God of us upon whom the ends
   of the earth have come. There is no change in the power of the
   Everlasting Father! Time and age work no decay in Him. His eyes have
   not waxed dim, neither has His natural force abated. He is still the
   Wonderful, the Counselor, the Mighty God!

   Let this encourage us, then, in our earnest entreaties that He would do
   for us like wonders to those which He worked for the early Church. Let
   us plead for Pentecosts, for even mightier works than Apostles saw.
   "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it." Open your mouths according
   to the model of the olden times and sing unto the Lord's arm in your
   hearts as you sang with your lips just now--

   "Again your wonted prowess show, Be You made bare again!"

   It is for us to recollect, also that God's power is in the fullness of
   it perfectly irresistible. We grant that when God puts out but little
   of His strength, it is with Him as it is with a man when he plays with
   a child. He may suffer that child to overcome him. But when God puts
   forth His Omnipotence, who, who is there that can stay His hand?

   Proud hearts are humbled, hard hearts are broken, iron melts, and rock
   dissolves when the Lord visits the host-- none of the men of might can
   find their hands! At Your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both the horses and
   the chariots are cast into a dead sleep. Let this encourage us--we have
   only to bestir our God and all things are possible! If we shall but
   behold His goings forth in the sanctuary, there is nothing that by any
   possibility can thwart the desire of our soul or frustrate our wishes.
   Only plead with the Most High till you can cry with Luther, "Vici!" and
   we have overcome, we have conquered in prayer, and conquered
   altogether!

   Let your cry be heard in the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth--"Awake! Put
   on Your strength, O God! And go forth with our hosts to conflict for
   the glory of Your name." And if He deigns to answer, nothing can
   withstand Him. This thought ought to comfort those of us who feel our
   weakness and think that we can do nothing--remember His strength and
   remember that He can do everything! If you have any kinsfolk for whom
   you have prayed and no answer has come, and your own exertions have
   been mocked at and despised, come again to the Mighty God of Jacob, for
   He will do His good pleasure, and in answer to your prayers He will
   send forth the blessing! His power is irresistible! Lay hold upon it
   and prevail.

   Nor will it be ill for me to remind you that this power is entirely
   independent. I mean that it needs nothing extraneous or beyond itself
   to enable it to work. This power is independent ofplace. Do you think
   there was any sanctity in the upper room at Jerusalem? Behold this room
   is quite as sacred as that filled by the Spirit in years gone by. Dream
   not that the city of Jerusalem of old, in the days of the Savior, was a
   more proper theater for Divine working than this is. He can make London
   rejoice even as He did Jerusalem of old! Equally is the Divine power
   independent of time. Do not dream that the ages have changed so that in
   this day God cannot do His mighty works!

   Beloved, if you can conceive of an age that is worse than another, so
   much the more is it a fit platform for the heavenly energy. The more
   difficulty--the more room for Omnipotence to show itself! There is
   elbow room for the great God when there is some great thing in the way
   and some great difficulty that He may overturn. When there is a
   mountain to be cast into the valley, then there is almighty work to be
   done! And our covenant God only needs to see work to do for His praying
   people and He will shortly do it. God is not dependent upon instruments
   any more than upon times and places. He who blessed the world by Paul
   and Peter can do His good pleasure by His servants now.

   The Christ of the fishermen is our Christ, too! Talk not of Luther, and
   Calvin, and Zwingli as though they were specially powerful in
   themselves and therefore accomplished so marvelous a work! Oh, Brothers
   and Sisters, there are humble men and women among us whom God may just
   as well bless as those three mighties if it so pleases Him! Dream not
   that there was something about the Wesleys and Whitfield which made
   them the only instruments for evangelizing this nation! O God Almighty,
   You can bless even us!

   And among the thousands of ministers who up to now may have plowed as
   upon a rock and labored in vain, there is no one whom God may not take
   and make him as a two-edged sword in His hand to smite through the
   hearts of His foes! Beloved, I have sometimes prayed, and do often pray
   that out of that little band of men whom we have in our own
   College--some ninety or so--He would find for Himself His arrows and
   fit them to the bow and shoot them to the utmost ends of the earth! And
   why not? Unbelief has many mournful reasons, but faith sees none!

   In our classes there are women, there are men, there are children, upon
   whom the Lord may pour forth His Spirit so that once again our sons and
   our daughters shall prophesy, and our young men shall see visions, and
   our old men shall dream dreams! We have but to wait upon the Most High
   and He will honor us with success--He can work in any place, in any
   time, among any people, and by any instruments. Let us come with
   confidence to His feet and expect to see Him lay bare His mighty arms.

   This power, I must not forget to say, as a gathering up of the whole,
   is infinite. Power in the creature must have a limit for the creature
   itself is finite. But power in the Creator has neither measure nor
   bound. I am sure, Beloved, we treat our God often as though He were
   like ourselves. We sit down after some defeat or disappointment, and we
   say we will never try again--we suppose the work allotted to us to be
   impossible. Is anything too hard for the Lord? Why limit the Holy One
   of Israel? God is not man that He should fail, nor the son of man that
   He should suffer defeat. Behold He touches the hills and they tremble!
   He touches the mountains and they smoke.

   When He goes forth before His people He makes the mountains to skip
   like rams, and the little hills like lambs. What, then, can block up
   His path? You divided of old the Red Sea, O God, and You did break the
   dragon's head in the midst of the many waters--and You can still do
   according to Your will--let any hinder who may. Oh, Beloved, if I may
   but be privileged to lift up your hearts and mine to something like a
   due comprehension of the infinite power of God, we shall then have come
   to the threshold of a great blessing! If you believe in the littleness
   of God you will ask but little and you will have but little! But
   enlarge your desires! Let your souls be stretched till they become wide
   as seven heavens and even then you shall not hold the whole of the
   great God! But you shall be fitted to receive more largely out of His
   fullness.

   Ask of Him that He would give the heathen unto Christ for His
   inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His
   possession--that the scepter of Jehovah shall go forth--and the
   monarchy of Christ shall be extended from the rising of the sun to the
   going down of the same. It were not right, perhaps, to leave this point
   without observing concerning this Divine power that it is all our own,
   for we are told that this God is our God forever and ever. "The Lord is
   my portion, said my soul, therefore will I hope in Him."

   Christian, the potency which dwells in Jehovah belongs to you! It is
   yours to rest upon in holy trust and yours to stir up in earnest
   pleading. That little sinew moves the great arm--I mean the sinew of
   the Believer's prayer. If you can pray, God will work. "To him that
   believe all things are possible." It is not, "Can You work, O God?" But
   it is, "Can you believe, O Christian?" You have a mighty arm, O God,
   but that arm is Your people's arm, for it is written, "He is their arm
   every morning, and their salvation every night." Come, then, with
   confidence, you who have made a covenant with Him by sacrifice, for
   this God is our God forever and ever, and He will help us. Yes, He will
   help us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him!

   II. Having given utterance to these few words upon his power in itself,
   I shall direct your attention to THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THIS POWER which
   are very varied in character and altogether innumerable in multitude.
   Following the leading of the Psalm rather than the natural order of
   things, I will remind you of God's tremendous power in destruction. You
   have this in the Psalm. "You have broken Rahab in pieces as one that is
   slain. You have scattered Your enemies with Your strong hand."

   Look back with solemn awe upon the works of God in the overthrow of
   sin. See the whole earth deluged with destructive floods. "You have a
   mighty arm, O God." You have unloosed the gates that shut in the sea.
   Greater than Samson You have borne away both posts and bar and all and
   set free the hosts of waters that they might overthrow Your foes. Up
   from their cavernous prison house the furious waters leap to desolate
   the sin-polluted world. Noah might have sung as he floated on that
   shoreless sea, "You have a mighty arm."

   Cast your eyes yonder to the East, to the well-watered plain of Sodom,
   and mark how God's anger smokes. He comes down to see if it is
   altogether according to the cry thereof, and when Justice has proved
   her point, then Judgment follows with swift feet. He rains Hell's
   torments out of Heaven upon sinners--fiery hail and brimstone cover the
   cities of the plain--and the smoke goes up to Heaven. "You have a
   mighty arm."

   Let your eyes glance along the banks of the Nile where haughty Pharaoh
   vaunts himself against the Most High. Remember how He smote the
   first-born of Egypt, the chief of all their strength! Let the terrible
   overthrow of the Red Sea never be forgotten. See how He scattered
   Amalek as chaff before the wind. Mark how He drove out the Hivites and
   the Jebusites and gave their necks to the feet of His children who were
   His avengers. Talk to one another and tell how He smote Philistia, how
   He made the sons of David cast forth their shoes upon Edom and gave
   Moab to be the wash pot of their feet.

   Let the name of Sennacherib come up before you and think how the Lord
   thrust a bit into his mouth and a hook into his jaws and made him go
   back the way by which he came. Remember Babylon and the heaps thereof!
   Nineveh, and the owls and the dragons that haunt her ruined walls.
   Remember the proud cities of Greece, cast down and destroyed because
   they worshipped idols! And Rome, herself, only living like a widow in
   her weeds, weeping because God has bereaved her of her glory. "Come,
   behold the works of the Lord, what desolations He has made in the
   earth. He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in sunder. He burns the
   chariots in the fire." Who is a God in might to be compared unto Him?

   As we survey the works of His power in destruction, let the subject
   make us grateful. What a marvel that He has not struck us! My Soul,
   remember when you did defy Him? When you did scorn His Grace, break His
   Sabbaths and blaspheme His name? Yet He who breaks the ships of
   Tarshish by His strong east wind has not shipwrecked you, but on the
   sea of life you sail securely still. O Sinner! Remember that this
   long-suffering will not last forever! Beware, lest He tear you in
   pieces and there be none to deliver you! He is strong to destroy and
   condemned souls feel that He is so.

   If I could catch the distant sounds that rise from Hell, I think they
   might be rendered into this one line--"You have a mighty arm!" Oh, how
   He destroys! Imagination fails to picture the terror of His blows. The
   day of mercy is over with the condemned and they writhe in extreme
   agonies! While with almighty hands, armed with an iron rod, He smites,
   and smites, and smites again. "You have a mighty arm." Oh, bow before
   Him, you who have not loved Him! Tremble at Him! "Kiss the Son, lest He
   be angry, and you perish from the way when His wrath is kindled but a
   little."

   You cannot face it out with Him--neither can you escape Him. You cannot
   set yourselves in battle array against the Almighty. Let the thorns set
   themselves in battle against the fire, but do not attempt to stand
   against Him--

   "O sinners, seek His face
   Whose wrath you cannot bear!
   Fly to the scepter of His Grace,
   And find salvation there."

   Looking at this part of the subject, here is a very strong argument for
   the people of God to stir them up to pray. The fearful nature of the
   sinner's doom should arouse us to vehement and abiding earnestness.
   Must we not plead with God when we think of our fellow creatures who
   are liable to prove the terror of the Almighty's arm?

   Will you not cry, you that have hearts not altogether turned to stone?
   Will you not plead with all your hearts, you who have any loving
   tenderness and generous pity within you? Will you not cry aloud and
   spare not, that He would be pleased to give men right reason to see
   their danger and turn them to Himself, that they may be washed in the
   Savior's blood and escape the terrible wrath due their iniquities?

   Turning from the subject, the Psalm reminds us of the manifestation of
   God's power in creation. "The heavens are Yours, the earth also is
   Yours: as for the world and the fullness thereof, You have founded
   them. The north and the south You have created them." Now, Beloved, it
   is well to remember the mighty power of God in creation. Man wants
   something to work upon--give him material and with cunning instruments
   he straightway makes for himself a vessel. But God began with nothing,
   and by His word alone out of nothing made all things. He used no
   instrument except His own word. "He spoke, and it was done as He
   commanded, and it stood fast."

   Darkness and chaos lay in the way before Him, but these soon gave place
   to the excellence of His might when He said, "Let there be light, and
   there was light." "In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth,
   and all the hosts of them." He garnished the heavens with the crooked
   serpent and the bear, and led forth Arcturus with his sons. How rapid
   was that work, and yet how perfect--how gloriously complete! Well might
   "the morning stars sing together, and the sons of God shout for joy"!

   Now, Christian, I want you to draw living water out of this well. The
   God, who in the old creation did all this--can He not work today? What
   if in the human heart there is nothing to help Him? He made the world
   out of nothing--can He not make new creatures without the aid of human
   will? Even out of these stones, can He not raise up children unto
   Abraham? His word fashioned the creation of old, and His word can still
   work marvels. Spoken by whomever He pleases to send, His word shall be
   as potent now as in primeval days. There may be darkness and confusion
   in the sinner's soul-- a word shall remove all--and swift and quick,
   requiring not even six days!

   God can make new creatures in this House of Prayer and throughout this
   city! The Lord has but to will it with His Omnipotent will, and the
   sinner becomes a saint and the most rebellious cast down their weapons.
   Oh let creation encourage you to expect a new creation! The old
   creation had no blood upon it to plead with God to work, but we have
   the blood of Jesus to be our plea when we come before Him with regard
   to the new creation. We may cry, "O God, since You have given Your dear
   Son to lay the foundations of this new earth and these new heavens,
   wherein righteousness does dwell, come and build up Your Church, and
   complete the last and noblest work of Your hands."

   Again, God's power is manifest, dear Friends, to our joy in works of
   sustentation as well as of creation. The next stanza of the Psalm seems
   to hint at that: "Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in Your name." That is
   to say, when the showers come dropping upon Tabor and Hermon, they send
   forth the perfume of their flowers and produce the abundance for the
   flocks. Now, Beloved, God's power has been seen, I am sure, not only in
   holding up the world, but in preserving His Church in the world all
   these years.

   He would be thought to be a mighty man who held up the monument of
   London on the palm of his hand. But You bear up, O God, the pillars of
   the heavens! And he who should take up St. Paul's and turn it uppermost
   as though it were but a cup in his hand would be exceeding mighty. But
   You take up the isles as a very little thing! What must be the power of
   God in sustaining and supporting all worlds? But as I have said, the
   spiritual power which preserves the spark of the Truth of God in the
   midst of a sea of error is equally great! To keep His sheep alive in
   the midst of wolves is equally marvelous!

   The mighty arm of God has been conspicuous in supporting His Church in
   years gone by. How the Lord has been in that gallant vessel! Never a
   boat more tempest-tossed than she! No voyage more dangerous than hers!
   She has tracked a narrow channel between threatening rocks and hidden
   quicksand. As for her crew, they have been a feeble folk, little able
   to cope with boisterous elements and furious tempests. Often the good
   vessel of the Church has mounted up to Heaven upon the crown of an
   outrageous billow, and then has gone down again into the depths of a
   yawning sea while her sailors have reeled like drunken men, staggering
   to and fro, being at their wits' end! But they have cried unto the Lord
   in their trouble and He who was strong to stir up the deep from its
   very bottom and make it boil like a pot has been equally strong to
   speak the word and still the raving of its waves.

   Let us be, then, of good comfort. Why should not God bless and succor
   His well-beloved Church now? Why should He not make her in these
   peaceful days to be a Palace Beautiful for Himself to dwell in? For the
   fair edification of His Church new converts are needed. There can be no
   building up of her walls except by the quarrying of fresh stones. O
   God, we have confidence in You that You will help us! Strong is Your
   hand. You have a mighty arm! Oh come, for the sustaining and increase
   of Your Church, even in this, our day!

   But, Beloved, the most striking manifestation of Divine power is found
   in the fourth form of it, namely, in works of redemption. Typical of
   these was the great redeeming work at the Red Sea, and hence the song
   of Moses is joined with the song of the Lamb. It was by Moses' rod that
   God brought forth the hosts of His beloved, and in mightier fashion and
   to a nobler tune shall the elect sing when they have been redeemed from
   all their enemies. Think, dear Friends, of the mighty arm of God in
   working out the means of our salvation. That was no light labor which
   Jesus undertook. Hercules cleaned the Augean stable, said the fable,
   but what an Augean stable is this world!

   Yet Christ will purge it. He is purging it! He did purge it by His
   death! This Aceldama shall yet become an Elysium. The field of blood
   shall be transformed into a garden of delights. Christ came to bear a
   load upon His shoulders compared with which the burden of Atlas is as
   nothing! Atlas, according to the heathen mythology, bore the world
   between his shoulders--but Jesus bears the world's sin, and that is
   more! Can you see Him there in the garden? Great drops of sweat prove
   what a tremendous toil He has undertaken!

   Do you see Him on the Cross? Not a bone is broken, but every bone is
   dislocated to prove how great the labor. But how greater still the
   strength which achieved the whole! O Lord Jesus! When we see that You
   have burst the gates of death, that You have trod on the neck of sin,
   that You have broken the head of Satan, that You have led captivity
   captive and opened the gates of Heaven to all Your people, we may,
   indeed, sing--

   "You have a mighty arm."

   Just now we have most to do with the application of this redemption by
   the Spirit of God, for it concerns that for which we pray. We have no
   reason to ask our Lord Jesus to finish the work of redemption, for He
   has completed it--on the Cross He said, "It is finished."

   III. It is the application of it which concerns our souls. And, Beloved
   in the faith, it is a great joy to us to know that in bringing souls to
   Christ by the Holy Spirit, the Omnipotence of God is very graciously
   displayed. Let us just a minute or two think of some sure tokens of
   this, and this shall furnish us with the third point, namely, THE
   LESSONS FROM THE WHOLE.

   There have been vouchsafed in the past very wonderful manifestations of
   Divine favor. Churches have grown very lukewarm, ministers very dull,
   doctrines have become unsound, the hearts of God's people have failed,
   the faithful have almost died out--but all of a sudden God has raised
   up some one man, perhaps some half dozen--and the face of the Church
   was changed from languor to energy! These men did but strike the spark
   and the flame flew over all lands.

   The Reformation was a marvelous type of genuine revivals--God-given
   revivals--which have been frequent in all times. In England we have had
   them. In America they have been abundant. Ireland has not been without
   them. In the darkest day, when everyone said the cause of religion was
   growing hopeless, then the great Lover of the Church has appeared. Have
   you never read the story of Livingstone preaching in a heavy shower of
   rain, outside the village of Shotts, to the multitude of people
   standing there who would not stir from the hearing of the Word?

   Or have you not heard the story of Whitfield's mighty preaching, when
   the people moved to and fro, as the corn is moved by the summer wind,
   and at last fell down beneath the Word as the sheaves fall before the
   reaper's scythe? Why may we not see all this again? Why not? And why
   not greater things than these? What hinders but our unbelief? O God,
   You have a mighty arm! Tens of thousands beneath one ministry have been
   made to feel the power of the Cross, and why not again? Let us proclaim
   a crusade! Let us gather together in prayer and besiege the Throne, and
   we shall see again a revival that shall make the age glad!

   God has proven the power of His arm in the persons whom He has saved.
   Saul of Tarsus seemed to be a very hard case, but the light from
   Heaven, and the Voice which gently upbraided, had power over Saul and
   he became one of the ablest of God's servants. There is no heart so
   hard but what God's hammer can dash it in pieces. Let us never despair
   while we can say of our God, "You have a mighty arm." Beloved, if there
   should happen to come within these walls at any time, some of the worst
   of men, we must not think that God will not bless them. Oh no! "You
   have a mighty arm."

   Lord, here is a great and hard rock! Now wield Your great hammer and
   the sparks shall fly, and the flint stone shall be broken into pieces!
   Quarry Your own stones, O God, and make them fit for Your temple, for,
   "You have a mighty arm." This is seen, sometimes, in the number
   converted. Three thousand in one day under Peter's sermon! Why not
   three thousand again? Why not thirty thousand? Why not three hundred
   thousand in a day? There is nothing too great for us to ask for, or for
   God to grant!

   He could, if He willed, turn the hearts of men as He turns the rivers
   by His foot. His might has been manifested in the instruments which the
   Lord has employed. He has taken the base things and the despised to
   make them the medium of His power! And then we have said, "You have a
   mighty arm" to do such wonders by such puny things. Now, Beloved, when
   I recollect the past in these various tokens of Divine strength, I wish
   I had time to encourage your hearts to expect great things of God. We
   are certainly not straitened in Him. You will be straitened in your own
   heart, if you are straitened at all. And I do pray my mighty Master
   that He may not suffer this to be, but give us large expectations that
   we may have large realizations!

   There is a friend here who says, "I have been praying very long to this
   mighty God for the conversion of one who lies very near my heart, but I
   cannot get an answer." No, Beloved, it may be that God has not yet put
   forth His power--it is certain He has not--or your friend would be
   healed. There may have been a reason why the Lord would not work,
   namely, because you were not prepared for so great a blessing. Perhaps,
   had He honored you to be the means of your friend's conversion, you
   would have grown proud. If you now feel your own utter powerlessness,
   now will be the time for God to work!

   The reason of delay may now have gone. Certainly the fact that God has
   not answered you is no reason why He should not ultimately give you
   your desire. If He has delayed a little time, remember He is never too
   late and certainly never forgets in the end. He may delay, but He
   cannot deny. Has your friend become worse and worse? Well, then,
   rampant sin often stirs up God. It is time for You to work, Lord, for
   they make void Your Law! I look upon the present age with very great
   comfort. Beloved, there never was a time in which Popery was so--I was
   about to say omnipresent everywhere. It is working everywhere--openly
   and by stealth.

   The Church of England has become thoroughly putrid with Puseyism.
   Infidelity has grown very bold. Let all these powers of evil be
   developed and work their will, for good will come out of it in the end!
   All these provocations will arouse our God. I thought within myself,
   when turning over these matters and seeing the signs of a breaking out
   of the old moderatism in Scotland, "Ah, Lord! You have not answered
   Your friends. Perhaps You will hear Your foes. And if Your children's
   prayers have not provoked You to bestir Yourself, perhaps the hard
   words of Your enemies will do it."

   It is a good thing for Zion when her enemies begin to curse and to lift
   up themselves against God, for then He will take up His own quarrel.
   Let them throw down the gauntlet and God will take it up! And we know
   when He does come forth from His resting place, the victory is sure! It
   is for us, however, to cry unto Him and spare not till He proves His
   cause to be His own by the potency which He puts into it. Let us, then,
   discard our despondencies and be of good courage, for strong is His
   hand and high is His right hand--

   "Lord, when iniquities abound,
   And blasphemies grow bold.
   When faith is hardly to be found,
   And love is waxing cold,
   Is not Your chariot hastening on?
   Have You not given this sign?
   May we not trust and live upon
   A promise so Divine?"

   Beloved, I am encouraged to expect the visitation of Divine Grace among
   us for these reasons: It must be for God's glory to save souls--there
   cannot be two opinions about it. Will He not therefore do it? Secondly,
   It must be due to

   Christ that souls should be saved. He cannot have seen the whole of the
   travail of His soul yet! I am sure He is not satisfied yet--He is yet
   to have many more! And shall He not have His seed and see His children?
   We can plead the blood and that is a prevalent argument with the Most
   High. I look upon our prayers as tokens for good. Some of us can say we
   came up here with prayer and our souls have been exercised during the
   week with groans and longings towards the mighty God of Jacob--that He
   would bless this congregation--and bless the world. This, too, is a
   token for good.

   Our past history comforts me in cheering hope. "The Lord has been
   mindful of us. He will bless us." Who would have thought that the Lord
   would bless us as He has done? It is now twelve years and more since I
   first came up to this great city, a stripling. With what trembling did
   I come! You were but very few and feeble, but still there was the true
   life lingering among you and soon the blessing came! You remember our
   sore trials and troubles, when we went through fire and through water,
   and men did ride over our heads. But our God has brought us out into a
   wealthy place. This very house is, itself, a monument of what God can
   do!

   Poor and feeble folk were we, and yet this house was built to His
   praise! And He has filled it and kept it full! Where else has He been
   pleased to gather the multitudes year after year, with never-failing,
   never-flagging interest and earnestness? Where else has He been pleased
   to add to the Church by hundreds in the year, till the only difficulty
   is the time to see the inquirers and to hear their confession of faith?
   In what other Church have there been four hundred and fifty souls added
   to the fellowship in one year? Where else has the baptismal pool been
   stirred with such a multitude of souls immersed into a profession of
   the Lord Jesus Christ?

   We say this not--we trust we do not--with so much as a single grain of
   sacrificing unto self, for what were we and what were our father's
   house that He should have brought us up to now? But we beg you to
   regard the past as a type of the future! Oh, start not back, you men of
   prayer! Fail not now since God is still your arm! You carry bows, turn
   not back in the day of battle! You have the trophies of past victories
   before your eyes! Now for a mighty attack upon the Mercy Seat that you
   may win power to overcome the gates of Hell!

   Let us be vehement--violent I was about to say--for, "the kingdom of
   Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." Let us
   cannonade the gate of Heaven! Let us rise up, each man and each woman,
   every soul that has power, and let us cry unto the mighty God that He
   would be pleased to give us such a blessing that we shall not have room
   enough to receive it! It must come, only be ready for it! It will
   come--it comes even now! Thank God! Take courage! Be on your
   watchtower! And may the Lord bless us for His name's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                              Spring In The Heart

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 11, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   You water the ridges abundantly: You settle the furrows: You make it
   soft with showers: You bless its growth." Psalm 65:10.

   THOUGH other seasons excel in fullness, spring must always bear the
   palm for freshness and beauty. We thank God when the harvest hours draw
   near and the golden grain invites the sickle, but we ought equally to
   thank Him for the rougher days of spring, for these prepare the
   harvest. April showers are mothers of the sweet May flowers, and the
   wet and cold of winter are the parents of the splendor of summer. God
   blesses its growth, or else it could not be said, "You crown the year
   with Your goodness." There is as much necessity for Divine benediction
   in spring as for heavenly bounty in summer, and therefore we should
   praise God all the year round.

   Spiritual spring is a very blessed season in a Church. Then we see
   youthful piety developed and on every hand we hear the joyful cry of
   those who say, "We have found the Lord." Our sons are springing up as
   the grass and as willows by the watercourses. We hold up our hands in
   glad astonishment and cry, "Who are these that fly as a cloud and as
   doves to their windows?" In the revival days of a Church, when God is
   blessing her with many conversions, she has great cause to rejoice in
   God and sing, "You bless its growth."

   I intend to take the text in reference to individual cases. There is a
   time of growth of Divine Grace when it is just in its bud, just
   breaking through the dull cold earth of unregenerate nature. I desire
   to talk a little about that and concerning the blessing which the Lord
   grants to the green blade of new-born godliness--to those who are
   beginning to hope in the Lord.

   I. First, I shall have a little to say about THE WORK PREVIOUS TO THE
   GROWTH. It appears from the text that there is work for God, alone, to
   do before the growth comes. And we know that there is work for God to
   do through us as well. There is work for us to do. Before there can be
   growth in the soul there must be plowing, harrowing, and sowing. There
   must be a plowing and we do not expect that as soon as ever we plow we
   shall reap the sheaves. Blessed be God, in many cases the reaper
   overtakes the plowman! But we must not always expect it.

   In some hearts God is long in preparing the soul by conviction--the Law
   with its ten black horses drags the plowshare of conviction up and down
   the soul till there is not one part of it left unfurrowed. Conviction
   goes deeper than any plow to the very core and center of the spirit
   till the spirit is wounded. The plowers make deep furrows, indeed, when
   God puts His hand to the work! The soil of the heart is broken in
   pieces in the Presence of the Most High. Then comes the sowing.

   Before there can be a growth it is certain that there must be something
   put into the ground so that after the preacher has used the plow of the
   Law, he applies to his Master for the seed basket of the Gospel. Gospel
   promises, Gospel doctrines--especially a clear exposition of free Grace
   and the Atonement--these are the handfuls of corn which we scatter
   broadcast. Some of the grain falls on the highway and is lost. But
   other handfuls fall where the plow has been and there they abide. Then
   comes the harrowing work. We do not expect to sow seed and then leave
   it--the Gospel has to be prayed over. The prayer of the preacher and
   the prayer of the Church make up God's harrow to rake in the seed after
   it is scattered. And so it is covered up within the clods of the soul
   and is hidden in the heart of the hearer.

   Now there is a reason why I dwell upon this, namely, that I may exhort
   my dear Brethren who have not seen success to not give up the work but
   to hope that they have been doing the plowing, and sowing, and
   harrowing work, and that the harvest is to come. I mention this for yet
   another reason--and that is by way of warning to those who expect to
   have a harvest without this preparatory work. I do not believe that
   much good will come from attempts at sudden revivals made without
   previous prayerful labor.

   A revival to be permanent must be a matter of growth and the result of
   much holy effort, longing, pleading, and watching. The servant of God
   is to preach the Gospel whether men are prepared for it or not--but in
   order to large success, depend upon it--there is a preparedness
   necessary among the hearers. Upon some hearts, warm earnest preaching
   drops like an unusual thing which startles but does not convict. In
   other congregations, where good Gospel preaching has long been the
   rule, and much prayer has been offered, the words fall into the
   hearers' souls and bring forth speedy fruit.

   We must not expect to have results without work. There is no hope of a
   Church having an extensive revival in its midst unless there is
   continued and importunate waiting upon God together with earnest
   laboring, intense anxiety, and hopeful expectation. But there is also a
   work to be done which is beyond our power. After plowing, sowing, and
   harrowing, there must come the shower from Heaven. "You visit the earth
   and water it," says the Psalmist. In vain are all our efforts unless
   God shall bless us with the rain of His Holy Spirit's influence.

   Holy Spirit! You, and You alone work wonders in the human heart, and
   You come from the Father and the Son to do the Father's purposes and to
   glorify the Son! Three effects are spoken of. First, we are told He
   waters the ridges. As the ridges of the field become well saturated
   through and through with the abundant rain, so God sends His Holy
   Spirit till the whole heart of man is moved and influenced by His
   Divine operations. The understanding is enlightened, the conscience is
   quickened, the will is controlled, the affections are inflamed--all
   these powers, which I may call the ridges of the heart--come under the
   Divine working.

   It is ours to deal with men as men, bring to bear upon them Gospel
   truth, and to set before them motives that are suitable to move
   rational creatures. But, after all, it is the rain from on high which
   alone can water the ridges! There is no hope of the heart being
   savingly affected except by Divine operations. Next it is added, "You
   settle the furrows," by which some think it is meant that the furrows
   are drenched with water. Others think there is an allusion here to the
   beating down of the earth by heavy rain till the ridges become
   flat--and by the soaking of the water--are settled into a more compact
   mass.

   Certain it is that the influences of God's Spirit have a humbling and
   settling effect upon a man. He was unsettled once like the earth that
   is dry and crumbly, and blown about and carried away with every wind of
   doctrine. But as the earth, when soaked with wet, is compacted and knit
   together, so the heart becomes solid and serious under the power of the
   Spirit. As the high parts of the ridge are beaten down into the
   furrows, so the lofty ideas, the grand schemes, and carnal boastings of
   the heart begin to level down when the Holy Spirit comes to work upon
   the soul. Genuine humility is a very gracious fruit of the Spirit. To
   be broken in heart is the best means of preparing the soul for Jesus.
   "A broken and a contrite hear, O God, You will not despise." Brethren,
   always be thankful when you see high thoughts of man brought down! This
   settling the furrows is a very gracious preparatory work of Divine
   Grace.

   Yet again, it is added, "You make it soft with showers." Man's heart is
   naturally hardened against the Gospel. Like the Eastern soil it is hard
   as iron if there is no gracious rain. How sweetly and effectively does
   the Spirit of God soften the man through and through! He is no longer
   towards the Word what he used to be--he feels everything, whereas once
   he felt nothing. The rock flows with water. The heart is dissolved in
   tenderness. The eyes are melted into tears. All this is God's work!

   1 have said already that God works through us, but still it is God's
   immediate work to send down the rain of His Grace from on high. Perhaps
   He is at work upon some of you though as yet there is no growth of
   spiritual life in your souls. Though your condition is still a sad one,
   we will hope for you that before long there shall be seen the living
   seed of Divine Grace sending up its tender green shoot above the
   soil--and may the Lord bless its growth!

   II. In the second place, let us deliver A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE
   GROWTH. After the operations of the Holy Spirit have been quietly going
   on for a certain season as pleases the great Master and Husbandman,
   then there are signs of Grace. Remember the Apostle's words, "First the
   blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." Some of our
   friends are greatly disturbed because they cannot see the full corn in
   the ear in themselves. They suppose that if they were the subjects of a
   Divine work they would be precisely like certain advanced Christians
   with whom it is their privilege to commune, or of whom they may have
   read in biographies.

   Beloved, this is a very great mistake! When Grace first enters the
   heart it is not a great tree covering with its shadow whole acres--but
   it is the least of all seeds--like a grain of mustard seed. When it
   first rises upon the soul, it is not the sun shining at high noon--it
   is the first dim ray of dawn. Are you so simple as to expect the
   harvest before you have passed through the growing season? I shall hope
   that by a very brief description of the earliest stage of Christian
   experience you may be led to say, "I have gone as far as that," and
   then I hope you may be able to take the comfort of the text to
   yourselves: "You bless its growth."

   What, then, is the growth of piety in the heart? We think it is first
   seen in sincerely earnest desires after salvation. The man is not
   saved, in his own apprehension, but he longs to be. That which was once
   a matter of indifference is now a subject of intense concern. Once he
   despised Christians and thought them needlessly earnest. He thought
   religion a mere trifle and he looked upon the things of time and sense
   as the only substantial matters. But now how changed he is! He envies
   the meanest Christian and would change places with the poorest Believer
   if he might but be able to read his title clear to mansions in the
   skies!

   Now worldly things have lost dominion over him and spiritual things are
   uppermost. Once with the unthinking many he cried, "Who will show us
   any good?" But now he cries, "Lord, lift up the light of Your
   countenance upon me." Once it was the corn and the wine to which he
   looked for comfort, but now he looks to God alone. His rock of refuge
   must be God, for he finds no comfort elsewhere. His holy desires, which
   he had years ago, were like smoke from the chimney, soon blown away.
   But now his longings are permanent, though not always operative to the
   same degree. At times these desires amount to a hunger and a thirsting
   after righteousness, and yet he is not satisfied with these desires, he
   wishes for a still more anxious longing after heavenly things.

   These desires are among the first growth of Divine life in the soul.
   "The growth" shows itself next in prayer. It is now real prayer. Once
   it was the mocking of God with holy sounds unattended by the heart--but
   now, though the prayer is such that he would not like a human ear to
   hear him, yet God approves it--for it is the talking of a spirit to a
   Spirit, and not the muttering of lips to an unknown God. His prayers,
   perhaps, are not very long--they do not amount to more than this--"Oh!"
   "Ah!" "Would to God!" "Lord have mercy upon me, a sinner!" and
   such-like short ejaculations, but, then, by God's Grace, they are
   prayers.

   "Behold he prays," does not refer to a long prayer. It is quite as sure
   a proof of spiritual life within if it only refers to a sigh or to a
   tear. These "groans that cannot be uttered," are among "the growth."
   There will also be manifest a hearty love for the means of Grace, and
   the House of God. The Bible, long unread, which was thought to be of
   little more use than an old almanac, is now treated with great
   consideration. And though the reader finds little in it that comforts
   him just now, and much that alarms him, yet he feels that it is the
   book for him and he turns to its pages with hope.

   When he goes up to God's House he listens eagerly, hoping that there
   may be a message for him. Before, he attended worship as a sort of
   pious necessity incumbent upon all respectable people. But now he goes
   up to God's House that he may find the Savior. Once there was no more
   religion in him than in the door which turns upon its hinges. But now
   he enters praying, "Lord, meet with my soul." And if he gets no
   blessing, he goes away sighing, "O that I knew where I might find Him,
   that I might come even to His seat."

   This is one of the blessed signs of "its growth." Yet more cheering is
   another, namely, that the soul in this state has faith in Jesus Christ,
   at least in some degree! It is not a faith which brings great joy and
   peace, but still it is a faith which keeps the heart from despair and
   prevents its sinking under a sense of sin. I have known the time when I
   do not believe any man living could see faith in me, and when I could
   scarcely perceive any in myself, and yet I was bold to say, with Peter,
   "Lord, You know all thing, You know that I love You."

   What man cannot see, Christ can see. Many people have faith in the Lord
   Jesus Christ but they are so much engaged in looking at it that they do
   not see it. If they would look to Christ and not to their own faith,
   they would not only see Christ but see their own faith, too. But they
   try to measure their faith and it seems so little when they contrast it
   with the faith of full-grown Christians that they fear it is not faith
   at all. Oh, little one, if you have faith enough to receive Christ,
   remember the promise, "To as many as received Him, to them gave He
   power to become the sons of God."

   Poor simple, weak-hearted, and troubled ones, look to Jesus and answer,
   Can such a Savior suffer in vain? Can such an Atonement be offered in
   vain? Can you trust Him and yet be cast away? It cannot be! It never
   was in the Savior's heart to shake off one that did cling to His arm.
   However feeble the faith, He blesses "its growth." The difficulty
   arises partly from misapprehension and partly from lack of confidence
   in God.

   I say misapprehension--now if like some Londoners you have never seen
   corn when it is green, you would cry out, "What? Do you say that yonder
   green stuff is wheat?" "Yes," the farmer says, "that is wheat." You
   look at it again and you reply, "Why, man alive, that is nothing but
   grass! You do not mean to tell me that this grassy stuff will ever
   produce a loaf of bread such as I see in the baker's window--I cannot
   conceive it." No, you could not conceive it, but when you get
   accustomed to it, it is not at all amazing to see the wheat go through
   certain stages. First the blade, then the ear, and afterwards the full
   corn in the ear.

   Some of you have never seen growing Grace and do not know anything
   about it. When you are newly converted you meet with Christians who are
   like ripe golden ears, and you say, "I am not like they are." True, you
   are no more like they than that grassy stuff in the furrows is like
   full-grown wheat! But you will grow to be like they are one of these
   days. You must expect to go through the blade period before you get to
   the ear period! And in the ear period you will have doubts whether you
   will ever come to the full corn in the ear--but you will arrive at
   perfection in due time. Thank God that you are in Christ at all!

   Whether I have much faith or little faith. Whether I can do much for
   Christ or little for Christ is not the first question. I am saved, not
   on account of what I am, but on account of what Jesus Christ is! And if
   I am trusting Him, however little in Israel I may be, I am as safe as
   the brightest of the saints.

   I have said, however, that mixed with misapprehension there is a great
   deal of unbelief. I cannot put it all down to an ignorance that may be
   forgiven, for there is sinful unbelief, too. O Sinner, why do you not
   trust Jesus Christ? Poor quickened, awakened Conscience--God gives you
   His word that He who trusts in Christ is not condemned--and yet you are
   afraid that you are condemned! This is to call God a liar! Be ashamed
   and confounded that you should ever have been guilty of doubting the
   veracity of God!

   All your other sins do not grieve Christ so much as the sin of thinking
   that He is unwilling to forgive you, or the sin of suspecting that if
   you trust Him He will cast you away! Do not slander His gracious
   Character. Do not cast a slur upon the generosity of His tender heart.
   He said, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." Come in the
   faith of His promise and He will receive you right now! I have thus
   given some description of "its growth."

   III. Thirdly, according to the text, THERE IS ONE WHO SEES THIS GROWTH.
   You, Lord--You bless its growth. I wish that some of us had quicker
   eyes to see the beginning of Grace in the souls of men. For lack of
   this we let slip many opportunities of helping the weaklings. If a
   woman had the charge of a number of children that were not her own, I
   do not suppose she would notice all the incipient stages of disease.
   But when a mother nurses her own dear children, as soon as ever upon
   the cheek or in the eye there is a token of approaching sickness, she
   perceives it at once.

   I wish we had just as quick an eye, just as tender a heart towards
   precious souls. I do not doubt that many young people are weeks and
   even months in distress, who need not be, if you who know the Lord were
   a little more watchful to help them in the time of their sorrow.
   Shepherds are up all night at lambing time to catch up the lambs, as
   soon as they are born, and take them in and nurse them. And we, who
   ought to be shepherds for God, should be looking out for all the lambs,
   especially at seasons when there are many born into God's great
   fold--for tender nursing is wanted in the first stages of the new life.

   God, however, when His servants do not see "its growth," sees it all.
   Now, you silent, retired spirits who dare not speak to father or
   mother, or brother or sister--this text ought to be a sweet morsel to
   you. "You bless its growth," which proves that God sees you and your
   newborn Grace. The Lord sees the first sign of penitence. Though you
   only say to yourself, "I will arise, and go to my Father," your Father
   hears you. Though it is nothing but a desire, your Father registers it.
   "You put my tears into Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?" He is
   watching your return. He runs to meet you and puts His arms about you,
   and kisses you with the kisses of His accepting love!

   O Soul, be encouraged with that thought that up in the chamber or down
   by the hedge, or wherever it is that you have sought secrecy, God is
   there! Dwell on the thought, "You, God, see me." That is a precious
   text--"All my desire is before You." And here is another sweet one,
   "The Lord takes pleasure in them that fear Him, in them that hope in
   His mercy." He can see you when you only hope in His mercy, and He
   takes pleasure in you if you have only begun to fear Him!

   Here is a third choice word, "You will perfect that which concerns me."
   Have you a concern about these things? Is it a matter of soul-concern
   with you to be reconciled to God and to have an interest in Jesus'
   precious blood? It is only "its growth," but He blesses it! It is
   written, "A bruised reed He will not break, and the smoking flax He
   will not quench, till He brings forth judgment unto victory." There
   shall be victory for you, even before the Judgment Seat of God, though
   as yet you are only like the flax that smokes and gives no light, or
   like the reed that is broken and yields no music! God sees the first
   growth of Grace.

   IV. A few words upon a fourth point: WHAT A MISERY IT WOULD BE IF IT
   WERE POSSIBLE TO HAVE THIS GROWTH WITHOUT GOD'S BLESSING! The text
   says, "You bless its growth." We must, just a moment, by way of
   contrast, think of how the growth would have been without the blessing.
   Suppose we were to see a revival among us without God's blessing? It is
   my conviction that there are revivals which are not of God at all, but
   are produced by excitement.

   If there is no blessing from the Lord it will be all a delusion, a
   bubble blown up into the air for a moment and then gone to nothing. We
   shall only see the people stirred to become the more dull and dead
   afterwards. And this is a great mischief to the Church. In the
   individual heart, if there should be growth without God's blessing,
   there would be no good in it. Suppose you have good desires, but no
   blessing on these desires? They will only tantalize and worry you, and
   then, after a time, they will be gone and you will be more impervious
   than you were before to religious convictions. If religious desires are
   not of God's sending, but are caused by excitement, they will probably
   prevent your giving a serious hearing to the Word of God in times to
   come.

   If convictions do not soften they will certainly harden. To what
   extremities have some been driven who have had growth of a certain sort
   which has not led them to Christ! Some have been crushed by despair.
   They tell us that religion crowds the madhouse--it is not true--but
   there is no doubt whatever that religiousness of a certain kind has
   driven many a man out of his mind. The poor souls have felt their wound
   but have not seen the balm. They have not known Jesus. They have had a
   sense of sin and nothing more. They have not fled for refuge to the
   hope which God has set before them.

   Marvel not if men go mad when they refuse the Savior! It may come as a
   judicial visitation of God upon those men who, when in great distress
   of mind, will not fly to Christ. I believe it is like this with
   some--you must either fly to Jesus or else your burden will become
   heavier and heavier until your spirit will utterly fail. This is not
   the fault of religion--it is the fault of those who will not accept the
   remedy which religion presents. A growth of desires without God's
   blessing would be an awful thing, but we thank Him that we are not left
   in such a case.

   V. And now I have to dwell upon THE COMFORTING THOUGHT THAT GOD DOES
   BLESS "THE GROWTH." I wish to deal with you who are tender and
   troubled. I want to show that God does bless your growth. He does it in
   many ways. Frequently He does it by the cordials which He brings. You
   have a few very sweet moments, but you cannot say that you are
   Christ's. At times the bells of your heart ring very sweetly at the
   mention of His name.

   The means of Grace are very precious to you. When you gather to the
   Lord's worship you feel a holy calm and you go away from the service
   wishing that there were seven Sundays in the week instead of one. By
   the blessing of God the Word has just suited your case as if the Lord
   had sent His servants on purpose to you. You lay aside your crutches
   for awhile and you begin to run. Though these things have been sadly
   transient, they are tokens for good.

   On the other hand, if you have had none of these comforts, or few of
   them, and the means of Grace have not been consolations to you, I want
   you to look upon that as a blessing! It may be the greatest blessing
   that God can give us to take away all comforts on the road, in order to
   quicken our running towards the end. When a man is flying to the City
   of Refuge to be protected from the man-slayer, it may be an act of
   great consideration to stop him for a moment that he may quench his
   thirst and run more swiftly afterwards. But perhaps, in a case of
   imminent peril, it may be the kindest thing neither to give him
   anything to eat or to drink, nor invite him to stop for a moment--in
   order that he may fly with undiminished speed to the place of safety.

   The Lord may be blessing you in the uneasiness which you feel. Inasmuch
   as you cannot say that you are in Christ, it may be the greatest
   blessing which Heaven can give to take away every other blessing from
   you in order that you may be compelled to fly to the Lord. You,
   perhaps, have a little of your self-righteousness left, and while it is
   so you cannot get joy and comfort. The royal robe which Jesus gives
   will never shine brilliantly upon us till every rag of our own goodness
   is gone. Perhaps you are not empty enough, and God will never fill you
   with Christ till you are. Fear often drives men to faith.

   Have you ever heard of a person walking in the fields into whose bosom
   a bird has flown because pursued by the hawk? Poor timid thing, it
   would not have ventured there had not a greater fear compelled it! All
   this may be so with you. Your fears may be sent to drive you more
   swiftly and more closely to the Savior, and if so, I see in these
   present sorrows the signs that God is blessing "its growth." In looking
   back upon my own "growth" I sometimes think God blessed me then in a
   lovelier way than now. Though I would not willingly return to that
   early stage of my spiritual life, yet there were many joys about it. An
   apple tree when loaded with apples is a very comely sight. But give me,
   for beauty, the apple tree in bloom. The whole world does not present a
   more lovely sight than an apple blossom!

   Now, a full-grown Christian laden with fruit is a comely sight, but
   still there is a peculiar loveliness about the young Christian. Let me
   tell you what that blessedness is. You now probably have a greater
   horror of sin than professors who have known the Lord for years! They
   might wish that they felt your tenderness of conscience. You have now a
   graver sense of duty and a more solemn fear of the neglect of it than
   some who are further advanced. You have also a greater zeal than
   many--you are now doing your first works for God, and burning with your
   first love--nothing is too hot or too heavy for you! I pray that you
   may never decline, but always advance!

   And now to close. I think there are three lessons for us to learn.
   First, let older saints be very gentle and kind to young Believers. God
   blesses their growth--mind that you do the same. Do not throw cold
   water upon young desires. Do not snuff out young Believers with hard
   questions. While they are babes and need the milk of the Word, do not
   be choking them with your strong meat--they will eat strong meat
   by-and-bye, but not just yet. Remember, Jacob would not overdrive the
   lambs. Be equally prudent. Teach and instruct them, but let it be with
   gentleness and tenderness--not as their superiors, but as nursing
   fathers for Christ's sake. God, you see, blesses their growth--may He
   bless it through you!

   The next thing I have to say is, fulfill the duty of gratitude.
   Beloved, if God blesses its growth we ought to be grateful for a little
   Grace. If you have only seen the first shoot peeping up through the
   mold, be thankful. And as you see the green blade waving in the breeze,
   be thankful for the ankle-deep verdure and you shall soon see the
   commencement of the ear! Be thankful for the first green ears and you
   shall see the flowering of the wheat, and by-and-by its ripening, and
   the joyous harvest.

   The last lesson is one of encouragement. If God blesses "its growth,"
   dear Beginners, what will He not do for you in after days? If He gives
   you such a meal when you break your fast, what dainties will be on your
   table when He says to you, "Come and dine"? And what a banquet will He
   furnish at the supper of the Lamb! O troubled One! Let the storms which
   howl, and the snows which fall, and the wintry blasts that nip your
   growth all be forgotten in this one consoling thought--God blesses your
   growth, and whom God blesses none can curse! Over your head, dear,
   desiring, pleading, languishing Soul, the Lord of Heaven and earth
   pronounces the blessing of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
   Spirit. Take that blessing and rejoice in it evermore. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                       Man'S Thoughts And God'S Thoughts

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 18, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,"
   says the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My
   ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah
   55:8,9.

   THE text speaks of thoughts. It mentions the thoughts of man and the
   thoughts of God. The power of thought is one point in which man is made
   in the image of God. Other animated creatures which are put in
   subjection to the thinking, intelligent creature, man, have no
   fellowship with God in thought--into His world of pure spirit they
   cannot enter. To the majestic lion or to the monstrous leviathan, no
   speech could be addressed by God involving the terms, "My thoughts,"
   and "your thoughts."

   But the Lord is here speaking to a creature of another mold which He
   has made a living soul, capable of fellowship with the invisible, the
   spiritual, and the Divine. When men do not think, and especially when
   they do not think of the highest and most important matters, they
   degrade themselves from the true position and occupation of immortal
   minds. The beast's spirit goes downward--and frivolous, thoughtless
   persons do as much as they can to descend to the groveling level of the
   mere animal.

   Thought is that which likens us unto God. The powers of mind, when
   rightly exercised upon eternal things, are the means of uplifting us to
   the highest point to which unaided human nature can attain. And low as
   this point is, it is vastly better than brutish carelessness. I see the
   thoughtless soul yonder moving on all fours with the beast looking for
   nothing more than food and drink. The thoughtful I see walking erect
   with his brow toward Heaven seeking for something which clods of clay
   cannot yield him. I am thankful this morning if you have begun to think
   upon spiritual things, and though there should unhappily be a spice of
   skepticism about your thoughts--though they should be mournfully far
   from being God's thoughts--yet I shall hail it as no ill omen if you
   think at all.

   The man who begins to think about God, and his soul, eternity, sin, and
   righteousness, is becoming like the bones in the vision when there was
   a noise and a shaking. And there is a prospect that before long bone
   will come to his bone and the dead shall live. As for you who never
   think at all, my text can scarcely yield you a single ray of comfort.
   It is my first duty to pray that the Lord may lead you to exercise the
   royal prerogative of thought and to shake you from the terrible
   lethargy into which you have fallen.

   In the text we have two persons thinking--and the result--man's
   thoughts and God's thoughts. God's thoughts are declared by Himself to
   be exceedingly above man's. And yet if ever man is to dwell with God he
   must think as God thinks. "How can two walk together except they are
   agreed?" If my thoughts run this way, and God's thoughts are in an
   opposite direction, I cannot have any fellowship with Him. My thoughts
   must be conformed to God's thoughts or I cannot be like He and walk
   with Him.

   Yet He tells me that His thoughts are not my thoughts, but are as high
   above mine as the heavens are above the earth! What, then, can I do to
   rise to Him? Think as much as I please it only sets me on my feet, and
   so far does me service--but it still leaves me on earth, and God is
   yonder far above me! My thoughts can no more attain unto Him than an
   infant can touch the stars with his finger. Still, it is a comfort to
   me if I am sincerely thoughtful after God, that He is thinking about
   me--for if my thoughts cannot bear me up to Him--His thoughts can bring
   Him down to me! And when He has established a connection between the
   Heaven which is above me and the earth which is beneath Himself, then
   I, laying hold on His thoughts, and believing what He has thought out
   for me, shall be drawn up to His elevation--and I shall come to think
   His thoughts and so be in communion and fellowship with the Most High.

   This morning I want, as the Holy Spirit enables me, to speak to those
   who have been led so far as to have thoughts concerning eternal things,
   and especially thoughts upon forgiveness of sin. You have as yet only
   your own thoughts, and these are troubling and misleading you. I desire
   to contrast your thoughts with God's thoughts in the hope that you may
   lay hold on God's thoughts by faith. And, then, by holding them fast
   you may be drawn up by them as by a Divine hand into a clearer
   atmosphere, and into a happier state than that in which your soul now
   sits, weeping and disconsolate. It may be that into perfect peace and
   joyous confidence God's thoughts may lift you as on eagle's wings this
   morning--a work which your deepest and most anxious thoughts can never
   achieve for you.

   I shall attempt first, this morning, to contrast your thoughts as to
   the possibility of pardon with God's thoughts. Then, secondly, your
   thoughts as to the plan of pardon shall be set in the same light. And
   thirdly, your thoughts as to the present possession of personal pardon
   shall pass in brief review.

   I. May the Holy Spirit help me while I endeavor to compare your
   thoughts of THE POSSIBILITY OF PARDON with God's thoughts about it. You
   naturally form your ideas of God's ways from what you conceive would be
   yours if you were in His position. I take you on that ground this
   morning, and we will suppose that some wicked person has very grossly
   injured you--and that the question of your forgiving him is now before
   you. We will suppose you to be of a generous, frank, forgiving
   disposition and in a calm and judicious state of mind.

   You are ready to act most leniently, but still, the case in hand is no
   trifle and requires consideration. After well pondering and considering
   the matter, you feel bound to say, "I could forgive this person, but
   his offense is of a peculiarly grievous kind. Had he robbed me of my
   purse or my estate I could have overlooked it. But he has despoiled my
   character. He has touched my person in its most tender part and injured
   me to the highest extent possible. I could forgive ten thousand other
   forms of trespass, but the form of evil from which he has made me
   suffer is peculiarly offensive and injurious to me. The person under
   consideration has perpetrated the worst conceivable form of wrong
   against me. With the most sincere desire to pass over it I feel that I
   must not, but must let the law take its course."

   There have been many occasions when persons aggrieved have thus spoken
   and when no reasonable person could have blamed them. Such, O awakened
   Sinner, is your case before the Lord! And if He should think of you as
   one man would think of another, you must admit Him to be just. It is
   certain, dear Friend, that you have offended God in the most tender
   point--you have denied His right to you, though you are His creature.
   You have denied your Maker's right to command you, saying, "Who is the
   Lord that I should obey His voice?"

   Though you have been a pensioner upon His daily bounty, you have
   constantly insisted upon it that you were your own master and had a
   right to do just as you pleased. You have thus invaded the crown rights
   of the King of kings, and committed treason against His sovereignty
   which He guards most jealously. Worst of all you have committed sin
   against His only begotten and most dear Son, the Lord Jesus. You may
   not have persecuted His people, or spoken against His Deity--but you
   have slighted the precious blood and you have passed by the crucified
   Savior as though His Atonement were nothing to you.

   You have thus perpetrated the most provoking offense against God and
   touched Him in the apple of His eye. If it were your case, you could
   not forgive--but be astonished as you hear that your thoughts are not
   God's thoughts--and His ways of forgiveness are as high above your ways
   as the heavens are above the earth! If you trust in the Lord Jesus,
   your iniquity, although most heinous and detestable, shall be blotted
   out forever! It is supposable that when you are weighing the case of an
   offender you decide upon it thus: "I could forgive him, bad as the sin
   is, if I thought he had fallen into it from inadvertence or
   carelessness, or if I supposed that he was moved by some great hope of
   gain for himself. But the offense was intentional, malicious, and
   wanton, and therefore I cannot remit it."

   Naturally you transfer these thoughts of yours to the Lord of Heaven,
   and you say, "He will never pardon me for I have trespassed willfully.
   I knew the right, but I chose the wrong. I was never a gainer by my
   sins--I was often made to smart through them. And even when I became
   like a burnt child, I wanted only to thrust my finger into the fire
   again. I had no conceivable motive for sin except the determined and
   incorrigible love of evil! I drank down iniquity as the ox drinks down
   water--but the ox drinks to slake his thirst--I only gratified my
   passions and hardly that, for the more I sinned, the more unhappy I
   became! The more I drank of that ill stream, the more my horrid thirst
   came upon me. I have sinned without excuse."

   My dear Friend, such language as this befits a penitent's tongue, but
   since you have Jehovah in Christ Jesus to deal with, do not despair!
   Men cannot forgive their fellows when they perceive wanton malice in
   their crimes, but God can forgive YOU! And though you have
   intentionally slighted, aggrieved, vexed, and even blasphemed Him as
   high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are His ways above
   your ways! You will in some cases also be obliged to say, "I could very
   readily have overlooked this fault but it has been repeated. It was not
   once, nor twice, nor even twenty times, but this person has so hated me
   that he has purposely spited me every day of his life! He has teased
   and worried me with his insolence till I cannot do other than let my
   wrath loose against him! Forgive him? I might have done it if it were
   seventy times seven, but he has out-done Herod and gone beyond all
   number in his insults and injuries. You cannot expect me to forgive."

   Such, exactly, is your case, O troubled Sinner, with regard to God. It
   is certain that your offenses are as many as the sands on the seashore.
   You have, through a life of twenty, thirty, forty, perhaps sixty or
   seventy years, done nothing else but sin! Your transgressions have been
   as numerous as the beats of your pulse, but still, though you hardly
   dare to think of forgiveness, God can not only think of it, but bestow
   it! The sins of twice ten thousand years He can blot out in a moment if
   there could be supposed a sinner who had them all heaped upon himself!
   God's thoughts are not your thoughts with regard to the number of sins,
   neither are His ways your ways.

   I can conceive a person greatly injured saying, "I would overlook all
   these injuries which have been hurled against me, but I cannot see any
   reason why I should have been the particular object of this man's
   spite. It has been quite undeserved on my part, and unprovoked. I never
   gave this enemy of mine any occasion to speak against me. I never did
   him an ill turn--on the contrary, if he has asked me for any help I
   have always given it cheerfully and liberally." That would be a very
   excellent reason in a court of justice for insisting on the punishment
   of an offender. A judge would allow very much weight to it, and
   everyone would admit its reasoning.

   Powerful, indeed, would it be in your case, O guilty Sinner, if the
   Lord should plead it! Listen, I pray you, to the voice of the good God
   whom you have injured. "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! I have
   nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against Me.
   The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel does
   not know, My people do not consider." What do you think is the sequel
   to this very just but sad complaint? Is it, "Because of this
   ingratitude I will never forgive"? No. "Come now, and let us reason
   together, says the Lord: though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be
   as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as
   wool."

   Dear Friend, you have received nothing from God but mercy, and though
   you have been very ill, what a mercy it is that you are spared! You
   brought on your sickness by your own sin, and tender mercy might have
   been worn out with your rebellions and have let you destroy yourself
   outright! But God has spared you! He has been provoked, but He has kept
   back His mighty hand, and you are a trophy of His wonderful
   longsuffering. Oh why do you continue to sin against Him? Why do you
   rebel against One so kind? How can you be so ungenerous to a God so
   full of Grace? Let His love melt you, for although men cannot forgive
   the ungrateful wretches who wound their benefactors, yet the Lord's
   thoughts are as much above our thoughts as the heavens are above the
   earth!

   "Yes," says an offended person, "I might overlook the fault if I
   thought the man were wholly humbled. You see he asks me to pardon him,
   but he has not a sufficient sense of his guilt. He has no idea of how
   much I have had to smart--it has been sport to him, but it has been
   death to me--and he does not seem to be rightly aware of the really
   heinous nature of his sin. He asks for pardon very glibly, with a very
   smooth tongue, but I believe if he were left to himself and had an
   opportunity he would do the same again--how can you expect me to
   forgive him?"

   Troubled Sinner, this is very much your case. You are somewhat broken
   down this morning, but you must confess that your heart is still hard
   compared with what it ought to be. I do not think any of us have such a
   sense of sin as could be called a perfect sense of it. The most
   grieved, broken, and contrite sinner does not perceive all the
   blackness of sin as God perceives it. And I am afraid the most of us,
   though we do come to Christ, must mourn that we do not mourn more
   thoroughly and bitterly over our sins.

   We have sometimes made an excuse for not pardoning an offender because
   of his want of humbling, but God does not do so--He says, "I will take
   away the heart of stone and I will give them a heart of flesh." He does
   not say, "I will have nothing to do with that sinner because he has a
   stony heart." No, "I will take away the heart of stone out of his flesh
   and give him a heart of flesh." Here is mercy, indeed--mercy looking
   upon the heart of adamant and melting it until it becomes as
   wax--long-suffering bearing with impenitence, and then putting its own
   hand to the work to turn impenitence into contrition of soul. Truly is
   it written, "My thoughts are not your thoughts."

   "Still," exclaims the aggrieved party, "I think the man ought to make
   me some compensation. He speaks of forgiveness, but then look at the
   mischief he has done me all these past years. He ought to propose
   something by way of making amends to me for the ill which he has done."
   This principle is very properly recognized in courts of justice. It is
   always thought that when a man has sustained a wanton injury he is not
   to be expected to overlook it unless compensation is offered.

   Now, poor Sinner, you feel that you cannot bring any compensation. If
   you know yourself aright, you perceive that you can do nothing to undo
   what you have done. You have dishonored the Law of God in such a way
   that there is no hope of your ever removing the affront. But our loving
   God does not ask you for any compensation! He says, "Only return unto
   Me." "Only confess your iniquity which you have committed." Only
   acknowledge, as David did to Nathan, the sin you have done, and you
   shall receive, through Jesus, a word like that which Nathan brought to
   David--"The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die."

   He that confesses and forsakes his sin shall find mercy. No
   compensation is needed. Sin is freely forgiven for Jesus' sake.
   Naturally many a just-minded person would say, "If I were most
   gracious, yet I could not find it in my heart freely to forgive when I
   see the consequences always before my eyes." Suppose that somebody had
   wantonly injured your child. Suppose he had broken one of your child's
   limbs, for instance. I think I hear you say, "I could forgive him, but
   look at my poor limping child! Do you expect a father freely to forgive
   when he sees that poor limping one constantly before him to remind him
   of this man's wanton cruelty? Can I forgive?"

   But, Sinner, God sees before Him daily tokens of what you have done!
   Frivolous, dissolute man, there is that poor girl's ruined body and
   soul through you, in years gone by, and nothing you can ever do can
   undo that mischief! Could your tears flow forever you can never undo
   the past, nor restore the lost one. Could you bring that wandering soul
   back by Divine Grace, even then the bitter past could not be unwritten,
   for she, too, has spread the poison. All that accursed past of sin must
   live on. God forgives sin, but much of the consequences of sin God
   Himself does not prevent. If you light the fire, it will burn on to the
   lowest Hell! God may forgive your evil deeds, but the fire itself still
   continues.

   You spoke a word against the Lord Jesus in the ears of some youngster
   years gone by which turned him aside from the right path. You cannot
   unsay it, and that youngster's infidelity and unbelief you cannot now
   destroy. The perpetual mischief which you have done to others might
   fitly be a reason which the Most High should not forgive you--but yet
   He says, "My thoughts are not your thoughts." With all this before Him,
   with all the consequences of your sin before Him, He forgives you
   freely if you rest on Jesus!

   Ah, it is a wonderful thing--we may have been the instrument of sending
   others down to the pit, and alas, we cannot restore them from their
   endless woe--yet we may, by Grace, amazing Grace--be delivered
   ourselves from the horrible doom of sinners! The mercy of God may be
   extolled in us, and His justice in them. There is the infidel, the
   atheist who has poisoned the minds of others and sent them down to
   Hell, and yet almighty mercy saves him at the last hour! He cannot save
   his dupes--he cannot pull up his followers from the pit--but he is
   himself saved! What a stupendous wonder of Divine Sovereignty and
   Grace! Well did we sing just now--

   "Who is a pardoning Godlike you? Or who gives Grace so rich and free?"

   Furthermore, I can conceive a case in which the offended party can
   fairly say, "I do feel from my heart fully prepared to forget this
   offense against me, but it was public, and therefore highly obnoxious
   and injurious. If no one else had known it, I think I might have
   overlooked it. But this was done in the marketplace, and not in a
   corner. I was put to public shame before a company of those whose
   respect I deserved. I was laughed at in the streets through the
   infamous villainy of this man. Do you expect me to pass by such an
   affront as that?"

   Trembling Sinner, you also may well think, "Surely God will never
   forgive me, for against Him only have I sinned, and done this evil in
   His sight. I sinned in the face of the sun. My iniquities were open and
   visible to all. I sinned unblushingly, and gloried in my shame."
   Rejoice, poor Mourner, that this is no reason why the Lord should not
   forgive you, for as high as the heavens are above the earth so high are
   His thoughts above your thoughts! Only turn to Him with a simple
   confession upon your heart, and put your trust in His dear Son and He
   will put all this away!

   I will not prolong this talk, but only mention one more dark line of
   guilt. I can imagine it possible that an offended person might add, by
   way of clenching all his arguments against pardon, this one--"My
   forgiveness he has already despised. I have often asked this man to be
   at peace with me. I have put myself out of the way to be at peace with
   him. Notwithstanding all his malice and mischief I have said to him,
   'Come, let us make a treaty and be friends. Why should this enmity
   continue? Why should there not be peace between us?' And when I have
   done this, he has turned scornfully on his heels and has said that he
   defied my mercy, and cared not for my love. I have acted thus
   generously many times. I have put myself to a great expense in order to
   subdue his hatred and set him right with me. And yet he has stood out
   against me! How can reason and justice expect me to do any more?"

   I might, perhaps, answer, "No, neither of them can well expect more of
   you. But what we cannot expect of you, the guilty penitent may yet
   expect of God." After all these years of rebellion, after these many
   times in which you have rejected loving invitations given by a tender
   mother or an earnest minister in God's name--after these multiplied
   rejections--His mercy is not gone forever, neither does His loving
   kindness fail! It is astonishing that some of you are still on earth
   after the many, many times that you have been bestirred in soul to call
   unto God. I know it has not been this voice only which has called you,
   but there has been a voice within--your conscience, your awakened
   conscience has cried to you--"Return unto the Lord your God."

   But you have silenced the thunder of conscience so many times that it
   is a marvel the Holy Spirit has not said, "Let him alone, he is given
   unto idols." Here you are, still on praying ground and pleading terms
   with God. Thank Him for it, and be grateful that all these rejections
   have not moved Him to swear that you shall not enter into His rest. He
   waits still to be gracious--

   "Still does His good Spirit strive With the chief of sinners."

   May God grant that you may have made your last rejection, and may you,
   this day, yield to the Savior!

   I should like to ask a favor of anyone here who is under conviction of
   sin and who has formed his thoughts of God from what he would do if he
   were in God's place. I would earnestly beg him to go out into the
   street, or the field, or the garden--wherever he best can this
   afternoon--and just look up and try, if he can, form an idea of how
   high the heavens are above the earth. Or if you prefer, when night
   comes on, stand under that starry canopy and think about how high those
   heavens are above the earth. You need not limit your contemplations to
   the planets and the nearest of the fixed stars--go beyond, beyond,
   beyond, beyond the most distant of the nebulae--and think how matchless
   the heavens are in height above the globe on which we tread.

   Think over, if you will, what you know concerning astronomy. Measure
   the infinite leagues of space which lie beyond the narrow bounds of our
   solar system, or even of this universe of visible stars. And then
   remember that as high as these heavens are above the earth, so high are
   the Lord's thoughts above your thoughts, and His ways above your ways!
   Indeed, there is no comparison between the two, for He says positively,
   "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are My ways your ways."

   II. Let us now turn to the second head and contrast your thoughts about
   THE PLAN OF PARDON with God's thoughts. If you have advanced far enough
   to believe that God can pardon, and have to this extent laid hold upon
   God's thoughts, it is well. But still another of your own thoughts
   drags you down, for you have a wrong idea of the way of pardon. I will
   suppose that there are persons here who ignorantly say, "If it is true
   that the Lord will pardon sin, let Him do it outright. Let Him just
   take the pen and mark through all my transgressions, and have done with
   them. He has but to say, 'I forgive you,' and that is the end of it."

   But God's thoughts are not your thoughts in this case. You have
   evidently become so impure in heart as to look upon sin as a trifle.
   But the Judge of all the earth is of another mind. He is the Governor
   of all worlds and must maintain His government. There may be tens of
   thousands of races of creatures all subject to Him and governed by the
   same Law of immutable right and justice. If it were whispered
   throughout the universe that on so much as one solitary occasion the
   Judge of all the earth had winked at sin and exercised His Sovereignty
   to suspend His moral Law and to deny Justice its due--it would not
   matter how obscure an object the tolerated sinner might be--he would be
   quoted in every world and mentioned by every race of creatures as a
   proof that Divine Justice was not invariable and without respect of
   persons.

   If it is right to punish sin at all, it must be right to do so in every
   case! And suffering sin to go unpunished in one case would be a sort of
   confession that the penalty was too severe. Now, therefore, the great
   Ruler cannot suffer sin to go unpunished. God as a moral Governor is
   such in all His actions, on the smallest scale, as it would be best for
   Him to be on the grandest scale. If God forgave sin without penalty, He
   would no longer be equally resplendent in every attribute since Mercy
   would eclipse Justice.

   Princes may, on earth, exercise their sovereignty with a mercy which
   forgets justice. This is because of the imperfection of the laws which
   they administer, or of themselves as governors. But God, reigning as a
   perfect Governor, administering perfect Laws, never allows exceptions
   or does other than what is right. Jehovah is invariably the same, and
   if the angels that sinned were punished, so must every other sinning
   creature be punished or else God will have changed--which can never
   be--since He is the same evermore.

   Now, Sinner, you think that God might forgive you and no hurt would
   come of it. I have hinted that there might be an universal evil
   spreading through unnumbered worlds by the forgiveness of the most
   obscure individual without the exaction of a penalty. The foundations
   would be removed and then what could even the righteous do? No, God
   will not forgive you without penalty. Your thoughts are not His
   thoughts. He will have stroke for stroke, and what the Law required it
   shall receive! He will not pass by your transgressions without exacting
   the full demands of His justice.

   I have no doubt there are others here who have a notion that God may,
   perhaps, forgive them by putting them through a course of affliction.
   It is still a superstitious notion lingering in England that poor
   persons are the special subjects of Divine favor, and that hard work
   and poverty, and especially a long lingering sickness are a means of
   putting away sin. Persons so afflicted have had so much misery in this
   life that they do not deserve to suffer more!

   This is a falsehood which is seldom mentioned in the pulpit because it
   is thought to be non-existent. But we know it to be very prevalent
   among certain classes. But oh, my Hearer, your thoughts on this matter
   are not God's thoughts! The eternal miseries of Hell are not a full
   expiation for the unutterable blackness of sin--much less can the
   miseries of this life be! You may be as poor as Lazarus and never lie
   in Abraham's bosom! You may endure as many sufferings here as fell to
   the lot of Job, and yet you may go from Job's dunghill to the flames of
   Hell. Cast out any idea that these sufferings or privations of yours
   can make atonement for sin! God's thoughts are not your thoughts.

   A more current idea, still, is that God will put away the past and give
   men a new start. And that if they go on well for the future, then in
   their dying hour, when it comes to the end, God will pardon. But Soul,
   there is nothing of that said in the Word of God! That truthful Book
   tells us solemnly that as far as the matter of keeping the Law and
   being saved by our good works are concerned, we have, all of us, but
   one opportunity--and the moment we commit one sin that opportunity is
   over! No, before we began life our father Adam had spoiled that chance
   for us by his sin. The Word of God never speaks about giving us a
   second chance! The law says, "Cursed is every man that continues not in
   all things that are written in the Book of the Law to do them."

   It says nothing whatever of starting in business again in the hopes
   that you may at last make your spiritual fortune! Nothing of the kind!
   And those of you who are trying your hands at reformation and hoping
   that in a dying hour you will get peace to your souls are spending your
   money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which
   profits not--for if you never sinned in the future--what would that
   have to do with the past? Will a man's paying ready money in the future
   defray the debts which he has already incurred? God has a right to the
   obedience of your whole life--do you suppose that giving Him the
   obedience of a part of it will be accepted as a satisfaction for the
   whole?

   Moreover, who are you that you should be holy? Who can bring a clean
   thing out of an unclean? Not one. You will only repeat your former
   life--you will go back again like the dog to its vomit--and the sow
   that was washed to her wallowing in the mire. As for peace in the hour
   of death, he who is not pardoned living is not likely to be pardoned
   dying. Nine out of ten, perhaps nine hundred and ninety-nine out of
   every thousand of professed deathbed salvations are a delusion! We have
   good facts to prove that. A certain physician collected notes of
   several hundreds of cases of persons who professed conversion who were
   supposed to be dying. These persons did not die but lived, and in the
   case of all but one they lived just as they had lived before--though
   when they were thought to be dying they appeared as if they were truly
   converted. Do not look forward to that! It is a mere snare of Satan.
   God save you from it--for in this case His thoughts are not your
   thoughts.

   There is a very current supposition, however, that God pardons sin in
   this way--that He says, "Well now. I forgive you the past. My Law was a
   little too severe for you, but I will try you again under a more
   lenient rule. Do us well as you can, attend a place of worship, pray
   and be very religious and I will save you." Ah, but my dear Friend, God
   does nothing of the kind! He does not say to a sinner, "There, Sinner,
   I forgive the past. Now you must see how you can behave for the
   future." The forgiveness which is given to a sinner reaches to the sins
   which are yet to be committed as well as to the sins which he has
   already done--

   "Here's pardon for transgressions past, It matters not how black their
   cast. And oh my Soul, with wonder view, For sins to come here's pardon
   too!"

   Jesus does not forgive a part, but He forgives the whole. He says, "I
   absolve you, none shall lay anything to your charge." And this is not
   only for the present but for the future, too! It is a forgiveness which
   makes a clean sweep of all sin, since all the sin of all Believers is
   present sin in the sight of God though it is not present sin to them.
   If the Lord forgives you at all, dear Sinner, let me tell you what He
   will do--He will punish that sin of yours--no He has punished it in
   Christ! Christ stood for you and bore all that you ought to have borne
   from the wrath of God--therefore God is severely just while He is
   bountifully merciful to you!

   In the next place, when God forgives you He does it unconditionally. He
   will not forgive you on the condition of this or that in the future.
   But He now speaks the word, "I have blotted out your sins like a cloud,
   and like a thick cloud your iniquities." All this He can do in a
   moment! Before that clock ticks yet again the sentence may go forth,
   "That soul has trusted My dear Son and I have made him whiter than
   snow, and whiter than snow He shall be in My sight in time and in
   eternity. I have cast all his sins behind My back. I have covered him
   with a robe of righteousness. He is now Mine, and he shall be Mine in
   the day when I make up My jewels."

   Here is a pardon which you have not to earn, but to accept freely. Here
   is a pardon given to you--not on the condition of anything you are to
   be, to feel, to do, or to give--but a pardon given freely to you out of
   the riches of God's loving kindness and tender mercy. Jesus Christ has
   bought it! Jesus Christ has bought it for you! He brings it to you now,
   and oh, if you have Divine Grace to receive it, you may accept it and
   go on your way rejoicing in the Lord your God! This is a pardon worth
   receiving!

   Let me ask you a second time to look up and consider that all your
   ideas of God's pardon are but thoughts here on the earth--but His
   thoughts of love to you are as high above you as the heavens are above
   the earth.

   III. To conclude--time seems to have traveled at double speed this
   morning--I wanted to have said, in the third place, a little as to THE
   PRESENT POSSESSION of this pardon. There is an idea in the mind of many
   of you that the plan of just trusting in Christ and being pardoned on
   the spot is too simple to be safe. You want a plan which involves a
   host of Latin and Greek and all sorts of ornaments and garments. You
   want vestments, and altars, and prayers, and hymns, and chants, and Te
   Deums and all that kind of thing. You want a long ceremony of baptism,
   confirmation, confession, communion, penance, matins, vespers,
   festivals and I know not what!

   But the Gospel is, "Trust Jesus and live." "Believe on Jesus Christ and
   you are saved." It is too simple, you think, to be safe. Now it is a
   well known fact that the simplest remedies are the most potent and
   safe. And, certainly, the simplest rules in mechanics are just those
   upon which the greatest engineers construct their most wonderful
   inventions! The moment you get to complexity you get into a snarl and
   are on the brink of weakness. Simplicity, how solid it is! See the
   old-fashioned plan of putting a plank across the village brook--that
   was the old way of making a bridge! Well, then, somebody came in and
   invented an arch--a grand invention, certainly, but not in all cases
   available, because in a measure complex.

   What are the engineers coming back to? The old plan of the plank! The
   Menai tubular bridge is nothing more than the old plan of a plank
   thrown across the brook--and more and more great engineers revert to
   simplicities. When man grows wisest he comes back to where he was when
   he started. I suppose that when the swan first sailed across the lake
   it gave to the navigator the best possible model of a vessel to which
   navigation will always have to keep close if it would keep close to the
   true and beautiful. Now, as in nature simplicity is strength, so is it
   certainly in Divine Grace. Trust Christ and live! And let me say,
   simple as it looks, it is the most philosophical plan of salvation that
   could have been thought out--for faith is the mainspring of the entire
   man--and when faith is right all the powers are right.

   Teaching men morals is as though I had a clock that would not go, and I
   turned round one of the cog-wheels. But faith takes the key and winds
   up the mainspring and the whole thing runs on readily. Do not despise
   the Gospel because it is simple! Trust Christ and you shall live now!
   Believe that Jesus Christ has made a full Atonement and rest yourself
   wholly on Him! Just as I rest wholly now upon this rail--with your
   whole weight rest on Christ! And if you are not saved the Word of God
   does not speak the truth, for it is written, "He that believe on Him is
   not condemned." "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved."

   I think I hear you say, "It is too good to be true." That is an
   objection I myself fought with for a very long time. But surely the
   best things about our good God must be the truest. If anyone should
   tell me a thing that was not very good about God, I might indignantly
   say, "That must be untrue! If it is about God it must be good, and as
   it is about the Most High it must be good in the highest degree." Oh
   Sinner, it does seem a very wonderful thing that you should be made a
   child of Heaven this morning--crimes of such horror and multitude be
   forgiven in a moment--it does seem too good to be true!

   But then it is just like our God. "Is not it surprising," said one to a
   good old saint, "that God should forgive such sins?" "No," she said,
   "it is not surprising, it is just like Him." And it is just like
   Him--just like a God who gave His own dear Son to die that He should
   take the prodigal and fall upon his neck, and kiss him, and feast him,
   and rejoice and be merry because His lost one was found!

   Lastly, I think I hear your heart say, "It seems to me to be a plan too
   swift to be sure. What? In a moment? I can understand getting through a
   long treadmill of doubts that would take me a dozen years, and then
   getting into something like light and peace. But can all this be done
   in an instant?" "I do not believe in those medicines," says one, "which
   say 'cured in an instant.'" Very likely not, there are many quacks
   about! But this is no human cure--this is a Divine prescription.
   Believe and live! Have done with yourself and begin with Christ! From
   sin to holiness, from earth to Heaven is only one step--that one step
   is out of self and into Christ.

   The thing is as simple as taking that step. "Why is it so hard, then?"
   says somebody. Because your hearts are hard. It is not hard in itself.
   If it were a harder thing you would like it better--but it is because
   it is so simple that your wicked heart will never take it till God the
   Holy Spirit breaks that heart. I never knew a man believe in Jesus
   Christ till he felt he could not do anything else. "Well," says he, "I
   cannot save myself and I will therefore let Christ do it." May the Lord
   pump you dry of all your self-sufficiency and then the stream of
   eternal mercy will come flowing down through the silver pipe of the
   atoning sacrifice and you shall rejoice and live!

   I have now to say to every sinner here, in conclusion, that my God is a
   God willing to pardon, a God passing by transgression, iniquity, and
   sin! These are His words, not only to the whole of you as a mass, but
   to each unconverted person in particular, though I cannot point the
   finger to everyone. "Come now, and let us reason together. Though your
   sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are
   red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Do not those words melt you
   at all? I pray God that He may bless them to you. You have been
   restored, brought here again after much affliction. God has been
   gracious to you. He has passed by much sin in His long-suffering.

   Oh, let Heaven's mercy melt you! He seems to me, this morning, to be
   standing here and to be saying, "How can I give you up, Ephraim? How
   shall I deliver you, Israel? How can I set you as Admah? How can I make
   you as Zeboim? My heart is moved, my repentings are kindled together. I
   will not destroy you, for I am God and not man." Fly, then, to your
   Father's bosom! Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the
   way! And may this day witness joy in Heaven because the prodigal has
   returned and the lost sheep is found! God bless this simple address to
   each of us, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               Faith Versus Sight

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For we walk by faith, not by sight." 2 Corinthians 5:7.

   I THINK the Apostle is explaining here how it was he could say that
   while he was at home in the body, he was absent from the Lord--and
   through what means he felt that this was not the state in which he
   wished to be forever. Having been possessed, and actuated, and moved by
   the principle of faith, he was not content to tabernacle in a body
   which could only be dwelt in satisfactorily through the influence of
   the faculty of sight. The Apostle, however, mentions here a great
   general principle--"We walk by faith, not by sight." In talking upon
   this text this evening, we shall--without pretending to go into it
   fully--speak, first of all, upon the posture mentioned. Then upon the
   two principles contrasted, and finally upon a certain caution which is
   here implied.

   I. First, a word or two about THE POSTURE MENTIONED. Paul, speaking of
   Believers, says: "We walk by faith, not by sight." Walking is, of
   course, a posture which implies the possession of life. You can make a
   dead man sit in a certain position, or even stand in a chosen
   attitude--but to walk necessitates the possession of inward life. It
   becomes with us, therefore, a question, in the first place, whether we
   have the life of God within us.

   In the sense in which the term "walk" is here used, the ungodly man
   does not walk at all. He hastens after his own lusts and he treads in
   the way of the flesh. But in a spiritual sense he is, and always must
   be a stranger to "walking" until God has quickened him. When we see
   corpses walking along our roads and pass them at eventide in our
   streets, then shall we expect to see Christian feelings, Christian
   emotions, and Christian character exhibited by unconverted men--but not
   till then! There must first be an inward life before there can be the
   outwardsign of it.

   Walking is a position which also signifies activity. You would suppose,
   from the way in which some Christians deport themselves, that their
   whole life was spent in meditation. It is a blessed thing to sit--

   " With Mary at the Master's feet," but we walk as well as sit. We do
   not merely learn, but we practice what we know. We are not simply
   scholars, but, having been taught as scholars, we go on to show our
   scholarship by working in the vineyard or wherever else the Master may
   be pleased to place us. The quietists and mystics are a class of people
   who have a peculiar attraction for my mind, and I suppose the mention
   of such a name as that of Madame Guyon, who, among females, stands at
   the very head of the school, will awaken in many of you many sweet
   remembrances of times enjoyed in reading her blessed hymns and of her
   sweet and admirable life.

   But, after all, it is not the highest style of Christian living to be a
   mystic or a quietist. "We walk." Some Christians seem as if they always
   sit, but, "we walk." You would gather, indeed, from what others say,
   that the whole life of a Christian is to be spent in prayer. Prayer, it
   is true, is the vitality of the secret parts of Christian life, but we
   are not always on our knees! We are not constantly engaged in seeking
   blessings from Heaven. We do, "continue in prayer," but we are also
   engaged in showing forth to others the blessings which we have
   received, and in exhibiting in our daily actions the fruits which we
   have gathered on the mountaintop of communion with God. "We walk," and
   this implies activity.

   Oh, I would that some Christians would pay a little attention to their
   legs instead of paying it all to their heads! When children's heads
   grow too fast it is a sign of disease and they get the rickets or water
   on the brain. And there are some very sound Brethren who seem to me to
   have got some kind of disease--and when they try to walk, they
   straightway make a tumble of it--because they have paid so much
   attention to perplexing doctrinal views instead of looking, as they
   ought to have done, to the practical part of Christianity.

   By all means let us have doctrine! But by all means let us have
   precepts, too. By all means let us have inward experience, but by all
   means let us also have outward "holiness, without which no man can see
   the Lord." "We walk." This is more than some can say. They can
   affirm--"We talk. We think. We experience. We feel"--but true
   Christians can say, with the Apostle Paul, "We walk." Oh that we may
   ever be able to say it, too! Here, then, is the activity of the
   Christian life.

   In the posture of walking there is also implied progress. A man does
   not walk unless he makes some headway. We are not always practicing the
   goose-step. We are not always lifting our foot and then putting it down
   in the same place. This may do very well for the beginners in the
   awkward squad at drill, and I am afraid that a great many of us are
   still in that squad--but the Christian who has got through his
   childhood, and has grown somewhat, makes progress. There are some who
   will tell you that they do not know that they have made any progress,
   or, if they do not say this, you can see that they have made none.

   They are as bad-tempered as when they first joined the Church. They are
   as changing, as narrow-minded, as critical, as easily "carried about
   with every wind of doctrine" as they were at first. Such persons give
   some cause for suspicion as to whether they know much about the Divine
   life at all--because they who have the Divine life truly in them can
   say-- "We walk." They go from strength to strength. Every one of them
   appears in Zion before God. They are not satisfied with being in the
   Way--they desire also to walk in the Way. God does not say to us--"This
   is the Way," and then stop--He says, "This is the Way, walkin it."

   We are always to be making advances. We are to be going from faith in
   its beginnings to faith in its perfections-- from faith to
   assurance--from assurance to full assurance. And from there we are to
   go to the full assurance of hope to the full assurance of
   understanding--always forward, waxing stronger and stronger. There is a
   progress to be made in every Christian Grace and he who carefully marks
   the terms used about Christian Graces will discover that there are
   degrees in all of them, while each of them are degrees one above the
   other. Walking implies progress and the genuine Christian, when he is
   in a healthy state, may truthfully say--"We walk."

   Walking also implies perseverance. When a man goes along a step or two
   and then stops, or returns, we do not call that walking. The motion of
   the planets, as seen by the eye have been described by the poet as
   "progressive, retrograde, and standing still." I am afraid there are
   many people of whom this would be a true description, but the true
   Christian keeps on. And though there may often appear to be times when
   he stops, and seasons when he goes back, yet the Scripture is not
   broken where it says that, "The path of the just is as the shining
   light, that shines more and more unto the perfect day."

   The Christian's motto is, "Upward and onward." Not as though he had
   already attained, either was already perfect--he presses forward to the
   mark for the prize of his high calling in Christ Jesus. We are not true
   Christians if we stop, or start, or turn aside. As an arrow from a bow
   that is drawn by some mighty archer speeds straightway towards its
   goal, such is the Christian life as it is and such is it as it always
   should be. We make progress, and we persevere in so doing.

   I think, however, that by the term "walk" the Apostle meant to signify
   that, in the ordinary and customary actions of life we are actuated by
   faith. You know walking is the common way of moving. You do not often
   talk of a child's walking. You do speak of it, of course, but you
   generally say, "There are the little ones running about the house." You
   do not say that they are "walking about the house," because the way of
   moving with the young is generally running, inasmuch as they have a
   great deal of extra energy and have not yet got into the wear and tear
   of life.

   You do not find lambs walking at all in the ordinary way in which sheep
   do. Now, it is very easy, in the beginning of the Christian life, to
   run in the ways of the Lord with rejoicing--but running, after all, is
   not the most manly form of progress--it is not that which can be kept
   up for long! Running fatigues and tires you-- walkingis that kind of
   progress in which a man continues hour after hour. And after his
   night's rest he rises again to walk on as before until he reaches his
   goal.

   In Scripture we often read of men who, by faith, did great exploits.
   "By my God I have broken through a troop. By my God I will leap over a
   wall." Now this is a very great thing to do, and some Christians are
   always fixing their eyes upon exploits of faith. The Apostle Paul cut
   through troops and did leap over walls, but in this place he speaks of
   the common actions of life. It is as if he said--"I not only leap walls
   by faith, but I walk by faith! I not only break through troops by
   faith, but I go and do my business by faith."

   That man has not yet learned the true spirit of Christianity who is
   always saying, "I can preach a sermon by faith." Yes, Sir, but can you
   make a coat by faith? "I can distribute tracts, and visit the district
   by faith." Can you cook a dinner by faith? I mean, can you perform the
   common actions of the household, and the daily duties which fall to
   your lot in the spirit of faith? This is what the Apostle means. He
   does not speak about running, or jumping or fighting, but about
   walking--and he means to tell you that the ordinary life of a Christian
   is different from the life of another man--that he has learned to
   introduce faith into everythinghe does. It was not a bad saying of one
   who said that he, "did eat and drink, and sleep eternal life." We want
   not a home-spun religion, but a religion that was spun in Heaven and
   that will do to wear at home and about the house. "We walk by faith."

   The Mohammedan worships his god at the "holy hour." The true Christian
   calls all hours "holy," and worships always. Some set apart the seventh
   day of the week, and therein do well, but in setting apart allthe seven
   days, and living to God, and entering into rest throughout them all, we
   do better still. Our souls should not keep our religion for the
   Tabernacle and the pew, and the closet, and the open Bible, and the
   bended knee. Our religion must become the atmospherein which we live,
   the element in which our soul breathes! Our God must dwell in us, and
   we dwell in Him. We must feed upon Christ, not as a special dainty, but
   as "the bread of Heaven," and drink of Him, not as a luxury, but as
   "the water of life." We must wear our piety, not as some holiday
   garment, but as our everyday dress and then it is that we get into the
   spirit of true religion.

   Summing up all, then, the whole of the Christian life which is implied
   in the term, "walk," is here spoken of, and it is influenced by the
   principle of faith which we are now about to speak.

   II. And now, secondly, in the text we have TWO PRINCIPLES CONTRASTED.
   There is walking by faith, and there is walking by sight. The most of
   men, all men, indeed, naturally walk by sight. They have a proverb
   that, "Seeing is believing," and they are wise men, for they trust
   people as far as they can see them, and no further. The world thinks
   itself uncommonly knowing in always depending upon its own sight.

   The highest degree of worldly wisdom seems to be just this--see
   everything for yourself and do not be taken in. Do not be led by the
   nose by anybody, but follow your own understanding. This is the text
   which the world's Solomons always preach from--"Self-made Men"--that is
   the title of their book! Self-reliance--that is the name of their
   principle, and, according to the world, the best and grandest thing
   that a man can do is to have faith in himself! Their maxim is, "Know
   things for yourself. Look after the main chance. Make money--make it
   honestly if you can, and honorably if possible, but, if not, make it
   anyhow, by hook or by crook." "Take care of Number One"--this is the
   world' s learned dictum.

   Now the Christian is the very opposite of this. He says--"I do not care
   about looking after the things that are seen and are temporal. They are
   like dissolving views, or the scenes from a child's magic
   lantern--there is nothing in them-- they are but phantoms and shadows.
   The things that are not seen influence me because they are eternal They
   endure, remain, abide, and therefore they affect a creature which has
   learned that it has, not mortality alone, but immortality, and who,
   expecting to live forever, therefore seeks for things which will be
   like his own existence."

   Now, since the world thinks itself so very wise for holding everything
   it can, and thinks the Christian such a great fool for giving up what
   he can see for what he cannot see, in contradiction to the world's
   proverb, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"--let us see
   where the wisdom of this matter is, and where it is not. In the first
   place, we notice that walking by sight is a very childish thing. Any
   child can walk by sight, and so can any fool, too. We know how a child
   feels when it looks at a mountain, and we have all felt the same when
   we have gone to Switzerland and other places.

   I had a friend with me, who said of a certain mountain--"I will
   undertake to be at the top in half-an-hour." It took us five and a half
   hours steady toiling, and we did not go slowly either! Of course my
   friend judged by his sight, and not being accustomed to mountains, and
   not knowing that sight is a very different thing when it comes to deal
   with different landscapes--not knowing that a judgment which would be
   pretty accurate in England would be totally wrong in the mountains of
   Wales, and still more erroneous in Switzerland--not knowing all this, I
   dare say he would be startled at eventide, expecting to find himself at
   the top before the sun went down, whereas he would not have reached it
   till the middle of the night!

   A child always judges everything by what he sees. You give him a number
   of coins. They are all counterfeit, but he is so pleased with them that
   he does not care about having real sovereigns--he is just as glad to
   have those he has, for they look quite as good. You offer him sixpence
   and when he is yet a youngster he will give you your sixpence back for
   a penny because the penny is the larger of the two. He judges by sight,
   which, you see, is a childish principle altogether. When a man grows up
   he no longer judges so much by sight. He has learned a great many
   things in this world and he has discovered that his eyes may be very
   greatly mistaken at times.

   The child says--"How quickly these stars move! How fast the moon
   hastens through the clouds!" The man says-- "No, no. It is the clouds
   that are moving." The child says that the sun rises in the morning and
   sets in the evening, and admires its motion. But the man knows that the
   sun does not move at all, and that it is the earth that is moving. He
   believes this, and thus in a certain degree he has faith because he
   cannot see the world move. Hodge once said he would not believe the
   world moved at all because he found that his house still stood in the
   same place, and Hodge proved himself to have been thus only a big
   child. But it is a very manly thing to believe something which you
   cannot see. Even in common philosophy it is so.

   The children all sat at home in England, and in Spain, and in France
   and they said--"Oh, this is all the world, this is," and they had their
   Mediterranean Sea in the middle of the earth. But there was a man among
   them who said he did not believe it but thought the world was round,
   and that there was another half to it. "You are a fool," they said.
   "Fool or not," he replied, "I believe it." And Columbus stood up, head
   and shoulders taller than the rest of his fellows and got a few to go
   with him and started--a company of fools they were called. They could
   not see anything!

   They sailed on, and on, and on, for many weary days, and the
   unbelievers said they had better go back. There were several pieces of
   seaweed floating about which looked as if they came from some other
   shore, or had been washed down some not far distant river. Columbus did
   not care much for these seaweeds because he believed, and believed
   firmly, that there was another half of the globe. And when the land
   birds came and lighted on his ship, though they gladdened his heart,
   yet they did not make him believe any the more. And when he saw
   America, and stood on the strand of the land of gold, he still only had
   to keep on as he had done. He had walked by faith before, and he could
   continue in the same course now. When he came back everybody
   said--"What a wonderful man is Columbus!" Just 50 and all the rest were
   children--he was the only true man among them.

   Now the Christian is a man! I mean to say he is "a man" in the
   Scriptural sense of the term. He has become a full-grown man in Christ
   Jesus, and while the worldling says--"This is all the world. Let us eat
   and drink, for tomorrow we die. Let us make money and spend it and
   enjoy ourselves, for this is the end of the world"--the Christian says,
   "No, there must be another half to the world! I am sure there must be
   another land beyond the sea, so I will loose my anchor and turn my
   helm, and try to find it. I will leave this world to you children and
   will seek another and a more heavenly one."

   So we sail away and by-and-by we see the bits of seaweed. And when at
   last the angelic messengers come, like birds of Paradise, and light
   upon the masts of our vessels, then we thank God that we were ever
   enabled, with true manly courage, to loose our anchor, to set out upon
   our voyage and to turn our helm towards the sea! We thank Him that we
   believed in God and were actuated by a noble principle of faith,
   compared with which the world's wisdom is but the folly of the child.
   This, then, is the first thing we have to say about these two
   principles--that the one is childish while the other is manly.

   Again, the one is groveling while the other is noble. I think the world
   must be pretty well ashamed of itself if it still considers this poor
   earth to be all that a soul has to live for. I feel as if I could not
   talk upon the matter. Solomon tried everything there was in this
   world--riches, power, pleasure--every sort of delicacy and delight he
   had, beyond the point of satisfaction--and what was his verdict upon it
   all? "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" A man earning his bread all
   day long--what is he? Is he better than the donkey that I saw a little
   while ago at Carisbrook Castle, pumping up water and always going
   round? What more is he than that?

   "Well, but he makes money and acquires houses and land." Yes, and there
   is only so much more probate tax to be paid when he dies, and I suppose
   the worms know no difference between a man who died worth three hundred
   thousand pounds and a poor wretch who was buried by the parish! It does
   not come to anything more than that! The children go to the seaside
   with their little wooden spades and build up a pier of sand, but the
   tide comes and washes it away--and this is just what men do--they build
   with heavier stuff, which gives them more care and not half so much
   merriment in piling up as the youngsters have in digging up their sand.
   But the end is just the same!

   Only the children live to build again, while these big children, these
   grovelers, are washed out to sea with all their works and perish
   everlastingly. You have walked upon the beach, I dare say, when the sea
   has gone down. I do not mean the beach at Ramsgate where everybody
   goes, but a long way out in some quiet spot. If you have, you will have
   seen what hundreds of little mounds there are all over the beach, where
   the worms have come up and made a number of small heaps. That is all we
   do, and it is all that the world is--just a big place covered all over
   with little heaps of dirt that we have all piled up.

   But where have we gone? If there is not another world to live for, I
   must say that this life is a most unutterably empty kind of thing! It
   is not worthy of a man! But oh, to believe what God tells me--that
   there is a God--that God became flesh to bear me up to Himself! To
   believe that I am God's son--that I have an immortality within myself
   which will outlast the stars--that I shall one day see His face and
   sing His praise forever with cherubim and seraphim! Why, there is
   something herd. The man who believes this feels as if he begins to
   grow! He bursts the poor engrossments of his flesh and expands into
   something worthy of a man who is made in the image of the Most High!

   The principle of seeing everything, and of liking only to get what I
   can see, and touch, and handle is the poor instinct of beasts and
   birds, but the principle of living upon what I cannot see, and upon
   something that I can believe, is one worthy of a man. As much as man is
   higher than the beast, so much and yet more a thousand-fold is the life
   of faith superior to that of mere sight and feeling.

   Again--there is something exceedingly ignorant about believing only
   what I can see. What, then, shall I believe? Even in common life the
   man who walks by sight must necessarily be a fool--I say necessarily
   because nine out of ten things in the world that are the most wonderful
   and potent cannotbe seen--at least not by the eyes. A man who will not
   believe in electricity--well, what can you make of him in these days?
   Such a man will believe in the vapor that puffs from the steam engine,
   but since nobody ever did or could see steam, inasmuch as it is an
   invisible agent, he cannot ever believe in that!

   He lives in the midst of a great world and he cannot account for most
   things in it because he will not believe in anything beyond what he
   sees. If he carries this principle out--the marvels of other countries,
   and the wonders of other ages are all shut out from his poor dull mind.
   And this is most decidedly the case with regard to spiritual things. If
   you only walk by sight, and only believe what you see, what do you
   believe? You believe that while you are living here it is a good thing
   to make the best you can of it. And that then you will die and be
   buried, and that will be the end of you! What a poor, miserable,
   ignorant belief this is!

   But when you believe in what God reveals and come to walk by faith, how
   your information expands! Now riddles are all solved, and the
   inexplicable is understood! Now you begin to comprehend things in a way
   which you never could have done had you walked only by sight. Now you
   can understand those trials and troubles that come to you! Now you can
   understand the complexity of your nature and the inward conflicts that
   you feel within you. You could never have done this on the principle of
   sight--but believing what God says you have got into a state in which
   you shall be educated and taught till you become wise--and able to have
   fellowship with the only wise God!

   Let me say, again, that walking by sight is such a very deceptive way
   of walking. After all, the eyes do not see anything--it is the mind
   that sees through the eyes. The eyes in every man have some sort of
   defect in them--they need to be educated for a long time before they
   tell the truth! And even then there are a thousand things about which
   they do not always speak truly. The man who walks by his eyes will be
   deceived in many ways. The angler baits his hook and casts his fly upon
   the water, and the silly fish, which jumps by sight, has the hook in
   its jaws in a moment. You can evermore, if you will, go from bad to
   worse in unseen danger if you will judge according to the sight of the
   eyes.

   The world is wise enough to say that, "Honesty is the best policy." The
   world was not quite itself when it said that, for mostly it is present
   gain that Satan sets before us, and present pleasure. "Snatch the hour
   as it passes," says Satan. "These things are sure--you do not know what
   may come afterwards." And so is the poor soul deceived by judging
   according to what he thinkshe sees, whereas the man who has a God to go
   to, and to believe in, is never deceived. The promise to him always
   stands fast. The Person of Christ is always his sure refuge, and God
   Himself is his perpetual inheritance.

   Let me add, again, that the principle of sight is a very changeable
   one. You can see well enough, you know, in the day, but what will you
   do in the night when you cannot see? It is well enough to talk of
   walking by sight in the light, but what will you do when the darkness
   comes on? It is very well to talk about living on time present while
   you are here, but when you go upstairs and lie on your deathbed, what
   about the principle of living for the present then? When you cannot
   stay here any longer--when, notwithstanding all the ties which held you
   to earth, Death begins to drag you away and you cry to him--"Stop! I
   cannot leave wife, and children, and business just yet!" And when Death
   remorselessly tears you away from all that is dear to you--how about
   the principle of sight then? It is a strange principle to die with,
   but, let me say, on the other hand, that the principle of faith does
   best in the dark!

   He who walks by faith can walk in the sunlight as well as you can, for
   he walks with God--he has enlightened eyes, but he can walk in the dark
   as you cannot, for his light is still shining upon him. He trusts in
   the unseen and in the invisible--and his soul rejoices when present
   things are passing away. We will not tarry longer upon this point
   except to say one thing, namely, that those who walk by sight walk
   alone. Walking by sight is just this--"I believe in myself." Whereas
   walking by faith is--"I believe in God." If I walk by sight I walk by
   myself. If I walk by faith then there are two of us, and the second
   one--ah, how great, how glorious, how mighty is He!

   He is the Great All-in-All! He is God All-Sufficient! Sight goes to war
   at its own charges and becomes bankrupt and is defeated. Faith goes to
   war at the charges of the King's Exchequer and there is no fear that
   Faith's bank shall ever be broken. Sight builds the house from its own
   quarry and on its own foundation, but it begins to build and is never
   able to finish. And what it does build rests on sand and falls. But
   Faith builds on the foundation laid in eternity--in the fair colors of
   the Savior's blood--in the Covenant of Grace! It goes to God for every
   stone to be used in the building and brings forth the top-stone with
   shouts of, "Grace, Divine Grace unto it."

   Beloved, when you say, "I will do so-and-so," you may be very proud.
   But when you can say, "God will do so-and-so, and I believe it," then
   you will be humble and yet you may glory and boast as much as you will
   because there are two of you together. It is not "the sword of Gideon,"
   but, "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and Jehovah cannot be
   defeated. "The life that I live I live not, but Christ hides in me,"
   and this is the grand advantage. In living by sight you have to get
   your own wisdom, your own judgment, your own strength to guide you. And
   when you get into trouble you must be your own deliverer, and your own
   comforter, and your own helper or else you must run to somebody as weak
   as yourselves who will only send you deeper down into the mire.

   But when you walk by faith, should there seem to be a mistake you have
   not made it. Should anything seem to go wrong, you did not steer the
   ship. And if the ship should run aground, you are not answerable and
   will not be blamed. It is yours to be watchful and careful, and to
   believe that all things work together for the good of those who love
   God and are the called according to His purpose. But besides this we
   know that nothing can go wrong while God is in the vessel! Blessed be
   God, when Christ is on Lake Gennesaret there may come a stormy night,
   but every vessel gets safely to port and we can always sing--

   "Begone unbelief, my Savor is near, And for my relief will surely
   appear. By faith let me wrestle, and He will perform, With Christ in
   the vessel I smile at the storm."

   III. And now, having contrasted the two principles, I am about to close
   by noticing THE CAUTION IMPLIED in the text. The Apostle says
   positively, "We walk by faith," and then he adds negatively, "not by
   sight." The caution, then, is--NEVER MIX THE TWO PRINCIPLES. Some of
   you will not know what I am talking about but I will try to make you
   understand it. Some of you are actuated in what you do by something
   that you can see. You can see your children, and you will work for
   them. You can see money--you will strive for that. You can see
   such-and-such temporal good-- you will seek after that.

   But the Christian believes in God and he lives to God. He lives as if
   there were a God, but you live as if there were no God. He believes in
   a hereafter--you say you do, too--but you live as if there were no
   hereafter, while the Christian lives as if there was one. He believes
   in sin, and you say you do, and yet you never weep about it--while the
   Christian lives as if sin were a real disease and he could not bear it.
   You say you believe in Christ the Savior, but you live as if you did
   not believe in Him. The Christian lives upon his belief that there is a
   Savior. All that he does is affected and acted upon not by what he
   sees, but by what he does notsee and yet believes! He walks according
   to that faith.

   Now, the thing that neither you nor I can understand is this--how is it
   that the man who has once learned to walk by faith can be so stupid as
   ever to mix the two principles together? You may go on a journey by
   land, or you may go by water, but to try to swim and walk at the same
   time would be rather stupid. A drunken man tries to walk on both sides
   of the street at once--and there is a sort of intoxication that
   sometimes seizes upon Christians which makes them also try to walk by
   two principles. They cannot do it! It is like trying to go due east and
   due west at the same time. The principles themselves are antagonistic
   to one another and yet there are some Christians who attempt it.

   Shall I show you what I mean by this? You say--"I believe God loves me.
   I have prospered in business ever since I have been a Christian."
   Yes--the first part of that is faith--but the second part of it is
   sight. Suppose you had not prospered in business, what then? Why,
   according to your way of reasoning, you would have said--"I do not
   believe that God loves me, for I have not prospered in business since I
   have been a Christian." So, you see, you would really be walking by
   sight

   Genuine Christian reasoning is this--"I have trusted in the Lord Jesus
   Christ. He says that as many as receive Him are the sons of God. I have
   received Him, and I am therefore a son of God. Now, whether my Father
   kisses me or flogs me, I know that I am His son. I am not going to be
   guided by my state and condition, but by my faith as to the promise of
   the Word. He says that if I have received Christ I have the privilege
   to be a child of God. Then, whether I am rich or poor--whether I am
   sick or healthy--all these are matters of sight. I do not bring them
   into the calculation. I take the naked Word of God as it stands--that I
   am God's child. If He slays me I am His child. If He lets me go to
   prison, if He should suffer me to rot in a dungeon, or to burn at the
   stake, I am still His child! I do not look upon circumstances as at all
   affecting my position."

   Oh Beloved, if you once begin calculating your position before God
   according to your temporal circumstances, where will you be? Do not
   talk any more of believing--you have given it up--and you are really
   walking by sight. Perhaps many of you do not make precisely this
   mistake, but there is another way of doing it. "Now," says one, "I have
   believed in Jesus Christ, but I am afraid I am not saved, for I feel
   tonight so depressed in spirits, and so unhappy." "Oh," says another,
   "you need not tell me that I have trusted in Jesus Christ, for I am
   sure I am saved, because I feel so happy."

   Now you are both wrong, as wrong as wrong can be! When you said you
   trusted in Christ--so far, so good. But when you said you were afraid
   you were not saved because you were so unhappy, or, on the other hand,
   that you were sure you were saved because you were so happy--that,
   also, is walking by sight! You see you are mixing up the two principles
   which will no more go together than fire and water. If I have believed
   in Jesus Christ, I may at this moment, through disease of body or some
   other present temporal affliction, be very heavy in spirit--but I am
   saved notwithstanding. "He that believe on Him is not condemned."

   I may be very troubled. I may see a great deal in myself that may make
   me distressed--but if I believe, I am not condemned, and cannot be. Or,
   if I have strong faith and am possessed of great joy, that is no proof
   of my being saved. It is my believing that is the proof of that. I do
   not hang upon my feelings--I rely simply upon Christ! I must learn the
   difference between feeling and believing or else I shall always be
   blundering and making mistakes. You sometimes get taken by the Lord to
   the mountaintop and you have such sweet communion with Him! And then
   you say--"My mountain stands firm, I shall never be moved."

   Ah, poor Simpleton, you do not know what you are saying, for in a short
   time you may go down into the depths and cry--"All Your waves and Your
   billows have gone over me." You think that God has forgotten to be
   gracious and you begin to write bitter things against yourself--whereas
   that is the very time to "have faith in God"--

   " When we in darkness walk, Nor feel the heavenly flame, Then is the
   time to trust the Lord, And wait upon His name."

   You think that you will use your candle in the daytime, but candles
   were made for the night! Faith is not meant for sweet frames and
   feelings only--it is meant for dark frames and horrible feelings. Do
   you think that the minister has no changes? If he had no changes within
   he would know himself to be a Moabite and not an Israelite, for it is
   Moab that is settled on his lees!

   What, then, is the way to maintain peace when there are changes within
   the soul? How can we be peaceful when we are sometimes taken up to
   Heaven and are another time cast down? Why, the only way is never to be
   unduly elated by prosperity without or within and never to be unduly
   depressed by adversity or by doubts and fears! We must learn to live
   neither upon things without nor upon things within, but upon things
   abovewhich are the true food for a new-born spirit. What is your title
   for Heaven, Christian? Every evidence will one day be taken from you
   except that which is comprised in these three words: "It is written."

   The genuine foundation upon which I may rest for salvation is this:
   "God has said it." It is not, "I have experienced it," for there will
   often be times when I shall be afraid that my experience is a delusion.
   But if "God has said it," we can never be afraid! On the oath and
   Covenant of the Most High we must, every one of us, come and build! If
   we do that, all shall be well with us. But this is a work so far above
   human nature that human nature does not even understand it, and though
   I have tried to speak very plainly, I am conscious that I have spoken
   in riddles to many of you. God Himself must open the eyes to understand
   what living faith means, and then He must give that living faith and
   perpetuate it or else, as Israel went back in their hearts to Egypt, so
   shall we go back to the garlic and onions of the things that are seen
   and have but little of the manna which comes from an unseen Heaven.

   And now, in closing, I would affectionately bid you take heed of one
   thing. You must be sure if you walk by faith, that you walk by the
   rightfaith. I mean you must be sure that it is faith in Jesus Christ.
   If you put faith in your dreams, as some of you still do--or in
   anything you thought you saw when you were walking, or in a voice you
   thought you heard from the clouds, or in texts of Scripture coming to
   your mind--if you put faith in anything else but Christ--I do not care
   how good it may be or how bad it may be--you must beware, for such a
   faith as that will give way. You may have a very strong faith in
   everything else but Christ and perish!

   There was an architect who had a plan for building a lighthouse on the
   Eddystone Rock. He was quite satisfied, and as he sat by the fire
   looking at his plans he was quite sure that no storm that ever came
   could shake the building. He applied for the contract to build the
   lighthouse and did build it--and a very singular-looking place it was.
   There were a great many flags about it and ornaments and it looked very
   promising. Some shook their heads a little, but he was very, very firm
   and said he should like to be in it himself in the worst wind that ever
   blew. He was in it at the time he wanted to be--and he was never heard
   of again--nor was anything more ever seen of his lighthouse. The whole
   thing was swept away. He was a man of great faith, only it happened to
   be founded on mistaken principles.

   Now sometimes, because there is a way of talking which looks very much
   like assurance, you may say, "I am not afraid. I never had a doubt or a
   fear. I know it is all right with my soul. I am not afraid of the test
   of the Day of Judgment." Well, whether you wish it or not, that test
   for the labor of your lighthouse will come. And if it should prove that
   you built it yourself, it will be swept away--and you with it. But if
   your soul takes God's Word, and reading that Word, believes it and is
   willing to be taught its inward meaning--if you take that Word as it
   stands, and rest upon it, and act upon it with all your heart and
   soul--the worst storm that ever blew shall never shake your rock and
   refuge, nor you, either! And you shall be safe when earth' s old
   columns bow and all her wheels shall go to wreck and confusion.

   Rest in the Lord Jehovah! Depend on the blood and righteousness of the
   Lord Jesus Christ for all that you need! Rest wholly in Him with the
   whole weight of your soul and spirit and then there shall be no fear
   that what you shall see is God's face with acceptance! May God teach us
   faith on the right principle, and may we walk by it, and not by sight--
   and then the Lord shall give us that reward which is given to those who
   walk by faith in the living God!
     __________________________________________________________________

                            Praise Your God, O Zion!

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING. FEBRUARY 25, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And when He was come near, even now at the descent of the Mount of
   Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and
   praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had
   seen, saying, Blessed is the King that comes in the name of the Lord!
   Peace in Hea ven, and glory in the highest! And some of the Pharisees
   from among the multitude said unto Him, Master, rebuke Your disciples.
   But He answered and said unto them, I tell you that if these should
   hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out."

   Luke 19:37-40.

   THE Savior was "a man of sorrows," but every thoughtful mind has
   discovered the fact that down deep in His innermost soul He must have
   carried an inexhaustible treasury of refined and heavenly joy. I
   suppose that of all the human race there was never a man who had a
   deeper, purer, or more abiding peace than our Lord Jesus Christ. "He
   was anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows." Benevolence
   is joy. The highest benevolence must, from the very nature of things,
   have afforded the deepest possible delight.

   To be engaged in the most blessed of all errands, to foresee the
   marvelous results of His labors in time and in eternity, and even to
   see around Him the fruits of the good which He had done in the healing
   of the sick and the raising of the dead must have given to such a
   sympathetic heart as that which beat within the bosom of the Lord Jesus
   Christ much of secret satisfaction and joy. There were a few remarkable
   seasons when this joy manifested itself. "At that hour Jesus rejoiced
   in spirit and said, I thank You, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth."
   Christ had His songs though it was night with Him. And though His face
   was marred and His countenance had lost the luster of earthly
   happiness, yet sometimes it was lit up with a matchless splendor of
   unparalleled satisfaction as He thought upon the recompense of the
   reward, and in the midst of the congregation sang His praise unto God.
   In this, the Lord Jesus is a blessed picture of His Church on earth.

   This is the day of Zion's trouble--at this hour the Church expects to
   walk in sympathy with her Lord along a thorny road. She is outside the
   camp--through much tribulation she is forcing her way to the crown. She
   expects to meet with reproaches. To bear the cross is her office, and
   to be scorned and counted an alien by her mother's children is her lot.
   And yet the Church has a deep well ofjoy of which none can drink but
   her own children! There are stores of wine, and oil, and corn hidden in
   the midst of our Jerusalem upon which the saints of God are evermore
   sustained and nurtured. And sometimes, as in our Savior's case, we have
   our seasons of intense delight for "there is a river, the streams which
   make glad the city of our God."

   Exiles though we are, we rejoice in our King! Yes, in Him we
   exceedingly rejoice, while in His name we set up our banners! This is a
   season with us as a Church when we are peculiarly called upon to
   rejoice in God. The Lord Jesus, in the narrative before us, was going
   to Jerusalem as His disciples fondly hoped, to take the throne of David
   and set up the long-expected kingdom. Well might they shout for joy,
   for the Lord was in their midst--in their midst in state, riding amidst
   the acclamations of a multitude who had been glad partakers of His
   goodness. Jesus Christ is in our midst today! The kingdom is securely
   His. We see the crown glittering upon His brow. He has been riding
   through our streets, healing our blind, raising our dead and speaking
   words of comfort to our mourners!

   We, too, attend Him in state today, and the acclamations of little
   children are not lacking, for from our Sunday school there have come
   songs of converted youngsters who sing gladly, as did the children of
   Jerusalem in days of yore, "Hosanna! Blessed is He that comes in the
   name of the Lord!"

   I want, dear Friends, this morning, to stir up in all of us the spirit
   of holy joy because our King is in our midst! I wish that we may
   welcome Him and rejoice in Him, and that while He is working His mighty
   deeds of salvation throughout this congregation so graciously, He may
   not lack such music as our feeble lips can afford Him. I shall,
   therefore, invite your attention to these four verses by way of
   example, that we may take a pattern for our praise from this inspired
   description.

   We shall observe four things--First, delightful praise. Secondly,
   appropriate song, Thirdly, intrusive objections, and fourthly, an
   unanswerable argument.

   I. First, we shall observe here DELIGHTFUL PRAISE. In the
   thirty-seventh verse every word is significant and deserves the careful
   notice of all who would learn aright the lesson of how to magnify the
   Savior. To begin with, the praise rendered to Christ was speedy praise.
   The happy choristers did not wait till He had entered the city, but
   "when He was come near, even now at the descent of the Mount of Olives,
   they began to rejoice." It is well to have a quick eye to perceive
   occasions for gratitude.

   Blind Unbelief and blear-eyed Thanklessness allow the favors of God to
   be forgotten in ingratitude, and, without praises, die. They walk in
   the noonday of Mercy and see no light to sing by. But a believing,
   cheerful, grateful spirit detects at once the rising of the Sun of
   Mercy and begins to sing, even at the break of day! Christian, if you
   would sing of the mercy you have already, you would soon have more! If
   twilight made you glad, you should soon have the bliss of noon! I am
   certain that the Church in these days has lost much by not being
   thankful for little. We have had many Prayer Meetings, but few, very
   few, Praise Meetings--as if the Church could cry loud enough when her
   own ends were to be answered--but was dumb as to music for her Lord.

   Her King acts to her very much as He did with the man with the pound.
   That man put not out the pound to interest and therefore it was taken
   away. We have not thanked Him for little mercies, and therefore even
   these have been removed, and Churches have become barren and deserted
   by the Spirit of God. Let us lift up the voice of praise to our Master
   because He has blessed us these twelve years. We have had a continual
   stream of revival! The cries of sinners have sounded in our ears--every
   day we have seen souls converted--I was about to say almost every hour
   of the week, and that by the space of' these twelve years, and of late,
   we have had a double portion!

   Benjamin's mess has been set near our place at the table! We have been
   made to feast on royal dainties and have been filled with bread even to
   the full. Shall we not then praise God? Ah, let us not require twice
   telling of it, but let our souls begin to praise Him, even now, that He
   comes near unto Jerusalem!

   It strikes us at once, also, that this was unanimous praise. Observe,
   not only the multitude, but the whole multitude of the disciples
   rejoiced and praised Him! Not one silent tongue among the
   disciples--not one who withheld his song. And yet, I suppose, those
   disciples had their trials as we have ours. There might have been a
   sick wife at home, or a child withering with disease. They were
   doubtless poor--we know they were--and poverty is never without its
   pinches. They were men of like passions with ourselves. They had to
   struggle with inbred sin, and with temptation, and yet there seems to
   have been no one who on those grounds excluded himself from the choir
   of singers on that happy day!

   Oh, my Soul, whatever you have about you which might bow you down, be
   glad when you remember that Jesus Christ is glorified in the midst of
   His Church! Why, my Brother, is that harp of yours hanging on the
   willows? Have you nothing to sing about? Has He done nothing for you?
   Why, if you have no personal reason for blessing God, then lend us your
   heart and voice to help us, for we have more praise-work on hand than
   we can get through alone--we have more to praise Him for than we are
   able to discharge without extra aid! Our work of praise is too great
   for us, come and help us! Sing on our behalf, if you cannot on your
   own, and then, perhaps, you will catch the flame and find something,
   after all, for which you, too, must bless Him.

   I know there are some of you who do not feel as if you could praise God
   this morning. Let us ask the Master to put your harp in tune. Oh be not
   silent! Be not silent! Bless Him! If you cannot bless Him for
   temporals, bless Him for spirituals! And if you have not of late
   experimentally enjoyed many of these, then bless Him for what He is.
   Bless Him for that dear face covered with the bloody sweat--for those
   pierced hands, for that opened side will you not praise Him? Why,
   surely, if He had not died for me I must still love Him, to think of
   His goodness in dying for others! His kindness, the generosity of His
   noble heart in dying for His enemies might well provoke the most
   unbelieving to a song.

   I am, therefore, not content unless all of you will contribute your
   note. I would have every bird throw in its note, though some cannot
   imitate the lark or nightingale! Yes, I would have every tree of the
   forest clap its hands, and even the hyssop on the wall wave in
   adoration! Come, Beloved, cheer up! Let dull care and dark fear be
   gone! Up with harps and down with doubts! It must be praise from "the
   whole multitude." The praise must be unanimous--not one chord out of
   order to spoil the tune.

   Next, it was multitudinous. "The whole multitude." There is something
   most inspiriting and exhilarating in the noise of a multitude singing
   God's praises. Sometimes, when we have been in good tune, and have sung
   "Praise God from whom all blessings flow," our music has rolled upward
   like thunder to yon dome and has reverberated peal on peal! These have
   been the happiest moments some of us have ever known--when every tongue
   was praise, and every heart was joy! Oh, let us renew those happy
   times! Let us anticipate the season when the dwellers in the East and
   in the West, in the North and in the South, of every age and of every
   clime shall assemble on the celestial hilltops and swell the
   everlasting song extolling Jesus Lord of all!

   Jesus loves the praise of many. He loves to hear the voices of all the
   blood-washed--

   "Ten thousand thousand are their tongues, But all their joys are one."

   We are not so many as that, but we are counted by thousands so let us
   praise His name--the whole multitude! Still it is worthy of observation
   that while the praise was multitudinous, it was quite select. It was
   the whole multitude "of the disciples." The Pharisees did not praise
   Him--they were murmuring. All true praise must come from true hearts.
   If you do not learn of Christ you can not render to Him acceptable
   song. These disciples, of course, were of different sorts. Some of them
   had but just enlisted in the army--just learned to sit at His feet.
   Some had worked miracles in His name, and, having been called to the
   Apostolic office, had preached the Word to others--but they were all
   disciples.

   I trust that in this congregation there is a vast majority of
   disciples--well, then, all of you, you who have lately come into His
   school, you who have long been in it--you who have become fathers in
   Israel and are teaching others, the whole multitude of disciples, I
   hope, will praise God! I could wish--God grant the wish--I could wish
   that those who are not disciples might soon become so. "Take My yoke
   upon you," He said, "and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in
   heart."

   A disciple is a learner. You may not know much, but you need not know
   anything in coming to Christ! Christ begins with ignorance and bestows
   wisdom. If you do but know that you know nothing, you know enough to
   become a disciple of Christ Jesus! There is no matriculation necessary
   in order to enter into Christ's college. He takes the fools and makes
   them know the wonders of His dying love. Oh that you may become a
   disciple! "Write my name down, Sir," you say to the writer with the
   inkhorn by his side, and be you from now on a humble follower of the
   Lamb. Now, though I would not have those who are not disciples close
   their mouths whenever others sing, yet I do think there are some hymns
   in which they would behave more honestly if they did not join--for
   there are some expressions which hardly ought to come from unconverted
   lips. Better far would it be if they would pray, "Lord, open my lips,
   and my mouth shall show forth Your praise."

   You may have a very sweet voice, my Friend, and may sing with admirable
   taste and in exquisite harmony any of the parts, but God does not
   accept the praise where the heart is absent. The best tune in the book
   is one called Hearts. The whole multitude of the disciples whom Jesus
   loves are the proper persons to extol the Redeemer's name. May you,
   dear Hearer, be among that company!

   Then, in the next place, you will observe that the praise they rendered
   was joyful praise. "The whole multitude of the disciples began to
   rejoice." I hope the doctrine that Christians ought to be gloomy will
   soon be driven out of the universe! There are no people in the world
   who have such a right to be happy, nor have such cause to be joyful as
   the saints of the living God! All Christian duties should be done
   joyfully--and especially the work of praising the Lord.

   I have been in congregations where the tune was dolorous to the very
   last degree--where the time was so dreadfully slow that one wondered
   whether they would ever be able to sing through the 119th
   Psalm--whether, to use Watts's expression, eternity would not be too
   short for them to get through it! And altogether the spirit of the
   people has seemed to be so damp, so heavy, so dead that we might have
   supposed that they were met to prepare their minds for hanging rather
   than for blessing the ever-gracious God!

   Why, Brethren, true praise sets the heart ringing its bells and hanging
   out its streamers! Never hang your flag at half-mast when you praise
   God! No! Run up every color, let every banner wave in the breeze and
   let all the powers and passions of your spirit exult and rejoice in God
   your Savior! They rejoiced. We are really most horribly afraid of being
   too happy. Some Christians think cheerfulness a very dangerous folly,
   if not a ruinous vice. That joyous Hundredth Psalm has been altered in
   all the English versions--

   "All people that on earth do dwell,
   Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice,
   Him serve with fear, His praise forth tell,
   Come you before Him and rejoice."

   "Him serve with fear," says the English version. But the Scotch version
   has less thistle and far more rose in it. Listen to it, and catch its
   holy happiness--

   "Him serve with mirth, His praise forth tell;
   Come you before Him and rejoice."

   How do God's creatures serve Him out of doors? The birds do not sit on
   a Sunday with folded wings, dolefully silent on the boughs of the
   trees! They sing as sweetly as may be even though the raindrops fall!
   As for the new-born lambs in the field--they skip to His praise though
   the season is damp and cold. Heaven and earth are lit up with gladness,
   and why not the hearts and houses of the saints? "Him serve with
   mirth." Well said the Psalmist--"before Him exceedingly rejoice." It
   was joyful praise.

   The next point we must mention is that it was demonstrative praise.
   They praised Him with their voices and with a loud voice. Propriety
   very greatly objects to the praise which is rendered by Primitive
   Methodists at times. Their shouts and hallelujahs are thought by some
   delicate minds to be very shocking. I would not, however, join in the
   censure, lest I should be numbered among the Pharisees who said,
   "Master, rebuke Your disciples." I wish more people were as earnest and
   even as vehement as the Methodists used to be.

   In our Lord's day we see that the people expressed the joy which they
   felt--I am not sure that they expressed it in the most harmonious
   manner--but at any rate they expressed it in a hearty, lusty shout.
   They altogether praised with a loud voice. It is said of Mr. Rowland
   Hill that on one occasion someone sat on the pulpit stairs who sang in
   his ears with such a sharp shrill voice that he could endure it no
   longer, and said to the good woman, "I wish you would be quiet." She
   answered, "It comes from my heart," "Oh," said he, pray forgive
   me--sing away! Sing as loudly as you will."

   And truly, dear Friends, though one might wish there were more melody
   in it, yet if your music comes from the heart we cannot object to the
   loudness, or we might be found objecting to that which the Savior could
   not and would not blame. Must we not be loud? Do you wonder that we
   speak out? Have not His mercies a loud tongue? Do not His kindnesses
   deserve to be proclaimed aloud? Were not the cries upon the Cross so
   loud that the very rocks were rent thereby--and shall our music be a
   whisper?

   No, as Watts declares, we would--

   "Loud as His thunders shout His praise, And sound it lofty as His
   Throne." If not with loud voices actually in sound, yet we would make
   the praise of God loud by our actions, which speak louder than any
   words! We would extol Him by great deeds of kindness, and love, and
   self-denial, and zeal so that our actions may assist our words. "The
   whole multitude praised Him with a loud voice." Let me ask every
   Christian here to do something in the praise of God--to speak in some
   way for his Master. I would say, speak today--if you cannot with your
   voice--speak by act and deed, but join in the hearty shout of all the
   saints of God while you praise and bless the name of our ever gracious
   Lord.

   The praise rendered, though very demonstrative, was very
   reasonable--the reason is given--"for all the mighty works that they
   had seen." My dear Friends, we have seen many mighty works which Christ
   has done. I do not know what these disciples had seen. Certain it is
   that after Christ entered into Jerusalem He was generous with His
   miracles. The blind were healed, the deaf had their ears opened--many
   of those possessed with devils were delivered--and incurable diseases
   gave way at His word. I think we have the like reason in a spiritual
   sense. What has God worked? It has been marvelous--as our elders would
   tell you if they could recount what God has done--the many who have
   come forward during the last fortnight to tell what God has done for
   their souls.

   The Holy Spirit has met with some whom up to now no ministry had
   reached. Some have been convicted of sin who were wrapped up in
   self-righteous rags. Others have been comforted whose desponding hearts
   drew near unto despair. I am sure those Brethren who sat to see
   enquirers must have been astonished when they found some hundreds
   coming to talk about the things that make for their peace! It was
   blessed work, I doubt not, for them. They, therefore, would lead the
   strain.

   But you have all in your measure seen something of it. During the
   meetings we have held we have enjoyed an overpowering sense of the
   Divine Presence. Without excitement there has been a holy bowing of
   spirit, and yet a blessed lifting up of hope, and joy, and holy fervor!
   The Master has cast sweet smiles upon His Church! He has come near to
   His beloved. He has given her the tokens of His affection and made her
   to rejoice with joy unspeakable! Any joy which we have towards Christ,
   then, will be reasonable enough, for we have seen His mighty works.

   With another remark I shall close this first head--the reason for their
   joy was a personal one. There is no praise to God so sweet as that
   which flows from the man who has tasted that the Lord is gracious. Some
   of you have been converted during the last two or three months. Oh, you
   must bless Him! You must take the front rank now and bless His name for
   the mighty work which you have seen in yourself! The things which once
   were dear to you, you now abhor, and those things which seemed dry and
   empty are now sweet and full of savor. God has turned your darkness
   into light! He has brought you up out of the horrible pit and out of
   the miry clay and has set your feet upon a rock! Shall not your
   established goings yield Him a grateful song? You shall bless Him!

   Others here present have had their own children saved. God has looked
   on one family and another, and taken one, and two, and three. He has
   been pleased to lay His hand upon the elders among us and bless their
   families. Oh sing unto His name! Sing praises for the mighty works
   which we have seen! This will be commonplace talk enough to those of
   you who have not seen it--but those who have will feel the tears
   starting to their eyes as they think of son and daughter of whom they
   can say, "Behold, he prays!"

   Saints of God, I wish I could snatch a firebrand from the altar of
   praise that burns before the great Throne of God-- I wish I could fire
   your hearts with it--but it is the Master's work to do it. Oh, may He
   do it now! May every one of you feel as if you could cast your crown at
   His feet! As if you could sing like the cherubim and the seraphim, nor
   yield even the first place of gratitude to the brightest spirit before
   the Eternal Throne! This morning may it be truly said, "The whole
   multitude of the disciples rejoiced with a loud voice for all the
   mighty things which they had seen."--

   "O come, loud anthems let us sing, Loud thanks to our Almighty King.
   For we our voices high should raise, When our salvation's Rock we
   praise. Into His Presence let us haste, To thank Him for His favors
   past! To Him address, in joyful songs, The praise that to His name
   belongs." II. I shall now lead you on to the second point--their praise
   found vent for itself in AN APPROPRIATE SONG. "Blessed is the King that
   comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in Heaven, and glory in the
   highest!" It was an appropriate song, if you will remember that it had
   Christ for its subject! "My heart is writing of a good matter: I speak
   of the things which I have made touching the king."

   No song is so sweet from believing lips as that which tells of Him who
   loved us and who gave Himself for us. This particular song sings of
   Christ in His Character of King--a right royal song, then--a melody fit
   for a coronation day. Crown Him! Crown Him Lord of all! That was the
   refrain. "Blessed be the King." It sang of that King as commissioned by
   the Most High, "who comes in the name of the Lord." Think of Christ as
   bearing Divine authority, as coming down to men in God our Father's
   name--as speaking what He has heard in Heaven, fulfilling no
   self-espoused errand, but a mission upon which the Divine Father sent
   Him according to His purpose and decree--all this is matter for music!

   Oh bless the Lord, you saints, as you remember that your Savior is the
   Lord's Anointed--He has set Him on His Throne! Jehovah, who was pleased
   to bruise Him, has said, "Yet have I set My King upon My holy hill of
   Zion." See the Godhead of your Savior! He whom you adore, the Son of
   Mary, is the Son of God! He who did ride upon a colt, the foal of an
   ass, did also ride upon a cherub and did fly--yes, He rode upon the
   wings of the wind!

   They spread their garments in the way, and broke down branches. It was
   a humble triumph, but long before this the angels had strewn His path
   with adoring songs. Before Him went the lightning, coals of fire were
   in His track, and up from His Throne went forth hailstones and coals of
   fire! Blessed be the King! Oh praise Him this day! Praise the King,
   Divine and commissioned of His Father!

   The burden of their song was, however, of Christ present in their
   midst. I do not think they would have rejoiced so loudly and sweetly if
   He had not been there. That was the source and center of their
   mirth--the King riding upon a colt, the foal of an ass--the King
   triumphant! They could not but be glad when He revealed Himself.
   Beloved, our King is here! We sang at the beginning of this visitation,
   "Arise, O King of Grace, arise, and enter to Your rest!" You remember
   our singing the verse--

   "O You that are the Mighty One, Your sword gird on Your thigh."

   And King Jesus has done so in state--He has ridden prosperously--and
   out of the ivory palaces His heart has been made glad! And the King's
   daughter, all-glorious within, standing at His right hand, cannot but
   be glad, too! Loud to His praise wake every string of your heart and
   let your souls make the Lord Jesus the burden of their song!

   This was an appropriate song, in the next place, because it had God for
   its object. They extolled God, God in Christ, when they thus lifted up
   their voices. They said, "Peace in Heaven, and glory in the highest."
   When we extol Christ, we desire to bless the infinite Majesty that gave
   Christ to us. Thanks be unto the Father for His unspeakable gift! O
   eternal God, we, Your creatures in this little world do unfeignedly
   bless You for Your great purpose and decree by which You did choose us
   to be illustrious exhibitions of Your majesty and love!

   We bless You that You did give us Grace in Christ Your Son before the
   starry sky was spread abroad! We praise You, O God, and magnify Your
   name as we enquire, "What is man, that You are mindful of him, or the
   son of man, that you visit him?" How could You deign to stoop from all
   the Glory of Your infinity to be made Man, to suffer, to bleed, to die
   for us? "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." Oh
   that I could give place to some inspired bard, some seer of old, who,
   standing before you with mouth streaming with holy eloquence, should
   extol Him that lives, but once was slain, and bless the God who sent
   Him here below that He might redeem unto Himself a people who should
   show forth His praise!

   I think this song to have been very appropriate for another reason,
   namely, because it had the universe for its scope. It was not praise
   within walls as ours this morning--the multitude sung in the open air
   with no walls but the horizon-- with no roof but the arch of Heaven!
   Their song, though it was from Heaven, did not stay there, but enclosed
   the world within its range. It was, "Peace in Heaven, and glory in the
   highest!" It is very singularly like that song of the angels, that
   Christmas carol of the spirits from on high when Christ was born--but
   it differs, for the angels' song was, "Peace on earth," and this at the
   gates of Jerusalem was, "Peace in Heaven."

   It is the nature of song to spread itself. From Heaven the sacred joy
   began when angels sang, and then the fire blazed down to earth in the
   words, "Peace on earth." But now the song began on earth, and so it
   blazed up to Heaven with the words, "Peace in Heaven, and glory in the
   highest!" Is it not a wonderful thing that a company of poor beings
   like we here below can really affect the highest heavens? Every throb
   of gratitude which heaves our hearts glows through Heaven! God can
   receive no actual increase of Glory from His creature for He has
   infinite Glory and majesty--but yet the creature manifests that Glory.

   A grateful man here below, when his heart is all on fire with sacred
   love, warms Heaven itself! The multitude sung of peace in Heaven as
   though the angels were established in their peaceful seats by the
   Savior--as though the war which God had waged with sin was now over
   because the conquering King was come! Oh let us seek after music which
   shall be fitted for other spheres! I would begin the music here and so
   my soul should rise. Oh for some heavenly notes to bear my passions to
   the skies! It was appropriate to the occasion because the universe was
   its sphere.

   And it seems also to have been most appropriate because it had
   gratitude for its spirit. They cried aloud, "Blessed"--Blessed is the
   King." We cannot bless God and yet we do bless Him in the sense in
   which He blesses us. Our goodness cannot extend to Him, but we reflect
   the blessedness which streams from Him as light from the sun. Blessed
   be Jesus! My Brothers and Sisters, have you never wished to make Him
   happier? Have you not wished that you could extol Him? Let Him be
   exalted! Let Him sit on high! I have almost wished, even selfishly,
   that He were not so glorious as He is so that we might help to lift Him
   higher! Oh, if the crushing of my body, soul, and spirit would make Him
   one atom more glorious, I would not only consent to the sacrifice, but
   bless His name that He counted me worthy to do so!

   All that we can do brings nothing to Him. Yet, Brethren, I would that
   He had His own. Oh that He rode over our great land in triumph! Would
   that King Jesus were as well known here now as He was once in Puritan
   times! Would that Scotland were as loyal to Him as in Covenanting
   periods! Would that Jesus had His majesty visible in the eyes of all
   men! We pray for this! We seek this! And among the chief joys our most
   chief joy is to know that God has highly exalted Him and given Him a
   name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
   should bow!

   We have thus said something about the appropriateness of the song. May
   you, each of you, light upon such hymns as will serve to set forth your
   own case and show forth the mercy of God in saving you. Do not be slack
   in praising Him in such notes as may be most suitable to your own
   condition.

   III. Thirdly, and very briefly--for I am not going to give much time to
   these men--we have INTRUSIVE OBJECTIONS. "Master, rebuke Your
   disciples." We know that voice--the old grunt of the Pharisee. What
   could he do otherwise? Such is the man and such must his communications
   be. While he can dare to boast, "God, I thank You that I am not as
   other men are," he is not likely to join in praises such as other men
   lift up to Heaven.

   But why did these Pharisees object? I suppose it was first of all
   because they thought there would be no praise for themselves! If the
   multitude had been saying, "Oh these blessed Pharisees! These excellent
   Pharisees! What broad phylacteries! What admirable hems to their
   garments! How diligently and scrupulously they tithe their mint and
   their anise and their cummin! What a wonder that God should permit us,
   poor vile creatures, to look upon these super-excellent incarnations of
   virtue," I will be bound to say there would not have been a man among
   them who would have said, "Master, rebuke Your disciples." A proud
   heart never praises God for it hoards up praise for itself.

   In the next place, they were jealous of the people. They did not feel
   so happy themselves and they could not bear that other people should be
   glad. They were like the elder brother who said, "Yet you never gave me
   a kid that I might make merry with my friends." Was that a reason why
   nobody else should be merry? A very ill reason, truly! Oh, if we cannot
   rejoice, ourselves, let us stand out of the way of other people! If we
   have no music in our own hearts, let us not wish to stop those who
   have!

   But I think the main point was that they were jealous of Jesus. They
   did not like to have Christ crowned with majesty. Certainly this is the
   drift of the human heart. It does not wish to see Jesus Christ
   extolled. Preach up morality or dry doctrine, or ceremonies and many
   will be glad to hear your notes. But preach up Jesus Christ and some
   will say, "Master, rebuke your disciples!" It was not ill advice of an
   old preacher to a young beginner when he said, "Preach nothing down but
   sin, and preach nothing up but Christ."

   Brethren, let us praise nothing up but Christ! Have nothing to say
   about your Church. Say nothing about your denomination. Hold your
   tongue about the minister--but praise Christ--and I know the Pharisees
   will not like it! But that is an excellent reason to give them more of
   it, for that which Satan does not admire he ought to have more of. The
   preaching of Christ is the whip that flogs the devil. The preaching of
   Christ is the thunderbolt, the sound of which makes all Hell shake. Let
   us never be silent! We shall put to confusion all our foes if we do but
   extol Christ Jesus the Lord. "Master, rebuke Your disciples!"

   Well, there is not much of this for Jesus Christ to rebuke in the
   Christian Church in the present day. There used to be--there used to be
   a little of what the world calls fanaticism. A consecrated cobbler once
   set forth to preach the Gospel in Hindustan. There were men who would
   go preaching the Gospel among the heathen, counting not their lives
   dear unto them. The day was when the Church was so foolish as to fling
   away precious lives for Christ's Glory! Ah, she is more prudent
   nowadays. Alas! Alas for your prudence! She is so calm and so quiet--no
   Methodist's zeal, now! Even that denomination which did seem alive has
   become most proper and most cold.

   And we are so charitable, too. We let the most abominable doctrines be
   preached and we put our finger on our lip, and say, "There's so many
   good people who think so." Nothing is to be rebuked nowadays, Brethren!
   One's soul is sick of this! Oh, for the old fire again! The Church will
   never prosper till it comes once more. Oh, for the old fanaticism, for
   that, indeed, was the Spirit of God making men's spirits in earnest!
   Oh, for the old doing and daring that risked everything and cared for
   nothing except to glorify Him who shed His blood upon the Cross! May we
   live to see such bright and holy days again! The world may murmur but
   Christ will not rebuke.

   IV. We come now to the last point, which is this--AN UNANSWERABLE
   ARGUMENT. He said, "If these should hold their peace, the very stones
   would cry out." Brothers and Sisters, I think that is very much our
   case. If we were not to praise God, the very stones might cry out
   against us! We MUST praise the Lord! Woe unto us if we do not! It is
   impossible for us to hold our tongues! Saved from Hell and be silent?
   Secure of Heaven and be ungrateful? Bought with precious blood and hold
   our tongues? Filled with the Spirit and not speak? Restrain from fear
   of feeble man with the Spirit's course within our souls? God forbid!

   In the name of the Most High let such a thought be given to the winds!
   What? 0ur children are saved--the offspring of our loins brought to
   Christ! What? See them springing up like willows by the water courses,
   and no awakening of song, no gladness, no delight! 0h, then we were
   worse than brutes and our hearts would have been steeled and become as
   adamant. We must praise God! What? The King in our midst, King Jesus
   smiling into our souls, feasting us at His table, making His word
   precious to us, and not praise Him! Why if Satan could know the delight
   of Christ's company he might begin to love--but we, we were worse than
   devils if we did not praise the name of Jesus! What? The King's arm
   made bare, His enemies subdued, His triumphant chariot rolling through
   our streets, and no song!

   Oh Zion, if we forget to sing let our right hand forget her cunning if
   we count not the King's triumph above our chief joy. What? The King
   coming! His advent drawing near, the signs of blessing in the sky and
   air abound, and yet no song! 0h, we must bless Him! Hosanna! Blessed is
   He that comes in the name of the Lord! But could the stones ever cry
   out? Yes, they could, and if they were to speak they would have much to
   talk of even as we have this day. If the stones were to speak they
   could tell of their Maker--and shall not we tell of Him who made us
   anew, and out of stones raised up children unto Abraham?

   They could speak of ages long since gone--the old rocks could tell of
   chaos and order and the handiwork of God in various stages of
   creation's drama--and cannot we talk of God's decrees, of God's great
   work in ancient times, and all that He did for His Church? If the
   stones were to speak they could tell of their breaker, how he took them
   from the quarry, and made them fit for the temple--and cannot we tell
   of our Creator and Maker, who broke our hearts with the hammer of His
   Word that He might build us into His temple?

   If the stones were to speak they would tell of their builder who
   polished them and fashioned them after the similitude of a palace--and
   shall not we talk of our Architect and Builder who has put us in our
   place in the temple of the living God? Oh, if the stones could speak
   they might have a long, long story to tell by way of memorial, for many
   a time has a great stone been rolled as a memorial unto God--and we can
   tell of Ebenezers, stones of help, stones of remembrance! The broken
   stones of the Law cry out against us, but Christ Himself, who has
   rolled away the stone from the door of the sepulcher, speaks for us.

   Stones might well cry out, but we will not let them! We will hush their
   noise with ours! We will break forth into sacred song and bless the
   majesty of the Most High all our days! Let this day and tomorrow be
   especially consecrated to holy joys and may the Lord, in infinite
   mercy, fill your souls right full of it--both in practical deeds of
   kindness and benevolence and works of praise! Blessed be His name who
   lives forever and ever!
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    The Amen

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 4, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The Amen." Revelation 3:14.

   THE word "Amen" is much more full of meaning than may be supposed, and
   as a title of our Lord Jesus Christ it is eminently suggestive. As you
   know the word is a Hebrew one which has been very properly conveyed not
   only into our language, but into most, if not all the languages of
   Christendom. It is a happy circumstance that some of these words should
   have had vitality enough in them to be transplanted into other tongues
   and still flourish. It gives some faint foreshadowing of the united
   worship of celestial spirits, and it indicates the Lord's will that the
   Hebrew race shall not be forgotten by His Church--and that the language
   of His well-beloved Israel stills sounds sweetly in His ear.

   AMEN signifies, true, faithful, certain--but its sense will be better
   seen by carefully noting its uses. It had at least three forms of
   practical meaning. First, it was used in the sense of asserting--when a
   person would give peculiar authority to his words he either commenced
   or concluded with the word, "Amen." And thus he declared as with the
   solemn "yes, yes," of an honest, truth-loving man--certainly,
   assuredly, so it is. Our Savior uses the term frequently. The word
   which we translate, "Verily, verily," is this word "Amen."

   You must have observed that John, who has a quick eye for the Divine
   moods of the Lord Jesus, notes with unerring fidelity the repetition of
   the asserting word. Whenever our blessed Lord was about to say
   something peculiarly solemn into which He would throw the full weight
   of His authority, He asserted it by the doubling of the word "Amen,
   amen," or "Verily, verily," at the commencement of it.

   The second sense of the word, Amen, slightly varies from asserting, and
   may be more properly described as consenting. There is a memorable
   instance of this in the case of the woman who drank the water of
   jealousy (Num. 5:22). When she drank the water of jealousy it was
   enacted that if she had been guilty of the crime laid to her door,
   certain terrible results should follow as the effect of this water.
   She, at the time she drank it, said, "Amen, amen," that is, she gave
   her consent that such-and-such pangs should fall upon her if she had
   been really guilty of adultery.

   A more memorable instance, still, is that of the people assembled upon
   Mount Ebal and Gerizim. When the threats and the blessings were both
   read in their hearing, the people said "Amen, amen." So let it be. Of
   the like character is the case in the book of Nehemiah. When Ezra
   blessed Jehovah, the great God, all the people answered, Amen, with
   lifting up of their hands. A third meaning of the word Amen is what we
   may call petitionary. In this sense we use it at the close of our
   prayers. "Our Father who are in Heaven" is not a complete model of
   public prayer till it concludes with, "Amen."

   In the ancient Church it was customary for the entire congregation to
   say Amen. Paul alludes to this custom in that expression in the
   Corinthians where he speaks of persons praying in an unknown tongue--he
   says, "How should he that occupies the room of the unlearned say Amen
   at your giving of thanks, seeing he understands not what you say?" We
   have it put on record by Jerome that at Rome the people were accustomed
   to say Amen in the gatherings of the early Christians so heartily--I
   might add, so lustily--that it was like the dash of a cataract, or a
   clap of thunder!

   I could wish that we more uniformly and universally said Amen at the
   close of public prayer. I am sure it would be Scriptural and Apostolic,
   and I believe it would be useful to you all. Perhaps the custom was
   dropped on account of the irregular way in which the brethren said
   Amen. I have heard the same regularity in certain rustic Methodist
   congregations when I have thought that the Amen was put in the wrong
   place, and could have wished the custom to be discontinued altogether,
   because certain illiterate, rash, but zealous Brethren said Amen when
   there was nothing to say Amen to! They rather created ridicule than
   reverence, and showed as much folly as fervor. However, a judicious
   revival of the custom would, I doubt not, be useful in the Church of
   God.

   It also signifies, "So be it, so let it be," and is virtually the
   consent of the entire congregation to the prayer which has been put up.
   Observe the devout Amen of Benaiah, at the close of David's dying
   prayer, with the remarkable addition, "The Lord God of my lord the king
   say so too" (1 Kings 1:36). Notice also how the Psalmist closes several
   of the Psalms, such as the forty-first and the seventy-second with the
   emphatic conclusion, "Amen and Amen."--

   "Let every creature rise and bring
   Peculiar honors to our King;
   Angels, descend with songs again,
   And earth, repeat the long AMEN."

   Should you desire still further to enquire into the use and meaning of
   this remarkable word, there is a valuable sermon upon it in the works
   of Abraham Booth which you may read, as I have done, to great
   advantage. If anything should lead to the revival of its use more
   generally in public worship it will be a matter of great
   congratulation.

   It strikes me that I might have divided my discourse this morning very
   fairly under these three heads--asserting, consenting, petitioning--for
   in each of these our adorable Lord Jesus Christ is certainly "the
   Amen." He asserts the will of God--He asserts God Himself. God the Son
   is constantly called the Logos, the Word--He who asserts, declares and
   testifies God.

   In the second place, we know that Jesus Christ consents to the will,
   design, and purpose of Jehovah. He gives an Amen to the will of
   God--is, in fact, the echo--in His life and in His death, of the
   eternal purposes of the Most High. And, thirdly, he is "the Amen" in
   the petitionary sense, for to all our prayers He gives whatever force
   and power they have. It is His Amen to our supplication which makes it
   prevalent at the Throne of the Most High. In these three senses Christ
   may well be called "THE AMEN."

   But we have preferred to divide the discourse another way. Our blessed
   and ever-to-be-adored Lord Jesus is, first, "the Amen" in reference to
   God. Secondly, "the Amen" as viewed in Himself. And, thirdly, I trust
   some of us have distinctly trusted Him to be "The Amen" in regard to
   ourselves.

   I. Refresh your memories upon the great Truth of God, our LORD IS
   SUPERLATIVELY GOD'S AMEN. Let us review the various points in which He
   is "the Amen" of God. We must speak, of course, of God after the manner
   of men. Let that grain of salt be understood to savor all that we say.
   Jesus is "the Amen" of the Divine purposes. There was a day before all
   days when there was no day but the Ancient of Days--a time before all
   times when He who made all time dwelt alone.

   Then in His august mind He conceived the plan of redemption. He foresaw
   the world ruined by sin. He determined that a number whom no man could
   number should be redeemed unto Himself to be forever His children, the
   beloved of His soul. These purposes He made, and fixed them fast--there
   should be a people who should show forth His praise forever and ever.
   These purposes were but purposes until God said Amen to them, and made
   them valid and sure decrees by determining to give His own dear Son. If
   God had not resolved to give the Lord Jesus Christ to be a redeemer,
   the purpose of redemption would have had no Amen. If He had not
   appointed Christ to be the Head of the body, His purpose concerning the
   body would have lacked the Amen.

   The giving of our souls to Christ according to the Scriptures was a
   most ancient covenant transaction--and the gift of the Son to us was of
   equally ancient date--for He is regarded by God as the Lamb slain from
   before the foundation of the world. That gift of Christ to us in the
   Everlasting Covenant was the mighty Father's virtually stamping His
   decree and making it valid and good. Long before you and I had a
   being--before this great world was made by God out of nothingness--God
   had made every purpose of His eternal counsel to stand fast and firm by
   the gift of His dear Son to us. He was then God's Amen to His eternal
   purpose.

   When our Lord actually came upon the earth He was then God's Amen to
   the long line of prophecies. One by one the servants of God had
   testified concerning the coming Messiah. Some had spoken evangelically
   as Isaiah--others with a more legal savor as Moses. But their testimony
   was to the same effect, that in due time a Prophet should be raised up,
   and that there should be born of a virgin a Man who should at the same
   time be "the Wonderful, the Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting
   Father."

   These promises followed thick and fast, all of them cohering, each one
   manifesting the self-same coming One. But there was no Amen to
   them--they were things hoped for, but not the substance--till at last,
   in the silence of midnight, angels sweetly sang His advent, "Glory to
   God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill toward men! For unto you
   is born this day in Bethlehem a Savior, which is Christ the Lord." That
   Babe among the horned oxen. That carpenter's son, was God's declaration
   that prophecy was the voice of Heaven! Now, you Prophets, sleeping in
   your tombs, it is witnessed that you lied not! Now has God Himself come
   forth and set to His seal that you are true! In the blessed form of
   Mary's Child, God's Amen appears both to shepherds and to wise men.

   In the same sense, also, Christ was God's Amen to all the Levitical
   types. The morning and the evening lamb, the red heifer, the turtle
   doves, and the two young pigeons whose blood stained the altar, the
   sacrificial bullock, the scapegoat, the plentiful sprinklings of
   blood--all these were man's avowal that he believed in God--and at the
   same time God declaring to man that He had provided a Sacrifice. Yonder
   smoking bullock offered by Aaron and his sons is nothing yet, it is but
   a figure, it lacks the Amen to give it body, force, substance. That
   uplifted knife, that priest clad in fair white linen, that blood spilt
   upon the altar--all these are nothing--they need a soul put into them!

   When Jesus Christ came, and especially when up to the Cross as to the
   altar He went as a victim and was laid on it, then it was that God
   solemnly put an Amen into what otherwise was but typical and shadowy.
   "It is finished," said the Savior, and then was, as our poet puts it--

   "Finished all the types and shadows Of the ceremonial law! Finished all
   that God had promised; Death and Hell no more shall awe: It is
   finished! Saints, from here your comfort draw." "The Amen" is set to
   the purposes, to the prophecies, and to the types. It is exceedingly
   worthy of your regard that Christ is God's Amen to the Majesty of His
   Law.

   That was a very solemn Amen which God gave on the top of Sinai when He
   came with ten thousand of His holy ones, and the mountain smoked
   beneath His feet. As I hear those words, "You shall love the Lord your
   God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your
   strength," that blast of the trumpet waxing exceedingly loud and long,
   that crack of thunder, and yon mighty flashes of great lighting were
   God's Amen! AMEN rolled in peals along the wilderness of Kadesh, made
   the tents of Kedar tremble, and made the hinds to calve, and broke even
   the lofty cedars of Lebanon! It was such a terrible Amen that the
   people begged that they might hear it no more--their hearts were
   subdued with the terror of the dread appearances of God's Law though He
   revealed it in the hands of a mediator by angels.

   But, dear Friends, I can point you to a more solemn Amen than that!
   More terrible than Sinai although you can better bear the sight. God
   has said, "The soul that sins it shall die." "Cursed is everyone that
   continues not in all things that are written in the Book of the Law to
   do them." There stands the Son of God. He has not sinned Himself, but
   He has the sins of all His people imputed to Him. He has never broken
   the Law, but all our breaches were laid on Him. Now what will God say
   to Him? God meets Him as He once met Adam in the garden, but Jesus did
   not hide Himself as Adam did, He met stern Justice face to face.

   There He is, the sinner's Substitute--what will the infinitely just
   Jehovah say now? The Law says He is accursed, for He has sin upon Him.
   Will the Father consent that His own Beloved shall be made a curse for
   us? Hearken and hear the Lord's Amen. "Awake, O sword, against the Man
   that is My Fellow, said the Lord." What? Does God the Father say Amen?
   Can it be? It is even so! He says Amen. And what an awful Amen, too,
   when the streaming sweat of blood leapt from every pore of His most
   blessed and immaculate body and fell in terrible clots upon the frosty
   ground! O God, You did say Amen, indeed, to all the terror of Your Law
   when Christ had to cry, "I am exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death."

   Yet louder still is that Amen at Golgotha where stands the Savior,
   mocked, despised, rejected. He is at the Roman column, torn with
   scourges and in the seat of mockery crowned with thorns. There the Law
   seemed to say, "The sinner is to be despised and rejected, the sinner
   is a shameful thing, worthy to be spit upon, the sinner deserves to be
   crowned with thorns." And God says, Amen, and His own dear Son, who
   stood in the sinner's place, was made to set forth God's awful assent
   to the demands of Justice. Yonder along the streets of Jerusalem, over
   stones as hard as the hearts of Jerusalem's sons and daughters--harder
   they could not be--He leaves a trail of blood up to Calvary's mound!

   And then His hands and feet are pierced and His soul pierced with
   something worse than nails. And then His heart is made to drink of
   draughts more bitter than wormwood mixed with gall, and His soul the
   subject of worse temptations than the mere thrusting out of the tongue
   or the jeer and the jibe of the multitude! There where His soul died
   within Him because God forsook Him, He shrieked "Eloi! Eloi! Lama
   Sabacthani?" There it was that God said sternly and dreadfully, "Amen,"
   to that sentence, "Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree."

   Beloved, if you want to see to the fullest degree how God hates sin,
   and with what vengeance He pursues iniquity, you must see Him hunt that
   sin right into the shelter which it sought to find in His own dear Son!
   Though it never was His sin, but our sin laid upon Him, yet God spared
   not His own Son. You have only to see how He was smitten of God and
   afflicted--because the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with
   His stripes we are healed--and you will see at once that Jehovah does
   not reckon sin to be a trifle.

   It must have been a very grand sight to stand in the valley between
   Ebal and Gerizim to hear the Law read, and then to have heard the six
   tribes upon Gerizim all say to the blessings solemnly, Amen--like a
   peal of thunder it must have started from the ten thousand lips of the
   children of Israel! And then how dreadful, in what subdued awe-stricken
   tones, like the low murmur of a threatening tempest, must have sounded
   the dreadful Amen from Ebal, when all the threats were read. "Cursed is
   he that confirms not all the words of this Law to do them. And all the
   people shall say Amen."

   But mark this word, it was a far more solemn thing when God spoke than
   when the tribes spoke, and He did speak upon Calvary in tones, the
   thunder of which reverberate throughout all ages, and are heard in
   dreadful mutterings in the abyss of Hell! Jehovah, whom cherubs sing
   as, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts," then said, "Amen, so let it
   be! Vengeance, take your fill! Justice, slay the Victim! Let the
   innocent Substitute bleed for men." Our Lord Jesus, so far from
   destroying the Law, came to be God's Amen to its penalty and to
   sanction and to establish it as the Law of God forever!

   We have not, however, exhausted this topic. Jesus Christ is, as you
   know, very blessedly God's Amen to all His Covenant promises, for is it
   not written that "all the promises of God in Him are yes and in Him
   Amen"? The Apostle Paul seems to have hit upon the very spirit of
   Christ's name, Amen, when he says, "He that spared not His own Son, but
   delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give
   us all things?" When God gave His Son He did virtually give all
   Covenant blessings to His people. The gift of Jesus Christ was God's
   making every promise which had ever gone before the coming of Christ
   sure and certain. Christ was the wax melted in the fire upon which God
   set the stamp of His own honor that He would be true to the Covenant
   engagements which He had made.

   Brothers and Sisters, if the saying of Amen upon Mount Gerizim to the
   blessing of the Law had something delightfully cheering and comfortable
   about it, how much more divinely sweet was Jehovah's Amen when Jesus
   Christ rose from the dead triumphant?! How much more when up the
   everlasting hills He rode in glorious triumph, leading captivity
   captive?! Devout Spirits, come here and mark God's Amen to the
   blessings of the Covenant! See yonder the mighty throng of angels and
   hear their song as they sing, "Lift up your heads, O you gates. And be
   you lift up, you everlasting doors, that the King of Glory may come
   in."

   Do you desire to hear God's Amen? Hear it as He bids His Son, amidst
   universal acclamations, sit upon His Throne and reign with Him,
   expecting till His enemies be made His footstool! Oh, greatly blessed
   are you, you Saints who are one with Jesus, for God has blessed Him and
   therefore you! On high enthroned are you, O Saints, for Christ
   enthroned stands! Him has God exalted, and He has exalted all His
   saints in Him! He joys not for Himself alone--the meanest Christian has
   a part in all the glories of the Savior! The enthronization of Christ
   is God's solemn declaration and Amen that He will bless all His people
   and make them kings and priests to reign forever and ever.

   Once more, Jesus Christ will be God's Amen at the conclusion of this
   dispensation in the fullness of time. I am not going into curious
   questions about how this dispensation will end. I have my own notions
   about it--other people have theirs. I believe if some people were as
   private about theirs as I am about mine, they would not sell so many
   two penny books, nor make so many foolish guesses at the future! I know
   just this about that, that Jesus Christ will come in due time, and that
   when He comes, whether immediately, or after a millennial reign, two
   things will surely happen--the righteous will be rewarded, and the
   wicked will be condemned. These two things we can be quite sure of.

   Now, when God shall put into His dear Son's mouth those words, "Come,
   you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from
   before the foundation of the world," that will be a most solemn Amen to
   God's purpose made concerning those saints! Indeed, it will be the Amen
   to the Covenant in the whole of its range, and to the entire work of
   Divine Grace from the first to the last! Then, as they come streaming
   up the sky in glorious pomp, to reign with

   Jesus Christ forever, Death and Hell, and the assembled world shall
   mark with shame and dismay God's Amen to His own eternal purposes, and
   to the work of His glorified Son.

   When, turning to the left, the Judge shall say, "Depart, you cursed,
   into everlasting fire in Hell"--before the word is spoken the ungodly
   will recognize Christ as being "the Amen" to all that God had
   threatened! In their cries to the rocks to hide them, in their shrieks
   to the mountains to fall upon them they will at once make clear to
   assembled multitudes that they perceive Jesus to be "the Amen," making
   God's threats true! And when His voice shall have cursed them forever,
   it will be the weighty Amen throughout eternity! It will be the
   emphatic reasserting at once of their guilt and of their
   punishment--that their sentence came from Jesus--that same Jesus who
   died for sinners and whom sinners crucified and rejected.

   Had it come from any other lips the sentence had not been so dreadful.
   But coming from the Man, as well as from the God, it shall be humanity
   assenting to God's verdict as well as God declaring and enforcing the
   sanctions of His Law. Oh Sinner, may Christ never be God's Amen to you
   in that sense! But, on the contrary, may you hide in the wounds of
   Jesus, and find all the blessings in Him, yes, and in Him, Amen, to
   you! I have thus spoken sufficiently upon this point if God blesses it
   to you--and so let us turn to our second head.

   II. Our Redeemer took this as a personal title to Himself. He called
   Himself "the Amen," and so He is. Our second point, then, is THAT HE IS
   OUR AMEN IN HIMSELF. He proved Himself to be Amen--the God of truth,
   sincerity, and faithfulness in His fulfillment of Covenant engagements.
   The Lord Jesus Christ undertook to bring many saints to Glory. His
   Father gave Him a people to be His forever and He undertook, in
   suretyship engagements, that every one of these should be delivered
   perfect and complete when they should be required at His hands.

   He undertook, in order to this, that He would suffer, bleed, and die
   for His Church--that all her debts should be discharged from His own
   veins--that a perfect righteousness should be worked out for her in
   which she should stand all beauteous in the sight of God. Brethren, I
   leave it to your own judgment, you who know the Lord Jesus, whether He
   has not faithfully kept His engagements. He has been "the Amen" to the
   full, in this respect. "Lo, I come! In the volume of the Book it is
   written of Me: I delight to do Your will, O God."

   From old eternity He declared Himself to be ready to go through the
   work, and when the time came He was straitened till the work was done.
   When He was a servant in the house of His Father, He might have gone
   out free if He had pleased. He might have left the service had He
   willed, but He said, "I love My Master, and I love My Master's
   children." And so, like a man who would not accept freedom under the
   old Jewish Law, His ear was fastened to the doorpost of God's house and
   He became the servant of His people forever. "My ear have You opened."

   Beloved, He has fulfilled His service! Seven years of toil for Rachel
   were achieved by Jacob, and seven years afterwards--and our Master has
   achieved the same. He has paid the price of His Beloved to the
   uttermost farthing, and up till now it can be said of Him, "Having
   loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end." "Of
   all whom you have given Me I have lost none." Let us praise and bless
   His name as we see Him in Covenant engagements faithful and true, "the
   Amen."

   He was also "the Amen" in all His teachings. We have already remarked
   that He constantly commenced with, "Verily, verily." The Pharisees in
   their teachings began with insinuating doubts, beclouding the mind with
   mystifications, and raising needless difficulties. It was considered to
   be the right thing for a philosopher never to teach dogmatically--but
   Christ never spoke in any other way. You find Him beginning, "Verily,
   verily, I say unto you." Christ, as Teacher, does not appeal to
   tradition, or even to reasoning, but gives Himself as His authority. He
   quotes, indeed, the authority of, "It is written," and speaks of the
   things which He had seen and heard of His Father. But this He states
   upon the authority of His own oneness with the Father.

   He comes clad with Divine authority and He does not deign to dispute or
   to argue, but He claims for His words that they are Amen. We have
   accepted His teachings, I hope, in that same spirit. I do not open the
   evangelists to find Christ's words to cavil over them. I do not turn to
   the Epistles to criticize the teachings of my Lord, nor to raise
   difficult questions with which to wrangle with the great Teacher. The
   position of a Christian is at his Master's feet, not disputing but
   receiving--not questioning, but believing. And in this sense Christ
   claims, as a Prophet and Teacher, to be "the Amen."

   He is also "the Amen" in all His promises. Sinner, I would comfort you
   with this reflection. Jesus Christ said, "Come unto Me all you that
   labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." If you come to
   Him, you will not find that He has revoked that promise, but He will
   say, "Amen," in your soul. That promise shall be true to you. He said
   in the days of His flesh, "The bruised reed I will not break, and the
   smoking flax I will not quench." Oh you poor, broken, bruised Heart, if
   you come to Him He will say Amen to you, and that shall be true in your
   soul as in hundreds of cases in bygone years.

   These are His own words, which He spoke to His servant John: "The
   Spirit and the Bride say come; and let him that hears say come; and
   whoever will, let him take the water of life freely." He says Amen to
   all those "comes," and when you come and are anxious to drink, He will
   say Amen to your coming and to your drinking, for He declares to you,
   "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." From the Throne of
   God where He is highly exalted, He utters the very same sentence now,
   and says Amen to that which He declared before!

   Christian, is not this very comforting to you, also, that there is not
   a word which has gone out of the Savior's lips which He has ever
   retracted? "I have not spoken in secret, in the dark places of the
   earth: I said not to the seed of Jacob, Seek you My face in vain." No
   stopping of Christ's bills--they shall be duly honored when the time
   comes. If you get a hold of but half a promise, you shall find it true!
   Beware of him who is called "Clip-promise," who will run away with much
   of the comfort of God's Word! But if you should even get a clipped
   promise, God will honor it--He will still keep His Word. "Let God be
   true, and every man a liar." You have to deal with Jesus Christ, "the
   same yesterday, today, and forever." Therefore be not afraid--

   "His very word of Grace is strong
   As that which built the skies
   The voice that rolls the stars along
   Speaks all the promises."

   I must not, however, tarry here. Jesus Christ is yes and Amen in all
   His offices. He was a Priest to pardon and cleanse once. He is Amen as
   Priest, still. He was a King to rule and reign for His people, and to
   defend them with His mighty arm. He is an Amen King, still the same. He
   was a Prophet of old to foretell good things to come. His lips are most
   sweet, and still drop with honey--He is an Amen Prophet. He is Amen as
   to the merit of His blood--

   "Dear dying Lamb,
   Your precious blood
   Shall never lose its power."

   He is Amen as to His righteousness. That sacred robe shall remain most
   fair and glorious when nature shall decay. He is Amen in every single
   title which He bears--your Husband, never seeking a divorce--your Head,
   the neck never being dislocated. He is your Friend, sticking closer
   than a brother--your Shepherd, with you in death's dark valley-- your
   Help and your Deliverer! He is your Castle and your High Tower--the
   Horn of your strength, your Confidence, your Joy, your All in All, and
   Amen in all.

   I must close all this by reminding you that He is Amen with regard to
   His Person. He is still faithful and true, immutably the same. Not less
   than God! No furrows on that eternal brow--no palsy in that mighty
   arm--no faintness in that Almighty heart! There is no lack of fullness
   in His all-sufficiency--no diminution in the keenness of His eyes--no
   defalcation in the purpose of His heart. Omnipotent, Immutable,
   Eternal, Omnipresent still! God over all, blessed forever! O Jesus, we
   adore You, You great Amen!

   He is the same, too, as to His manhood. Bone of our bone still. In all
   our afflictions still afflicted. Our Brother in ties of blood as much
   today as when He wore a peasant's garb, and said, "Foxes have holes,
   and the birds of the air have nests. But the Son of Man has not where
   to lay His head." He has the same heart of sympathy, the same heart of
   compassion--remembering us and bidding us remember Him. Not for a
   moment changed because of the change of His condition. Not for an
   instant unmindful of us because of the harps of angels and the songs of
   the redeemed. As quick to hear a sigh or catch a tear today as when in
   the days of His flesh He comforted His people and carried the lambs in
   His bosom!

   The Amen Savior! Oh, blessed is His name! Let us worship Him as the
   great Mediator between God and our souls, feeling joy to think that in
   all this He suffers no shadow of a change--

   "Blessings forever on the Lamb
   Who bore the curse for wretched men.
   Let angels sound His sacred name,
   And every creature say, AMEN."

   III. But I must roll all this up and leave you to digest and to enjoy
   the sweetness of the Truths of God which are contained in that short
   title, "the Amen." I have to close now by saying that THE LORD JESUS IS
   EXPERIMENTALLY GOD'S AMEN TO EVERY BELIEVING SOUL. We may say in the
   first place that He is God's Amen in us. Beloved, it is not impossible
   to prove the existence of God by argument. It is not altogether
   difficult to demonstrate the reasonableness of the Gospel by syllogism
   and by logic. None but the man who is deficient of brains, I think,
   need be long without being assured of the authenticity of Scripture.

   But let me say to you that all that argument, reasoning and logic can
   do for you is less than nothing and vanity. You will doubt in the teeth
   of argument, and be skeptical in the face of demonstration as long as
   your heart does not love the Truth of God. Your head may be convinced,
   but your heart will always supply enough atheism to keep your head at
   work. And your head will always be willing to receive an abundant
   supply from that nethermost cavern of your depravity.

   But let me say to you if you want to know God you must know Christ. If
   you want to be sure of the truth of the Bible you must believe Jesus.
   And I warrant you that when you have once looked up and seen Incarnate
   God bearing your sins. When you have thrown yourself flat upon the Rock
   of Ages and have felt the inward joy and peace which flow from
   believing in God, you will have heard an Amen to that old Book, and an
   Amen to the existence of God, and an Amen to the Gospel which Satan
   himself can never remove from your remembrance! You will be confident
   where once you were diffident! You will believe with a Lutheran vigor
   when once you have laid hold of Jesus Christ. I believe that this is
   the keynote of all true believing--to lay hold on Jesus Christ--

   "Till God in human flesh I see My thoughts no comfort find."

   And when I get Christ, my thoughts not only have comfort but they get a
   solid conviction that the things must be true. Perhaps there are few
   among you here that are troubled with skeptical doubts. They will
   afflict some of us, and I can say with regard to them whenever they
   come across my soul in any shape or form, I find the short and quick
   answer is this--I know one thing--namely, that I am not what I used to
   be. I know that I have entered into a new world. I feel spiritual
   heaving in my soul, spiritual longing, emotions, desires to which I was
   once an utter stranger!

   I know there has been as great a metamorphosis passed upon me as though
   a swine should suddenly become a seraph. I know that the very thought
   of Jesus keeps me back from sin and impels me in the path of duty. I
   know that His name exercises such a charm over me that no magician's
   wand ever worked such wonders. My rocky heart melts, my frozen soul
   dissolves at the touch of His love! And I, a clod of dead earth,
   suddenly get wings and fly and commune with the eternal God! Why, that
   must be true which has done all this for me! It cannot be a lie, it
   must be true!

   I feel within myself that my own consciousness must be true, and the
   Lord Jesus has so interwoven and intertwisted Himself with my
   being--no, overlaid and covered my being--that though I should doubt
   all beside, I could not doubt the existence and Divine power of my Lord
   Jesus Christ! Depend on it, dear Friend, if you want to know the
   Gospel, you must receive Jesus Christ, and when you know Him you know
   the Gospel. Mahomet, you know, is not Mohammedanism, but Jesus is
   Christianity. Jesus Himself is the Bible! Jesus is God's Word. Trust
   Him and you shall doubt no more.

   Next, Jesus Christ is "the Amen," not only in us, but "the Amen" for
   us. When you pray, dear Friend, you say Amen. Did you think of Christ?
   Did you look to His wounds? Did you offer your prayer through Him? Did
   you ask Him to present it before God? Did you expect to be heard by
   virtue of His intercession? If not, there is no Amen to your prayer.
   But if you have prayed, though it were but a sigh or a tear--if you
   were looking to the Cross--Jesus Christ's blood said Amen, and your
   prayer is as certain to be heard in Heaven as it was heard on earth! As
   sure as it came from your inmost soul and Christ was pleaded in it, the
   answer must certainly come!

   And now I pray, dear Friends, that Jesus Christ should be God's Amen in
   all our hearts as to all the good things of the Covenant of Grace this
   morning. I am sure He will be if you receive Him. We who have believed
   have entered into rest. If you have Christ you have entered into rest.
   "Being justified by faith we have peace with God." You that have Christ
   have peace with God this morning. "Being justified by faith we have
   peace with God." "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved."

   If you have Christ, you are saved. Christ is God's Amen. Get Christ and
   you have the promises. Get Jesus, and you are like the man who has an
   estate and is secure of his property because he holds the title deeds.
   He says, "I have got the estate." "Where is it?"--he shows you the
   title deeds. "Oh," says another man, "that is not the estate! That is
   far away in the north of England." "I have it however," says the owner,
   and he folds up his deeds, ties them round, and puts them away in his
   chest. "I have possession of the estate."

   Well, dear Friends, we have Heaven! We have God Himself because we have
   Christ--and Christ is the title deeds of all things. May you--

   "Read your title clear, To mansions in the skies," and the Lord make
   Jesus to be to your hearts, today, joyfully and blessedly His own Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                            Have You Forgotten Him?

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 11, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I do remember my faults this day." Genesis 41:9.

   No single power or faculty of man escaped damage at the Fall--while the
   affections were polluted, the will was made perverse, the judgment was
   shifted from its proper balance, and the memory lost much of its power
   and more of its integrity. Every observing mind will have noticed that
   naturally we have a greater power for remembering evil than good. Very
   plain is this in your children. If you mention anything good in their
   hearing you had need to say it many times and very plainly before they
   are likely to remember it. But if one ill word shall casually meet
   their ear in the street, it will not be long before you have the pain
   of hearing them repeat it.

   Our memory is like theirs, only in proportion as it is developed this
   peculiarity is more manifest. We have a most convenient warehouse for
   storing the merchandise of evil, but the priceless jewels of goodness
   are readily stolen from their case. We have a fireproof safe for
   worthless matters, and enclose the rarest gems in mere pasteboard
   cases. Our memory, like a strainer, often suffers the good wine to pass
   through but retains all the dregs. It holds the bad in an iron grasp
   and plays with good till it slips through the fingers. Our memories,
   like ourselves, have done the things which they ought not to have done,
   and have left undone the things which they ought to have done--and
   there is no health in them.

   Among other things, it is not always easy to remember our faults. We
   have special and particular reasons for not wishing to be too often
   reminded of them. Few men care to keep their faults in the front room
   of the house. Underground, in the darkest cellar, and, if possible with
   the door locked and the key lost--it is there we would like to conceal
   our faults from ourselves. If, however, the Grace of God has entered
   into a man he will pray that he may remember his faults and he will ask
   Divine Grace that if he should forget any excellences which he once
   supposed he had, he may not forget his defects, his sins, his
   infirmities and his transgressions. He would have them constantly
   before him that he may be humbled by them and led to seek pardon for
   them and help to overcome them.

   I do not say that the butler in this case had any work of Divine Grace
   in his heart, but I shall use him as an illustration and hope by using
   my watchman's rattle, to wake up some of your sleepy memories, for
   there are thieves about, and you are being robbed without knowing it!
   It will be a healthy result to us all if we shall be compelled to say
   at the end of this sermon, "I do remember my faults this day."

   In the first place this morning, using the butler as our illustration,
   we shall state his faults. Secondly, we shall consider the
   circumstances which refreshed his memory. And, thirdly we shall show
   the good points in his remembrance.

   I. We shall first call your attention to the BUTLER'S FAULTS, for his
   faults are ours, only ours are on a larger scale. "I do remember my
   faults this day." His particular fault was that he had forgotten
   Joseph--having promised to remember him when it should be well with
   him--he had altogether overlooked the circumstances which occurred in
   the prison. Instead he had been enjoying himself and leaving his friend
   to pine in obscurity.

   Here, then, is the first fault--the butler had forgotten a friend. That
   is never a thing to be said to a man's praise. We ought to write the
   deeds of friendship as much as possible in marble--and that man is
   unworthy of esteem who can readily forget favors received. Joseph had
   done all that he could to make the butler's sojourn in prison
   comfortable. It was hard, that so soon as the butler had escaped from
   prison his friend Joseph had escaped his memory. Save us from men who
   can so easily forget!

   But you and I have a Friend! We call Him very dear. We are accustomed
   to speak of Him in very rapturous terms. We declare that no others have
   such a Friend as we have. We have made our boast that there is none
   other that deserves the name in comparison with Him whom we call our
   best Beloved. And yet how many of us have forgotten Him?! His name we
   know, His nature we understand, His blessings we sometimes rejoice
   in--but frequently His Divine Person, His blessed self--alas, how cold
   our love to Him! This fault will not strike the carnal mind as being a
   great one, but in proportion as our hearts are spiritual and under the
   influence of the Holy Spirit, we shall feel it a great and grievous sin
   to have in any measure forgotten our best Friend.

   The circumstances were these--the butler was in prison, and then this
   friend came to him and spoke comfortably to him. Do you remember when
   you were in prison? I never can forget when I was bound in fetters far
   harder, heavier, and more painful to wear than fetters of iron. It was
   a dark dungeon, without a ray of light. There was no rest in it neither
   night nor day. A certain fearful looking for judgment and of fiery
   indignation haunted that gloomy cell. I struggled to be free, but the
   more I struggled the more hard did my bondage become. I was as one in
   the deep mire, who, by every struggle only sinks himself the more
   hopelessly in it.

   Do you not remember? Oh, Believers, you have passed through the same
   experience! Your feet were in the stocks, you laid in the innermost
   prison while the whip of the Law frequently fell upon your backs. The
   sentence of execution thundered in your ears and you trembled lest you
   should be dragged forth to your doom! Do you not remember it, the
   wormwood and the gall? Joseph came to the butler and said, "Why do you
   look so sadly today?" In our case we have not forgotten how Jesus came
   to us and enquired into our state. With what tender accents of sympathy
   did He address our hearts!

   He told us--and we could readily believe it--that He would not quench
   the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed. We had not been
   accustomed to be addressed in this fashion, for the voice of Moses is
   far from musical, and his tones are very grating to the ear. But when
   Jesus spoke it was all soft and sweet. "Poor Sinner!" He said, as
   though He pitied rather than blamed. He looked upon us not with an eye
   searching for iniquity, but with a heart which saw our calamity and
   which looked for the means to deliver us! Have you forgotten those
   times of brokenness of spirit when the only comfort which you knew was
   the name of Jesus? When the only stay for the hunger and thirst which
   were in your spirits was a morsel or two of His sweet love which He
   graciously cast to you to keep you by the way?

   Do you remember your dream? The butler had a dream. Do you remember
   yours? It was more than a night dream-- it was a day dream with a
   terrible interpretation appended to it in your mind. You dreamed of a
   vine, too, and you were the cluster, and you dreamed of the time when
   you should be cast into the winepress, and trod beneath the feet of
   almighty Wrath until your blood should fill the cup of Divine vengeance
   even to the brim! Do you remember that dream? How it haunted you, and
   seemed like some huge bird of prey with black wings and horrid cries,
   fluttering over you as though about to tear you in pieces?

   I remember when day was night to me, and night was worse than night.
   "Then You scare me with dreams, and terrify me through visions," was
   the cry of Job, and such has been the lament of many and many a heart
   under the weight of sin. Oh, how guilt can thunder in our ears! How the
   Word of God can grow terrible and stern! "God is angry with you! God is
   angry with the wicked every day! It is appointed unto all men once to
   die, and after death the judgment." In our terror we could see the
   rider on the pale horse and feel ourselves overtaken by him and struck
   down by the horses' hoofs! We saw ourselves cast into the pit of Hell
   and seemed to be falling, falling, falling, ever sinking from the angry
   glance of God and still as dreadfully near to it as before! That was
   our dream, and the interpretation, the only interpretation which seemed
   to fit it was this, "You will be banished from His Presence into
   eternal misery."

   Beloved, do you remember when Jesus came with the interpretation of a
   very different kind, just as Joseph did to the butler? He interpreted
   to the butler that Pharaoh would lift him up and put him in his place
   again. And so Jesus came to us and told us that we were condemned in
   ourselves but that we might not be condemned at the last. He told us
   that we had a sentence of death in ourselves because God intended never
   to pass that sentence in the Court of Heaven and had, instead, passed
   it in the Court of our conscience.

   He told us that God never kills with His Law in the heart without
   intending to make alive! That when He wounds He heals! That when He
   strips He means to clothe. We did not understand this. We thought that
   all this terrible dealing within our heart was the prelude of
   everlasting judgment! But He showed us that as many as God loves He
   rebukes and chastens. That it is the way with Him to break up the clods
   with the plow before He casts in the golden seed--and to dig out deep
   foundations before He piles polished stones one upon another to make a
   temple to His praise. Ah, I never shall forget when, at the foot of the
   Cross, I saw the interpretation of all my inward griefs when I looked
   up and saw the flowing of my Savior's precious blood--and had the great
   riddle all solved.

   My Brothers and Sisters, what a discovery was that when we learned the
   secret that we were to be saved not by what we were or were to be, but
   saved by what Christ had done for us! The simplicity of the Cross is
   the grandest of all revelations. "Look unto Me and be you saved, all
   you ends of the earth." Why it is as simple as the interpretation which
   Joseph gave to the dream! But in its simplicity lies a great part of
   its sweetness. How was it that I was such a fool as not to understand
   it before--that for every sinner who was truly a sinner, and had no
   righteousness of his own-- Jesus Christ is made righteousness and
   salvation? And that every sinner who confesses with a broken heart that
   he deserves God's wrath, he may know that Jesus has suffered all God's
   wrath for him, and that therefore God is no longer angry with him--for
   all His anger has been spent upon the Person of Jesus Christ?!

   How sweet it is to understand that all our soul's terrors and alarms
   are only meant to bring us to the Cross! That they are not intended to
   make us look at ourselves, to search for comfort there--nor intended to
   set us upon paving a way to Heaven by our own exertions--but to lead us
   to Jesus! Happy day! We see Jesus as the cluster crushed until the
   heart's blood flows and can, by faith, go in unto the King, with Jesus
   Christ's own precious blood and offer that, just as the butler stood
   before Pharaoh with the wine cup in his hand. I bear a cup filled not
   with my blood but His blood! Not the blood from me as a cluster of the
   vine of earth, but the blood of Jesus as a cluster of Heaven's own
   vintage, pouring out its precious floods to make glad the heart of God
   and man. Here lies our fault--that we have forgotten all this--not
   forgotten the fact, but forgotten to love Him who gave us that
   soul-comforting, heart-cheering interpretation!

   Beloved, when Jesus revealed Himself at first, our hearts were ready to
   leap out of our bodies for joy! Do you remember the time you thought
   you could sing always and never stop? Nothing was too hard, no burden
   was too heavy for you then--for your soul was all on fire with love.
   But ah, since then, what a sad declension! You forgot your Joseph. You
   forgot your Friend who gave you this kind interpretation of your dream!

   Dear Friends, there was something which ought to have made the butler
   remember Joseph. When I read the story just now, it came very vividly
   to my own mind. It was this--that there was another in prison at the
   same time with him--and what had become of him? The baker had been
   hanged! And if the butler had chosen to walk out, he might have seen
   the relics of the body of his poor miserable companion--gibbeted to be
   fed upon by kites and carrion crows. That poor wretch had dreamed a
   dream, too, but the interpretation had been very different.

   When some of us look back to the time when we were in sin with others,
   and recollect that although we are here, the living, to praise the
   Redeemer's name, some of our old companions are--we shudder to think of
   it, but it is so--at this moment in Hell! How shall we praise the
   electing Grace which has made us to differ? It is a solemn thought that
   such differences should occur--

   "Why were we made to hear His voice, And enter while there's room, When
   thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come?"

   Some of you used to spend hour after hour in the public house, and you
   could blaspheme God's name. And while those whom you once drank with
   are now drinking the cup of God's wrath, you, who were not one whit
   better than they--in some points even worse--are now saved by Sovereign
   Grace.

   Discriminating Grace should always give a high tone to our gratitude.
   He has not dealt thus with every people. Praise the Lord! If you whom
   God has chosen, and whom Christ has specially and effectually called by
   Divine Grace from among others--if you do not remember Him, what shall
   I say to you? Oh, dear Friends, how it should humble you and bow you
   down in the dust that after such remarkable, peculiar, distinguishing
   love as that of which you have been the subjects, you should still
   forget your dear Friend, and fail in point of duty where you ought to
   have been faithful to Him!

   We have not, however, quite done with the case of the butler and
   Joseph. The request which Joseph made of the butler was a very natural
   one. He said, "Think of me when it is well with you." He asked no hard,
   difficult, exacting favor, but simply, "Think of me, and speak to
   Pharaoh. You will have his ear in moments when kings are most likely to
   be in good humor. You will wait upon him at his feasts--then, when it
   is well with you and the time is come--put in a word for your poor
   friend who will be pining away in the damps of the dungeon." It was a
   very simple thing, and I will be bound to say the butler said to him,
   "Oh, my dear fellow, I will not only do that, but I do not know what I
   will not do for you! You shall be out of prison within a week and I
   will take good care that you have the fat of all the land of Egypt, and
   I will see that that Potiphar and his wife shall be severely punished
   for all the wrong they have done you."

   But he did nothing of the kind. What the Savior asks of us, His
   servants, is most natural and most simple, and quite as much for our
   good as it is for His Glory. Among other things, He has said to all of
   you who love Him, "This do in remembrance of Me." He has asked you to
   gather around His table, and break bread with His servants, and feast
   with Him. Some of you have never obeyed His command yet--you say you
   love Him--but you forget Him. It was kind of Him to institute that
   blessed ordinance to help your memory.

   It is doubly unkind of you that you not only forget Him but are not
   willing to use the means to have that frail memory of yours refreshed.
   Moreover, of you who come to His Table He asks the favor to speak a
   good word for Him wherever you have an opportunity. During the last
   week have you spoken for Jesus? He asks you to spread abroad the savor
   of His name--have you done so during the last month or not? He requests
   of you that as you are an heir with Him and a partaker of His kingdom,
   you will help Him to spread it--not by word of mouth only--but by your
   gifts and by your labors. What have you done?

   Suppose that now the Lord Jesus Christ should occupy this pulpit
   instead of me, and stand here and spread His hands and show you His
   wounds? Could you dare to look at Him? Might not some of you have
   crimsoned cheeks as you would have to confess, "Ah, Master, we have
   forgotten You. As to much practical service and honor of Your name, we
   have been quite as negligent as the butler was concerning Joseph."
   Well, He is here in spirit, and He will soon be here in Person.
   Servants of the Master, be faithful to your Master! But oh, all you who
   lean upon His bosom, and have familiar union with Him--I will not
   merely speak of faithfulness to you, but I charge you by your love, by
   the lilies, and by the animals of the field--see to it that you not
   forget your Beloved! Day by day, and hour by hour, feast Him with your
   wine, with your milk, with the choicest of your gifts, and the richest
   products of your souls! Labor for Him, live for Him, and be ready to
   die for Him who has done so much for you!

   I have thus stated the butler's case, but I shall want to pause a
   minute or two over this head just to go into the reason of his fault.
   Why was it that he did not remember Joseph? There is always a reason
   for everything, if we but try to find it out. He must have been swayed
   by one of three reasons. Perhaps the butler was naturally ungrateful.
   We do not know, but that may have been the case. He may have been a
   person who could receive unbounded favors without a due sense of
   obligation. I trust that is not our case in the fullest and most
   unmitigated sense--but I am afraid we must all plead guilty in a
   measure. Were there ever such ungrateful ones as the saints of God? We
   treat no other friend so badly as we treat our Lord!

   We love our parents. We feel gratitude towards friends who have
   assisted us in times of need. We are bound by very strong ties to
   certain persons who were very greatly an assistance to us in a pinch.
   But our dear Savior--better than father and mother, fonder than the
   fondest friend, closer than the most loving spouse--how ill we use Him!
   I am afraid, Brethren, we had better all of us say it is ingratitude
   here--we are basely ungrateful to Him. But let us not confess it as a
   matter of course--let us be ashamed to have such a thing to say! Let us
   feel that it lowers us more than anything else could lower us--that it
   proves how total, how abject, how degrading must have been the Fall of
   Adam, that even the love of Jesus Christ shed abroad in hearts like
   ours in such a remarkable and plenteous manner cannot cure us of the
   base and detestable vice of ingratitude!

   Oh You dear One, can I look upon Your face, all covered with Your
   bloody sweat? Can I view You again all covered with the spittle from
   the mouths of Your enemies? Can I see You in Your thirst and anguish on
   the Cross and know that every pang was for me, and every woe for
   me--and not a groan or spasm of pain for Yourself, but all for love of
   me who was Your enemy--and can I, after that, forget You? Oh my Soul,
   loathe yourself that you should be ungrateful to Him!

   Perhaps, however, worldly care choked the memory. The chief butler had
   a great deal to do--he had many under-servants, and having to wait in a
   palace much care was required. He who serves a despot like the king of
   Egypt must be very particular in his service. It is very possible that
   the butler was so busy with his work and his gains, and looking after
   his fellow servants and all that, that he forgot poor Joseph. Is it not
   very possible that this may be the case with us? We forget the Lord
   Jesus to whom we are bound by such ties because our business is so
   large, our family so numerous, our cares so pressing, our bills and
   bonds so urgent--and even, perhaps, our gains are so large!

   There is as much power to divide the heart from Christ in gain as there
   is in loss. In fact, the sharpest edge of the world's sword is
   prosperity. The back cut of adversity very seldom wounds as prosperity
   does. And yet, dear Friends, what are all these cares that they should
   make us forget our Lord? I know not to what to compare us. Unto what
   shall I compare our folly? We are like children in the marketplace who
   have their little plays and games, their pieces of broken crock and
   stick and stone and these take up all their thoughts. And they forget
   their dear mother who is calling them. She has nourished these
   children, and day by day her heart cares for them, but they forget her.

   They cannot live without her--they must go to her for all their
   necessities--the very garments on their backs are her workmanship, and
   the food that keeps life in their bodies she must find. But they are
   too busy, too busy with these little plays and toys and mere dirt and
   such things as children in the market will play with--too busy to think
   of her. Oh, it is base that it should be so, but we are sadly worldly.
   I am afraid John Bunyan's picture of the man with the muck-rake is not
   altogether unlike some of God's own children. Here we are with the rake
   groping over the dunghill, although above us stands the angel with the
   golden crown calling to us to look up from the dunghill and remember
   our lasting and enduring portion! But no, not we--that dunghill takes
   up so much of our time and thoughts that the crown is forgotten!

   Do not misunderstand me, I would not have you be negligent in
   business--neither reason nor Revelation require that--but oh, if you
   could remember the Savior in it all, and if you traded for His sake and
   worked for Him, and in the ordinary deeds of life did all as unto the
   Lord ("whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all in the
   name of the Lord Jesus")--then, truly, everything might remind you of
   Him and both gain and loss, mercy and misery might only drive you
   nearer to His blessed bosom!

   I am half ashamed to have to say one thing more. I am afraid that the
   butler forgot Joseph out ofpride because he had grown to be such a
   great man and Joseph was in prison. He was butler to the king. Now when
   he was in prison Joseph was his equal, and in some sense his superior
   for he waited on him. But now my lord, the butler, has great interest
   at court and he wears splendid garments, and he is very great among his
   fellow servants. Joseph--Joseph smells of the dungeon! He is a
   jailbird, and quite beneath him. He knows not what Joseph is to
   become--that all the glories of the land of Egypt are to be at Joseph's
   feet--but he is ashamed of Joseph.

   I do not suppose this operates with many of you, but I have known it
   with some professed Believers. When they were little in Israel, when
   they first professed to have found peace, oh, how they acknowledged
   Jesus! But they got on in the world and prospered--and then they could
   not worship among those poor people who were good enough for them
   once--they now drive to a more fashionable place of worship where the
   Lord Jesus is seldom heard of. They feel themselves bound to get into a
   higher class of society, as they call it, and the poor despised cause
   of Jesus is beneath them, forgetting, as they foolishly do, that the
   day will come when Christ's cause shall be uppermost!

   They forget that the world shall go down and the faithful followers of
   the Lord Jesus shall be peers and princes even in this world, and reign
   with Him--He being King of kings and Lord of lords--and they sitting
   upon His Throne and sharing in His royal dignity. I hope none of you
   have forgotten Christ because of that. I do not know, though--I have my
   fears of some of you. I do know this, that many a working man thinks
   more of Christ while he is so than he does when he rises above his
   fellows. We have heard of one who used to give much when he was poor,
   but when he grew rich he gave less, and he said, "when I had a shilling
   purse I had a guinea heart, and wished I could do much more for Christ.
   But now I have a guinea purse I find I have only a shilling heart, and
   I am for stinting and doing less."

   Oh let it not be so! Shall it be that the more He gives the less we
   give, and the more He shows his love, the less we show our love? God
   forbid that we should do this, but by every tie of gratitude let us
   serve Him more and more each day! There was very great heinousness in
   this forgetfulness on the part of the butler and he ought to have felt
   it. Perhaps the way for us to see our own fault is this. Suppose the
   butler had put himself in Joseph's place and said, "Now I wonder what
   Joseph thinks of my conduct? Suppose I were Joseph in prison, and I had
   done this favor to someone else? How should I feel with regard to his
   forgetfulness?"

   My dear Friends, can you suppose yourselves in Jesus Christ's place?
   Suppose it possible that you could have died for another, and by your
   death could have saved him and made him the partaker of everlasting
   joys? What would you think of him if he treated you as you treat Jesus
   Christ? You would say, "I am ashamed of him. I regret that ever I spent
   so much love on such a thankless person." Judge, then--judge your own
   case! Again, he might have judged of the heinousness of his
   forgetfulness by considering his conduct as he would have considered it
   at the first. Suppose a prophet had told you, when you were first
   converted, that you would live as you have done? Could you have
   believed it? You would have said "Never! If the Lord Jesus Christ does
   but take my burden off my back and set me free, there is nothing which
   I will not do for Him. I will be none of your cold, dead professors,
   not I."

   But you have been, dear Friends! You have been just as lukewarm as
   others. Judge of your sin as you would have judged of it at the first.
   Again, will you please to judge of it as you judge of other people?
   What do you think of other cold hearts? What do you think of other
   chilly professors, whose lives are lukewarm, and whose love knows no
   fervency? Judge yourselves by the same judgment. Put your spirit in the
   same scale and be humbled! Yes, let every one of us lay his mouth in
   the dust as we confess this day that we are verily guilty concerning
   the Lord Jesus. Let us all remember our faults this day.

   II. The second point is this--WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES BROUGHT THE FAULT TO
   THE BUTLER'S MIND? The same circumstances which surround us this
   morning. First, he met with a person in the same condition as that in
   which he once was. King Pharaoh had dreamed a dream and wished for an
   interpretation. Joseph could interpret--and the butler remembered his
   fault.

   Brothers and Sisters in Christ, there are those in the world who are in
   the same state of mind as you were once in. They once loved sin and
   hated God and were strangers and aliens from the commonwealth of
   Israel. But in some of them there has been the mysterious working of
   the Holy Spirit and they have dreamed a dream. They are awakened,
   although not yet enlightened. Salvation is a riddle to them at present,
   and they want the interpretation. Do you not remember how the Gospel
   was blessed to you? Do you not desire to send it to others? If you
   cannot preach yourself, will you not help me in my life-work of
   training others to preach Jesus?

   If I could bring before you this morning a score or two of anxious
   persons up from country villages and remote parts of our own land, you
   would say, "Oh, let me tell them about the Savior, or let me help to
   send someone to them who will do so." That is just the effect I want to
   produce without using that means. I want to make you remember your Lord
   Jesus--practically remember Him--by reminding you that there are
   persons who are now seeking Him, who are now panting after Him who have
   not yet heard the Gospel! They are longing for some herald of peace to
   come to them and proclaim the good news. By the love of souls, aid me
   in my great anxiety to supply the needs of the age with a ministry
   called of God to preach His Truth.

   The next thing that recalled the butler's thought was this--he saw that
   many means had been used to interpret Pharaoh's dream, but they had all
   failed. We read that Pharaoh sent for his wise men but they could not
   interpret his dream. You are in a similar case. There are thousands in
   England who are trying to minister to spiritual necessities-- above all
   we have Popery in its double form--Romish and Anglican--doing its best
   to interpret the dream of the human heart. You know what a sad mess it
   makes of it--it gives a stone instead of bread--brings to poor, needy,
   guilty man, anything but the Savior he wants.

   Now, as you hear these foolish wise men all blundering over the dream,
   do you not think of the Joseph who could interpret it? And as you hear
   these men holding up baptismal regeneration and sacramental salvation,
   does not your tongue long to say, "O fools! O generation of simpletons!
   It is Christ Jesus who is the great Interpreter--He alone can supply
   human necessities." Do you not feel a need, if you cannot go and preach
   yourselves, to help others to do so? Will you remember Jesus Christ as
   you remember how many are perverting the Gospel and preaching anything
   rather than the merit of His Cross? Remember your Lord today and your
   faults concerning Him, but let your remembrance lead to future
   diligence in His cause.

   Then, again, if the butler could have known it, he had other motives
   for remembering Joseph. It was through Joseph that the whole land of
   Egypt was blessed. Joseph comes out of prison, interprets the dream
   which God had given to the head of the State, and that interpretation
   preserved all Egypt, yes, and all other nations during seven years of
   drought! Only Joseph could do it. Oh Brothers and Sisters, you know
   that it is only Jesus who is the balm of Gilead for the wounds of this
   poor dying world! You know that there is nothing which can bless our
   land, and all other lands, like the Cross of Jesus Christ! Have you
   forgotten your Savior? Have you allowed His Gospel to be by without
   preaching it yourselves or helping others to preach it? Have you
   suffered the precious Truth of God to be like Joseph, hidden in prison,
   when you might have helped to bring it out into open court that others
   might hear and know the sound which has made glad your own heart? Then,
   as you remember England, the country of your love. As you remember
   other lands, which in proportion are dear to you, will you not think of
   Jesus today and do something for the promotion of His cause?

   Once more, surely the butler would have remembered Joseph had he known
   to what an exaltation Joseph would be brought. Under God it was all
   through the butler saying, "I remember Joseph," that Joseph came out of
   prison, that he stood before Pharaoh, that he rode in the second
   chariot, that the heralds cried before him, "Bow the knee!" and that
   Joseph, the poor prisoner, became governor over the land of Egypt!
   Christian, would you like to lift up the name of Jesus from obscurity
   into the throne of the human heart?

   At this present moment throughout this world Jesus Christ is still the
   despised and rejected of men! He is still a root out of a dry ground to
   the mass of mankind, and the only way in which He can be exalted is by
   loving hearts telling of Him and helping others to tell of Him. Think
   of the splendor which yet will surround our Lord Jesus! He shall come,
   Beloved, He shall come in the chariots of salvation! The day draws near
   when all things shall be put under Him. Kings shall yield their crowns
   to His superior sway and whole sheaves of scepters, plucked from
   tyrants' hands, shall be gathered beneath His arms--

   "Look, you saints, the sight is glorious, See the 'Man of Sorrows' now?
   From the fight returned victorious, Every knee to Him shall bow."

   You by testifying of Him are promoting the extension of His kingdom and
   doing the best that lies in you to gather together the scattered who
   are to be the jewels of His crown. Surely the thought of His exaltation
   fires you with delight! The prospect of magnifying Him, of setting Him
   on high and helping to adorn His head--or even to strew the path
   beneath His feet--must fill your soul with a celestial ardor! Do not
   forget Him, then, but let the fact that you are in this position
   today--that you can glorify Jesus, that you can bless the world--let
   this encourage you to remember your faults this day.

   III. In the last place, I have a few things to say by way of
   COMMENDATION OF THE BUTLER'S REMEMBRANCE. It is a pity he forgot
   Joseph, but it is a great blessing that he did not always forget him.
   It is a sad thing that you and I should have done so little--it is a
   mercy that there is time left for us to do more!

   One of our dear friends said this morning--one of our beloved
   deacons--when I was asking him about some of the Churches he has been
   to visit--places where we are forming new Churches--what he thought of
   the work which was going on. "Oh," he said, "it is such a glorious
   work, and God is so marvelous in it that I wish I were younger that I
   might live to see more of it." He is not old, but he wished he were
   much younger that he might see God's gracious work going on for many
   years as it is now progressing through God's Grace in our midst. Our
   College is a mighty lever with which the Lord is working and if God's
   people knew more of it they would help it more.

   I like the butler's remembrance, first of all, because it was very
   humbling to him. He had to say it to Pharaoh. Pharaoh was angry and put
   his servant in prison. That was not a very pleasant thing for the
   butler to say to the king, "My Lord, you were angry with me and put me
   in prison." But though it was a humbling thing, it was very necessary
   that he should say it and be reminded of it. Let us go before God with
   the confession, "Lord, I was as base and vile as any. Your Cross saved
   me. I was an heir of wrath even as others. Jesus did all this for me,
   blessed be His name, and I humble myself to think that I should so
   treacherously have forgotten Him who was so kind to me."

   I commend his remembrance for another thing, namely, that it was so
   personal. "I do remember my faults this day." What capital memories we
   have for treasuring up other people's faults, for once, let us keep to
   ourselves. Let the confession begin with the minister. "I do remember
   my faults this day." This is not the place for me to tell you of them,
   though I dare say you see them without any telling of mine, but I do
   remember them. They make a long list. My Brethren in office--the
   deacons and elders--I have no charge against them, but I have no doubt
   they can all say, "I do remember my faults this day."

   You members of this Church, some old and gray, some young beginners,
   many of you parents and people in middle life--I suppose there is not
   one of you but what might say--"Yes, I do remember my faults this day."
   Let it go round. Do not let there be an exception to the case--let each
   Christian, instead of thinking about others, make it a personal matter,
   "I do remember my faults this day." I could wish that the unconverted
   here would join with us. Your fault--the great fault with you--is that
   you do not believe in Jesus Christ. You do not trust Him with your
   souls, but are still strangers to Him. I wish you could say, now, you
   up in that gallery there, each one of you, "I do remember my faults
   this day." And the whole body of you down below the stairs, and you
   around the pulpit, "I do remember my faults this day."

   It is a good sign of true repentance when it is personal repentance.
   Every man must mourn apart, and every woman apart--the husband apart,
   and the wife apart--the brother apart, and the sister apart. "I do
   remember my faults this day." The best part of it, perhaps, was the
   practical nature of the confession. The moment he remembered his fault,
   he redressed it as far as he could. He could not make up to his poor
   friend for the days he had been lying in prison, but he spoke to
   Pharaoh directly. That action was the means of bringing Joseph out.

   Now, dear Friends, if you remember your faults to the Lord Jesus, may
   you have Grace not to fall into them again! If you have not spoken for
   Him, speak today! If you have not given to His cause, give now! If you
   have not devoted yourselves as you ought to have done to the promotion
   of His kingdom, do it now! Oh, Sinner, if you have not believed in
   Christ, may God the Holy Spirit lead you to believe now! It is of no
   use remembering a debt if you do not pay it. And it is of no avail to
   remember a fault if you do not repent of it.

   I have little by way of urging you as a congregation to do more in the
   service of the Master. Often I feel held back by the thought that you
   are doing so much, but oh, if we could do as much as possible, if every
   one of us felt pledged, for the Lord's cause and the Redeemer's
   kingdom, that there should be nothing within the range of possibility
   to mortal man that we would not attempt for such a King, for such a
   Lord, oh, then we should see blessed days!! You have had a zealous
   spirit. You still have it--but you need still more of it, and may God
   send it to you!

   We are helping to send the Gospel throughout all this country, and to
   different countries abroad as well. Do not hold back when God is
   blessing! Your parts help is still required--be not slow to render it.
   Do come forward with us and help us to magnify the Savior's name till
   the ends of the earth shall know it, and all nations shall call Him
   blessed! The Lord bless these words for the sake of Jesus Christ our
   Lord. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                  Eyes Opened

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 18, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water." Genesis 21:19.

   "And their eyes were opened, and they knew Him." Luke 24:31.

   The Fall of man was most disastrous in its results to our entire being.
   "In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die," was no idle
   threat, for Adam did die the moment that he transgressed the
   command--he died the great spiritual death by which all his spiritual
   powers became then and evermore, until God should restore them,
   absolutely dead. I said all the spiritual powers, and if I divide them
   after the analogy of the senses of the body, my meaning will be still
   more clear.

   Through the Fall the spiritual taste of man became perverted so that he
   puts bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. He chooses the poison of
   Hell and loathes the bread of Heaven. He licks the dust of the serpent
   and rejects the food of angels. The spiritual hearing became grievously
   injured, for man naturally no longer hears God's Word but stops his
   ears at his Maker's voice. Let the Gospel minister charm ever so
   wisely, yet the unconverted soul, like the deaf adder, hears not the
   charmer's voice. The spiritual feeling by virtue of our depravity is
   fearfully deadened. That which would once have filled the man with
   alarm and terror no longer excites emotion.

   Even the spiritual smell with which man should discern between that
   which is pure and holy and that which is unsavory to the most High has
   become defiled. Now man's spiritual nostrils, while unrenewed, derive
   no enjoyment from the sweet savor which is in Christ Jesus but seeks
   after the putrid joys of sin. As with other senses so is it with man's
   sight. He is so spiritually blind that things most plain and clear he
   cannot and will not see. The understanding, which is the soul's eye, is
   covered with scales of ignorance and when these are removed by the
   finger of instruction, the visual orb is still so affected that it only
   sees men as trees walking.

   Our condition is thus most terrible, but at the same time it affords
   ample room for a display of the splendors of Divine Grace. We are so
   naturally and entirely ruined, that if saved, the whole work must be of
   God, and the whole Glory must form the head of the Triune Jehovah.
   There must not only be a Christ lifted up of whom it can be said,
   "There is life in a look at the crucified One," but that very look,
   itself, must be given to us or else in vain should Christ hang upon the
   Cross!

   I. Taking Hagar's case first, I shall address myself this morning to
   certain unconverted ones who are in a hopeful condition.

   1. Taking Hagar's case as the model to work upon, we may see in her and
   in many like her a preparedness for mercy. In many respects she was in
   a fit state to become an object of mercy's help. She had a strong sense
   of need. The water was spent in the bottle, she herself was ready to
   faint and her child lay at death's door. This sense of need was
   attended by vehement desires. It is a very hard thing to bring a sinner
   to long after Christ--so hard that if a sinner does really long and
   thirst after Jesus--the Spirit of God must have been secretly at work
   in his soul, begetting and fostering those desires.

   When the invitation is given, "Ho, every one that thirsts," you can
   honestly say, "That means me." That precious Gospel invitation,
   "Whoever will, let him come," is evidently yours, for you will it
   eagerly and vehemently. The Searcher of all hearts knows that there is
   no objection in your heart either to be saved or to the way of being
   saved--no, rather you sometimes lift your hands to Heaven and say, "O
   God, would that I might say, 'Christ for me!' " You know that the water
   of life is desirable--you know more than that--you pine with an inward
   desire to drink of it. Your soul is now in such a state that if you do
   not find Jesus you never will be happy without Him. God has brought you
   into such a condition that you are like the magnetized needle which has
   been turned away from the pole by the finger of some passerby, and it
   cannot rest until it gets back to its place.

   Your constant cry is, "Give me Christ! Give me Christ, or else I die!"
   This is hopeful, but let me remind you that it, alone, will not save
   you. The discovery of a leak in a vessel may be preparatory to the
   pumping of the ship, and to the repair of the leak--but the discovery
   of the leak will not of itself keep the boat afloat. The fact that you
   have a fever is well for you to know, but to groan under that fever
   will not restore you to health. To desire after Christ is a very
   blessed symptom, but mere desires will not bring you to Heaven! You may
   be hungering and thirsting after Christ, but hungering and thirsting
   will not save you! You must have Christ! Your salvation does not lie in
   your hungering and thirsting, nor in your humbling, nor in your
   praying--salvation is in Him who died upon the Cross--and not anything
   in you.

   Like Hagar you are humbled, and brought to despair. There was a time
   when you did not admit your need of a Savior. You found comfort enough
   in ceremonies, and in your own prayers, repentances, and so on. But now
   the water is spent in your bottle and you are sitting down with Hagar
   wringing your hands and weeping in despair--a blessed despair! God
   bring you all to it! Despair is next door to confidence in Christ! Rest
   assured, until we are empty Jesus will never fill us! Until we are
   stripped He will never clothe us! Until self is dead Christ will not
   live in us!

   It is quite certain that in Hagar's case the will was right enough with
   reference to the water. It would have been preposterous, indeed, to say
   to Hagar, "If there is water are you willing to drink?" "Willing?" she
   would say, "look at my parched lips, hear my dolorous cries, look at my
   poor panting, dying child! How can you ask a mother if she is willing
   to have water while her babe is perishing for thirst?" And so with you.
   If I were to propose to you the question, "Are you willing to be
   saved?" you might look me in the face and say, "Willing? Oh Sir, I have
   long passed beyond that stage! I am panting, groaning, thirsting,
   fainting, dying to find Christ! If He would come to me this morning I
   would not only open both the gates of my heart and say, 'Come in,' but
   the gates are opened now before He comes. And my soul is saying, 'Oh,
   that I knew where I might find Him, that I might even come to His
   seat!' "

   All this is hopeful, but I must again remind you that to will to be
   rich does not make a man rich, and that to will to be saved cannot in
   itself save you. Panting after health does not restore the sick man
   though it may set him upon using the means, and so he may be healed.
   And with you, your panting after salvation cannot save you--you must
   get beyond all this to the great Physician Himself.

   2. In the second place, mercy was prepared for Hagar, and is prepared
   for those in a like state. There was water. She thought it was a
   wilderness without a drop for her to drink, but there was water.
   Troubled Conscience, there is pardon! You think it is all judgment,
   thunder and thunderbolts, curses and wrath, but it is not so. There is
   mercy! Jesus died. God is able justly to forgive sinners. God was in
   Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their
   trespasses unto them. He is a God ready to pardon, ready to forgive!
   There is forgiveness with Him that He may be feared. There is water,
   there is mercy. What is more, there is mercy for you! There is not only
   that general mercy which we are bound to preach to every creature, but
   for many of you whom I have described I am persuaded that there is
   special mercy.

   Your names are in His Book. He has chosen you from before the
   foundation of the world, though you do not know it. You shall be
   His--you ARE His! The hour is not far distant, when, washed in the
   fountain and made clean, you shall cast yourselves at the Savior's feet
   and be His captives in the bonds of love forever. There is mercy for
   you now if you trust Jesus!

   The water was not created as a new thing to supply Hagar's thirst--it
   was there already. If she could have seen it she might have had it
   before, but she could not see it. There is mercy, there is mercy for
   you. All that is wanted is that you should see it, poor troubled
   Conscience, and if you could have seen it there would have been no
   necessity whatever that you should have been so long a time as you have
   been in despair, and doubt, and fear. The water was near to Hagar, and
   so is Christ near to you. The mercy of God is not a thing to be sought
   for up yonder among the stars, nor to be discovered in the depths--it
   is near you, it is even in your mouth and in your heart!

   The Savior who walked along the streets of Jerusalem is in these aisles
   and in these pews--a God ready to forgive, waiting to be gracious. Do
   not think of my Master as though He had gone up to Heaven out of your
   reach and had left no mercy behind Him. Let Him tell you that He is as
   near in spirit now as He was to the disciples when He spoke to them at
   Emmaus. Oh that you could see Him! He is "the same yesterday, today,
   and forever." He is passing by! Cry to Him, you blind man, and you
   shall receive your sight! Call to Him, you deaf! Speak, even you whose
   lips are dumb--His ears can hear your soul's desires! He is near--only
   believe in His Presence and trust His Grace--and you shall see Him.

   It is a notion abroad that the act of faith is very mysterious. Now
   faith, so far as it is an act of man, (and an act of man it most
   certainly is, as well as the gift of God, for "with the heart men
   believe"), is one of the simplest acts of the human intellect. To trust
   Jesus, to lean with the soul upon Him--just as with my body I am
   leaning on this rail--to make Him all my confidence and all my rest
   needs no learning, no previous education. It needs no straining or
   mental effort. It is such an action that the babe and the suckling may
   glorify God by it!

   The faith of Sir Isaac Newton, with all his learning, is not a whit
   more saving or less simple than the faith of the child of three years
   old, if brought to rest on Christ alone. The moment the dying thief
   looked to the Crucified and said, "Lord remember me," he was as saved
   as Paul, when he could say, "I have fought a good fight, I have
   finished my course." I am very anxious to be understood, and therefore
   I am trying to speak very simply, and to talk right home to those whom
   I am driving at.

   My own case is to the point. I was for some few years, as a child,
   secretly seeking Jesus. If ever heart knew what the bitter anguish of
   sin was, I did. And when I came to understand the plan of salvation by
   the simple teaching of a plain, illiterate man, the next thought I had
   after joy that I was saved, was this--"What a fool I was not to trust
   Jesus Christ before!" I concluded that I never could have heard the
   Gospel, but I think I was mistaken. I think I must have heard the
   Gospel thousands of times, but did not understand it. I was like Hagar
   with my eyes closed. We are bound to tell you every Sunday that
   trusting Jesus Christ is the way of salvation, but after you have heard
   that 50,000 times, you really will not even understand what we mean by
   it till the Spirit of God reveals the secret.

   But when you do but know it and trust in Jesus, simply as a child would
   trust his father's word, you will say of yourself, "How could it be? I
   was thirsty with the water rippling at my feet! I was famishing and
   perishing for hunger, and the bread was on the table! I was fretting as
   though there were no entrance into Heaven, but there stood the door
   wide open right before me, if I could but have seen it!" "Trust Christ,
   and He must save you." I will improve upon it: "Trust Him, you are
   saved." The moment you begin to live by faith in His dear Son, there is
   not a sin left in God's book against you!

   3. We pass on, then, in the third place, to notice that although Hagar
   was prepared and mercy was prepared, yet there was an impediment in the
   way for she could not see the water. There is also an impediment in
   your way. Hagar had a pair of bright beaming eyes, I will be bound to
   say, and yet she could not see the water. And men may have first-rate
   understandings, but not understand that simple thing--faith in the Lord
   Jesus Christ. You do not suffer so much from lack of power to
   understand faith as from a kind of haze which hovers over your eyes to
   prevent their looking into the right place. You continue to imagine
   that there must be something very singular for us to feel in order to
   have eternal life.

   Now this is all a mistake! Simple trust in Jesus has this difficulty in
   it--it is not difficult--and therefore the human mind refuses to
   believe that God can intend to save us by so simple a plan. What
   blindness is this! So foolish and so fatal! Is not this ignorance
   partly caused by legal terrors? Master Bunyan, who had a keen insight
   into spiritual experience, says that Christian was so troubled with the
   burden on his back that in running he did not look well enough to his
   steps. Therefore, being much tumbled up and down in his own mind, as he
   says, he also tumbled into the Slough of Despond.

   You may have heard the thunder of God's Law so long that you cannot
   hear anything so soft and sweet as the invitation of the loving Jesus.
   "Come and welcome! Come and welcome!" is unheard because of the din of
   your sins.

   The main reason I think why some do not attain early to peace is
   because they are looking for more than they will get and thus their
   eyes are dazzled with fancies. You who dare not take Christ because you
   are not a full-grown Christian, be content to be a babe first! Be
   satisfied to go through the seed state, and the blade state, and the
   ear state, and then you will get to be the full corn in the ear! Be
   content to begin with Christ and with Christ, alone. I verily believe
   some of you expect that you will experience a galvanic shock, or a
   superhuman delirium of horror. You have an idea that to be born-again
   is something to make the flesh creep or the bones shiver--an
   indescribable sensation, quite out of the compass of human feeling.

   Now believe, that to be born-again involves the ending of superstition
   and living by feeling, and brings you into the world of plain and
   simple truth where fools need not err. "Whoever believe in Him is not
   condemned." If you can understand that and claim it as your own, you
   are born-again. But though you should understand all human mysteries,
   if you are not born-again you could not truly understand that simplest
   of all teachings, "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved."

   Again, I am afraid some persons with the water at their feet do not
   drink it because of the bad directions that are given by ministers.
   When a minister closes up an address to the unconverted with this
   exhortation--"Now, my dear Friends, go home and pray," that is a very
   right exhortation--but it is given to the wrong people, and in the
   wrong place. I do not say to you this morning, I dare not say to you,
   as though it were the Gospel message, "Go home and pray." I hope you
   will pray! But there is another matter to come before prayer, namely,
   faith in Jesus!

   When Christ told His disciples to go and preach the Gospel to every
   creature, He did not say to them, "He that prays shall be saved,"
   though that would be true if he prayed aright. But Christ said, "he
   that believes shall be saved." Your present duty is not praying, but
   believing. You are to look to Jesus Christ upon the Cross just as the
   poor serpent-bitten Israelites looked to the bronze serpent and lived.
   Your praying will not do you a farthing's worth of good if you refuse
   to trust Jesus Christ. When you have trusted Jesus Christ prayer will
   become your breath, your native air--you will not be able to live
   without it! But prayer, if put in the place of a child-like trust in
   Jesus, becomes an antichrist.

   It is not going to places of worship, or Bible reading which saves. I
   am not depreciating these duties but I am putting them in their proper
   position. It is depending upon the Lord Jesus Christ alone which is the
   true vital act by which the soul is quickened into spiritual life. If
   you, trusting in Christ, do not find peace and pardon, the Gospel which
   I preach is a lie and I will renounce it! But then the Bible would be
   false, also, for it is from that Book my message comes. This is the
   Gospel which we have received and which Christ has sent us to
   preach--that whoever believes in Him is not condemned.

   Now why do you hurry about after this and that? Why follow this man's
   and that man's directions? Why look to your baptism and confirmation?
   Why do you go about to your Church-goings and your Chapel-goings, your
   Bible-readings and your praying, your good works about this and about
   the other--they are all but dross and dung if you put them in the place
   of Christ! But Christ Jesus, if you rest on Him, is precious, and after
   your receive Him, your works and your prayers shall become precious,
   too, because they will be performed through faith in Him. But until you
   come to Him, they are all nothing and vanity--unacceptable in the sight
   of God--because you put them into the place which should be occupied by
   the Savior.

   4. I feel certain that there are some here upon whom the Lord intends
   to work this morning--so we will speak, in the fourth place, upon the
   Divine removal of the impediment. Hagar's blindness was removed by God.
   No one else could have removed it. God must open a man's eyes to
   understand practically what belief in Jesus Christ is. That simple
   Truth of God--salvation by trust in Jesus Christ--still remains a point
   too hard to be seen. Until the whole power of Omnipotence is made to
   bear upon the intellect man does not really comprehend it!

   But while this was Divinely removed, it was removed instrumentally. An
   angel spoke out of Heaven to Hagar. It matters little whether it is an
   angel or a man--it is the Word of God which removes the difficulty.
   Dear Friend, I pray that the Word of God may remove your unbelief. May
   you see today the light of Jesus Christ by simply trusting Him! I
   believe there are some who are saved who still are afraid they will be
   lost. I have heard of a butcher who, at his work, was accustomed to put
   his candle in a little candlestick which was tied by a belt around his
   forehead. One day he needed his candle in his hand and he looked all
   around his slaughterhouse for it by the light of the candle on his
   forehead. He looked about everywhere to fine it and, of course, he
   could not have looked at all if he had not had the light which he
   looked for already! Many a man is looking within himself to see the
   evidence of Divine Grace when his anxiety and the very light by which
   he looks ought to be sufficient evidence. I hope there are many of you
   who are just on the verge of salvation without knowing it.

   I looked last Friday night at a very remarkable sight--the burning of a
   huge rug factory. I was returning home from my Master's work, when I
   saw a little blaze, and in an incredibly short time a volume of fire
   rolled up in great masses to the skies! Why did it blaze so suddenly?
   Why, because for months before many men had been busily employed in
   hanging up the rugs and saturating the building in combustible
   materials. I do not mean with the intention of starting a fire, but in
   the ordinary course of their work. And in due time, when the first
   spark came it immediately grew into a great sheet of flames.

   So, sometimes, when the Gospel is faithfully preached, a sinner gets
   present peace and pardon and he is so full of joy that his friends
   cannot make him out, his progress is so rapid. But remember that God
   has been mysteriously at work months before in that man's
   heart--preparing his soul to catch the heavenly flame so that there was
   only a spark needed and then up rolled the flames to Heaven! Oh that I
   could be that spark to some heart in whom God has been working this
   morning--by HE alone can make me so! I noticed when that factory was on
   fire from top to bottom that it seemed to glow like pure gold, or like
   transparent glass, and then I expected to see it fall and, by-and-by,
   fall it did, for after about half-an-hour, all of a sudden, one timber
   went over and the whole mass fell with a tremendous crash!

   I venture to compare that final crash with the actual salvation of a
   soul long prepared, by God's Grace, to receive it. The heart has been
   glowing with a Divine desire, a heavenly flame for even months and
   years, and then, at last, and in a moment, the final movement is
   made--and doubts and fears and sins fall to the ground--and there is
   room to build a Temple for the living God. May it be so with you this
   morning!

   There has been much preparatory work in you, for you are brought to
   long after a Savior and you are desirous to be saved by Him. There He
   is! Take Him! Take Him! The cup of water is put before you. Drink it!
   No need to wash your mouth first, or to change your garments. Drink it
   at once! Come to Jesus as you are!--

   "Come and welcome, sinner, come!"

   II. Oh that the Spirit of God would give me power from on high while I
   try to talk to the saints from the second case--that of the disciples
   in Luke 24:31. This is no Hagar, but "Cleopas and another disciples."
   And yet these two suffered under the same spiritual blindness as Hagar,
   though not, of course, in the same phase of it. Carefully observe the
   case of these disciples, for I believe it is often our own. They ought
   to have known Jesus for these reasons. They were acquainted with Him.
   They had been with Him for years in public and in private. They had
   heard His voice so often that they ought to have remembered its tones.
   They had gazed upon that marred face so frequently that they ought to
   have distinguished its features. They had been admitted into His
   privacy and they ought to have known His habits. That Savior walking
   there ought not to have been incognito to them though He was to the
   rest of men.

   So it is with us. Perhaps you have not found Jesus Christ lately. You
   have been to His table and you have not met Him there. You are in a
   dark trouble this morning, and though He says, "It is I, be not
   afraid," yet you cannot see Him there. Brothers and Sisters, we ought
   to know Christ! We ought to discover Him at once. We know His voice. We
   have heard Him say, "Rise up, My love, My fair one, and come away." We
   have looked into His face. We have understood the mystery of His grief.
   We have leaned our head upon His bosom. Some of you have had an
   experience of fifteen or twenty years, some of forty or fifty
   years--and yet, though Christ is near, you do not know Him this
   morning--and you are saying, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him!"

   They ought to have known Him because He was close to them. He was
   walking with them along the same road. He was not up on a mountain at a
   distance. Even then they ought to have known Him--but He was there in
   the same way with them! And at this hour Jesus is very near to us,
   sympathizing with all our griefs.

   "In every pang that rends the heart, The Man of Sorrows has His part."
   He bears and endures with us still, though now exalted in Glory's
   Throne in Heaven. If He is here, we ought to know Him. If He is close
   to His people every day and in all their affliction is afflicted, we
   ought to perceive Him. Oh, what poor vision is this, that Christ should
   be near, our own well-beloved Redeemer, and yet we should not be able
   to detect His Presence!

   They ought to have seen Him because they had the Scriptures to reflect
   His Image, and yet how possible it is for us to open that precious Book
   and turn over page after page of it and not see Christ. They talked
   concerning Christ from Moses to the end of the Prophets, and yet they
   did not see Jesus. Dear Child of God, are you in that state? He feeds
   among the lilies of the Word and you are among those lilies, and yet
   you do not see Him? He is accustomed to walk through the glades of
   Scripture and to commune with His people, as the Father did with Adam
   in the cool of the day, and yet you are in the garden of Scripture but
   cannot see your Lord though He is there and is never absent?

   What is more, these disciples ought to have seen Jesus, for they had
   the Scriptures opened to them. They not only heard the Word, but they
   understood it. I am sure they understood it, for their hearts burned
   within them while He spoke with them by the way. I have known what it
   is, and so have you, to feel our hearts burn when we have been thinking
   of the precious Truth of God, and yet we have said, "Oh that I could
   get at Him!" You have heard of election, and you have wondered to
   yourself whether you should ever see again the face of God's first
   elect One. You have heard of the Atone- ment, and the mournful story of
   the Cross has ravished you. You have gone from page to page of
   Scripture doctrine and have received it and felt its influence, and yet
   that best of all enjoyments, communion with the Lord Jesus Christ, you
   have not comfortably possessed.

   There was another reason why the disciples ought to have seen Him,
   namely that they had received testimonies from others about Him. "But
   we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel: and
   beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done.
   Yes, and certain women of our company, which were early at the
   sepulcher, made us astonished. For when they found not His body, they
   came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said
   that He was alive." There He was close to them. Oh, it is so strange
   that in the ordinances of God's house Jesus should be there, and yet in
   sad intervals our hearts should get so cold and so worldly that we
   cannot see Him!

   It is a blessed thing to want to see Him, but oh, it is better still to
   see Him. To those who seek Him He is sweet. But to those who find Him,
   He is dear beyond expression! In the Prayer Meeting you have heard some
   say, "If ever I loved You, my Jesus, 'tis now," and your hearts burned
   within you as they thus spoke, and yet you could not say the same
   yourself. You have been up in the sick-chamber, and you have heard the
   dying saint sing--

   "I will love You in life, I will love You in death,
   And praise You as long as You lend me breath;
   And say when the death-dew lies cold on my brow,
   If ever I loved You, my Jesus, 'tis now."

   You have envied that dying saint because you could not just then feel
   the same confident love.

   Well this is strange, passing strange--it is amazing--a present Savior,
   present with His own disciples who have long known Him and who long to
   see Him--and yet their eyes are shut so that they cannot discover Him.
   Why do we not see Him? I think it must be ascribed in our case to the
   same as in theirs, namely, our unbelief. They evidently did not expect
   to see Him, and therefore they did not discover Him. Brethren, to a
   great extent in spiritual things we shall get what we expect. The
   ordinary preacher of the Gospel does not expect to see present
   conversions and he does not! But there are certain Brethren I have
   known who have preached with the full faith that God would convert
   souls and souls have been converted!

   Some saints do not expect to see Christ. They read the life of Madame
   Guyon and her soul-enchanting hymns, and they say, "Ah, this was a
   blessed woman." They take down the letters of Samuel Rutherford, and
   when they read them through, they say, "Enchanting epistles! A strange,
   marvelously good man was this." It does not enter into their heads that
   they may be as Madam Guyon and that they may have as much nearness to
   Christ, and as much enjoyment as Samuel Rutherford! We have got into
   the habit of thinking the saints gone by stand up in elevated niches
   for us to stare at them with solemn awe, and fancy that we can never
   attain to their elevation.

   Brothers and Sisters, they are elevated, certainly, but they beckon us
   to follow them, and point to a something beyond! They invite us to
   outstrip them, to get greater nearness to Christ, a clearer sense of
   His love, and a more ravishing enjoyment of His Presence. You do not
   expect to see Christ, and therefore you do not see Him. Not because He
   is not there to be seen--but because your eyes are shut through your
   unbelief! I do not know any reason why we should not be full of joy
   this morning--every believing soul among us.

   Why hang those harps on the willows, Beloved? You have a trial, you
   say. Yes, but Jesus is in it! He says, "When you pass through the
   rivers, I will be with you, the floods shall not overflow you." Why not
   rejoice then, since the dear Shepherd is with you? What matters it
   though there are clouds? They are full of rain when He is there, and
   they shall empty themselves upon the earth. Up, my Brothers and
   Sisters, up! With everything that may discourage and cast you down, you
   have 10 times as much to encourage and life you up! He love you and
   gave Himself for you. His blood has cleansed you. His righteousness has
   clothed you. His Grace has decked you with jewels. This world and the
   world to come are yours--and Christ who is better than both worlds--is
   yours forever and ever! Take down those harps and strike the strings
   with glad fingers--and wake them into melodies of joy!

   Now, dear Friends, I am sure it is the duty of every Christian, as well
   as his privilege, to walk in the conscious enjoyment of the love of the
   Lord Jesus Christ. It may be that you came here on purpose that you
   might begin such a walk. The disciples had walked a long way without
   knowing Christ, but when they sat at His table it was the breaking of
   bread that broke the evil charm, and they saw Jesus clearly at once. Do
   not neglect that precious ordinance of the breaking of bread! There is
   much more in it than some suppose. Sometimes when the preaching of the
   Word affords no joy, the breaking of bread might--and when reading the
   Word does not yield consolation--a resort to the Lord's Table might be
   the means of comfort.

   It may even happen that some other neglected means may be that which
   God intends to bless to your soul. I am afraid many of God's servants
   are in darkness because they have neglected known duties. The windows
   of Christ's palace are many, and He would not have one of them blocked
   up. And if you block up one window, it may be that He will say, "I will
   never show My face at any but that. I will make My servants take down
   that shutter, that the Light of God may shine through." There is
   nothing in any ordinance of itself, but there may be much sin in your
   neglecting it. There is nothing, for instance, in the ordinance of
   Believers' Baptism, and yet, knowing it to be a prescribed duty in
   God's Word, it may be that the Lord will never give you a comfortable
   sense of His Presence till you yield to your conscience in that matter.
   But, waiving all that point, what you want is to see Him! Faith alone
   can bring you to see Him. Make it your prayer this morning, "Lord, open
   my eyes that I may see my Savior present with me. And after once seeing
   Him may I never let Him go. From this day forth may I begin, like
   Enoch, to walk with You, and may I continue walking with You till I
   die, that I may then dwell with You forever."

   I find it very easy to get near to God compared with what it is to keep
   near. Enoch walked with God 400 years! What a long walk that was! What
   a splendid journey through life! Why should you not begin, dear
   Christian Brothers and Sisters, today, if you have not begun, and walk
   with God through the few years which remain? What if God should spare
   you for 40 years? I do not see that there is any necessity that your
   communion with God should be broken from now till death or the Lord's
   coming. "Yes," you say, "you talk in a Utopian fashion!" Perhaps I do,
   but I believe that high-toned Christian experience is, to a great
   extent, what common Christians think to be out of their reach.

   Oh to get up above yon mists which dim the valley! Oh to climb the
   mountain's top which laughs in the sunlight! Oh to get away from the
   heavy atmosphere of worldliness and doubt, of fear, of care, of
   fretfulness--to soar away from the worldlings who are always
   earth-hunting, digging into its mines and prying after its
   treasures--and to get up there where God dwells in the innermost circle
   of heavenly seclusion--to get where none can live but men who have been
   quickened from among the dead! Where none can walk but men who are
   crucified with Christ, and who live only in Him! Oh to get up there
   where no more question concerning our security can molest us! Where no
   carking care can disturb because all is cast upon the Lord and rests
   wholly with Him! Oh to live in such an entireness of confidence and
   child-like faith that we will have nothing to do with anything except
   with serving Him and showing forth the gratitude we owe to Him who has
   done so much for us!

   Get up, Believers! Get up to your high mountain! Leave your dunghills
   and assume your thrones! Cast off your sackcloth! Throw away your ashes
   and put on your scarlet apparel! Christ has called you to fellowship
   with Himself, and He is no longer in the grave--He is risen! Rise! He
   is ascended! Ascend with Him and learn what this means, "He has raised
   us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ
   Jesus!

   I know you will say you cannot see this. However, it is there--most
   surely there! It is just the same as in Hagar's case, with you--the
   same but with a difference. The fullness of fellowship with Christ is
   attainable! It is close to you and if you have your eyes opened to see
   it, as it has been given you to see Jesus as your Savior, you may
   rejoice w with a joy unspeakable and full of glory! God do so to you
   and more, also, according to His Covenant goodness in Christ Jesus.
   Amen and Amen.

   PORTIONS SOF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--GENESIS 21:9-19; LIKE
   24:13-31
     __________________________________________________________________

                       Future Punishment A Fearful Thing

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 25, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
   Hebrews 10:31.

   You will most cheerfully bear me witness that my most frequent subjects
   are the mercy and abundant loving kindness of our God in Jesus Christ,
   and that it is my favorite employment to invite the very chief of
   sinners to come to Jesus Christ with the assurance that He will cast
   out none who come to Him, but will assuredly give to them eternal life.
   It is not to my honor to say so, but still you know how seldom I have
   forced upon your attention those terrible subjects which concern the
   state of the lost in Hell. I have felt more at home in using the
   drawing of mercy than the driving of terror, and I can most honestly
   plead innocence of any charge of delighting in declaring the torments
   of the finally impenitent, or of entering upon the discussion of the
   miseries of the lost with eagerness and enjoyment.

   He who searches all hearts knows that under an overwhelming sense of
   urgency and necessity, and purely out of love to the souls of men I
   bring before you the text which I have announced. The burden of the
   Lord hangs heavily upon me. I must deliver myself of the blood of some
   of you who are living in impenitence and who will probably die in it,
   and who, if you die unwarned, having often listened to my voice, may be
   able to reproach me in another world if I do not faithfully and
   earnestly bear my solemn testimony concerning the wrath to come.

   Beloved, we know by observation in our pastoral work that while the
   mercy of God draws many to Him, there are some who are more affected at
   first by the terrors of the Law. We have many, now, who are members of
   this Church walking in holiness and in the fear of God. They listened
   to sermons upon the softer and more tender topics and were not
   affected. But when they came under the heavy blows of the hammer of
   God's Law their flinty hearts were broken into shivers and, by God's
   Grace, before long they turned unto the hand which smote them! God has
   ordained both the terrors of the Law and the tenderness of the
   Gospel--that by means of both--men may be saved.

   Gospel farming employs many implements, and there are some lands which
   will never yield a harvest without much more exercising with the plow
   than others may require. The light of Tabor and the fiery flashes of
   Sinai are equally Divine and so long as we learn to rest in Calvary it
   little matters by what means, whether tender or terrible, we may have
   been brought there. The complete ministry leaves no revealed Truth of
   God unuttered, but looks for a blessing upon the Word as a whole. The
   themes of mercy need, in order fully to manifest their brightness, the
   dark background of the terrors of the Law--for men will never value a
   Redeemer so well as when they have a very clear consciousness of the
   ruin from which He has redeemed them.

   The preciousness of mercy is best known by those who discern the terror
   of justice. If we really feel that God is angry with the sinner and
   loathes and hates his sin and will certainly take fearful vengeance
   upon him on account of it, we shall the better understand the force of
   that Divine mercy which led Him to give His own dear Son, and which now
   leads Him to cry unto the Sons of men, "Turn! Turn! Why will you die, O
   house of Israel?"

   In addition to these considerations I have been urged to bring this
   subject before you because the assaults which are now made against the
   Gospel frequently assail the doctrine of future punishment. It was once
   the business of infidels to revile the terrible sanctions of the Divine
   Law--but they may now suspend their exertions, for certain clergymen of
   the Church of England are doing the work most effectually. No,
   more--there are certain Dissenting ministers, successors of good and
   venerable men, who are never more at home than when they are making
   sport of the terrors of God!

   Just now it seems to jump with the humor of certain philosophic schools
   to depreciate our God as a Judge, and to magnify a supposititious
   Divine fatherhood which is the offspring of their own effeminate
   imaginations and flesh-pleasing dreams. It therefore behooves the
   servants of the Most High and Righteous God to confess the faith which
   they have received and not be ashamed of it, whatever disgrace may
   cover them.

   I. The text asserts that "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands
   of the living God," and our first statement shall be, that SURELY IT IS
   SO, as we may certainly gather from several considerations.

   1. It must be a fearful thing for impenitent sinners to fall into God's
   hands when we remember the Character of God as revealed in His
   judgments of old. Taking the Scriptures as our guide we see in them a
   revelation of God differing very greatly from that which is so current
   today. The God of Abraham, as revealed in the Old Testament, is as
   different from the universal Father of modern dreams as He is from
   Apollo or Bacchus. Let me remind you that ever since the day when Adam
   fell, with but two exceptions, the whole of the human race has been
   subjected to the pains of sickness and of death.

   If you would behold the severity of Him who judges all the earth, you
   have only to remember that this whole world has been for ages a vast
   burying place. Men whine out their abhorrence of God's justice and
   scout the idea of future punishment with the question, "Would a father
   do thus-and-thus with his children?" The question needs no other reply
   than fact. All men die. Would a father suffer his children to pine in
   sickness and die when it was in his power to prevent it? Certainly not.
   Since, then, the great God evidently permits much pain, and even death
   to happen to His creatures, He is evidently not merely father, but
   something more!

   To ungodly men Jehovah reveals Himself in the light of a judge--and a
   judge, too, whose stern severity has brought to pass the terrible doom
   of death upon every man of woman born, with two exceptions, from the
   Fall of Adam even until now. This is the God of Love--but not the
   newly-devised God who is love and love alone. Our business is not to
   think out our own idea of what God should be, but to find out, as far
   as we can, what God really is. Let me then remind you of the deluge.
   When the world was covered with inhabitants, and according to the
   computation of some, owing to the longevity of man, with a population
   more numerous than the present which crowds it, (however that is not a
   material point in the question)--when the world was covered with
   inhabitants, and these had sinned--God destroyed all flesh from off the
   face of the earth with the exception of eight souls, whom in His
   sovereignty He saved in the ark.

   Can you picture to yourself the horrors of that tremendous day, when
   the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the rains descended
   from on high? Here were millions of creatures like ourselves destroyed
   at a blow! Can you hear their shrieks and cries? Do you see them
   clambering in fright to the mountaintops? Do you behold them struggling
   for existence amidst the devouring flood? Can you hear the cries of the
   last strong swimmers in their agony? Who does all this? It is that God
   who so hates sin that, though He is infinite Love--and we would never
   detract from that attribute-- He is also infinite Justice and will by
   no means spare the guilty!

   Do not imagine that He who thus destroyed the world with a flood was
   never at any other time equally severe. Let me show you the dreadful
   picture of Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain. Those
   cities were filled with inhabitants, happy and cheerful like ourselves.
   They found their happiness, however, in sin, and their sin had so
   provoked God to anger that after a personal visit to the spot what did
   He do? You who believe in effeminate personification of shallow
   benevolence, turn here your blind eyes if perhaps the fire which fell
   from Heaven may yield you some ray of light.

   Can you see the dwellers of those cities when the fiery hail begins to
   fall? In vain were their cries! In vain their tears! The burning sleet
   pitilessly descends until one dreadful sheet of flame enwraps the sky
   and all the men of the plain are consumed before the terrible wrath of
   the Most High. What do you think of this scene of horror? And what of
   those words of Peter where he speaks of God who, turning the cities of
   Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them with an overthrow and
   made them an example unto those that after should live ungodly?

   Let me direct your eyes to Egypt. You read the story of the slaying of
   the first-born in one night and it does not strike you with horror. But
   only conceive of the first-born throughout all London dying in one
   night--what a visitation that would be! The whole of Egypt, it is to be
   believed, contained far more inhabitants than London, and yet without
   regarding Egypt's bitter cry which He foreknew would ring in His
   ears--that God who revenges and is terrible slew in one night the chief
   of all their strength!

   Don't forget the destruction at the Red Sea. Pharaoh and his hosts
   descended into the midst of the sea and perished there. You rejoice,
   and rightly so, because Israel was preserved, but what a fearful thing
   it was that Egypt should be destroyed! Pharaoh and all the chivalry of
   Mizraim swallowed up by the waves, to be mourned by innumerable widows
   and orphans! Do I hear anybody accusing our God of cruelty on account
   of this? And why not, if the new benevolence theory is true? Let those
   who accuse the infinite Jehovah beware! Let them strive with their
   fellow potsherds, but strive not with the rod of iron! Jehovah needs
   none of our defenses. O amazing God! Little does it matter to You what
   man's judgment of You may be, for with You the inhabitants of the earth
   are as grasshoppers! You do as You will, and Your judgments are past
   finding out.

   Think of the slaughter of the Canaanites. Palestine was filled with
   Hivites, Jebusites, and other nations. All these were given to the edge
   of the sword by God's express command. Dispute the Bible and you may
   get rid of this, but believe it and you have that terrible fact before
   you--that He gave a whole population to unmitigated slaughter--and, I
   believe, justly and rightly so. I profess not to understand the ways of
   God. Who am I that I should understand Him? Should the potter's vessel
   think of understanding the potter? I bow before what He does and
   believe that He is just. Let Him do whatever He may!

   There is no need to detain you over the terrible spectacle of thousands
   smitten by pestilence at the time of David's numbering of the people.
   Or of Sennacherib's hosts slain in one night by God's own hand, or even
   over that direst of all judgments--the destruction of Jerusalem! But I
   cannot forbear quoting the memorable words of Moses when he said of
   Jehovah, "He repays them that hate Him to their face, to destroy them.
   He will not be slack to him that hates Him, He will repay him to his
   face" (Deut. 7:10). Well does our Jehovah deserve the title which
   Isaiah gives Him, "The Lord that renders recompense to His enemies"
   (Isa. 66:6). What instances does the Scripture give of what Paul calls
   "the severity of God," and how true is it that, "It is a fearful thing
   to fall into the hands of the living God"!

   2. Pursuing our heavy task we shall now draw your solemn attention to
   the words of the Savior. Our Lord Jesus Christ we believe to be the
   Incarnation of God, and to represent our God under a most tender
   aspect. It is a very remarkable fact that no inspired preacher of whom
   we have any record ever uttered such terrible words concerning the
   destiny of the lost as our Lord Jesus Christ. You may search the
   Scriptures through, but you will not find more solemnly alarming
   expressions than those which the loving Jesus employed.

   Now, Sinner, that you may feel their power, instead of quoting them
   hurriedly, let me just remind you of them slowly and solemnly. It was
   that tender Savior who still cries, "Come unto Me all you that labor
   and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It was also He who
   said, "Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the
   soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in
   Hell" (Matt. 10:28). Read in Matthew 13:41--turn to the passage and
   read it with your own eyes that you may feel its power more--"The Son
   of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His
   kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall
   cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing
   of teeth."

   He repeats that expression in the forty-ninth verse. "So shall it be at
   the end of the world; the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked
   from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire:
   there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." In the same Gospel, in
   the twenty-second chapter, you will find words equally suggestive in
   the thirteenth verse--"Then said the King to the servants, Bind him
   hand and foot and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness;
   there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." And so again He says of
   the unprofitable servant in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, which
   chapter also records those dreadful words, which it is well for us to
   read as we find them at the forty-first verse--"Then shall He say also
   unto them on the left hand, Depart from Me, you cursed, into
   everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."

   And as if this were not enough, Jesus closes His discourse with these
   words at the end of the chapter, "And these shall go away into
   everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." Who was
   it who uttered that fearful sentence written in the ninth of Mark at
   the forty-third verse? Let it duly affect you as you read it--"If your
   hand offends you, cut it off: it is better for you to enter into life
   maimed than having two hands to go into Hell, into the fire which never
   shall be quenched: where their worm dies not, and the fire is not
   quenched."

   Did Jesus say that once? Read the forty-sixth verse "Where their worm
   dies not, and the fire is not quenched." Did He only say it twice? Look
   at the forty-eighth verse--"Where their worm dies not, and the fire is
   not quenched." Three times over in one discourse! Do not complain of
   the preacher if you think him harsh. Oh Beloved, he does not wish to be
   harsh, but to preach with tears in his eyes these dreadful things! But
   look at my Master, the Lord Jesus Christ! Did He preach smooth things
   on this matter?

   We heard the other day that the unquenchable fire and the undying worm
   were mediaeval ideas to be scoffed at in these enlightened times! A
   courtly preacher insinuated as much and more--but a greater than he,
   who wore no soft raiment and dwelt in no king's palaces--uses such
   expressions unmodified and undiluted! I pray you laugh not at them, and
   scoff not at them, for the lips that spoke them were the lips of Him
   who loved the souls of men even to the death! The lips of Him who shall
   come a second time to judge the quick and the dead.

   My terrible list is very far from being exhausted. Look at the
   twentieth chapter of Luke and the eighteenth verse, and the eighteenth
   chapter of Matthew and the eighth and ninth verses. But still more
   memorable is that parable of Lazarus and the rich man. The punishment
   of Dives is not described in terms of gentleness! He cries, "Father
   Abraham, send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water
   and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame." Abraham gives
   him no hope of escape from his misery, for the answer to the enquiry
   is, "And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf
   fixed: so that they which would pass from here to you cannot, neither
   can they pass to us that would come from there."

   Oh, mournful picture, but Jesus drew it! He it was who told us of a
   certain sinner it were better for that man that he had never been born!
   And of others that it were better for them that a millstone were hung
   about their necks, and that they were cast into the depths of the sea!
   He it is who describes certain sinners as being miserably destroyed,
   and in another place uses this fearful sentence which I confess,
   although it is figurative, makes me shiver as I utter it, "The lord of
   that servant will come in a day when he looks not for Him, and at an
   hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint
   him his portion with the unbelievers" (Luke 12:46).

   Do not talk about grim mediaeval expressions after this! This is the
   Master Himself, and these are His own words! And I dare to say it that
   all the glowing pictures ever painted designed to compel souls to
   escape from Hell never reached the dread reality which is implied in
   the words of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I hope that perceiving these
   terrors to have come from the lips of Jesus, who is all love, kindness,
   and benevolence, you will understand that it is the highest benevolence
   to warn men of their danger and to exhort them to escape from the wrath
   which will surely come upon them, for "It is a fearful thing to fall
   into the hands of the living God."

   3. We feel that it must be a fearful thing to be punished for sin when
   you remember the Atonement. It is our full belief as Christians, that,
   in order to the pardon of human sin, it was necessary that God Himself
   should become Incarnate, and that the Son of God should suffer--suffer
   excruciating pains--to which the dignity of His Person added infinite
   weight.

   Brothers and Sisters, if the wrath of God is a mere trifle, there was
   no need of a Savior to deliver us! It were as well to have let so small
   a matter take its course, or, if the Savior came merely to save us from
   a pinch or two, why is so much said in His praise? What need for Heaven
   and earth to ring with the glories of Him who would save us from a
   small mischief? But mark the word! As the sufferings of the Savior were
   intense beyond all conception, and as no less a Person than God Himself
   must endure these sufferings for us--that must have been an awful, not
   to say an infinite evil from which there was no other way for us to
   escape except by the bleeding and dying of God's dear Son!

   Think lightly of Hell, and you will think lightly of the Cross. Think
   little of the sufferings of lost souls, and you will soon think little
   of the Savior who delivers you from them. God grant we may not live to
   see such a Christ-dishonoring theology dominant in our times.

   4. But once again, and with this we close this point. The conscience of
   every sinner tells him that there will be a wrath to come. I do not
   mean that the conscience of the sinner tells him what kind of
   punishment it will be, or dictates to him its duration. But we know
   from facts that dying men who have lived in impenitence have often
   exhibited fears that are not to be accounted for except upon the
   supposition that the shadow of a terrible doom had cast itself upon
   their minds.

   These were not the old women of whom so much has been said in the way
   of despising them. These have been strong men once as boastful as Tom
   Paine and his fellows! These were men of intellect, sharp intellects,
   who once threatened to strike the Gospel through the heart--and yet
   when they have come to die their boasts have all ceased and the
   blanched cheek and the terror of the wrath to come have all proved the
   truth of what they denied, and have declared--"It is a fearful thing to
   fall into the hands of the living God."

   I am sure we all feel--at least I speak of my own conscience--I feel
   that God could not be truly God if He did not punish evil. That it
   would be a pity that there should be a God if He did not punish sin.
   That He might as well have had no existence at all if such were the
   fact, and that if a preacher should arise who would tell men that God
   would not punish their sins, such a man ought to be carefully secluded
   from society because of the mischief which his doctrines would
   assuredly cause.

   I feel like the judge in America, who when he was waited upon by the
   Universalists for assistance in setting up a place for their meeting,
   after hearing the arguments, said, "No, I cannot help you. In the first
   place, I do not believe that your doctrines are at all consistent with
   Holy Writ. And though I am sorry to say I am not so well instructed in
   the Bible as I ought to be, I believe that if Scripture had meant to
   teach eternal punishment, I do not see what other terms it could have
   used. At all events, if your sentiments should prevail, if there is no
   Hell hereafter, there would very soon be a Hell here. For as soon as it
   were known that men might commit sin with impunity, men would plunge
   into sin at once."

   The moral sense of man is not stamped out yet, and while it remains it
   will in more or less distinct terms declare that "It is a fearful thing
   to fall into the hands of the living God."

   II. Let me urge you, my dear Hearer, in the second place, NOT TO
   ATTEMPT TO DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF THE BENEFICIAL EFFECT WHICH A PROPER
   CONSIDERATION OF THIS DOCTRINE WOULD HAVE UPON YOU.

   1. Do not deny the fact, at any rate. If you do, be consistent and deny
   Scripture altogether. If you doubt the punishment of the future state,
   doubt the inspiration of Scripture at once--for to doubt one and hold
   the other is impossible! Do not so violate your own conscience as to
   dream of sin's escaping punishment. If you should persuade yourself to
   doubt the existence of Hell, your doubting it will not quench its
   fires. If there is no Hell hereafter I am as well off as you are, but
   if there is, where will you be? Take it on the most common
   supposition--I have two strings to my bow, you have only one--and that
   one I believe to be a lie. Oh, my Hearers, if I were to stand here and
   persuade you that there was no danger, you might very well say, "Then
   why need you tell us so? Why be in earnest when there is nothing to be
   in earnest about?"

   2. In the next place, do not have the edge of this truth taken off by
   those who suggest a hope that though you may be punished for a time in
   the next world you will ultimately be destroyed and annihilated. Now
   nothing in nature ever has been annihilated yet, and it would be a new
   thing if you should be. I am not about to argue the point this morning,
   but I pray you do not let the terrors of the wrath to come be taken off
   by that idea--for even supposing it to be true, yet those who teach it
   tell us that there will be a limited but a very fearful punishment!
   They still agree with the teaching of the text, that "It is a fearful
   thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

   If I knew that I should be damned for a day I would labor to escape
   from it! But to be damned for a thousand years will be terrible,
   indeed, and it would still be true that "It is a fearful thing to fall
   into the hands of the living God." I dare not, however, hold out to you
   the hope of annihilation while the Bible contains such words as
   these--"These shall go away into everlasting punishment"--everlasting!
   The word is precisely the same as that which is applied to Heaven, and
   though I shall be told that this is an old argument, I reply that this
   is the very reason why I use it.

   Be it for others to invent novelty--we count that the old is better. If
   that passage does not teach the eternity of punishment, neither does it
   teach the eternity of reward. It is to be always punishment,
   too--always punishment. Now if the lost should suddenly be annihilated,
   that annihilation would be no punishment--it would be a gift to be
   sought with tears. It would be the cessation of all punishment, for how
   can they be punished who have ceased to be? The punishment spoken of is
   said to be everlasting, and everlasting it will be!

   In the second Epistle to the Thessalonians, the first chapter and
   seventh and ninth verses, we are told that such men shall be punished
   with eternal destruction. Some lay hold upon the word "destruction" as
   meaning annihilation, but it is eternal destruction. Annihilation is
   done at once and done with--but this destruction lasts on forever. It
   is eternal destruction, and then it is explained--"eternal destruction
   from the Presence of the Lord, and the Glory of His power." Therefore
   to be forever banished from the Glory of God and shut out from every
   source of hope is the destruction here meant.

   There is a very terrible passage in the twentieth chapter of Revelation
   where in vision John speaks concerning the condition of lost spirits.
   If you read the tenth verse speaking of Gog and Magog, it says, "And
   the devil that deceived them was cast into the Lake of Fire and
   brimstone, where the beast and false prophet are, and shall be
   tormented day and night forever and ever." I do not know what the words
   forever and ever can mean if they do not mean forever and ever.

   Yes, cries one, that torment is for the devil. Very well, why do you
   not sympathize with the devil as well as with men? Is not there as much
   reason to sympathize with fallen angels as with fallen men?

   But our Lord has said that the same punishment which awaits Satan will
   befall the impenitent, for He says, "Depart, you cursed, into
   everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." And in the
   last verse of the twentieth chapter of Revelation we find that whoever
   was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of
   Fire--that same place into which Death and Hell were cast! This fire
   will not cause annihilation, for in Revelation 21:8 we are told that
   certain sinners, such as the "fearful and unbelieving, and all liars,
   shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone."

   How can those have a part who have no existence? To have a part in that
   fire is the second death. When Jesus speaks of the fire of Hell, He
   does not say that annihilation is effected by it, but speaks on this
   wise: "shall cast them into a furnace of fire, there shall be (not
   annihilation, but the signs of conscious misery)--weeping, and wailing,
   and gnashing of teeth." Now I am not going fully into this subject, but
   I can only say this much--if our Lord and His Spirit intended to make
   us believe that there would be a worm that never dies, and a fire that
   never could be quenched, and did mean to teach us that there was a
   punishment for sin which would last forever, I do not know what other
   words could have been used.

   And I do pray, dear Friends, whether you think so or not, be on the
   safe side! For even if it were but a thousand years only, think what
   that must be! It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the
   living God, even if you could get out again. But when it comes with the
   solemn sanction, as I am persuaded it does, that you never will escape
   from those hands, oh, why will you die? Why will you die? Look, look to
   Jesus, and find eternal life in Him! Beware lest you be "wandering
   stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever."

   3. Some suppose that instead of annihilation, restoration awaits the
   lost. There are no texts in Scripture which, when read by honest men,
   can mean this. They must be wickedly and perniciously perverted before
   they can be made to teach anything of the sort. Scripture does not
   speak of the fire of Hell as chastening and purifying, but as
   punishment which men shall receive for deeds done in the body. They are
   to be visited with many stripes and receive just recompense for
   transgressions.

   What can there be about Hell fire to change a man's heart? Surely the
   more the lost will suffer the more they will hate God! When God sent
   plagues upon the earth men blasphemed His name (Rev. 16:9). Men do so
   now. Are they likely to turn at His rebuke then? Satan has been
   punished for these six thousand years--do you see any signs of
   repentance about him? Do you see any tokens of his being reclaimed? Is
   he not just as much a roaring lion, going about seeking whom he may
   devour, as ever he was? And the case of Satan must run parallel with
   ours! There are no tokens of his restoration now, nor will there be any
   tokens of ours then.

   Besides, if the Gospel of Christ cannot save you, what can? If the
   wooing of Christ's wounds cannot make you love Christ, do you think the
   flames of Hell will? Oh, my Hearers, if, with such a Gospel as that
   which is proclaimed to you, you will not turn, do you think you will
   turn in the world to come? Jesus says not so, but declares that, "he
   that believes not shall be damned." You live in the company of saints
   now--at all events, you live in a land which represses immorality. But
   in Hell there are no preachers of the Gospel--no holy examples to win
   you to holiness. The dwellers in Hell are enemies of God--a pretty
   school for virtue that!

   Do you suppose, then, that you who leave this life without the fear of
   God will be led to turn to Him then? Cast away the thought, my Hearer,
   it will deceive you. This fearful doctrine did much mischief in America
   at one time, but it was so revolting to the common sense of many
   consciences that its day was soon over. This error will eat out the
   very soul of piety. Still, were it true, Believers in Jesus are as well
   off as you are. A gentleman once said to a Universalist who had been
   arguing with him, "I suppose if I hate your religion, laugh at it,
   ridicule it, and spit on it, it will be all the same with me at the
   last?" "Yes," said the other. "Well," said the first, "mind you do not
   do that with mine, or you are a lost man."

   I like the remark of the people who were requested to accept one of
   these preachers as ministers. They said, "You have come to tell us that
   there is no Hell. If your doctrine is true, we certainly do not need
   you! And if it is not true, we do not want you--so that, either way, we
   can do without you." It is a most dreadful fact that there is no
   provision made for the future restoration of the lost. Not a word said
   about it except that for them remains the blackness of darkness
   forever.

   Abraham did not say to the rich man, "My dear son, you will return to
   my bosom when you have undergone those purifying fires." Oh, no! That
   would have been something more than a drop of water to cool his
   tongue--that would have drenched him with buckets full of the cooling
   draught. But no, it was just this: "And beside all this, between us and
   you there is a great gulf fixed so that they which would pass from here
   to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from
   there."

   4. Some ungodly men say, "Well, you do not believe for a minute that
   there is any material fire, do you?" My dear Hearer, what is that to
   you? There is a text which speaks of destroying both body and soul in
   Hell, which seems to indicate punishment for the body. But if it were
   not so, do you think that soul punishment is a trifle? Why, it is the
   very soul of punishment! It is far more dreadful than bodily pain. Go
   across to Bethlehem Hospital and observe poor creatures perfectly free
   of pain in body whose minds are wrung with bitter anguish--and you will
   soon see that none can bear a wounded spirit.

   Oh, listen to the Lord, for it is a fearful thing to fall into His
   hands. If there is no material fire. If there is no literal worm, this
   will be sorry consolation for a soul on flame with woe! Though I am
   thus speaking, I know what some will do. You will go away and say, "I
   could not bear to hear him." I do not ask you to hear me, but I pray
   you do not neglect your souls. You will say, "What a harsh preacher!"
   Say so, but do not be harsh with your own souls. You will say, "He
   brings up the old bugbear." If it is an old bugbear, you are men and
   need not worry about it--but if it is not so, should I not be a demon
   if I did not warn you?

   As long as God spares my life, I hope I shall not be found unfaithful
   to your souls. So long as I believe this Book, I cannot but warn you
   that "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

   III. In the third place, and briefly, I should like you to CONSIDER HOW
   THIS TEXT IS PUT. The punishment to be endured is here described as
   falling into the hands of the living God. Will not that be fearful? You
   hear men speak of falling into the hands of the devil--that, no doubt,
   would be something terrible--but this is much worse, falling into the
   hands of the living God!

   But what could there be that would terrify and alarm the soul in
   falling into the hands of the living God? Let me remind you. You
   sinners, when you begin to think of God, feel uneasy. In a future state
   you will be compelled to think of God. God is not in all your thoughts
   now--it is the only place where He is not--but when you enter the
   future state, you will not be able to escape from the thought of God.
   You will then realize the words of David, "If I make my bed in Hell,
   You are there also." That thought will torment you. You will have to
   think of God as One to whom you were ungrateful. You will look up and
   think, "There is the God who made me, who fed me, clothed me, and if He
   chastened me, did it for my good, and I never thanked Him, but I used
   His name by way of blasphemy."

   You will feel remorse, but not repentance as you recollect that He did
   honestly invite you to come to Him--that He did call and you
   refused--that He stretched out His hands and you paid no attention to
   Him. As you think of the happiness of those whose hearts were given to
   Him it will make your miseries great to think of what you have lost.
   You will hate Him, and here, it seems to me, will be your misery. The
   hatred of the soul to everything that is good will involve fearful
   misery, and more so if that soul sees that good is infinite, that good
   is victorious, that goodness reigns in Heaven!

   Well may the wicked gnash their teeth, as they note the overthrow of
   evil and the establishment of good! Ungodly men, both here and
   hereafter, hate God because He is good! Just as of old, the wicked
   hated the saints because they were saints-- and they hate Him all the
   more because He is so powerful that they cannot defeat Him or frustrate
   His designs. Ah, those sins of yours will feed the flame within your
   conscience and will be an undying worm within your heart. Oh, Friends,
   it is misery on earth to hate God! It is misery to live with those who
   hate God!

   But when sin shall become fully developed there will be no need of
   racks and flames--sin itself will be enough to make its own
   punishment--no punishment more acute and more terrible--while the
   Presence of God all the while shall act as a great exciting cause to
   stir up the bad passions, and the vile enmity, and the horrid rebellion
   of lost, fallen spirits. Oh turn to Him, for to turn FROM Him is to be
   unhappy! To love God is Heaven--to hate Him brings Hell. You are so
   made that you cannot sin and be happy.

   It was right of God to make you such a creature that holiness and
   happiness should go together--it was right of Him to make you such a
   creature that sin and sorrow must go together, and if you will have
   sin, you must have sorrow. Oh turn from it while you may! Oh may God's
   Spirit turn you now before you enter into that world where there is no
   turning, but where the die is cast and the road is chosen. As the arrow
   once shot speeds onward in its course and turns not from it, so must
   you speed on in holiness and happiness or in sin and sorrow, for there
   is no turning from the course.

   IV. I desire to close by saying, if THESE THINGS ARE SO, THEN ACT
   ACCORDINGLY. Sinner, unless you are prepared to say this text is a lie,
   do not fall into the hands of the living God. But you say, "How can I
   escape, then?" By falling into the hands of the living God now, in
   another sense. If you will come and confess your sin. If you will trust
   in Him whom God has set forth as a propitiation for sin, there is
   pardon for you! There is pardon for you NOW!

   However great your sins may have been, if with a broken heart you will
   say, "I will arise and go unto my Father," there is room in His heart.
   There is room at the table of His Divine Grace. There is room in Heaven
   for you. Whoever among you turns unto the living God shall certainly
   live. "Only confess your iniquity," said He, "only return unto Me, and
   I will have mercy upon you--

   "You sinners, seek His Grace, whose wrath you cannot bear: Fly to the
   shelter of His Cross, and find salvation there."

   To trust Christ is the true way of escape! Rely upon Him and you shall
   live.

   To the saint--what should be the effect of this doctrine? I will show
   you from the lips of one who hates it. I read in a newspaper yesterday
   the notes of a sermon preached by a certain Congregational preacher in
   London, a sermon which I must confess did not altogether so much
   startle me as it would have done if I had not known the gentleman's
   past.

   But it did startle me when I read these words. I will quote a few
   sentences: "If I dwelt upon this doctrine Sunday after Sunday in this
   place of worship, and induced you to believe that people who have lived
   and died impenitent are thrown into a state of condemnation and
   misery--I say, if I believed that, how could I fail to feel for you or
   find rest to my spirit until I grasped every one of you and beseeched
   you to consider how terrible is your destiny, and how awful your
   danger?

   "Are we not giving up ourselves to all sorts of pleasures and
   entertainments? When the work of the day is over, do we not try to
   obtain some sort of relaxation among the drama, the theater, the cards,
   and all kinds of social delights to direct our thoughts from the
   terrible, piercing realities which are every day and every hour wearing
   out our lives? How dare you do that if spirits of men are going into
   everlasting damnation every instant that you breathe! If you believe
   that with every breath you draw there is some soul damned forever--some
   poor human being which has lost its way and come into utter misery--how
   can you go about playing games? How can you be going to concerts and
   sitting in front of stages and theatrical entertainments and finding
   your pleasures and recreations there?

   "If you do, you are like demons! If you can look on and see unnumbered
   millions of your fellow creatures perishing forever, and if you can
   live and enjoy yourselves, you deserve to perish forever." And then he
   goes on to say that if we can go to comfortable places of worship and
   sit there contentedly, and spend our lives in making money and live for
   nothing else, then we are false to our profession of belief in this
   doctrine. And he denounces the inconsistency, and adds, "If I believe
   that doctrine I dare not preach here. I do not know where I dare
   preach, but somewhere under the open sky where I should be able to say
   that human beings are being lost. If this doctrine of everlasting
   damnation is true, how ought you to labor to save souls from
   everlasting death!

   "You ought never to think of anything else, but declare it from the
   housetops, and never enjoy yourselves or make more money or sit quietly
   in chapel! You ought to wander over all the earth and bring spirits
   back again to the God who will damn them if they do not come unto Him."
   Now when I read all this, I thought, "It is even so. The doctrine of
   eternal punishment should thus act upon us! And for this very reason it
   ought to be preached and insisted upon--one would not have been
   surprised to hear the preacher proceed to press the doctrine in order
   to produce just such hatred of frivolity and worldliness, and just such
   zeal and fervor--but who is not horrified to find that the next
   sentence is--"I really believe that the doctrine of everlasting
   damnation is a blasphemy against God! I believe it to be demoralizing
   to the spirit of man, and subversive of all the laws of humanity! I
   believe that the doctrine of Atheism would be better."

   After first of all showing how we ought to live if that doctrine IS
   true, and very properly showing its influence in promoting zeal and
   fervor, this misguided man declares that Atheism would be better than a
   doctrine so practically useful! No answer is needed beyond his own
   words. Surely that doctrine is not so very demoralizing which would
   make ministers and hearers earnest to win souls, keep them from vain
   amusements, and make them give up mere money-making, and
   pleasure-seeking and self-comfort--and drive them into earnest,
   passionate weeping, longing and labor for men that they might be saved!

   I pray God that such teachers may have a better mind, and that all of
   us may be kept faithful by the power of the Holy Spirit, working to win
   men because "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living
   God."
     __________________________________________________________________

                         Divine Gentleness Acknowledged

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 1, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Your gentleness has made me great." Psalm 18:35.

   THERE are several interpretations of this text. A moment will suffice
   to give them to you. The word is capable of being translated, "Your
   goodness has made me great." David saw much of benevolence in God's
   action towards him and he gratefully ascribed all his greatness not to
   his own goodness, but to the goodness of God. "Your Providence" is
   another reading, which is, indeed, nothing more than goodness in
   action. Goodness is Providence in embryo-- Providence is goodness fully
   developed. Goodness is the bud of which Providence is the flower--or
   goodness is the seed of which Providence is the harvest.

   Some render it, "Your help," which is but another word for Providence.
   Providence is the firm ally of the saints, aiding them in the service
   of their Lord. Some learned annotators tell us that the text means,
   "Your humility has made me great." "Your condescension" may, perhaps,
   serve as a comprehensive reading, combining the ideas which we have
   already mentioned, as well as that of humility. It is God's making
   Himself little, which is the cause of our being made great.

   We are so little that if God should manifest His greatness without
   condescension, we should be trampled under His feet. But God, who must
   stoop to view the skies and bow to see what angels do, bends His eyes
   yet lower and looks to the lowly and contrite, and makes them great.
   While these are the translations which have been given to the adopted
   text of the original, we find that there are other readings. For
   instance, the Septuagint, which reads, "Your discipline"--Your fatherly
   correction--"has made me great." The Chaldee paraphrase reads, "Your
   word has increased me." Still the idea is the same.

   David ascribes all his own greatness to the condescending goodness and
   graciousness of his Father in Heaven. I trust we all feel that this
   sentiment is echoed in our hearts and we also confess that whatever of
   goodness or greatness God may have put upon us, we must cast our crowns
   at His feet, and cry, "Your gentleness has made me great." We intend,
   this morning, to keep to the authorized version: "Your gentleness has
   made me great." And in handling the text we shall have three points.

   First the text suggests historical illustrations from the life of
   David. Secondly it awakens personal gratitude. And thirdly it declares
   gracious privilege--we are made great.

   I. The life of David is exceedingly full of illustrations of the truth
   which he here uttered--"Your gentleness has made me great." We will
   briefly review it up to the time of his becoming king. David, as the
   youngest of the family, contrary to the general rule, appears to have
   been despised by his parents so that when Samuel came to keep the feast
   they sent for all their sons except David who was left in the fields
   keeping the sheep. I should suppose, judging from the conduct of his
   brothers to him in the valley of Elah, that they held him in very small
   esteem.

   Probably their habits were very different from his. They could not
   enter into the holier ways of the shepherd songster, nor could he enjoy
   their ruder and less seemly exercises. He was the despised one of the
   family, a reproach unto his mother's children. Nevertheless the Lord
   had chosen him in preference to all the rest, for the gentleness of God
   delighted in David the shepherd boy.

   What a balm must that Divine love have been to his wounded spirit! How
   often, sitting alone with his flocks, must he have sang to his harp,
   "When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up"!
   The gracious gentleness of his God to him must have encouraged his
   broken spirit when he felt the roughness of his father and the scorn of
   his brothers. His early life was peculiarly a season of hallowed rest
   and consecrated enjoyment of the gentleness of the Lord.

   His first entrance upon public life was greatly marked by the sternness
   of those who should have discerned his worth and treated him with love.
   His father sent him to the army, not as a soldier, though never was
   there a more valiant man than this youngest son of Jesse. But he was
   employed as a mere burden-bearer. "Take now for your brothers an ephah
   of this parched corn, and these ten loaves, and run to the camp to your
   brothers. And carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of their
   thousand."

   He was a mere porter and messenger to his more honored brothers. When
   he began to enquire concerning the giant--"Who is this that defies the
   armies of the living God?" His brothers asked in a most snarling and
   contemptuous way, "With whom have you left those few sheep in the
   wilderness? Because of the pride and naughtiness of your heart to see
   the battle are you come." Very different was the gentle communing of
   his heavenly Father!

   When in the inner chamber of his spirit his heart talked with God, he
   received no contemptuous epithets from the Most High. It is true he had
   all the outward marks of youth and consequent unfitness for the
   fight--but the Lord sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward
   appearance but God looks at the heart, and that bold heart was chosen
   to meet the Philistine. David was a man after God's own heart, and
   God's gentle communing with him strengthened him and made him so great
   that he dared to say, "Your servant slew both the lion and the bear,
   and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them."

   The harshness of his brothers might have cowed him, but the gentleness
   of God encouraged him. He might have quailed before their irony and
   sarcasm, but the tender promise of God was the still water of which he
   drank and the green pasture in which he rested. Now David comes to
   court, but he is no sooner among the courtiers than Saul hates him.
   "Saul has slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands" was a song
   most unmusical to Saul's jealous ears. "Saul eyed David," and in later
   days, when David played upon the harp, the evil spirit came upon Saul
   and he hurled his javelin at the young harpist, hoping to pin him to
   the wall.

   But mark the gentleness of God--while Saul hated him the people loved
   him--all Judah and all Israel loved David because he went in and out
   before them, and better still, the God who tried him with Saul
   comforted him with Jonathan. I like to think of those generous
   consolations which Jonathan rendered to the man whom his father so
   grievously maltreated. Those quiet evening walks, those tender
   interchanges of affection when the love of Jonathan, which surpassed
   the love of woman, made glad the tender heart of David, must have
   helped to make David greatly glad.

   He must have felt at times as if he would leave Saul's court and fly
   from the service of his country. But then Jonathan was the tie to keep
   him in his proper place--the gentle silken bond which bound him to the
   horns of God's altar. It was God's gentleness in raising up Jonathan as
   his companion which kept David in the place where greatness was
   possible to him, and enabled him still to live in those courts of which
   he was soon himself to be the master.

   There was gentleness even about the character of his wife Michal. The
   father would destroy, but the daughter saves her husband's life. When
   David at last fled from Saul he fled to Nob, to the priests. I think
   that was great gentleness on the part of God which permitted David to
   take the show bread and the consecrated sword. I never hear David
   rebuked for that bold deed! Our Savior mentions it without a single
   word of censure. According to the strict letter of the Law it appears
   to be perfectly unjustifiable--but the gentleness of God saw the need
   of His servant and inclined the heart of all the priests towards
   David--so that they gave him bread, and gave him what was equally
   necessary under his difficulty-- the sword of Goliath.

   When David fled into the wilderness, we cannot read the story of him
   among the caves of Adullam and the goat tracks of Engedi with any
   feelings of pity, for his joys ran high in his banishment! I can
   understand him sighing for the House of God, and declaring that he
   "dwelt in a dry and thirsty land where no water was," but, on the other
   hand, one might almost envy David there in his solitary fastnesses, for
   his God was his Companion, and the blessings of the Most High were
   showered upon him. There was gentleness towards him even in those wild
   places, so that the gypsy life of David was rendered very happy. And
   the wanderer banished from his native land was not banished from his
   God but felt the Presence of the Most High in the midst of his
   solitude. "Your gentleness has made me great."

   There are two points in David's history where I think the gentleness of
   God eminently worked with him. One particularly is connected with
   Nabal. That churl sent a very insulting message to David--"There are
   many servants, nowadays, that break away from their masters." I must
   not say that David was a Welshman, but he possessed much of the hot
   blood of our Brethren, and was warm in temperament. David had a hot
   heart within him, quick for love and quick for anger, too--and in an
   instant his soul was on fire with resentment--"God do so to me, and
   more also," said he, "if I leave anything of him before the morning
   light."

   Away he goes with his band to slay Nabal! Now, what is to prevent him?
   Nabal cannot resist him. But here comes a wise and amiable woman--no
   one more susceptible to kindly female influence than David--here comes
   the wise Abigail with her laden asses, bearing presents. How wisely she
   puts it! How her lovely face, and streaming eyes, and bended knees, all
   aid her while she adds--"This shall be no grief unto you, nor offense
   of heart unto my lord, either that you have shed blood causeless, or
   that my lord has avenged himself." It was a blessed interposition of
   Divine Grace which sent Abigail just then! David would certainly have
   taken terrible vengeance and have stained his character with vindictive
   blood-shedding if it had not been for the gentleness of God which found
   so good a wife in so bad a house and prompted her to interpose!

   Take another case. It must have been gentle influence from on high
   which kept David back, when, as he walked at night over the field where
   Saul and his host all slept, he penetrated within the trenches and
   through the armed men and came to the place where the king lay with his
   men at arms all round him, every man asleep. There was the water at the
   king's head, and his spear stuck in the ground. And Abishai, one of
   those fierce-minded sons of Zeruiah who are always ready for a blow,
   said to David, "Let me smite him. I will smite him but this once." But
   David holds up his hand and declares that he will not be guilty of the
   blood of the Lord's Anointed.

   There must have been a marvelously gentle influence over David just
   then to have kept back his hand! I will not say that nine out of ten
   warriors would have done it, and have been justified in so doing,
   according to martial law, but I will say that there is scarcely a case
   to be found in history where a man would have spared his cruel,
   inveterate, and malicious foe. Remember that Saul was engaged in open
   and relentless warfare with him when such an opportunity had been put
   into his hands. David had never been so great if Divine gentleness had
   not restrained the blow!

   Running on in the history of David we find that he was not always wise.
   How like a fool he looked when he scrabbled on the wall and spat upon
   his beard, and played the madman before the king of the Philistines!
   Ah, David, what a miserable spectacle! Though fit to be a companion of
   angels, he acted as if he had been only fit to herd with lunatics! But
   God delivered him! And after he had been delivered, you remember he
   wrote that beautiful Psalm in which he says, "Come, you children,
   hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord," and so on--a
   most beautiful expression of gratitude to God, and an earnest desire to
   teach others in God's way.

   Even when His people play the fool, God does not cast them away. When
   we are such that God Himself might be ashamed of us and say, "Take him
   away! Have I need of a madman to play the fool before Me?" yet even
   then our God, who knows that we are but dust, has pity upon us and
   delivers us out of the mischief into which our folly has thrust us.
   Possibly in David's life there is not one moment in which his anguish
   was more acute than when he returned to Ziklag. He had been marching
   with Achish to invade his own native land. He was in a very awkward
   position--he could not fight against his own countrymen--and yet having
   taken refuge with the Philistines he was bound to go with them to war.

   In that dilemma the Lord interposed for him. The Philistines'
   chieftains became jealous and distrustful of him and through their
   influence the king of the Philistines dismissed him. However, when he
   went hack to Ziklag, the place where he and his men had dwelt, he found
   it burned to the ground. The wives of his comrades and all their goods
   had been carried away. Not a vestige left of their happy home--children
   and family all gone! It is said that the men of war "lifted up their
   voice and wept." It takes a great deal to make a soldier sit down and
   weep. But in their anguish they went further and spoke of stoning
   David. What did David do? He "encouraged himself in the Lord his God."
   He turned himself to the kindness and gentleness of the Most High, and
   took comfort in his God!

   Surely the gentleness of God must then have shone out in contrast with
   the bitterness and ferocity of the men with whom he was associated.
   What could David do? It was not his fault that Ziklag had been burned.
   How could he prevent the robbers from plundering? He turned to his God
   when he was thus falsely accused and comfort flowed in like a mighty
   stream! And not many hours afterwards he overtook the spoilers and came
   back joyfully victorious. I think I have proven my point and need not
   delay you longer, that wherever any roughness from man had to he borne
   by David, there was always some gentleness on the part of God shown at
   the same time to sustain his spirit.

   When it seemed as if he must be quite crushed and overcome, and all
   hands were against him and none to help him, then it was that a
   consolation gently given by the right hand of the Most High made David
   to play the man again so that he triumphed over all his adversaries.
   Thus much for historical illustration.

   II. Now, we will turn to your own history, for the text EXCITES
   PERSONAL GRATITUDE. Have you that little book with you? I suppose you
   do not all keep one, but still your memory will serve you as a
   diary--do not print it, we have too many autobiographies already! But
   if you do not print it for other people, keep it for yourselves. May I
   ask you to turn to an early page in it? Do you remember when your heart
   was broken with a sense of sin? A truly broken heart is anguish,
   indeed!

   Do you remember when you realized your righteousness was as filthy
   rags, and your hope changed into despair? Do you recollect the felling
   that the anger of God pursued you? When death seemed to be before you,
   and you could see no way of escape? I shall not go over the dark
   details, but you remember well when you were in that condition! Do you
   also recollect the gentleness of the Savior? That was a very tender
   promise which first came to you like oil poured into your wounds. That
   was a very tender hand, a very cheering influence of the Holy Spirit
   which lulled the tempest into a calm, and hushed the thunder into the
   whisper of love.

   Do you remember the place, the spot of ground where Jesus first met
   with you? Some of us never can forget the rapture all Divine when He
   showed us His hands and His feet, and said to us, "I have suffered all
   this for you. Weep no more, your sins were laid on Me." There was
   peculiar gentleness about that first action of God the Holy Spirit. He
   has never, perhaps, seemed quite so gentle with us since, for we have
   never been so weak as we were then. We were shorn lambs and He tempered
   the wind to us. Our wounds were very raw and bleeding and He touched us
   very softly, knowing that He who would heal a sick soul must have downy
   fingers with which to touch it. Gentleness, indeed, was on His part
   which said to us, "Live!" when He saw us wallowing in our blood.

   Since then, dear Friends, what tokens of gentleness you and I have had!
   How many times He has checked our imprudence! When we first began our
   spiritual life we meant to drive the Church before us, and to drag the
   world behind us--our own idea was that there never would be such an
   earnest Christian as we would be! We looked with pity upon the coldness
   of many professors and we resolved in our own souls that we would far
   outdo them all! And what excitements we got into, and what things we
   said, and what strange things we did! There was much to be envied about
   our first spiritual life--but there was much to be pitied in it, too.

   Oh, what fools we were, and we thought ourselves so wise! What
   blockheads we made of ourselves every now and then and all the while
   wondered that everybody else did not do the same. But by what gentle
   means the Lord curbed us! He did not do as some of our friends did, who
   put wet blankets on us enough to extinguish our zeal. He let the zeal
   burn but He gently checked the imprudence of it. We did not know how
   weak we were--He let us fall and cut our knees and learn by experience
   our utter inability to go it alone.

   When a schoolmaster has a very dull boy, he would gladly teach him some
   useful knowledge--but after twenty times teaching he does not know
   it--and the master says, "What shall I do with this child? How shall I
   ever make anything but a dunce of him?" Yet he tries again! And so our
   God might well have said of us! Yet, how seldom has He used the rod
   after all. He has been obliged to take to it sometimes, but oh, how
   seldom comparatively. He has dealt so gently with us, teaching us with
   much pain and care.

   When a man has taken to gardening who does not understand it, if he
   takes his knife in the pruning season--at what a rate he goes to work!
   His cutting here and there will do ten times more harm than good! The
   gardener who is well skilled is gentle with the knife--and truly, dear
   Friends, our great Husbandman has been very gentle with the knife with
   all His trees.

   Some of you have lost a husband or a child, and you have come from
   wealth to poverty. Yes, He has used the knife, or else He were not
   wise--but He has still spared you some comforts, or else He were not
   kind. At any rate He has spared you Himself, and He is more than all to
   your languishing spirit. Thus in the way in which He has dealt with
   your excrescences, and imprudence, and sins, the Lord has had a world
   of gentleness with you.

   In looking over our diary we may say that God has dealt very gently
   with us in accepting our first endeavors. When you began to preach, my
   dear Friend, the first time, if the Lord had really let you know what a
   bad preach you made of it, you would never have tried again! And the
   first time you were asked to pray in public, if you could have heard
   the opinion of some of those who heard you, you would not have felt
   very happy! But very happily for you, you never did hear those opinions
   and you have been able to keep on till now you pray with much
   acceptance and profit to your Christian Brethren.

   Our beginnings are very much like our children's beginning. Many a
   young apprentice spoils a great deal more than he earns and yet his
   master knows that he cannot learn without spoiling something, and so he
   bears with him. And our God has let us spoil a great deal of work that
   we may one day be skilled workers. Through Jesus He accepts our prayers
   and our efforts. And though we are very blundering servants He has not
   discharged us, but He still keeps us in His service and blesses us in
   it. In His mercy He gives us to see the work of His hands prospering.
   That same gentleness also displays itself in caring for us in our
   sorrowful circumstances and particularly in our inward fears.

   There are distresses to which God's people are subject with which their
   fellow Christians can have but little sympathy. There are some
   Christians whom I have tried at times to comfort, but their fears have
   been so silly that I have felt more inclined to laugh at them than to
   console them. There are many of God's saints who are the victims of
   foolish fears, but the fears are none the less painful and vexatious
   because of their folly.

   Now our God is so tender and gentle that He even condescends to deal
   with our silly fears. Take such a one as this-- "I will never leave
   you, I will never forsake you." Now it really is foolish of us to think
   that God will leave us or forsake us, and yet He condescends to meet
   that foolish and even wicked unbelief of ours, and gives a promise to
   meet it! To suppose that He can forget is the height of absurdity, and
   yet He is pleased to meet that absurd fear of ours by saying, "Can a
   woman forget her sucking child?"

   Even the absurdity of our sorrow does not move the anger of God--in His
   great gentleness He enters into the childish troubles of His children.
   He lets them tell out their troubles and sorrows, and, "as a father
   pities," not a man of his own size, but "his children, so the Lord
   pities them that fear Him." You have seen a father bring himself down
   to his child. Two or three children have been at play--some of them
   have been cross and unkind to the little one, a child of three or four
   years of age--and father talks as if he were a child of three years of
   age himself! And though the trouble, when it is stated is so very
   little--such a very insignificant trouble that a man would be ashamed
   to mention it--yet father enters into it altogether. That is what the
   Psalmist means--"Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord
   pities them that fear Him."

   His gentleness shows itself in His being afflicted in our afflictions
   and entering into our sorrows, and putting Himself side by side with us
   in the battle of spiritual life. I trust I may not weary you while I
   remind you of all this. I shall not, if all the while you continue
   blessing and praising God for what you have tasted and handled of these
   good things. How much patience and gentleness God has had with us in
   suiting truth to our understandings and experiences! "I have many
   things to say unto you," says Jesus, "but you cannot bear them now." It
   is so with us.

   I suppose we did not learn the doctrine of election during the first
   week of our spiritual life. Higher and more sublime truths are left for
   later experience and belong, rather, to advanced saints than to the
   babes in grace. If the babe in Christ knew so much about the filthiness
   of his own heart as the advanced man of God, he might not be able to
   bear up under the grief occasioned by such knowledge! Inward
   discoveries come by degrees, and as we see the light of the Cross we
   see the darkness of sin. As we are assured of our salvation in Christ,
   we discover our utter and entire ruin by the Fall of Adam.

   It is gentleness which makes the all-wise One stoop down to our
   ignorance and teach us by slow degrees. What gentleness our God has
   shown to us in the timing and the tuning of our trials! We are such
   poor weaklings at times that if we were tempted much we should not be
   able to bear it. The timing of heavy trial is of very great importance.
   If I had lost my friend a year ago what should I have done? But just
   now it is a great sorrow, yet it has its alleviation. Had I been
   tempted as I now am but last week, I must have yielded. But now I have
   received strength from on high, and I can pass with safety through the
   fire.

   Have you not often felt that either when you have had an opportunity to
   sin you have not felt the temptation, or else when you have been
   tempted you have not found the opportunity? When you have been weak you
   have not experienced the trial, or when you have borne the trial you
   have not been weak. I will not say more, except I beg your hearts to
   praise God. I pray you wake up your souls to bless Him. How much we
   lose by not blessing God more! Oh that I could praise

   Him! If I might choose my vocation on earth, I think I would choose
   above all things to write hymns and psalms, such as the Lord's people
   might sing when they praise Him!

   My highest wish would be to be one of Heaven's poets--to write psalms
   for the spirits before the Throne and compose celestial sonnets for the
   blood-bought ones who praise him day and night. Oh to praise the Lord!
   Oh to bless Him and to magnify Him--to spend and to be spent in the
   praise and glory of my God! Wake up, you slumbering ones! Arouse
   yourselves, you that are dull and dead of heart! Wake up, my glory,
   awake psaltery and harp! I myself will awake right early while I
   remember that His loving kindness has made me great.

   III. Our third duty is to DECLARE OUR GRACIOUS PRIVILEGE. "Great," says
   one, "why, the text applies to David, it does not apply to us." Ah, but
   we have a body of great people here this morning. I do not suppose you
   will see their names in the Times tomorrow, but for all that we are
   honored with great company this morning. I will be bold enough to say
   that I question whether the House of Commons, and the House of Lords,
   and Windsor Castle thrown in together, hold more great folks than this
   Tabernacle does this morning.

   Great people! Yes, really great people! The true aristocracy! Let us
   describe them. There is a greatness of birth which God gives to His
   children. "It is no mean thing," said David, "to be a king's
   son-in-law." But to be a king's son--to have the blue blood in your
   veins! You do not think much of it because you have not got it, but you
   suppose those who have it think it the most wonderful of all
   privileges. To be descended from that thievish crew who came over to
   England at the Norman Conquest is thought to be a high honor!

   But how much more is it to be descended from the King of kings! The
   blood imperial of Heaven is in the veins of every regenerated man and
   woman! No matter though your garb is fustian, and your home is the
   abode of poverty--you are a prince of the blood royal the moment that
   you are born-again and made a child of God, and adopted into the family
   of the Most High! These are the princes of the living God! These are
   they who shall be crowned with immortal honor in the day of the Lord's
   appearing!

   Though here they may live unknown and despised, yet angelic eyes detect
   them and the whole world shall see them. "When He shall appear they
   shall appear with Him in glory." Men court much the greatness which
   comes by election. There are presidents of republics who become great
   by the national vote--it is no mean greatness to be dignified with
   imperial rank, not by the accident of birth but by the well-earned
   respect of honest men. This is something that men may covet. Well, we
   have this very greatness put upon us by the election of God! Everyone
   who believes in Christ Jesus was chosen in Him from before the
   foundation of the world. What are the votes of men? What the applause
   of the many after all? The choice of God is to be desired most! Because
   He has set His love upon me my soul shall sing and rejoice. Election
   makes all the objects of it great! Now, as you think of your birth and
   your election in Christ Jesus, you can say, "Your gentleness has made
   me great."

   There is a kind of greatness in the world to which most people pay
   quite enough respect, namely, the greatness of wealth. A man is very
   much thought of in proportion to the contents of his iron safe. After
   all, people do not respect men so much nowadays as they do iron safes.
   The iron safe is the god of thousands. However, saints can stand on an
   equality with any men--city men, or whatever they may be. Every
   Believer in Jesus Christ can sing--

   "This world is mine and worlds to come, Earth is my lodge and Hea ven
   my home; All things are ours, the gifts of God, The purchase of a
   Savior's blood." Poor rich men have to take care of these things for
   us, but they belong to us. The sons of the alien are our plowmen and
   our vinedressers. They are serfs of God's Providence, slaves in the
   kingdom in which we are sons. He who on bended knee can lift his
   streaming eye to Heaven and say, "My Father!" is rich to all the
   intents of bliss--rich enough for earth. And when all the treasures of
   earth shall be melted--when the rust shall have corrupted and the thief
   shall have broken through and the moth shall have eaten up all the
   world's treasures--then shall the wealth of the truly great shine forth
   forever more.

   Some men are great on account of their victories. How they crowd the
   streets when a Caesar or a Napoleon returns in triumph from the
   slaughter of his fellow creatures! Lo, I triumphed! Sound the trumpets!
   Beat the drums! Hang out the garlands! Gather, you crowds! Here comes
   the red-handed man, crimson with the blood of his fellows! What glory
   is this? Bah! It smells of the butcher's shambles. The glory of a child
   of God is the glory which Christ has given him of having slain his
   sins, of having trampled under foot his corruptions. The glory of
   having fought with devils and overcome them, having wrestled with
   principalities and powers and laid them in the dust. This is true
   glory! And what glory shall that be which awaits every true Believer
   when up the everlasting hills he shall ascend to be welcomed where his
   Master sits, welcomed with the same words of congratulation, "Well
   done!"

   There are great men, too, about the world, who are great in influence.
   All the world is governed by the backstairs. There are persons who sit
   behind the throne and pull the strings. People always touch their hats
   to men of influence. They may want a situation in the Customs for their
   first son. They may require to get an introduction into the Admiralty
   for the third boy. But what shall I say of every Believer? Beloved, his
   influence is unbounded! I wish you would use your influence for me.
   When you are speaking with the King of kings, since He has promised you
   that whatever you shall ask He will give it to you, speak for me!

   I think I have some claim on some of you. When it is well with you,
   think of me. When you are in the King's courts, you that are the King's
   and have an audience with Him--that sit at His table and lean your
   heads upon His bosom-- pray for His poor servant who has many cares,
   and many labors, and longs to see the King's face always. Beloved, the
   influence which the saints have with the King of kings is marvelous!
   They can touch the sinews of the Omnipotent arm, and it will do for
   them whatever their hearts desire. If you did but know it, the poorest
   saint, though bedridden, is more to be honored for the influence which
   she may have with the King of kings, than the greatest peers of the
   realm for the influence which they may have in the courts of royalty.

   But I must not tarry, else I was about to say that we have a greatness
   of history. There are some men who have a peculiar greatness on account
   of their history. Everyone wants to see them. If they go into a crowd
   everyone whispers, "That is he." What do you say of a child of God?
   There is more to be seen in him than in any other person! Shall I tell
   you his history? What would you think of a man who has been dead and
   buried and is alive again, and is the same man and yet not the same!
   Himself, but yet a new man in Christ Jesus! A man who has been born
   twice?

   Such is every Believer. He has been begotten again unto a lively hope
   by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He is dead with
   Christ and is risen with Him! And even now he does not live upon earth
   but is made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Why, he
   is the greatest curiosity in the world! A Christian man is a wonder to
   angels, a wonder to devils, a wonder to himself! And if men were wise
   he would be a wonder to them! Great men, again, there are because of
   their great discoveries. We admire the men who penetrated into the
   center of Africa and found out the source of the ancient river.

   Believers, also, have made discoveries in the vast desert of their own
   nature and have found out the source of the eternal love of God. They
   can sing with Kent--

   "A monument of Grace,
   A sinner saved by blood.
   The streams of love I trace,
   Up to their fountain, God.
   And in His mighty breast I see,
   Eternal thoughts of love to me."

   It is better than finding out the source of fifty Niles, to find out my
   name inscribed upon the heart of God and to find myself chosen and dear
   to God! Truly then, though we are little and despised, we can say
   without any exaggeration, "your gentleness has made me great."

   Two things and I have done. The first is to Christian people. As you go
   your way, you who have believed, do not go out of this place with your
   heads hanging down and do not behave like dispirited people. You are
   great! I want you to live like great folks. Live up to your spiritual
   incomes--you will spend a great deal if you do. Live happily, live
   joyfully, live holily, live triumphantly! Live as those who are to live
   in Heaven. Do not live like the pauper sons of earth who with their
   gold and their silver are yet naked, and poor, and miserable. But live
   like the sons of God who are clothed in the scarlet and fine linen of
   the righteousness of Christ, and fare sumptuously every day!

   The next time you are met by some would-be great man who wants to
   domineer over your faith, look him respectfully but firmly in the face
   and tell him that consciences and hearts were made for God alone. The
   next time the world attempts to win you by its bribes, tell the world
   it does not know what you are worth or else it would not attempt to
   bribe you. Every man has his price, but your price is too great for the
   world to give! Tell the world that you can look it in the face and are
   not afraid to dare it to do its worst or its best, for you are one of
   the blood royal of Heaven.

   I hate, above all things, Christians getting into the way of being
   honest with themselves. Mind you, the Puritans were not proud--they
   were humble men--but at the same time they knew that a man of God has
   something in him and they would not lay their necks beneath the feet of
   tyrants. When kings began to devour the saints, they quoted the old
   Psalm about "binding kings in chains, and nobles in fetters of iron,"
   and soon the Ironsides were to the front in the day of war for the
   Lord, and for the faith, and for the Covenant.

   We want no carnal weapons now! We have learned better than they. We
   care little about politics. Let the potsherds of the earth strive with
   themselves about that. But when it comes to truth and righteousness for
   God and for His cause, shall we put our finger on our lips and speak
   with bated breath? Never, as the Lord our God is our helper! Brethren,
   get a little touch of the old Lutheran spirit--it is needed nowadays.
   This England of ours is going to the Pope as fast as it can. All sorts
   of heresies are springing up and the most of men are soft animals
   without the appearance of a backbone in them.

   I pray that you Christian people may get a thoroughly sound backbone of
   high spiritual principle and may feel that you cannot give up the
   smallest atom of truth, but must stand fast for it and by it come what
   may. These are the men the edge of whose sword the fiend has felt of
   old and he trembles at the thought of them still.

   This advice of mine would be very dangerous if I did not couple it with
   the whole of the text. Remember where all true moral greatness must
   come from--it must come from God alone, and from His gentleness. Who
   are you to use these big words? Nothing! A swollen mass of emptiness,
   except as God's love dwells with you. But oh, Brothers and Sisters, the
   tenderness of God, while it makes us lie in the very dust before Him,
   yet lifts us up in the presence of our fellows!

   The love and gentleness of God makes us feel that we are less than
   nothing, less than the least of all His mercies--but oh, it makes us
   feel that we cannot sin! That we cannot yield to our fellow men in
   matters of conscience. That we must stand up for Him who has done so
   much for us. May you realize in your lives and in your hearts the
   meaning of my text, "Your gentleness has made me great!"
     __________________________________________________________________

                      Hope, Yet No Hope--No Hope, Yet Hope

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 8, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "You are wearied in the length of your way; yet you did not say, There
   is no Hope."

   Isaiah 57:10.

   "And theysaid, THEREISNO HOPE: but we will walk after our own devices,
   and we will everyone do the imagination of his evil heart." Jeremiah
   18:12.

   WHO can understand the subtlety of the human heart? Well said the
   Prophet, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately
   wicked." The physician of the body had need be skillful to track
   disease to its secret origin and to follow it through all its
   mysterious pathways in the mazes of the human body. But he who has to
   deal with souls has a task far harder, inasmuch as sin is more subtle
   than the virus of the most incurable disease, and the way in which it
   intertwines itself with every power of humanity is even more marvelous
   than the strange influences of plague and pest upon the human body.

   Those whose business and office it is to deal with sick souls set it as
   their great object to be instruments in the hands of God of bringing
   diseased souls to trust in the great salvation which God has provided
   in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. And simple as such a work may
   seem to be, every truly experienced minister is brought to confess that
   it needs a Divine art and Omnipotent power to bring a soul to rest
   simply upon Christ. All the subtlety of the human heart exerts itself
   to the utmost to prevent that heart from trusting in the Savior--and
   while evil is always cunning, it shows itself to be supremely so in its
   efforts to guard the Cross against the approaches of sinners. By the
   Cross, as the Savior said, the thoughts of many hearts are revealed.
   The Cross develops the subtlety of man when we see his struggles and
   contortions to avoid resting upon its glorious provisions of Divine
   Grace.

   There are two phases in spiritual life which well illustrate the
   deceitfulness of the heart. The first is that described in my first
   text, in which the man, though wearied in his many attempts, is not and
   cannot be convinced of the hopelessness of self-salvation but still
   clings to the delusion that he shall be able, somehow--he knows not
   how--to deliver himself from ruin. When you shall have hunted the man
   out of this, you will then meet with a new difficulty which is
   described in the second text. Finding there is no hope in himself, the
   man draws the unwarrantable conclusion that there is no hope for him in
   God. And, as once you had to battle with his self-confidence, now you
   have to wrestle with his despair.

   It is self-righteousness in both cases. In the one case it is the soul
   content with self-righteousness. In the second place it is man sullenly
   preferring to perish rather than receive the righteousness of Christ. I
   ask the children of God to pray that I may be enabled to simply but
   earnestly deal with men's souls this morning! It is their conversion
   that I am aiming at.

   I shall neither strive to please your ears nor your tastes, nor do I
   court an opportunity for oratorical display. All I want is to lead the
   sinner, by God's Grace, out of himself and then afterwards to lead him
   up from his self-despair. And oh, may God the Holy Spirit bring some
   souls by my means this morning to the foot of the Cross, and may they
   look up and know themselves to be saved through the finished sacrifice
   of our Great High Priest!

   I. Considering the first text, we have to speak of A HOPE WHICH IS NO
   HOPE. "You are wearied in the length of your way; yet you did not say,
   There is no hope. You have found the life of your hand; therefore you
   were not grieved." This well pictures the pursuit of men after
   satisfaction in earthly things. They will hunt the frequents of wealth.
   They will travel the pathways of fame. They will dig into the mines of
   knowledge. They will exhaust themselves in the deceitful delights of
   sin, and finding them all to be vanity and emptiness, they will become
   sorely perplexed and disappointed.

   But they will still continue their fruitless search. Wearied with the
   length of their way, they still stagger forward under the influence of
   spiritual madness! And though there is no result to be reached except
   that of everlasting disappointment, yet they press forward with as much
   ardor as if a full assurance of success sustained their spirits.
   Worldlings seem far more resolved to die than some Christians are to
   live. They are more desperate in seeking their own destruction than
   Believers are in enjoying spiritual life. Indeed, they are content
   because they have found the life of their hand. Living from hand to
   mouth is enough for them. That they are still alive--that they possess
   present comforts and present enjoyments--this contents the many.

   As for the future, they say, "Let it take care of itself." As for
   eternity, they leave others to care for its realities--the life of
   their hand is enough for them. Their motto is, "Let us eat and drink,
   for tomorrow we die." They have no foresight for their eternal state
   and the present hour absorbs them. Carnal minds with all their might
   pursue earth's vanities, and when they are wearied in their pursuit
   they still say not, "There is no hope," but change the direction, and
   continue the idle chase! They turn to another and another of earth's
   broken cisterns, hoping to find water where not a drop was ever
   discovered before.

   That, however, is not the subject of this morning. The text applies
   very eminently to those who are seeking salvation by ceremonies. This
   is a very numerous and increasing class. It is getting to be the
   current and fashionable belief that we are to be saved by going to holy
   places, receiving priestly baptism, Episcopal confirmation, eating
   consecrated bread, drinking hallowed wine, and repeating devout
   expressions. We are going back to the beggarly elements of Rome about
   as fast as we can and in a very short time we shall see the whole of
   this country covered by an Anglican Popery which will be far more hard
   to deal with than the more manifest Popery of Rome.

   It is surprising that in an age which was supposed to be one of thought
   and common sense, men should so soon be dazzled with the gaudy toys of
   Romanism! I marvel that the childish processions, the babyism, the
   effeminate millinery, the infantile nurseryisms of Rome should have
   charms for reasonable men and women! Some of the churches during the
   past week would have made little children scream with delight--they
   would have felt that they were in the prettiest nurseries and toyshops
   which they had ever seen! O it is an age of folly in which men think to
   worship God with displays fit only for children's sports!

   There may be some hearer here who is pursuing salvation by outward
   ceremonies. Your path is certainly a very tedious one and it will end
   in disappointment. If you addict yourself to the fullest ceremony. If
   you are obedient to it in all its jots and tittles--keeping its fast
   days and its feast days, its vigils, matins and vespers, bowing down
   before its priesthood, its altars, and its millinery, giving up your
   reason and binding yourself in the fetters of superstition--after you
   have done all this you will find an emptiness and a vexation of spirit
   as the only result!

   And it is probable that when you have once committed yourself to that
   course you will go on, wearied with the road, but too bewitched to be
   able to leave it! Pressing forward, you will be unwilling to confess
   that you have been mistaken. You will be conscious that you feel but
   little consolation but continue to pursue your downward course as if
   glory surely shone before you.

   It is only Divine Grace that can enable us to follow Luther's example,
   who, after going up and down Pilate's staircase on his knees, muttering
   so many Ave Marias and Pater Nosters, called to mind that old text,
   "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God." He sprung
   up from his knees and forsook once and forever all dependence upon
   outward formalities and quit the cloistered cell and all its
   austerities to live the life of a Believer, knowing that by the works
   of the Law there shall no flesh living be justified.

   Yet, dear Friends, albeit that I know only Divine Grace can turn you
   from the delusive path of vain ceremonies, I would like to suggest a
   doubt or two to you which may be helpful one of these days to make you
   choose a wiser course. Does it not seem to you to be inconsistent with
   the Character of the God of Nature that He should have instituted a
   plan of salvation so singularly complicated and theatrical as that
   which is nowadays taught us by priests? Nature is simple! Her grandeur
   lies in her simplicity. If you walk in the fields of our own happy
   land, or climb the lofty ranges of the Alps, you are delighted with the
   beautiful simplicity of nature in which there is an utter absence of
   everything gaudy, showy, and theatrical.

   Everything has a practical design, and even the colors of the flowers,
   which are not without intent and design, enable the plant to drink in
   certain rays of light which shall best satisfy its need. There is
   nothing in nature for mere display! But you step inside a place of
   worship dedicated to salvation by ceremonies, and I am persuaded that
   your taste will be outraged, if that taste has been formed upon the
   model of nature. Frequently, on the Continent, I turned with loathing
   from gaudily decorated churches daubed with paint, smothered with gilt,
   and bedizened with pictures, dolls, and all sorts of baby prettiness. I
   turned aside from them in uttering, "If your god accepts such rubbish
   as this he is no god to me! The God of yon rolling clouds and crashing
   thunder, yon foaming billows and towering rocks is the God whom I
   adore. Too sublime, too noble, too great-minded to take delight in your
   genuflections and stage-play devotions."

   When I beheld processions with banners, and crosses, and smoking
   censers, and saw men who claimed to be sent of God, and yet dress
   themselves like Tom fools, I did not care for their god, but reckoned
   that he was some heathenish idol whom I counted it my glory as a man to
   scoff at and to despise! Do not fall into the notion that the God of
   nature is different from the God of Grace. He who wrote the book of
   Nature wrote the book of Revelation, and writes the book of experience
   within the human heart. Do not, therefore, choose a way of salvation
   utterly at variance with the Divine Character.

   Has it never struck you that ceremonial salvation would be a very
   wicked way of salvation? What is there, for instance, about drops of
   baptismal water which could make men better? What is there about
   confirmation that should assure you of the forgiveness of your sins?
   What is there about receiving a piece of bread and drinking a drop of
   wine that should confer Divine Grace? Might you not remain as bad at
   heart and as wicked after all as ever you were? And is it not a
   violation of the eternal principles of morality that a man should be
   endowed with Grace while his soul still clings to sin?

   Now, if there is no effect in water to make you hate sin, and no result
   from the priest's hands to make you love God, and no result from
   sacraments to make you holy and heavenly-minded--can you trust in them?
   Surely there must be some sort of congruity between the means and the
   result! Surely it is immoral in the highest degree to tell a man that
   by outward things, which cannot change the life, he shall have his sins
   forgiven! We shall have the iniquity of the Middle Ages back again if
   we have the faith of the Middle Ages proclaimed--and from all that may
   God in His Grace deliver us! The votaries of superstition have
   furnished us with a very solemn argument, for many of them, when they
   have lain dying, have turned their eyes to other places and have
   anxiously begged for full assurance of eternal life.

   Superstition, strange to say, has been truthful enough to reply, "I
   have no rest to offer you." For what does Rome offer when you have done
   all? Purgatory and its pains! It tells you that when you have done all,
   you may have to lie for hundreds of years in a place full of misery
   till you have been purged from sin! How very different from the Gospel
   which the Word of God reveals to you--that whoever believes in the Lord
   Jesus Christ is saved not only from the guilt of sin but from the love
   of sin--is enabled to be holy, is made a new creature, and without any
   purgatorial cleansing shall ascend to his Father and his God to dwell
   with Him forever!

   So simple, so God-like, so Divine! How is it that so many cast it
   aside, and take up with these sillinesses which are the inventions of
   man? This whole Book through salvation is never said to be by anything
   done by priests--but salvation is everywhere spoken of as being by
   Christ through faith! There is not a place that gives a vestige of
   confidence to anybody who hopes to be saved by the performances of
   rituals--but everywhere salvation is presented to those humble,
   contrite souls who know and trust the Savior's blood.

   Perhaps these words of mine may not apply to many of you, and therefore
   we will turn to another phase of the same thing. A great mass of
   people, even though they reject priest-craft, make themselves priests,
   and rely upon their good works. A poor and wretched man dreamed that he
   was counting out gold. There it stood upon the table before him in
   great bags, and as he untied string after string, he found himself
   wealthy beyond Croesus' treasures. He was lying upon a bed of straw in
   the midst of filth and squalor--a mass of rags and wretchedness--but he
   dreamed of riches!

   A charitable friend who had brought him help stood at the sleeper's
   side and said, "I have brought you help, for I know your urgent need."
   Now the man was in deep sleep and the voice mingled with his dream as
   though it were part of it. He replied, therefore, with scornful
   indignation, "Get you gone! I need no miserable charity from you. I am
   possessor of heaps of gold. Can you not see them? I will open a bag and
   pour out a heap that shall glitter before your eyes." Thus foolishly he
   talked on, babbling of a treasure which existed only in his dreams till
   he who came to help him accepted his repulse and departed mournfully.
   When the man awakened he had no comfort from his dream, but found that
   he had been duped by it into rejecting his only friend.

   Such is the position of every person who is hoping to be saved by his
   good works. You have no good works except in your dreams. Those things,
   which you supposed to be excellent are really defiled with sin and
   spoiled with impurity. Jesus stands by you this morning and cries,
   "Soul, I have come from Heaven to redeem you. If you had any good works
   there had been no need for Me to come to save you, but, inasmuch as you
   are naked, and poor, and miserable, I came to earth and this face was
   bedewed with sweat of blood, and these hands were pierced, and this
   side was opened to work out your salvation. Take it! I freely present
   it to you."

   Will you, in your sleep this morning, make that sad reply, "Jesus, we
   are rich and increased in goods, and have need of nothing. We have
   neither cursed Your Father's name, nor broken your Sabbath, nor done
   anything amiss"? If so, dear Friends, you are resting upon a delusion
   and will find it so when it is too late! The way of salvation by works,
   if it were possible, would be a very wearisome way. How many good works
   would carry a man to Heaven would be a question very difficult to
   answer. It would be such a way that though a man should work his
   fingers to the bone, yet he would never be able to clamber up the
   precipice--for Sinai is too steep and high for mortal feet to force a
   passage to the skies up its terrible battlements.

   The way of salvation by works is totally contrary to that revealed in
   the Bible. If there is anything plain there, this is plain, "By the
   works of the Law there shall no flesh living be justified, for by the
   Law is the knowledge of sin." The way of salvation by works is a proud,
   rebellious way, by which man hopes to avoid humiliating himself before
   his God. How should the Lord bestow His favor upon the man who refuses
   to trust in His own dear Son? Shall the Lord yield to save men, and yet
   let them remain proud and boastful? Shall He save a man who refuses to
   owe that salvation to Divine mercy? You weary yourself, my Hearer, in
   your resolutions, and doings, and works, in the greatness of your way,
   and yet you will not confess that, "There is no hope." May the Lord
   force that conviction upon you till you shall turn aside from all
   self-confidence and rest in Jesus Christ alone!

   Many persons are looking for salvation by another form of
   self-deception, namely, the way of repentance and reformation. It is
   thought by some that if they pray a certain number of prayers and
   repent up to a certain amount, they will then be saved as the result of
   their prayers and repenting. This, again, is another way of winning
   salvation which is not spoken of in Scripture. This is a way by which
   neither Law or Gospel receive honor. To repent is a Christian's duty,
   but to hope for salvation by virtue of that, alone, is a delusion of
   the most fearful kind! The reason for salvation lies not in my
   repenting, but in Christ's suffering--not in my renunciation of sin,
   but in Christ's having borne my sin in His own body on the tree. Oh,
   that by God's Grace I may have done with relying upon anything that
   comes from myself!

   The idea of trying to repent in order to save yourself is so ridiculous
   that it has sometimes reminded me of the old story of the Dutchman,
   who, having no family, but having a great many cousins, left his estate
   in this way--all the cousins were to meet in the Town Hall on a certain
   day, and whoever could cry for him first, and could honestly say he
   wept out of sorrow for his death should have the estate. Now there was
   a very great difficulty here, because of the remarkable mingling of
   feeling. Could they get themselves into a state of mind so as to lament
   his death? Well, the largeness of the fortune and the desirableness of
   the estate at once dried up the tears!

   I forget how the story ends, but it sufficiently shows the
   impossibility of lamenting in order to gain an object. The hopeful joy
   and the sorrow, if both possible in themselves, would effectually
   neutralize each other. The tears of true repentance must be as much the
   gift of God as Heaven itself, and if we were to have an offer to be
   saved on account of our repenting, repenting would be an impossibility
   to us. Repentance is a part of salvation, and when Christ saves us He
   saves us by making us repent! But repentance does not save--it is the
   work of God, and the work of God alone. Now why do you weary yourself
   in this way? For surely in it "There is no hope."

   My drift in all this rambling talk is just this--whatever it is, my
   dear Hearer, that you are looking to as a ground of confidence--if it
   is anything in yourself-- pray you give up all hope, for though you
   have not seen it to be true, it is nevertheless assuredly so that there
   is no hope whatever by it. Where you have to do with the work it will
   be marred and spoiled and will end in confusion. Salvation is of the
   Lord, and your deliverance from your present state of sin and guilt
   must come from the right hand of the Most High! It cannot in any
   degree, or in any measure, come from yourself. You have destroyed
   yourself, that is, in your works--your help must be found in Another
   from the first to the last.

   I shall be accused, I know, of dispiriting you. I shall desire to plead
   guilty to the accusation! And if it shall even be urged again that I
   drive you to despair, I shall again plead guilty and glory in the
   result! I wish to preach everyone who would save himself into utter
   despair! If any man is hoping to save himself, I pray God that He may
   smite that hope dead on the spot--that it may be renounced forever.
   Sinner, oh that you would consent to yield up all confidence in
   yourself, for then there would be hope for you!

   Most men must have a secret hope somewhere of a false kind, for, look
   at the way in which they are employing themselves. Most men are not
   seeking to escape from the wrath to come--they are busy in worldly
   things while Hell is near them. They are like idiots catching flies on
   board a ship which is in the very act of going down. Surely those men
   must have some fictitious hope somewhere or they would not act like
   this! We see many persons busy about their persons, decorating
   themselves when their soul is in ruin. They are like a man painting his
   front door when his house is in flames! Surely they must harbor some
   baseless hope which makes them thus insensible!

   We see men who do not quail and tremble, though they profess to believe
   the Bible which tells them that God is angry with them every day.
   Surely their quietness of heart must arise from some secret hope
   lurking in their spirits! The rope of mercy is cast to the sinner and
   he will not lay hold of it! Surely he cannot be such a fool as to love
   to die--he must have some hope somewhere that he can swim by his own
   exertions and it is this hopefulness of the man in himself that is his
   ruin and his destruction. Until you are totally separate from all
   consciousness of hope in yourself, there is no hope that the Gospel
   will ever be any power to you!

   But when you shall throw up your hands like a drowning man, feeling,
   "It is all over with me! I am lost, lost, unless a stronger than I
   shall interpose." Oh Sinner, then there is hope for you! If we can once
   get you to say, "One thing I know, I cannot save myself. One thing I
   feel, I must have a stronger arm than mine to rescue me from ruin."
   When you have come to this, O Soul, we will begin to rejoice over you
   and may God grant that our rejoicing may not be in vain!

   II. We shall now turn to the second text. "And they said, THERE IS NO
   HOPE: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will everyone do
   the imagination of his evil heart." Here we have NO HOPE--AND YET HOPE.
   When the sinner has at last been driven by stress of weather from the
   road of his own confidence, then he flies to the dreary harbor of
   despair. He is now convinced that there is no hope in himself, and like
   a simpleton he goes to the other extreme, and concludes, "Then I cannot
   be saved at all."

   He acts as if there were nobody in the world but himself, and begins to
   measure God's power and God's Grace by his own merit and power. Some
   before me, convinced of their own powerlessness, are ready to lie down
   in a fit of despair and die. "The preacher has been telling us there is
   no hope, then we will give it up." My dear Friend, I know what will be
   the result if you go away with that impression--you will go off to your
   sins--for despair is the mother of all sorts of evil. When a man says,
   "There is no hope of Heaven for me," then he throws the reins upon the
   neck of his lusts and goes on from bad to worse.

   You will thoroughly misunderstand me if you go away with that
   impression. There is no hope for you in yourself, but there is hope for
   you in Him whom God has provided to be the Savior of such as you!
   Hopelessness in self is what we want to bring you to, but hopelessness
   in itself, and especially in connection with God, would be a sin from
   which we would urge you to escape. If you are sitting down in despair,
   I want to speak to you, first, of the God of Hope. Dear Friend, there
   is that in God--Father, Son, and Spirit--which may remove your fears so
   that you need never utter a single doubting word again!

   You are saying, "I am full of sin." That is true--you are much more
   full of sin than you think you are. "But I have been a great sinner."
   That is likely--and you are a greater sinner than you will ever know
   yourself to have been. "But I don't feel my sinnership as I ought to
   do." That is very likely--and you never will do so. No man on earth
   ever did feel sin in all its guiltiness, for God alone knows the
   blackness of sin. "But I am altogether such a one that there is nothing
   in me to recommend me. I could almost wish I had been a great sinner,
   that I might feel a great repentance. I have nothing to recommend me."

   Now think of the loving kindness of God the Father. Do you remember how
   He revealed Himself in that parable of the prodigal son? That prodigal
   son had been ungrateful, wicked--very wicked. He had spent his life in
   all sorts of vice and had become filthy in person and loathsome in
   character. His associates were of the lowest race of men, and then
   brutes themselves. Yet the goodness which he had not in himself his
   father had. He was all sin, but his father was all mercy. He was all
   iniquity, but his father was all loving kindness. Now can you not see,
   if the prodigal were here, we might say to him, "There is no hope for
   you in yourself. Those rags cannot recommend you. The swine trough
   cannot be used as an argument."

   But then that would not be a ground for his stopping where he is, for
   "there is hope for you in your father. He is so good, so tender. He
   rejoices to receive his returning children." And, Sinner, there is hope
   in God for you. His name is God That Is Good. He delights in mercy--it
   is His soul's highest joy to clasp His Ephraim to His bosom. This very
   morning He has sent me to say to you, "Come now, and let us reason
   together, said the Lord. Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be
   as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as
   wool."

   But you meet this invitation with another desponding suggestion. You
   say, "Why should I come before the Most High God? I have sinned, and
   what shall I bring as a recompense? Rivers of oil and ten thousands of
   the fat of fed beasts, if I could bring them, would not be acceptable
   to Him. If I had a mint of merits. If I had godly impressions. If I had
   high moral excellence I would come with that to God, and hope to obtain
   a hearing."

   But hearken, Sinner, do you not know the name of the second Person in
   the Trinity? It is Jesus Christ, the Son. Now, if you need merit, has
   He not enough of it? For what cause do you think He lived on earth
   three-and-thirty years and kept God's Law? Did He keep that for
   Himself? What need for God to be a man and to become subject to Law at
   all? He must have kept that Law for someone, then--but not for
   righteous men, for such have kept the law themselves! He must have kept
   it for the unrighteous.

   Now, can you not take that which Christ has worked out, and take it to
   yourself when He freely bids you take it? You talk of sin but have you
   never heard that my Lord Jesus died? Why Man, you have heard this
   hundreds of times! But I pray you open your eyes and see it! Do you see
   that Cross, the center one of the three? Thieves hang upon the other
   two, but God Himself hangs upon the one in the middle. God, in the form
   of Mary's Son, hangs bleeding out His life in acute sufferings
   exquisite, unutterable! For whom does He die? Not for Himself! What
   cause that God should be a man and die? He suffers! He suffers for sin!
   For whose sin, then? Not for His own for He had none. For the sins of
   good people? What need of that? He dies for the sins of those who have
   committed sins--for the sins of transgressors such as you and I are!

   Oh Soul, do you not hear the voice that said, "Look unto Me and live"?
   What? Jesus, am I not to do anything by way of merit? Am I not to be
   anything by way of preparation? Am I to stand and simply look at You
   and feel my sins forgiven? Blessed be Your name! What a simple plan of
   salvation! Now I feel my heart begin to melt. Now I hate the sins that
   nailed You there. Now do I give myself to You, to serve You all my
   life. This is good evidence of salvation when a man can thus speak: "I
   hate sin and I desire to serve Christ." You can see that he is saved
   from the power of sin--the power of the Cross has made him a new man!

   Oh Sinner, if you have no merit, you need not wish for any! Take Christ
   in your hands for He is made of God unto you wisdom, righteousness,
   sanctification and redemption! And all this for every soul of Adam born
   who trusts in Him alone! But I hear you complaining again, "Oh, but I
   have not the power to repent. You have told me this before and I cannot
   believe it--I cannot soften my heart-- I am so powerless I cannot do
   anything! You have been teaching me that." I know I have, but there is
   another person in the Trinity, and what is His name? It is the Holy
   Spirit. And do you not know that the Holy Spirit helps our infirmity?

   Though we know not what to pray for as we ought, yet He teaches us to
   pray. It is true you are darkness, but then He is your light! It is
   true you are naturally dead, but the Holy Spirit gives us life! And the
   light of God is the Holy Spirit as He shows Himself to you. It is clear
   that you can do nothing without that Spirit--that should make you
   despair of self! But you can do everything with that Spirit! Now, lift
   those eyes of yours with which He has already taught you to weep! Lift
   them up to the Throne and say, "My Father, if I may dare to call You by
   that name, help me to trust Your Son! My God, I see in Yourself a
   Father's love, in Your Son a Savior's power, and in Your Spirit the
   Quickener's life. Oh give me to feel Yourself within me, or, O God, if
   I may not feel it I will still believe it, for You cannot lie, and
   whether I have a comfortable evidence or not, I do this
   morning--utterly hopeless of anything in myself--I do this morning cast
   myself on You. "Lord, I believe! Help You my unbelief."

   Why, Sinner, I do not know what it is that you may want, but I know one
   thing--it is provided for you in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--and
   resting upon the great Savior whom God has provided, there is hope for
   you, my dear fellow creature! There is the brightness of a ray of hope
   this very morning, only may God turn it from a possible into an actual
   hope and give you a good hope of eternal life through believing in
   Jesus Christ!

   Thus I have tried to turn you away from self to the Lord--but it may be
   I have some very hard cases to deal with-- and so, two or three
   suggestions by way of smiting at the despair which some of you feel. A
   great Divine has said--and I think there is some truth in it--that a
   very great number of souls are destroyed through the fear that they
   cannot be saved. I think it is very likely. If some of you really
   thought that Christ could save you, if you felt a hope that you might
   yet be numbered with His people, you would say, "I will forsake my
   sins, I will leave my present evil way, and I will fly unto the strong
   for strength."

   Now though I have laid judgment to the line, and righteousness to the
   plummet, and sought to put the axe to the tree of all creature
   confidence, yet there is hope in Jesus Christ! There is hope in Jesus
   Christ, my dear Hearer, even for you! And I will give you these two or
   three reasons. In the first place, would it not be wise even if there
   were only a "perhaps," to go to Christ and trust Him on the strength of
   that? The king of Nineveh had no Gospel message, He had simply the Law
   preached by Jonah, and that very shortly and sternly. Jonah's message
   was, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." But the king of
   Nineveh said, "Who can tell?" And having nothing to rest upon--not a
   single word of promise--he humbled himself before God, he and his
   people, on the strength of a, "Who can tell?"

   Ah, my dear Hearers, take care lest the men of Nineveh rise up in
   judgment against you! You have got much more than a, "Who can tell?" Oh
   Sinner, you are saying, "I cannot be saved." But I ask you, Who can
   tell? "But I do not feel that there is hope." Who can tell? "But I am
   such a sinner." Who can tell? "Oh, but I am such a dull, heavy spirit!
   I cannot feel--there cannot be mercy for me." But who can tell? Surely
   if but on the presumption of "Who can tell?" the men of Nineveh went
   and found mercy, you will be inexcusable if you do not act upon the
   same, having much more than that to be your comfort! Go, Sinner, to the
   Cross, for who can tell?

   But, in the next place, you have had many clear and positive examples.
   In reading Scripture through you find that many have been to Christ and
   that there never was one cast out yet. If you had seen some repulsed,
   you might conclude that you must be among them, but not one has been
   rejected by the Savior. Why should you be? We need not turn to
   books--there are living people here saved by Divine Grace. I myself am
   one. I had no more preparation for Christ than you have. I had not the
   shadow of anything to trust to any more than you have. When I heard the
   Gospel precept, "Look unto Me and be you saved, all you ends of the
   earth," I did look, and I am saved!

   Oh my Soul, I am the witness for my Master that He is true! In a
   moment, no sooner had I looked than I had joy and peace, and I can
   promise you the same! Those wounds of Christ still stream with mercy!
   That head crowned with thorns still beams with the splendor of Grace!
   Do but look into His pierced side and you shall see a fount most deep
   and full-- still flowing with blood and water to cleanse you, even you,
   from sin! Do not say you cannot come to Christ for He is not here--you
   cannot come upon your feet, but then your thoughts are the feet of your
   soul! Come to Him in thought. Come to Him in confidence. Come to Him in
   trust, and you cannot trust Christ and yet be cast away. You have
   living examples.

   Moreover you have comfortable promises in the Word of God. I was
   thinking much yesterday of this promise--I wonder whether God has sent
   it to my heart for any of you--"Your hearts shall live that seek Him."
   I was wondering whether I should preach from it, but anyhow it kept
   following me about--"Your hearts shall live that seek Him." If you seek
   Him your heart shall live! Leap on the back of that promise and let it
   bear you, as the Samaritan's beast bore the dying man to an inn where
   you may rest--I mean to Christ--where you may have confidence.

   Here is another. "Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be
   saved." Now you do call upon His name. There are many others. They have
   been quoted in your ears till you know them by heart. "Whoever will,
   let him take the water of life freely." And you know that precious one,
   "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
   you rest." You see I had some black things to say at first--I had to
   tell you that the disease was incurable by natural means--but then the
   supernatural Physician can remove it! I had to tell you that the ship
   was sinking and could not be saved, but I have now to point you to the
   lifeboat which can never be wrecked. I had to warn you that your own
   arm is palsied, but I have to assure you that the Lord's arm is not so
   shortened that it cannot save, neither is His ear heavy that it cannot
   hear.

   I had to remind you that you were hopeless bankrupts and could not pay
   a farthing in the pound, but I have to assure you that He has paid all
   Believers' debts. I had to tell you that you were all so dirty in His
   sight that, in yourselves considered, you never could be accepted. But
   I have now to say, on the other hand, that every Believer is so clean
   and fair after being washed in Jesus' blood that he is without spot or
   wrinkle, or any such thing. Away, you broken cisterns! Oh, for the
   hammer of God to dash you into shivers! But come, come, come you
   thirsty ones to the ever-flowing, overflowing fountain! Here is nothing
   stinted! Here is no shortness of supply, no illiberality of gift--come
   as you are!

   The fountain flows freely and richly for you, who, having nothing in
   yourselves, are willing to have everything in Christ Jesus! Do not be
   saying, "There is no hope," for there IS hope! There is more--there is
   security--there is certainty to every soul that trusts in Jesus!

   To conclude, do you not know, poor Sinner, you who believe in Jesus
   this morning--do you not know the news? Then I will tell you a secret.
   Do you not know that if you now prostrate yourself at the foot of the
   Cross, you are God's chosen one? Your name is engraved on the hand of
   Jesus, on the heart of God! Before the daystar knew its place or
   planets ran their round--before the primeval darkness was pierced by
   the sun's first ray you were dear to the heart of Deity! You are His
   elect, His beloved one! And do you not know that the mountains may
   depart and the hills be removed but the Covenant of His love shall
   never depart from you? Neither shall His Grace be removed, said the
   Lord, who this morning has manifested His mercy towards you!

   Though you are but just now converted, there is laid up for you in
   Heaven a crown of life that fades not away. Jesus pleads for you this
   very day! He this day prepares one of the many mansions for your
   eternal dwelling place! Be of good courage! Angels are singing, Heaven
   is rejoicing over YOU! The Church on earth is glad concerning you! And
   one day, when the great Shepherd shall appear, you also shall appear
   with Him in glory--and all this for you, poor helplessly ruined
   sinner--helpless in yourself, but saved in Christ Jesus! May God add a
   blessing to this simple testimony this morning and His shall be the
   praise.
     __________________________________________________________________

                            Heedlessness In Religion

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 15, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But Jehu took no heed to walk in the Law of the Lord God of Israel
   with all his heart: for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam,
   which made Israel to sin."

   2 Kings 10:31.

   JEHU was raised up by God to be a great reformer in the kingdom of
   Israel. No sooner did he receive his commission than he was at his work
   with a daring and a perseverance never excelled. He was commanded to
   cut off the whole house of Ahab, and the task was a very congenial
   one--he slew right and left and spared none. Unlike Saul with the
   Amalekites, who spared Agag and the best of the cattle, Jehu utterly
   exterminated the race whom God had doomed. When full vengeance had been
   worked upon Jezebel and all Ahab's brood, he scarcely paused by the way
   to congratulate himself and say to Jehonadab, "Come with me and see my
   zeal for the Lord," but proceeded at once to gather together all the
   priests of Baal and to annihilate them at a blow.

   He was a thorough root-and-branch reformer in this matter and cut off
   the Baalites without remorse and without exception. He was not one of
   those who of old were cursed for doing the work of God deceitfully,
   holding back their hands from blood. He made a thorough and clean sweep
   of the abominations of Baal worship and accomplished the work for which
   he was raised up with the most wonderful thoroughness and zeal.
   But--oh, that but--how unhappily does it mar everything! While he was
   thus ready and earnest in a work which suited his furious taste, he had
   no true heart toward God! While he was a destroyer of Baal he was not a
   servant of Jehovah--he was an iconoclast of the very first order,
   breaking idols right and left--but he was no builder up of the house of
   the Lord!

   He did not yield his mind reverently and obediently to the worship of
   Israel's God. Neither did he care to know His mind and Law. He followed
   a sort of animal impulse which drove him forward in opposition to Baal
   and to Ahab's race, but he knew nothing of that spiritual force which
   would have led him to enquire, "What more would God have me to do?" His
   actions as God's executioner were right enough, but his heart was
   wrong. He was impulsive and impetuous and drove furiously when the work
   was to his mind, but, had no heart to other service for Jehovah.

   Having overthrown the worship of Baal, he almost immediately
   established another form of idolatry in its stead and bade the nation
   prostrate itself before the calves of Bethel. Hating one sin, he loved
   another, and thus proved that the fear of the Most High did not reign
   in his breast. He was merely a hired servant and received the throne as
   his wages. A child of God he never was--he did God's work, as did the
   lion who slew the wicked Prophet--but he still remained a lion.

   Anxious care to know and serve God did not suit Jehu's headstrong
   disposition. He was all flash and dash, but careful, humble obedience
   he knew nothing of. Do not suppose that this rash heedless Jehu was a
   man alone and without a companion--he was, alas, only one of a very
   numerous class! I have selected the text because of an impression upon
   my own heart that the Jehus are increasing in our land and that there
   will be found thoughtless professors in this congregation to whom this
   text may cause great searching of heart. I only trust that such may
   really be led to examine themselves and use fitting tests to discover
   whether they are truly Believers in the great God of Israel, or are
   only hasty, inconsiderate, unrenewed imitators of Jehu.

   The fault of heedlessness of God's will which is mentioned in the text
   is a very terrible one--fatal to all our professions of genuine
   piety--and all hopes of entering into eternal life. While I speak upon
   the holy caution and earnest heed which the text suggests, may the Holy
   Spirit enable us all to search ourselves--whether we have received from
   the Lord by faith in Jesus a renewed heart which is anxious to know and
   to do the will of the Lord--or are mere creatures of impulse, picking
   and choosing as to our Lord's commands and obeying or disobeying
   according as the circumstances of the hour may influence our
   thoughtless spirit.

   In the first place this morning we shall have to speak upon
   heedlessness in religion, showing the one peculiar point in which it
   mainly discovers itself. Then we shall proceed to testify, secondly,
   that in this point heedlessness in religion is fatal. We shall then,
   thirdly, go on to show the usefulness of holy care and heedfulness. And
   we shall close by endeavoring to exhort you to practice that
   heedfulness before you leave this House of Prayer.

   I. First, may the Holy Spirit enable us to SHOW THE POINT IN WHICH
   HEEDLESSNESS MOST OF ALL DISPLAYS ITSELF. Jehu took no heed to what? He
   took great heed to kill Ahab's family! He took great heed to totally
   destroy Baal's worshippers. But he took no heed to walk in the Law of
   the Lord God of Israel with all his heart. This is the point in which a
   great many flaming professors show their want of vital godliness--they
   exercise no holy circumspection and show no anxiety to walk in the Law
   of the Lord their God with all their heart--which they would be very
   desirous of doing if they were saved men.

   There are many, nowadays, who would be greatly disgusted with me if I
   did not admit them to be Christians--and yet they take no heed to know
   God's will. Many professors never gave themselves an hour's study of
   the Scriptures with a serious desire to ascertain God's way of
   salvation, and God's rule for a Believer's behavior in the Church and
   in the world. Multitudes of so-called Christians nowadays do not read
   their Bibles. My Hearers, do you? I would not malign modern
   Christendom, but I am persuaded that crowds of professors treat the
   Book of God with very wicked neglect. We frequently meet with mistakes
   which are so absurd that no habitual students of the Word of God could
   have fallen into them.

   So many of you take your religion second hand--you borrow it from the
   preacher--you copy it from your grandmothers. You follow custom as your
   guide, and not the voice of God. You do not search the Book of the Lord
   to discover whether these things are so or not. Why, great multitudes
   of people go blundering on like Jehu, supposing that they must be
   right! The uncomfortable but very prudent thought that perhaps all may
   be wrong has never occurred to them, and a resort to the "Law and to
   the Testimony" appears to them to be altogether superfluous.

   Now, my dear Friends, I do not see how a servant can be thought to be
   faithful who is utterly careless as to his master's will. Solemnly I
   believe that some professors do not wish to know their Lord's will too
   thoroughly--there are certain duties whose performance would be
   unpleasant and therefore they do not want to have their consciences too
   much enlightened upon the subject! They shun the Light lest they should
   stand reproved. Brothers and Sisters, if I am afraid of the Light of
   God, let me rest assured that for some evil reason I have good cause to
   be afraid of it!

   If my doctrinal opinions or my daily actions are such that I dare not
   put them into the scale of God's Word and give them a thorough
   pondering, I have reason to suspect that I shall be found wanting at
   the last. Oh that every one of us would diligently seek with humble and
   obedient spirit to sit at Jesus' feet and learn of Him! "Lord, what
   would You have me to do?" is the cry of the regenerate soul! Carnal
   religionists go driving on with headlong inconsiderateness, but
   spiritual minds pause, and ponder, and enquire--and all with the one
   aim--to be sound in the statutes of the Lord.

   Furthermore, I am afraid that there are some who, if they take any care
   to know, do not take heed to practice the Lord's will. If they think at
   all, they come to the conclusion that certain commands are grievous--so
   they postpone all practical attention to them. They claim to be
   obedient in principle but not in practice! Whereas a man who professes
   to hold a principle which he does not practice is a person without any
   principle whatever except a shockingly bad one! My dear Friends, if I
   am truly the Lord's servant, I shall feel that I must make haste and
   delay not in all things to walk according to His will, and though
   mournfully conscious of many infirmities and imperfections, yet at any
   rate I shall heartily desire to practice what I know.

   Beware, dear Friends, of letting the head grow at a great rate while
   the arm is shriveled. Knowledge involves a responsibility which will
   end in many stripes for disobedience. It is treason for a commander to
   be well-versed in military tactics and to be great in arms, and yet to
   refuse to defend his country and suffer the empire to go to ruin!
   Practical Christianity, alone, is true Christianity! The Lord give us
   such! May we sit down and solemnly say to ourselves, "What is that
   which I know to be God's will which I have neglected to perform? Lord
   help me to attend to it now." Dear Friends, we are saved by Divine
   Grace alone, and when saved we become obedient children and are no
   longer as thoughtless Jehu.

   But further, there are some who both know the will of God and practice
   it after a fashion--but they do not practice it as having Divine
   authority about it. In submitting ourselves especially to the
   ordinances of the Christian religion, we bring a vain oblation if we
   merely submit to them because of custom or because of the authority of
   the church. We must bow to each command of this Book because it is
   God's command--our course of life must not he guided by the impression
   that such-and-such a thing is respectable--but by the consciousness
   that we are the servants of the Most High and that whatever He said
   unto us, it is our privilege to perform.

   We ought to pray that we may run in the way of God's commandments, but
   in addition to that, that we may be moved to run in that way because it
   is the way of God's commandments. To obey mechanically is scarcely
   becoming in the servant of so great and gracious a God! It has been
   well observed that the early Christians did as much speak of obedience
   to Christ as of devotion to Him which is far higher than obedience.
   Consecration to Jesus should be the ruling passion of our soul.
   Beloved, let the word of Jesus be an irresistible force with us! Let us
   follow because Jesus leads.

   That was a mighty cry which was once profaned to purposes of fanaticism
   under the preaching of Peter the Hermit, "Deus vult," "God wills it."
   It sounded through Christendom! It made monarchs exchange their crowns
   for helmets! It made the artisan throw down his hammer to grasp the
   spear! It changed men's plowshares into swords, and their pruning hooks
   into spears--and they rushed to die in Palestine under the dominant
   idea of clearing that holy land from Pagan intrusion. Oh that such an
   impulse would go through Christendom again for a higher and a nobler
   purpose, "Deus vult!" The Lord wills it!

   Let truth banish error! Let superstition yield to the Gospel! Let forms
   and ceremonies fly before the doctrines of Free Grace! Let every knee
   bow at the name of Jesus, because "Deus vult!" Let the Crucified be
   everywhere adored, for God wills it! If this force shall not move all
   Christendom, at any rate let it influence our own hearts and may we
   take heed to God's commandments because they express His will. It is
   added once more in the text that the heedlessness of Jehu showed itself
   in his not giving heed to all the Law of the Lord God of Israel with
   all his heart. Shall I impeach the present age? No, but still might the
   impeachment well be against it that the most of us do not serve God
   with all our hearts.

   Oh the ardor with which men pursue after fortunes! Oh the rages with
   which they covet wealth! Oh the power of that force which impels the
   man of science to spend his life in toilsome research! Why should not a
   rage of a nobler kind seize us? Why should we not be equally devoted to
   the Master's cause? The half-heartedness of the most of us is that
   which prevents our glorifying Christ. We preach, but not as dying men
   to dying men! We pray, but not as Jacob wrestled with the Angel. We
   give, but not as bounteous givers. We seek to live in holiness, but not
   with that enthusiasm which becomes the Cross of Christ.

   Dear Friends, we fear that the text has a bearing upon us all--but
   there are some to whom it is almost a sentence of death--for though
   they know God's will and do it in a measure, yet they do not attend to
   it with their hearts. Remember, you may conscientiously carry out
   whatever you believe to be God's will externally, but unless the heart
   gives its obedience you have no evidence of being the subject of Divine
   Grace. It is the heart which Grace wins and which God claims--and till
   the heart is yielded nothing is yielded. You may be baptized and
   re-baptized. You may come to the communion as often as you will. You
   may sit in your pew and you may hear, no, you may preach and even give
   your body to be burned--but if your heart does not give itself to God,
   if you love Him not, if you feel no attachment to His Person--all that
   you have done is merely the natural effect of excitement or free will,
   and not the work of Divine Grace.

   When the heart cleaves to God, when the soul is fixed upon Him--when we
   throw our whole being into every act of service--then it is that we are
   distinguished as the quickened, called, elect--the people of God who
   rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh! Thus I
   have tried to set forth where the mischief lay in the matter of
   Jehu--that he did not care to know the whole of God's will. If he knew
   it, he did not study to practice it--he did not yield obedience because
   it was God's will, and never yielded his whole heart to the love of
   God.

   Observe, before we leave this point, that Jehu was very angry at other
   people's sins. That we may be, too, and yet never be delivered from our
   own. It is a very fine sight to see a man work himself up into a furor
   against drunkenness-- he himself never having been guilty of it. It is
   true that all the indignation which he pours upon it, it well deserves,
   for is it not an infamous sin, the great net of the devil in which he
   catches multitudes? But I may be a very earnest temperance man and hate
   drunkenness most fiercely but I may be a child of the devil
   notwithstanding all that. I may be very furious against adultery, or
   theft, or immorality of some other kind which I do not happen to
   practice myself, yet my own sins may cry out against me!

   It is not possible to justify my own sins by denouncing those of
   others! It is a very cheap sort of virtue, that, bullying other
   people's vices. The easiest thing in all the world is to be constantly
   denouncing popular faults--but to wring the neck of one of my own bosom
   sins is a harder work by far--and a much better sign of conversion. To
   be earnest against the sin of others may be praiseworthy, but it is no
   sign of Divine Grace in the heart--natural men have been some of the
   greatest leaders in this matter. To loathe my own sin, to humble myself
   on account of my own personal faults and to endeavor, in the sight of
   God, to renounce every false way is a work of something more than human
   nature.

   Will you also notice Jehu was very bitter against one sin. The very
   mention of the name of Baal brought the blood into his face. There are
   persons in the world who cannot bear some one sin to which they have
   aversion--they love to hammer away against it--their whole soul takes
   fire at the mention of it. This is all very well. But, unless you hate
   all sin--unless you hate, especially, the besetting sin which is most
   congenial to your own nature--you need to be converted. Christ does not
   make some things new, but all things new, and He does not teach us to
   cut off one lust and to indulge another. A clean sweep must, by God's
   Grace, be made of the love of all sin.

   Once more, Jehu did obey God up to a certain point. It happened to be a
   profitable thing to him to exterminate the old royal house of Ahab
   because it would confirm himself upon his own throne. But anything
   beyond that did not pay, and therefore Jehu did not touch it. Some
   virtues pay well and prudent people go in for them at once. These
   remunerative graces are very much admired--but poverty-stricken virtues
   have few patrons. If it had paid Jehu better to save Ahab, he would
   have been slow to kill him. And when it answered his purpose to set up
   the golden calves he had no scruples in doing so.

   Many men turn aside from religion when their interest would be
   compromised. If I see two men walking together I cannot tell who is the
   master of the dog that is behind, but I shall discover directly. One of
   them will turn to the right and the other to the left--now I shall know
   who is the master of the dog, for when it comes to the turning point
   the dog will go with its master and leave the stranger. You cannot
   always tell whether it is God or Mammon that a man is serving when
   virtue is profitable--but when it comes to the turning point and the
   man has to be a loser for Christ in what he gives up for Christ's
   sake--then sincerity is tried! Turning points are places where we may
   judge ourselves, for they are the only true criteria of our real
   character.

   II. HEEDLESSNESS IN THE POINT INDICATED IS FATAL. It is fatal because
   it manifests that sin is not hated.

   A particular form of sin is abhorred, but since another is indulged it
   is evident that there is no hate towards sin itself. Jehu would have
   said, "I hate idolatry. See how I have broken the image of Baal!" Yes,
   but see how you have set up the golden calves. It was not hatred of
   idolatry, per se and in itself, but hatred to that particular form of
   it which consisted in the worship of Baal. So you do not hate sin if
   you only hate some one sin.

   All iniquity will be distasteful in your sight if God the Holy Spirit
   has really made you to loathe iniquity. If I say to a person, "I will
   not receive you into my house when you come dressed in such a coat,"
   but if I open the door to him when he has on another suit which is more
   respectable, it is evident that my objection was not to the person but
   to his clothes. If a man will not cheat when the transaction is open to
   the world but will do so in a more secret way, or in a kind of
   adulteration which is winked at in the trade, the man does not hate
   cheating--he only hates that kind of it which is sure to be found
   out--he likes the thing itself very well.

   Some sinners say they hate sin. Not at all! Sin in its essence is
   pleasing enough--it is only a glaring shape of it which they dislike.
   Heedlessness indicates that self is not subdued. You say that you have
   given up a certain sin, but you will not attend to such-and-such a
   command of Christ--what does this prove? Why, that the great I is still
   predominating! Self is never subdued unless it is subdued in all
   matters. Unless I can say, "Lord, I delight to do all Your will, and I
   long to be thoroughly conformed to it in all respects," self is not
   subdued. That is a proud spirit which says, "I shall do this but not
   that." A servant is not to pick and choose as to his duties--he then
   becomes the master--he has arrogated to himself a position to which he
   has no right if he makes any selection whatever in what his master bids
   him do. Self is unhumbled and the soul is unrenewed, however high the
   pretensions, unless the man is willing to submit to Christ in
   everything.

   Again, your faith is not a living faith. We are saved by faith in
   Christ, and not by our works, but if, my dear Friend, you can harbor
   and pamper any one sin, and delight in it, you have not the faith of
   God's elect. If, my Brother, there is some known command of God against
   which you set yourself, and say, "Though I know it to be the command of
   Christ, yet I shall not obey it," you are not acting consistently with
   the obedience of faith--for Faith must obey her Master's will as well
   as trust His Grace.

   I know that what I am saying is not very pleasant to certain of
   you--but we are not sent to preach pleasant things to you--we are to
   deliver the healthful Truth of God. I pray it may be sanctified to my
   own soul and to yours also. You do not wish to be deceived, any of you.
   I am sure the most earnest Christian here is the man who is most
   willing to search himself. Better for us to have our eyes opened here
   than to go dreaming on and find out our mistake in Hell. The Lord give
   us never to be afraid of a cutting Truth of God nor a cutting
   sermon--but rather to invite a heart-searching minister to deal
   faithfully with us! Beloved, I pray you to remember your spirit cannot
   have been humbled, and your faith cannot be a living faith if it makes
   exceptions with regard to the Master's will and kicks at this or that!
   You do really, in fact, rebel against God Himself when you rebel
   against His will.

   And again, a presumptuous want of care as to serving God is very
   dishonoring to the Most High. This kind of harem scarem religion, this
   hit or miss godliness, this do the thing that anybody else does, but
   never stop to look at it, has in it a sad lack of true reverence to
   God. True reverence to God makes me stop every now and then and say,
   "Is this my Master's will?" It makes me go to the Record to see whether
   I am comporting myself according to the Master's orders. It brings me
   to a solemn position of enquiry where I have to look on the right hand
   and on the left, and say, "Am I really right here? Am I serving myself
   or my God? Am I now under a Divine impulse, or only subject to my own
   human passion?"

   If you do not thus pause, I do not think you have a proper regard for
   the Most High. If one of us should be sent as an ambassador from the
   Queen on some important business, when we received our orders we should
   be very diligent to know what they were. And I can suppose our putting
   our hand into our bosom, for we would be sure to keep the document
   there close to our heart, taking it out often and looking at it to know
   exactly what was to be done. I am sure we would say, "If I should make
   a mistake here it shall be through want of power--it shall not be
   through deficiency of care and caution."

   Dear Hearers, we ought not to be serving God blunderingly! We ought not
   to rush into His service and rush out again without setting our hearts
   toward Him. The Lord does not require of us to serve Him with half our
   heads or half our hearts--the service of God is worthy of all the light
   which my understanding can give me. I would not only serve Him with my
   heart having a good motive, but feeling that He bought my head with His
   precious blood I would try to obey Him with my understanding, saying to
   Him, "Lord, teach me what You would have me to do, and how You would
   have me to do it." Jesus deserves our whole man in the most educated
   state--and the true Christian will not be satisfied to give to Jesus
   merely passion, and impulse, and excitement--he will put himself under
   the instruction of the great Teacher, and say, "Lord, teach me Your
   statutes, that I may run in the way of Your commandments."

   Once more, after all, dear Friends, if we are heedless in the service
   of God and will not think it worth our while to find out or to do our
   Master's will, is there not grave cause for suspicion that the very
   heart of our religion is rotten? Do not think me harsh, but I must
   again press it upon you--it is the easiest thing in the world, Beloved,
   for you and for me to think that we are converted and to get into the
   notion that we have enjoyed such-and-such experiences. It is very easy
   for some to say they are Christians, but it will not be found so easy
   to be one.

   Hear the words of Paul: "If the righteous are scarcely saved." "For
   strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads unto life eternal."
   Now, if I wickedly in my soul say that I will not desire to know my
   Lord's will, or if I know it but will not yield it obedience--if I
   practice it I will do it lightly without giving my soul to it. What
   worse heart can any mere worldling have than this? How can corrupt
   nature be more thoroughly discovered? Of the two I think I would sooner
   see you lay down your profession than hold it with a reserve. It were
   better for you to be ostensibly the enemies of God than to be nominally
   His friends only up to a certain point! God save us from the shadow of
   hypocrisy!

   I am conscious that I have been touching some sore points here, for
   with a great many even in our own churches, let alone those who are in
   the Church of England and so on, it really is not with them a question
   as to what the Lord would have them to do. Some are guided by their
   family connections--"Why do I do so-and-so? Well, you see it is a thing
   I was brought up to do." The same theory would render all the heathen
   heathens forever, and every man would go down to Hell whose father went
   there!

   Many persons receive their religion as they received their names--they
   got their names when they were unconscious, and they obtained their
   religion, or rather irreligion, at the same time. I do not believe I am
   bound to do what my grandmother did. She was, I doubt not, an admirable
   woman and has gone to Heaven. But I do not believe God put the brains
   that were to guide me into her head. I think He put my understanding
   and my brains into my head, and that under the guidance of His Holy
   Spirit I am, myself, to search this Bible. God did not put the Bible
   into my father's hands that He might construct certain notions which
   should bind his son--He placed the Bible in each Christian's own hands
   that he might come there and say, "Lord, what would You have me to do?"

   It is a very ill reason to give for a practice, "I do so-and-so because
   my family did the same before me," and it is a worse reason, if
   possible, to say, "We do it because you see it is a general thing, and
   a respectable thing." The general thing is the wrong thing in nine
   cases out of ten! Christ's Church is not so predominant yet anywhere as
   that the general thing shall ever become the right thing. It is folly
   to be singular, except when to be singular is to be right--and that
   happens to be very, very often, indeed.

   Some, on the other hand, who do not follow tradition, follow mere
   excitement. They happen to be what they now are as professors because
   they were persuaded into it by an eloquent teacher--they were excited,
   and they did so. Besides, they did it, they say, from a good motive
   which is certainly better than no excuse at all. But my doing wrong
   from a good motive does not make the wrong right, especially when I
   might have enlightened myself and have found out what was the right. If
   I persistently shut up my Bible and say, "Now I shall do whatever I
   think to be right," I am like a person who at night puts out his
   lantern and cries, "Now I shall walk whichever way I think to be
   right." If he tumbles into a ditch, it will be very little consolation
   that he followed his best judgment. Why did he not follow the light
   which he had about him?

   Some professing Christians also give themselves up to their taste. They
   believe a doctrine because they like it, or they follow a practice
   because they think it is very appropriate, or perhaps pretty. As if
   taste could be any better than a mere Will-o'-the-wisp as a guide in
   religion! It is not possible for me to be a servant of God at all while
   I set up my own whims to be my rule of action. Beloved, there are many
   others whose religion is one constant piece of thoughtlessness--they
   never consider at all--and though this matter may not strike you as
   important, I am persuaded the message I am delivering is needed by the
   great mass of Christians.

   Do not serve God thoughtlessly. Do not come to any devout exercises
   merely because it is the time and season for them, but take heed, weigh
   the matter, see what you are doing--do not rush into God's Presence, do
   not worship because others do so, but take heed and consider--and then,
   deliberately in God's strength, whether others do so or not, perform
   the Lord's will with your whole heart.

   III. I will now come to the third point, and that is that CAREFUL
   THOUGHT WITH REGARD TO ALL GOD'S

   WILL IS MOST USEFUL. Because in the first place, a man who gives heed
   to walk in all the Lord's will with all his heart proves that he has
   the true serving spirit. He has become a servant, for his eyes were up
   to God as the eyes of the handmaiden towards her mistress. He has the
   true child-like spirit, for he says to his Father, "Father, tell me
   what You would have me do and be."

   He has the true believing spirit, for he no longer walks by the sight
   of his eyes and the will of the flesh, but desires to be conformed to
   the mind of the invisible God. And he has evidently a humbled spirit,
   since he puts his own will in subjection to Divine Grace--to the will
   of God. His desire is--"Not my will, but Yours be done." Cultivate,
   Beloved, cultivate carefulness with regard to God's will for you,
   because it will be to you one of the best and clearest evidences that
   Divine Grace reigns in your heart!

   In the next place, this heedfulness is precious because it will prevent
   much evil. There are scores of things which are now done that never
   would be done again if Christians would only think. If we could once
   get a thoughtful believing church, we should not be long without having
   a reformed church. Beloved, it was because Luther was led by God to
   proclaim that doctrine of justification by faith that we received the
   Reformation. Do not think there was nobody in the world who believed
   that when Luther preached it--there were thousands of holy men and
   women who had trusted in Christ and were trusting in Christ--but they
   did not see the necessity of proclaiming on the housetops that Truth of
   God which in secret they lived upon!

   It was only when Luther made them think whether they ought to be in
   communion with a church which denies this vital point--it was only then
   that they dreamed of coming out from the old Romish church and began to
   declare more boldly the Truth as it is in Jesus. You will be saved all
   sorts of troubles in Providence, if, like David, you will stay awhile,
   and say, "Bring here the ephod." If instead of running right on without
   looking, you will say, "Lord, where does the cloud lead me? Where does
   the finger of Providence direct me?" You will be saved many bitter
   tears, and your path will be more happy and pleasant to yourself.

   A heedful spirit, moreover, finds out God's will. God's will is not
   such a mystery as some would have us think! This is such a Book that he
   who wills to understand it, by God's Grace, shall understand. Come here
   in spirit, willing to know, and you will know. Come here with a desire
   to do what God would have you do, and you shall soon be well taught.
   You need not submit to a priest, nor allow the judgment of another to
   domineer over your intellect--

   "This is the judge that ends the strife,
   Where wit and reason fail,
   My guide to everlasting life
   Through all this gloomy vale."

   A heedful spirit is particularly needful to certain persons. A man with
   a quick spirit like Jehu ought to be the more heedful. Some Brothers
   and Sisters are born with a passionate disposition. Certain men are
   readily subject to impulses. Those of us who are cool and calculating
   will probably not err here--but the more impulsive brethren should look
   well to this duty of taking heed to the whole of God's will or else,
   before they know it, they may be the dupes of imposters.

   Under the notion of duty you may run into all sorts of mischief. If men
   would go to God about every matter, they would not talk so many crude
   things nor do so many absurd things as they now do. How necessary this
   heedfulness is to the preacher! If he does not take care what he
   publishes he will do much more mischief than he will do good. How
   heedful you Sunday school teachers, and you that are teachers of any
   sort should be! If you do not look to your actions, you may have good
   motives but your example will not be very good.

   How necessary this is to the parent! Because if the parent falls into
   an error, his children will imitate him in his vices far sooner than
   his virtues. How needful is this in certain positions! You who work
   with ungodly men--you who are thrown into worldly company--how heedful
   should you be! You will never be right unless you are watchful. "What I
   say unto you I say unto all, Watch." Watchfulness will be sure to take
   this turn of an anxious desire to give heed to all the Lord's will.
   Would I have you precise? "Yes," said a Puritan, "I am precise, for I
   serve a precise God."

   Would I have you careful and jealous? Ah, you serve a jealous God!
   There is no fear in this age that I can draw this string too tightly.
   Laxity is, alas, too much the common practice. Oh, Beloved, may we come
   back again, not to the gloom of Puritanism, but still to the rigidity
   of its obedience, to its stern tenacity of all its convictions and its
   determination sooner to die than to yield the very least point of the
   will of God! If we had more of this the Church would be much more
   blessed than it is.

   Let me say once more that this heedful spirit will be a great blessing
   to you Christians because of that which it will lead to. If I do not
   take heed to do the Lord's will, I shall soon miss the society of
   Jesus. Christ walks most closely with those who walk most closely with
   the Divine will. If I set up an idol in my heart I cannot expect Jesus
   Christ to come and talk familiarly with me, and sup with me in the
   presence of that idol! If I am knowingly, or even through a willful
   ignorance, unknowingly doing that which He does not approve of, I
   cannot expect His smile.

   We are not saved by works, we repeat it, but still much of our
   communion with Christ does depend upon the hearty sincerity of our
   obedience. "If you keep My commandments you shall abide in My love,
   even as I have kept My Father's Commandments, and abide in His love."
   May the Holy Spirit bring us, then, for all these reasons, into a
   heedful and careful spirit!

   IV. We must finish by trying to urge you TO PRACTICE CARE AT ONCE. And
   I would appeal to all present in these few words--Dear Friends, may I
   ask you all to answer to yourselves this question, "Is my hope which I
   possess at the present moment truly placed where all true hope must
   be?"

   Are you giving heed in the matter of your hope to walk according to the
   Commandment? What is the Commandment? This is the Commandment--that you
   believe on Jesus Christ whom He has sent. No question can be more
   important than this! Are you resting and depending upon Jesus Christ
   alone, and with all your heart? If not, you may as well give up all
   pretensions to godliness for you have not got any if you have not begun
   on this foundation. "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is
   laid."

   Come, there can be no exceptions here! That excellent disposition, that
   charitable action, that devout ceremony--all that is nothing at all
   unless you begin by disclaiming all good works and all human
   merits--and come to rest upon the Lord Jesus and upon His finished work
   and righteousness. Now, that is the first question to begin with.
   Christian, if you can get over that, and say, "Yes, blessed be God, I
   do in that respect walk according to the Commandment," then next I want
   you, Christian, to answer this--"Is there anything in which you are now
   indulging which you know to be wrong, or which you might know to be
   wrong if you took the trouble to search?"

   Then I charge you, by your allegiance to Christ, give it up now! One
   leak sinks a ship, and one sin really harbored will be a proof that the
   Grace of God is not in you. You may fall into one sin, no, fall into
   fifty sins and yet be a Christian--but you cannot live in one sin, and
   love one sin and be a Christian--it is indispensably necessary to vital
   godliness that all sin should be the subject of your heart's
   disapproval. What about this? My dear Brothers and Sisters saved in
   Christ--is there any one command of your Master which you have
   neglected?

   I shall give no hints about what it may happen to be, for it may be a
   different one in every case. But is there one thing that you might do
   for Christ which you have not done? Is there one service which you
   might render to your Master which you have not rendered? Then I charge
   you, as you hope to be found approved in the day of judgment, and by
   the sincerity of your attachment to your Lord, see that that one thing
   is done, and done at once with all your heart! How I wish that I had
   the power to press home this matter!

   I feel as if I had one of the largest subjects to handle and had the
   very smallest power to bring it home. Beloved, do not let us be among
   those that have the name to live and are dead--and who prove that they
   are dead by lacking the heart which clings to God! I know you cannot be
   perfect in life, but you must be desirous to be perfect. You cannot
   give up every sin, practically, I know. Through infirmity we fall into
   some sin or another--but the heart must give up every sin, or else it
   is a rotten heart in which God does not dwell! And the heart must be
   obedient to every command or else it is not a heart in which Jesus
   Christ has come to reign.

   The Lord purge the inside, and the outside will soon be right enough.
   May He make clean the inside of the cup and the platter, then the
   exterior will be cleansed, too. And may the Lord grant that this work
   be seen to at once! As for you professors who have felt this sermon cut
   you, may it cut you--may it kill your hopes! May it drive you to
   self-despair, and may it lead you to Christ!

   And when you come to Christ and trust in Him, then I know you will
   cry--

   "Loved of my God, for Him again With love intense I'd burn! Chosen of
   Him before time began, I choose Him in return."

   God bless this sermon of admonition, and make it profitable to every
   hearer, and His shall be the praise. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                        Obedience Better Than Sacrifice

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat
   of rams."

   1 Samuel 15:2.

   SAUL had been commanded to utterly slay all the Amalekites and their
   cattle. Instead of doing so he preserved the king and suffered his
   people to take the best of the oxen and of the sheep. When called to
   account for this he declared that he did it with a view of offering
   sacrifice to God--but Samuel met him at once with the assurance that
   such sacrifices were no excuse for an act of direct rebellion. In so
   doing he altered his sentence, which is worthy to be printed in letters
   of gold and to be hung up before the eyes of the present generation:
   "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of
   rams."

   I think that in this verse--and here I shall dwell mainly--there is,
   first, a voice to professing Christians, and then, secondly, to
   unconverted persons.

   I. First, I will speak to you, my Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus,
   you who have made a PROFESSION of your faith in Him. Be it ever in your
   remembrance, that to obey, to keep strictly in the path of your
   Savior's command, is better than any outward form of religion. And to
   hearken to His precepts with an attentive ear is better than to bring
   the fat of rams or anything else which you may wish to lay upon His
   altar. Probably there are some of you here tonight who may be living in
   the neglect of some known duty. It is no new thing for Christians to
   know their duty--to have their conscience enlightened about it--and yet
   to neglect it.

   If you are failing to keep the least of one of Christ's commands to His
   disciples, I pray you, Brethren, be disobedient no longer. I know, for
   instance, that some of you can see it to be your duty, as Believers, to
   be baptized. If you did not think it to be your duty, I would not bring
   this text to bear upon you. But if you feel it is right, and you do it
   not, let me say to you that all the pretensions you make of attachment
   to your Master and all the other actions which you may perform, are as
   nothing compared with the neglect of this! "To obey," even in the
   slightest and smallest thing, "is better than sacrifice," and to
   hearken diligently to the Lord's commands is better than the fat of
   rams.

   It may be that some of you, though you are professed Christians, are
   living in the prosecution of some evil trade, and your conscience has
   often said, "Get out of it." You are not in the position that a
   Christian ought to be in--but then you hope that you will be able to
   make a little money--and you will retire and do a world of good with
   it. Ah, God cares nothing for this rams' fat of yours! He asks not for
   these sacrifices which you intend to make. "To obey is better than
   sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."

   Perhaps you are in connection with a Christian church in which you may
   see much that is wrong and you know that you ought not to tolerate it,
   but still you do so. You say, "I have a position of usefulness, and if
   I come out I shall not be so useful as I am now." My Brother, your
   usefulness is but as the fat of rams, and "to obey is better than" it
   all. The right way for a Christian to walk in is to do what his Master
   bids him, leaving all consequences to the Almighty. You have nothing to
   do with your own usefulness further than to keep your Master's commands
   at all hazards and under all risks. "I counsel you to keep the King's
   commandments," and, "whatever He said unto you, do it." Sit at His feet
   with Mary and learn of Him! And when you rise up from that reverent
   posture, let it be with the prayer--

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

   Possibly, too, dear Brother, there may be some evil habit in which you
   are indulging and which you excuse by the reflection, "Well, I am
   always at the Prayer Meeting. I am constantly at communion, and I give
   so much of my substance to the support of the Lord's work." I am glad
   that you do these things, but oh, I pray you give up that sin! I pray
   you cut it to pieces and cast it away, for if you do not, all your show
   of sacrifice will be but an abomination! The first thing which God
   requires of you as His beloved is obedience! And though you should
   preach with the tongue of men and of angels, though you should give
   your body to be burned and your goods to feed the poor, yet if you do
   not hearken to your Lord and are not obedient to His will, all besides
   shall profit you nothing.

   It is a blessed thing to be teachable as a little child, and to be
   willing to be taught of God. But it is a much more blessed thing,
   still, when one has been taught to go at once and carry out the lesson
   which the Master has whispered in his ear. How many excellent
   Christians there are who sacrifice a goodly flock of sheep so as to
   replenish the altar of our God who, nevertheless, are faulty because
   they obey not the Word of the Lord? Look at our Missionary Society's
   list of subscribers, and ask yourself the question, Do all these help
   the spread of the Gospel by obedience to the precept, "Go you into all
   the world and preach the Gospel to every creature"?

   There you see in the money gift the sacrifice, but better far to have
   obedience. Both ought to be joined together. But of the two, better is
   the act of obedience than of giving! Noah's sacrifice sent up a sweet
   savor before God, but in God's sight the obedience which led him to
   build the ark and enter in with his family was far more precious--and
   for this his name is written among the champions of faith and handed
   down to us as a word of honor and renown. Moreover, Brethren, to obey
   is better than sacrifice in the matter of caring for the sick and needy
   of all classes. We rejoice in the number of hospitals which adorn our
   cities. These are the princely trophies of the power of our holy
   religion.

   To these we triumphantly point as among the ripe fruits of that
   Christianity which is for the healing of the nations, chiefly in a
   spiritual, but also in the physical aspect of man's diseased and
   miserable state. There are no nobler words in our language than those
   inscribed on so many walls--"Supported by voluntary contributions." We
   glory in them! Rome's monuments, Grecian trophies, Egyptian's mighty
   tombs and Assyria's huge monoliths are dwarfed into petty exhibitions
   of human pride and vanity before the sublime majesty of these
   exhibitions of a God-given love to our fellow men!

   But all these homes of mercy and healing become evils to ourselves,
   though they are blessings to the distressed, if we contribute of our
   wealth to their financial support and neglect personally to visit the
   fatherless and widows in their affliction, to feed the hungry, to care
   for the sick, and do not, like the Master, go about doing good. Give as
   God has given to you, but remember God acts as well as gives. "Go you
   and do likewise." Sacrifice, but also obey! A cup of cold water given
   to a disciple in the name of a disciple, and in obedience to the Lord,
   is a golden deed valued by our heavenly Master above all price--more
   precious in His sight than silver--yes, than much fine gold.

   I put this very earnestly to the members of this church, and, indeed,
   to all of you who hope that you are followers of Christ: Is there
   anything that you are neglecting? Is there any sin in which you are
   indulging? Is there any voice of conscience to which you have turned a
   deaf ear? Is there one passage of Scripture which you dare not look in
   the face because you are living in neglect of it? Then let Samuel's
   voice come to you and set you seeking for more Divine Grace, for "to
   obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."

   II. But my main business tonight is with the UNCONVERTED--and may the
   Master give us Grace to deal with them affectionately, faithfully, and
   earnestly! My Hearer, in the first place, God has given to you in the
   Gospel dispensation a command. It is a command in the obeying of which
   there is eternal life, and the neglect of which will be and must be
   your everlasting ruin! That command is this: "Believe on the Lord Jesus
   Christ, and you shall be saved."

   The Gospel does not come to you as the Law does, and say, "Do this and
   you shall live." It speaks as in the language of Isaiah the Prophet,
   and says, "Hearken diligently unto Me. Hear, and your souls shall
   live." It tells you that whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ, is
   born of God, and it bids the heralds of the Cross go out and cry, "He
   that believe and is baptized shall be saved. He that believe not shall
   be damned."

   To use the expressive language of the beloved Apostle John, "This is
   His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus
   Christ." To believe is to trust--to trust with your whole heart--and
   whoever trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ with his whole heart has the
   promise of eternal life. No, if that act is sincere, it is the result
   of eternal life already given! God, the just One, must punish sin,
   therefore He must punish you--but Jesus Christ became Man and stood and
   smarted in the sinner's place--that whoever trusts in Him might neither
   smart nor suffer because God punished Christ in the place of every man
   who comes to Christ and rests upon Him. To trust in Jesus, therefore,
   is God's first and great commandment of salvation.

   Now, listen, Sinner! God commands you to keep this and surely He has a
   right to do so. If He wills to save, He has a sovereign right to choose
   His own way of saving! If a man gives to the poor he may do so as he
   wills, whether he gives at this door or at that, or through the
   window--and so God is pleased to use the door of simple faith as the
   only door through which to bestow mercy on the sons of men. And not
   only has He a right to choose this way, but it is the only way that
   would suit you! If God determined to save none but those who kept His
   Law, what would become of you? If He only gave Divine Grace to the holy
   and to the good, where would you be?

   But the way of faith suits, and readily suits, one who has broken God's
   commandments. Though a sinner is dying, though he may be on the cross
   like the dying thief, yet, as the way of salvation is but a looking at
   Christ, there is hope for him even in the last extremity that he may
   still be able to look and live! Why should you kick against God's way
   when it is the best to suit you--when none can be more suitable--none
   more simple? He has chosen it because it is a way which honors His dear
   Son.

   Your trusting Jesus gives glory to Jesus and therefore God delights in
   your faith. And, besides, it brings a blessing to your own soul. To
   trust in Christ is in itself a blessing. It is humbling, but it is
   comforting. It empties you, but it fills you. It strips you, but it
   clothes you. Faith has a double action like a two-edged sword. It kills
   pride but at the same time it heals the wound it gave by giving to the
   sinner trust in Jesus. To trust Jesus is the best conceivable way I can
   imagine by which a sinner can be reconciled unto God through the blood
   of the great Redeemer. I pray you, therefore, be not angry because God
   is gracious. Be not rebellious when the still small voice says, "Look,
   Sinner, look to Him who died upon the tree, and by that look you shall
   live."

   Now, this first point being clear, that God has given a command, the
   second remark is that the most of men, instead of obeying God, want to
   bring him sacrifices. They suppose that their own way of salvation is
   much better than any that the Almighty can have devised and therefore
   they offer their fat of rams. This takes different forms, but it is
   always the same principle. One man says, "Well now, I will give up my
   pleasures. You shall not see me at the ballroom. You shall not catch me
   at the theater. I will forsake the music hall. You shall not discover
   me in low company. I will give up all the things that my heart calls
   good--will not that save me?"

   No, it will not. When you have made all this sacrifice all I shall, or
   can say of it is, "To obey is better than sacrifice." "Well, but
   suppose I begin to attend a place of worship? Suppose I go very
   regularly, and as often as the doors are open? Suppose I go to early
   matins, and to the evening song? Suppose I attend every day in the week
   where the bell is always going? Suppose I come to the sacrament and am
   baptized? Supposing I go through with the thing, and give myself
   thoroughly up to all outward observances--will not all this save me?"
   No, nor will it even help you to being saved! These things will no more
   save you than husks will fill your hungry belly. It is not the husks
   you need, you need the kernels, and so, poor Soul, you do not need
   external ceremonies--you need the inward substance and you will never
   get that except by trusting Jesus Christ!

   There was a time when doctrine was far more highly valued than is now
   the case with some Christians. You will often meet with those who seem
   to value men by their contributions to Church funds rather than by
   their soundness in the faith. Now, if I am to judge men at all, I prize
   the man who hearkens to God's voice far more than the one who can bring
   the "fat of rams" to the altar of God's House. A rich heretic I would
   reject and put from me, while the poor but obedient God-fearing
   disciple I would welcome with all my heart. An ear ever open to listen
   to God's voice, a heart ever soft to receive the impress of God's
   teaching--these are far more precious than a handful of silver and
   gold, and a mouth promising large things. For "to hearken is better
   than the fat of rams."

   All the costly gifts cast into the treasury are valuable chiefly as
   representing an inner spirit of devotion and of self-consecration. They
   may exist as outward acts without the living spirit which gives them
   value in God's eyes. We need, therefore, to cultivate the soul--and to
   see that that sacred spirit of devout submission dwells within us which
   dwelt in Him--who not only sacrificed Himself on the Cross, being
   obedient unto death, but ever lived in that state of heart which was
   embodied in His prayer, "Nevertheless, not My will but Yours be done."

   Would the washing of the windows of a house make the inhabitants clean?
   Does the painting and ornamenting of the exterior of a mansion make the
   dwellers in it healthier or holier men? We read of devils entering into
   a clean swept and garnished house, and the last end of that man was
   worse than the first! All the outward cleansing is but the gilding of
   the bars of the cage full of unclean birds--the whitewashing of
   sepulchers full of rottenness and dead men's bones. Washing the outside
   of a box will leave all the clothes inside as foul as ever. Remember,
   therefore, that all that you can do in the way of outward religion is
   nothing but the sacrifice of the fat of rams--and "to obey is better
   than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."

   "Yes," says another, "but suppose I punish myself a good deal for all
   that I have done? I will abstain from this. I will deny myself that. I
   will mortify myself in this passion. I will give up that evil." Friend,
   if you have any evil give it up, but when you have done so do not rely
   upon that, for this you ought to have done, and not to have left the
   other undone! God's command is, "Believe," and if you should go about
   to sacrifice your lusts till they are bleeding like a hecatomb of
   bullocks upon the altar, yet I must say to you, as Samuel sternly said
   to Saul, "To obey is better than to sacrifice, and to hearken to the
   Gospel message is better than all this fat of rams."

   But it is thought by some if they should add to all this a good deal of
   generosity, surely they will be saved. "Suppose I give money to the
   poor, build a lot of alms-houses and help to build a church? Suppose I
   am generous even beyond my means, will not this help me?" Sinner, why
   do you ask such a question? God has set before you a door--an open
   door-- and over it is written, "Believe and live"! And yet you go about
   and wander abroad to find another door! What is all your gold worth,
   Man? Why, Heaven is paved with it! All the gold you have would not buy
   a single slab of the eternal pavement, and do you think to enter there
   by way of your poor giving?

   If God were hungry He would not tell you, for His are the cattle on a
   thousand hills, and His are the mines of silver, and the sparkling ores
   of gold. The diamond, and the topaz, and the chrysolite are all His
   own, and His eyes see them hidden in their secret veins and lodes! Do
   you think to bribe the Eternal with your paltry purse? Oh, do you
   understand that "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than
   the fat of rams"?

   "Yes, but," says the sinner, "if I could add to all this a great deal
   of confidence in those good men who are recognized by the world as
   priests? Suppose I put myself into their bonds? I would not go to the
   Roman Catholics, for I do not like them much, but supposing I go to the
   Episcopalians--they have priests, too, and sprinkle children with holy
   water, and bury the reprobate dead, in 'sure and certain hope of a
   glorious resurrection to everlasting life'--could not they do something
   for me? Or suppose I go to some Dissenting minister, and put myself
   under his care, cannot he help me?"

   No, Sir, there is nothing in us that can help you one jot. We hate the
   very thought of being priests! I would sooner be a devil than be a
   priest with the exception of being what all Christians are--priests
   unto God. Let me justify that strong remark--of all pretensions on
   earth there is none so detestable as the pretense of being able to
   bestow Divine Grace upon men and of standing between their souls and
   God! Beloved, we are your servants for Christ's sake, but as for any
   priestly authority to give Grace to you, we shake off the imputation as
   Paul shook off the viper from his hand into the fire.

   We speak to men of our own kith and kin, we talk to you out of warm
   earnest hearts, but we can only say to you, "Do not trust in us, for
   you will be fools if you do. Do not trust in any man, for though you
   might make a sacrifice of your reason by so doing, yet remember that
   'to obey is better than sacrifice.' " God demands of you not submission
   to your fellow men, whoever they may be--He requires of you not to
   listen to the pealing of organs, not to attend gorgeous ceremonies
   where the smoke of incense goes up in gaudy palaces dedicated to His
   service. He requires this--that you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
   and then He tells you that you shall live. Trust the Savior and you
   shall not perish, neither shall any pluck you out of His hand! But if
   you refuse this way of salvation, then there is none other presented to
   you and you must perish in your sins. "To obey is better than
   sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."

   And now I have to show that it is so. Men are always setting up these
   ways of salvation of their own, and they will run anywhere sooner than
   come to Christ and do as God tells them! Let me show how to obey is
   better than sacrifice, and how to hearken is better than the fat of
   rams. It is better in itself. It shows that you are more humble. There
   are persons in the world who say that to trust Christ to save us from
   sin is not to be humble. Now, is it not always humility on the part of
   a child to do exactly what its parent tells it without asking any
   questions? I think it is so.

   Some poor Papists go down on their knees and even lick the dust to do
   penance, and they think that this is being humble! Now, suppose one of
   your children has offended you, and you say to him, "Come, my Dear, I
   freely forgive you. Come and give me a kiss, and it is all over." He
   shakes his head, and says, "No, Father, I cannot kiss you." And he runs
   upstairs and shuts himself up. You knock at the door, and say, "Come,
   my Child, come and kiss me, and it is all forgiven." But he shakes his
   head and says, "No, never!" He shuts himself up there all alone, and he
   thinks he is doing more to put away your anger by so doing than by
   obeying your command!

   You say to him solemnly, "My Child, I will chasten you again for
   disobedience if you do not come and accept the forgiveness which I
   offer to you if you will but kiss me." The child sullenly says, "No,
   Father, I will do something else that is more humbling." And then you
   feel in your soul that that is an unhumbled child or else he would at
   once do what his father told him--without thinking whether it would be
   a humiliating thing or not! It would be a humbling thing because his
   father told him to do it, and if he were a right-minded child he would
   do it from a spirit of obedience.

   Now, you may think it very humble on your part to need to feel a great
   deal of conviction and to shed a great many tears, and to pray a great
   many prayers--but the most lowly thing you can do is to perform what
   the Master tells you. "Trust Me," He said, "do not go over there to
   weep--come to Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will
   give you rest." Do not stand at the swine's trough saying, "I will not
   arise and go to my Father, for I am not fit to go till I have suffered
   a great deal more." Hear the voice which bids you say, "I will arise
   and go unto my Father. And what I have to say I will say unto him. And
   if I have to weep I will weep with my head in his bosom, while I
   receive the kisses of his love."

   Come, poor Sinner, do not set up your proud humility in the teeth of
   God, but since He bids you look and live, oh, give up your prayers and
   even your tears, and your repenting, and your convictions--have done
   with them all as grounds of confidence--and look to Jesus Christ, and
   to Jesus Christ alone!

   But in the next place, it is really a more holy thing. There are some
   soldiers here tonight. Now suppose one of these received orders from
   the commanding officer to keep guard at such-and-such a door. All of a
   sudden he thinks to himself, "I am very fond of our commander and I
   should like to do something for him." He puts his musket against the
   wall and starts out to find a shop where he can buy a bunch of flowers.
   He is away from his post all the while, of course, and when he comes
   back he is discovered to have been away from the post of duty.

   He says, "Here is the bunch of flowers I went to get." But I hear his
   officer say, "To obey is better than that--we cannot allow
   you--military discipline would not permit it--to run off at every whim
   and wish of yours and neglect your duty, for who knows what mischief
   might ensue?" The man, however much you might admire what he was doing,
   would certainly be made to learn by military law that "To obey is
   better than sacrifice." It is a holier and a better thing to do one's
   duty than to make duties for one's self and then set about them.

   Now, does it not seem a very pretty thing when a man puts on a very
   handsome-looking gown with a yellow cross down his back, and something
   else in pink, and I know not what colors, and ministers in a place
   decorated with flowers? And where there are such sweet things--incense
   smoking from silver censers and choristers all in white--is not that
   man serving God? When he preaches he does not say to the people,
   "Believe and live," but begins to talk about "the blessed sacrament of
   the altar," or some other such stuff? Is he not serving God when he
   does this? I will appeal to this old Book.

   Where inside these leaves and covers is there a word about burning this
   smoking incense? When did Christ ever say anything about it? Where have
   we anything about that decorated font, or about that pulpit that looks
   so very glorious? Why, the man has been making up a spiritual pantomime
   for himself and he has left out altogether the soul of the matter. He
   has left out Christ ! Therefore he has NOT done his work! He has done
   twenty other things--I dare say very sincerely and with a very pure
   desire--but after all he needs to be made to learn the meaning of this
   passage, "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat
   of rams."

   And better than smoking incense, and flowers, and gilded crosses, and
   chasubles, and albs, and dalmatics, and all such things as could
   possibly be brought together, if he had God's Word for it, it would be
   right, but without God's Word it is a mere invention of man to which
   God can have no regard. It is a more holy thing to do what God bids you
   than to do what you yourselves invent. When I have done with what I
   have invented, however pretty it may be, however venerable it may seem,
   yet what does it come to? Suppose I worship God in one of those smart
   robes--is my worship a bit the better? Suppose I should go home tonight
   and spend the night on my knees and think that by that means I should
   satisfy God? What should I have done but made my knees ache?

   Supposing I had filled this place with incense--what should I have done
   but probably have made you cough? Suppose I had decorated myself and
   this place--some of you might have been pleased--but what connection on
   earth can there be between flowers and holiness, or between gilding and
   millinery and glorifying God? If our God were like some of the fabled
   deities of Greece and Rome He might be delighted with these pretty
   things, but our God is in the heavens, and when He does show His
   splendor He scatters stars broadcast across the sky with both His
   hands--so what are all your prettinesses to Him? What is your swelling
   music and all your pretty things to Him who built the heavens and piled
   the earth with all its rugged splendor of forest, and mountain, and
   stream? "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat
   of rams."

   But while I remark upon these things, let me also say that to obey the
   precept, "Believe and live," is certainly a great deal more effectual
   to the soul's salvation than all the sacrifice and all the fat of rams
   which you can offer. Let me give you a picture by way of illustration.
   Naaman was a leper. He desired healing. The Prophet said to him, "Go
   and wash in Jordan seven times, and you shall be clean." Now Naaman
   thought to himself, "I dare say, wash? Does he think me to be some
   filthy wretch who needs washing? He says I must wash seven times! Does
   he really think that I have not washed for so long that it will take
   seven washings to get me clean?

   "He says I must wash! What a simple thing! I have washed every day, and
   it has done me no good. He says I must wash in Jordan! Are not Abana
   and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Jordan?
   Why cannot I wash in them and be clean?" This is just what some of you
   say about believing. You say, "Well, but sacraments--there must be
   something in them! Believing in Christ--why it is such a simple thing!
   I am such a respectable person. This is a very good religion to preach
   to thieves and so on, but surely you forget that I have a great many
   good works of my own--cannot I think of them? You say I must trust in
   Christ as though you thought nothing of my good works."

   Well, you are near the mark, Sir. I do not think anything of them! I
   would not give a penny for a wagon load of them! The whole of them are
   just what Paul calls them--"refuse." He says, "I count them but dung
   that I may win Christ, and be found in Him." All your best works are
   but so much rubbish to be carted out of the way, and if you trust in
   them they will be your ruin! All we say to you is, "BELIEVE AND LIVE."

   Now Naaman was in a great rage and he went away, but his servant said
   to him, "My Father, if the Prophet had bid you do some great thing
   would you not have done it? Much rather, then, will you not do what he
   tells you when he says, Wash and he clean?" Now, if my Master were to
   say to you tonight, "Walk to the city of York barefoot and you shall be
   saved," if you believed it, the most of you would start off tonight!
   But when the message is, "Believe and live," oh, that is too simple!
   What? Just trust Christ and be saved on the spot?! Why, it cannot be,
   you think! If we bade you do some great thing you would do it, but you
   refuse to do so simple a thing as to believe.

   But if Naaman had gone to Abana and Pharpar he would not have been
   healed. And if he had sought out all the physicians in Syria and paid
   away all his money, he would have been white with leprosy still. There
   was nothing but washing in Jordan that would heal him. And so with you,
   Sinner--you may go and do fifty thousand things but you will never get
   your sins forgiven! And you never, never shall have a hope of Heaven
   unless you will obey this one precept-- "Believe on the Lord Jesus
   Christ." But if you do this you shall find that "to obey is better than
   sacrifice" indeed, and "to hearken" than all "the fat of rams."

   But now we must close with a remark which we have made over and over
   again during this discourse, namely, that by not obeying and not
   hearkening to the Gospel, Sinner, you must perish. I know that some
   think it rather hard that there should be nothing for them but ruin if
   they will not believe in Jesus Christ. But if you will think for a
   minute you will see that it is just and reasonable. I suppose there is
   no way for a man to keep his strength up except by eating. If you were
   to say, "I shall never eat, I will not take refreshment," you might go
   to Madeira, or travel to all the climates, (supposing you lived long
   enough!) but you would most certainly find that no climate and no
   exercise would avail to keep you alive if you refused to eat!

   And would you then say, "Well, it is a hard thing that I should die
   because I refused to eat"? It is not an unjust thing that if you are
   such a fool as not to eat, you must die. It is precisely so with
   believing. "Believe, and you are saved." If you will not believe, it is
   no hard thing that you should be damned! It would be harder if it were
   not to be the case! There is a man who is thirsty, and there stands
   before him a fountain. "No," he says, "I will never touch a drop of
   moisture as long as I live. Cannot I get my thirst quenched in some
   other way?" We tell him, no, he must drink or die. He says, "I will
   never drink, but it is a hard thing that I must therefore die, a very
   hard thing." No, it is not, poor Simpleton! It is nothing but an
   inevitable law of nature. You must drink or die. Why play the fool at
   such a cost as that? Drink, Man, drink! And so with Christ. There is
   the way of salvation--and you must trust Christ or perish--and there is
   nothing hard in it that you should perish if you do not.

   Here is a man out at sea. He has a chart, and that chart, if well
   studied, will, with the help of the compass, guide him to his journey's
   end. The polestar gleams out amidst the clouds, and that, too, will
   help him. "No," he says, "I will have nothing to do with your stars. I
   do not believe in the North Pole. I shall not attend to that little
   thing inside the box. One needle is as good as another needle. I do not
   believe in your rubbish and I will have nothing to do with it. It is
   only a lot of nonsense got up by people on purpose to make money, and I
   will have nothing to do with it." The man does not get to shore
   anywhere--he drifts about, but never reaches port--and he says it is a
   very hard thing, a very hard thing.

   I do not think so. So some of you say, "Well, I am not going to read
   your Bible. I am not going to listen to your talk about Jesus Christ. I
   do not believe in such things." You will be damned, then, Sir! "That's
   very hard," you say. No, it is not! It is not more so than the fact
   that if you reject the compass and the polestar you will not get to
   your journey's end. There is no help for it--it must be so--you say you
   will have nothing to do with these things, and you pooh-pooh them. You
   will find it a very hard thing to laugh these matters down when you
   come to die, when the cold, clammy sweat must be wiped from your brow,
   and your heart beats against your ribs as if it wanted to get out and
   get away to God.

   Oh Soul, you will find then that these Sundays, and these services, and
   this preaching, and this old Book are something more and better than
   you thought they were! And you will wonder that you were so simple as
   to neglect them, the only guides to salvation. And above all, that you
   neglected Christ, that Polestar which alone shines aloft to guide the
   mariner to the port of peace.

   Now, where do you live tonight? You live, perhaps, on the other side of
   London Bridge, and you have to get over there tonight as you go home.
   But while you have been sitting here you have got a fancy into your
   head that you do not believe in bridges, and you do not believe in
   boats, and you do not believe in water. You say, "I am not going over
   any of your bridges! Do not tell me--I shall not get into any of your
   boats. If there is a river I am not going over it. I do not believe in
   crossing rivers." You go along and you come to the bridge, but you will
   not cross it. There is a boat, but you will not get into it. There is
   the river, and you say you will not cross that anyway, and yet you
   think it is very hard that you cannot get home.

   Now I think you must have got something that has over-balanced your
   reasoning powers, for you would not think it so hard if you were in
   your senses. If a man will not do the thing that is necessary to a
   certain end, I do not see how he can expect to gain that end. You have
   taken poison and the physician brings an antidote, and says, "Take it
   quickly, or you will die. But if you take it quickly I will guarantee
   that the poison will be neutralized." But you say, "No, Doctor, I do
   not believe it. Let everything take its course--let every tub stand on
   its own bottom--I will have nothing to do with you, Doctor." "Well,
   sir, you will die, and when the coroner's inquest is held on your body,
   the verdict will be, 'Served him right!' "

   So will it be with you if, having heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you
   say, "Oh, pooh-pooh! I am too much of a commonsense man to have
   anything to do with that, and I shall not attend to it." Then, when you
   perish, the verdict given by your conscience, which will sit upon the
   King's quest at last, will be a verdict of "Felode-se"--"he destroyed
   himself." So says the old Book--"O Israel, you have destroyed
   yourself!" But when I quote that text I must not stop there, for the
   next line is, "but in Me is your help found."

   Oh, my dear Hearer, what a mercy it is that there is help in God! There
   is help in God for you! There is help in God for the worst of you! I
   cannot tell who there may be here tonight. There may be some who have
   sinned very greatly, but there is help laid upon One who is "mighty to
   save." Where are you, big Sinner? Here is a great Savior able to put
   all your sins away! Have you grown gray in wickedness? Ah, my Master
   can put away seventy years of sin by a moment's application of His
   precious blood! See him bleeding on the Cross in agonies so great that
   angels might have wept to gaze upon Him?--

   "See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled
   down? Did ever such love and sorrow meet,

   Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

   There must be merit in such mighty agonies! If you trust in the merits
   of that precious blood you shall one day be with Him in Paradise. God
   give you Divine Grace to trust Jesus, to trust Jesus now, and then we
   shall meet again where they sing, "Unto Him that loved us, and washed
   us from our sins in His own blood, be glory forever and ever. Amen."

   "Behold the Lamb of God!
   Behold, believe and live!
   Behold His all-atoning blood,
   And life receive.
   Look from yourself to Him,
   Behold Him on the tree!
   Though the eye of faith be dim
   He looks on you.
   That meek, that languid eye,
   Turns from Himself away,
   Invites the trembling sinner near,
   And bids him stay.
   Stay with Him near the tree.
   Stay with Him near the tomb.
   Stay till the risen Lord you see.
   Stay 'till He comes."
     __________________________________________________________________

                               Messengers Wanted

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 22, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who
   will go for Us? Then said I, Here am I! Send me." Isaiah 6:8.

   God's great remedy for man's ruin of man is the sacrifice of His dear
   Son. He proclaims to the sons of men that only by the Atonement of
   Jesus can they be reconciled unto Himself. In order that this remedy
   should be of any avail to any man he must receive it by faith--for
   without faith men perish even under the Gospel dispensation. There is
   at the present moment great lack of men to tell out the story of the
   Cross of Jesus Christ and many considerations press that lack upon our
   hearts. Think how many voices all mingle into this one--"Who will go
   for Us?" Listen to the wounds of Jesus as they plaintively cry, "How
   shall we be rewarded? How shall the precious drops of blood be made
   available to redeem the souls of men unless loving lips shall go for us
   to claim by right those who have been redeemed by blood?"

   The blood of Jesus cries like Abel's blood from the ground, "Whom shall
   I send?" and His wounds repeat the question, "Who will go for us?" Does
   not the purpose of the Eternal Father also join with solemn voice in
   this demand? The Lord has decreed a multitude unto eternal life. He has
   purposed, with a purpose which cannot be changed or frustrated, that a
   multitude whom no man can number shall be the reward of the Savior's
   travail. But how can these decrees be fulfilled except by the sending
   forth of the Gospel, for it is through the Gospel, and through the
   Gospel alone, that salvation can come to the sons of men!

   I think I hear the awful voice of the purpose mingling with the
   piercing cry of the Cross appealing to us to declare the Word of Life.
   I see the handwriting of old Eternity bound in one volume with the
   crimson writing of Calvary, and both together write out most legibly
   the pressing question--"Who shall go for us to bring home the elect and
   redeemed ones? The very sins of men, horrible as they are to think
   upon, may be made an argument for proclaiming the Gospel! Oh the cruel
   and ravenous sins which destroy the sons of men and rend their choicest
   joy in pieces!

   When I see monstrous lusts defiling the temple of God, and many gods
   and many lords usurping the Throne of the Almighty, I can hear the loud
   cry, "Who will go for Us?" Do not perishing souls suggest to us the
   question of the text? Men are going down to the grave perishing for
   lack of knowledge! The tomb engulfs them, eternity swallows them up,
   and in the dark they die without a glimmer of hope! No candle of the
   Lord ever shines upon their faces. By these perishing souls we implore
   you this morning to feel that heralds of the Cross are needed--needed
   lest these souls be ruined everlastingly! Needed that they may be
   lifted up from the dunghill of their corruption and made to sit among
   princes redeemed by Christ Jesus! The cry wells into a wail of mighty
   pathetic pleading--all time echoes it and all eternity prolongs
   it--while Heaven, earth, and Hell give weight to the chorus.

   Beloved, there are two forms of missionary enterprise conducted by two
   classes of agents. I so divide them merely for the occasion--they are
   really not divided by any rigid boundary. The first is the agency of
   those specially dedicated to the ministry of the Word who give
   themselves wholly to it--who are able, by the generous effort of the
   Christian Church, or by their own means--to set their whole time apart
   for the great work of teaching the Truth of God. As there are but few
   in this assembly who can do this, I shall not translate my text in its
   reference to ministers although it has a loud voice to such.

   I shall rather refer to another and equally useful form of agency,
   namely, the Christian Church as a whole--the Believers who, while
   following their secular avocations, are heralds for Christ and
   missionaries for the Cross. Such are wanted here. Such are needed in
   our colonies. Such might find ample room in the great world of
   heathendom! Men and women, who, if they did not stand up beneath the
   tree to address the assembled throng, would preach in the workshop!

   Who, if they did not teach the hundreds, would at the fireside instruct
   the twos and threes. We want both sorts of laborers, but I may do more
   good on this present occasion by stirring up this second sort.

   You may all be teachers of Christ in another sense. You can all give
   yourself to the work of God in your own calling and promote your
   Master's glory perseveringly in your daily avocations. I lift up an
   earnest cry in God's name for consecrated men and women, who, not
   needing to wait till the Church's hands can support them, shall support
   themselves with their own hands and yet minister for Christ Jesus
   wherever Providence may have cast their lot. The person wanted, as
   described in the questions, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?"
   The person wanted is viewed from two points. He has a character bearing
   two aspects. The person wanted has a Divine side--"Whom shall I send?"
   Then he has a human aspect--"Who will go for Us?"

   But the two meet together--the human and Divine unite in the last
   words, "for Us." Here is a man, nothing more than a man of human
   instincts, but clad, through Divine Grace, with super-human, even with
   Divine authority. Let us look, then, at this two-sided person. He is
   divinely chosen--"Whom shall I send?" As if in the eternal counsels
   this had once been a question, "Who shall be the chosen man. Who shall
   be the object of My eternal love, and in consequence shall have this
   Grace given him that he should tell to others the unsearchable riches
   of Christ?" Beloved, what a mercy it is to us who are Believers that to
   us this is no more a question--for sovereignty has pitched upon us and
   eternal mercy, not for anything good in us, but simply because God
   would have it so, has selected us that we may bring forth fruit unto
   His name.

   As we hear the question, let us listen to the Savior's exposition of
   it. "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you
   that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should
   remain." The workers for the living God are a people chosen by the Most
   High. He sends whom He wills. He makes choice of this man and not
   another, and in every case exercises His own sovereign will. This
   question indicates a person cheerfully willing, and this is what I
   meant by the human side of the messenger. "Who will go for Us?" The man
   sought for is one who will go with ready mind--there would be no need
   to ask, "who will go?" If a mere slave or machine without a will could
   be sent.

   Beloved, the purpose of God does not violate free agency, or even the
   free will of man. Man is saved by the will of God, but man is made
   willing to be so saved! The fault is not in the hyper-Calvinist that he
   insists upon sovereignty, nor in the Arminian that he is so violent for
   free agency. The fault is in both of them because they cannot see more
   truths than one, and do not admit that truth is not the exclusive
   property of either, for God is a Sovereign, and, at the same time, man
   is a responsible free agent!

   Many among us are perpetually seeking to reconcile truths which
   probably never can be reconciled except in the Divine mind. I thank God
   that I believe many things which I do not even wish to understand. I am
   weary and sick of arguing and understanding, and misunderstanding. I
   find it true rest and joy, like a little child, to believe what God has
   revealed and to let others do the puzzling and the reasoning. If I
   could comprehend the whole of Revelation I could scarcely believe it to
   be Divine! But inasmuch as many of its doctrines are too deep for me
   and the whole scheme is too vast to be reduced to a system, I thank and
   bless God that He has deigned to display before me a Revelation far
   exceeding my poor limited abilities.

   I believe that every man who has Jesus has Him as a matter of his own
   choice--it is true it is caused by Divine Grace, but it is there--it is
   there. Ask any man whether he is a Christian against his will and he
   will tell you certainly not, for he loves the Lord and delights in His
   Law after the inward man. Your people are not led unwillingly to You in
   chains, O Jesus, but Your people shall be willing in the day of Your
   power. We willingly choose Christ because He has from of old chosen us!
   In the matter of holy work every man who becomes a worker for Jesus is
   so because he was chosen to work for Him--but he would be a very poor
   worker if he himself had not chosen to work for Jesus!

   I can say that I believe God ordained me to preach the Gospel, and that
   I preach it by His will--but I am sure I preach it with my own will,
   too, for it is to me the most delightful work in all the world! If I
   could exchange with an emperor I would not consent to be so lowered. To
   preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ is one of the sweetest and noblest
   employments and even an angel might desire to be engaged in it. The
   true worker for God must be impelled by Divine election, but yet he
   must make and will make, by Divine Grace, his own election of his work.
   The two meet together in this--the man is sent by the Three in One, who
   here asks, "Who will go for Us?"

   Every faithful Christian laborer labors for God. Brethren, when we tell
   others the story of the Cross we speak of God the Father. It is through
   our lips that the prodigal son must be reminded that the hired servants
   have bread enough and to spare. It may be through us that he will be
   shown his rags and his disgrace. Through us he will discover more
   clearly the disgrace of feeding swine. The Spirit of God is the
   efficient Agent, but it is by us that He may work. It is by us that the
   Divine Father falls upon the neck of His prodigal child. He does it,
   but it is through the teaching of His Word in some form or other. The
   promises are spoken by our lips, the sweet invitations are delivered by
   our tongues. We, as though God did beseech them by us, are to pray them
   in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God. God the Father says to you
   who know and love Him, "Will you go for Me and be an ambassador for
   Me?"

   Nor must we forget our tender Redeemer. He is not here, for He is
   risen. He will come again, but meanwhile He asks for someone to speak
   for Him, someone to tell Jerusalem that her iniquity is forgiven.
   Someone to tell His murderers that He prays for them, "Father, forgive
   them." To assure the blood-bought that they are redeemed. To proclaim
   liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison doors to them
   that are bound. Jesus from His Throne of Glory says, "Who will go for
   Me and be a speaker for Me?"

   Moreover, that blessed Spirit, under whose dispensational power we live
   at the present hour, has no voice to speak to the sons of men audibly
   except by His people. And though He works invisibly and mysteriously in
   the saints, yet He chooses loving hearts, and compassionate lips, and
   tearful eyes to be the means of benediction. The Spirit descends like
   the cloven tongue, but He sits upon disciples--there is no resting
   place for the Spirit of God nowadays within walls, and even the Heaven
   of heavens contains Him not, but He enthrones Himself within His
   people. He makes us God-bearers, and He speaks through us as through a
   trumpet to the sons of men.

   So you see that the adorable Trinity cry to you, you blood-bought,
   blood-redeemed sons of God, and says, "Are you seeking to promote Our
   glory? Are you effecting Our purposes? Are you winning those purchased
   by Our eternal sacrifice?" Turning to the Church assembled here the
   Lord pronounces those ancient questions, "Whom shall I send? Who will
   go for Us?"

   By God's help, we would say a little upon the person offering himself.
   "Here am I! Send me." The person offering himself is described in the
   chapter at very great length--he must be an Isaiah. Being an Isaiah, he
   must, in the first place, have felt his own unworthiness. My Brother,
   my Sister, if you are to be made useful by God in soul-winning you must
   pass through the experience which Isaiah describes in the chapter
   before us. You must have cried in bitterness of spirit, "Woe is me, for
   I am a man of unclean lips!" God will never fill you with Himself until
   He has emptied you of your own self. Till you feel that you are weak as
   water you shall not see the splendor of the Divine power.

   May I ask, then, those of you who feel desirous to serve God, this
   experimental question, "Have you been made fully conscious of your own
   utter unfitness to be employed in any work for God, and your own
   complete unworthiness of so great an honor as to become a servant of
   the living God? If you have not been brought to this you must begin
   with yourself--you cannot do any good to others--you must be
   born-again! And one of the best evidences of your being born-again will
   be a discovery of your own natural depravity and impurity in the sight
   of God.

   Now, Beloved, I want you to notice how it was that Isaiah was made to
   feel his unworthiness. It was first by a sense of the Presence of God.
   "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up." Have you
   ever had a consciousness of the Presence of God? The other day I was
   prostrated in soul, utterly prostrated, with this one word "I Am!"
   There is everything in that title, the I Am! God is the truest of all
   existences. With regard to all other things, they may or may not be,
   but I Am!

   It came with such power to me. I thought, Here am I sitting in my
   study, whether I am, or whether that which surrounds me really is, may
   be a question, but, God is--God is here. And when I speak God's Word in
   His name, though I am nothing, God is everything, and as to whether or
   not His Word shall be fulfilled there cannot be any question, because
   He still is called, not, "I Was," but "I Am," Infinite, Omnipotent,
   Divine! Think of the reality of the Divine Presence, and the certainty
   of that Divine Presence everywhere, close here, just now! "I Am!" O
   God, if we are not, yet You are!

   I scarcely think that any man is fit to become a teacher of others till
   he has had a full sense of the Glory of God crushing him right down
   into the dust, a full sense of that word, "I Am." You know a man cannot
   pray without it, for we must believe that He is, and that He is the
   Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. And if a man cannot pray for
   himself, much less can he rightly teach others. There must be the
   fullest conviction of the reality of God, an overwhelming sight and
   sense of His Glory, or else you cannot benefit your fellows. The source
   of Isaiah's sense of nothingness was that Isaiah saw the Glory of
   Christ!

   Have you ever sat down and gazed upon the Cross till, having read your
   own pardon there, you have seen that Cross rising higher and higher
   till it touched the heavens and overshadowed the globe? Then you have
   seen and felt the Glory of Him who was lifted up, and have bowed before
   the regal splendor of Divine Love, incarnate in suffering humanity, and
   resplendent in agony and death. If you have ever beheld the vision of
   the Crucified, and felt the glory of His wounds, you will then be fit
   to preach to others.

   I have sometimes thought that certain Brethren who preach the Gospel
   with such meager power and such lack of unction have no true knowledge
   of it. There is no need to talk of it with bated breath. It is sneered
   at as being such a very simple tale--"Believe and live"--but after all,
   no philosopher ever made such a disclosure! And if a senate of
   discoverers could sit through the ages they could not bring to light
   any fact equal to this--that God was in Christ reconciling the world
   unto Himself. Well may you open your mouth boldly when you have such a
   subject as this to speak upon! But if you have never perceived its
   Glory, you are utterly incapable of fulfilling God's errand.

   Oh, to get the Cross into one's heart! To bear it upon one's soul, and
   above all, to feel the Glory of it in one's whole being is the best
   education for a Christian missionary whether at home or abroad! It will
   strike you too, dear Friends, that the particular aspect in which this
   humiliation may come to us will probably be a sense of the Divine
   holiness, and the holiness of those who see His face. "Holy, holy,
   holy, Lord God of Hosts!" was the song which overawed the Prophet. What
   messengers are those who serve so holy a God? Free from earth and all
   its grossness, like flames of fire they flash at His command!

   Who then, am I--a poor creature, cribbed, cabined, and confined within
   this house of clay? Who am I--a sinful worm of the dust, that I should
   aspire to the service of so thrice holy a God? Oh let us serve the Lord
   with fear and rejoice with trembling, fearful lest we should do
   mischief while seeking to do good, and pollute the altar while
   attempting to offer sacrifice upon it!

   The next preparation for Christian work is we must possess a sense of
   mercy. Then flew one of the seraphims and took a live coal from off the
   altar. We explained in our reading that the altar is for sacrifice, and
   that the lip must be touched with a coal of that sacrifice. Then, being
   so touched, they derive two effects. In the first place, the lips are
   purged of iniquity, and in the next place they feel the influence of
   fire, enabling them to speak with vehemence and force. Beloved Hearer,
   you say, perhaps in zeal, "I desire to serve Christ and to tell abroad
   the story of His Cross." Have you proved that story to be true? Were
   you ever washed in the fountain? How can you bid others come if you
   have never come yourself?

   Have your sins been put away? "I hope so." Do you know it? I question
   if you can preach with any power till you have a full assurance of your
   own salvation. To teach the Gospel with "but" and "if is a poor
   teaching. You Sunday school teachers cannot hope to do much good to
   others while you doubt your own acceptance in the Beloved. You must
   know that you are saved! Oh Beloved, you must feel the touch of that
   live coal! You must feel that Christ gave Himself for you. You
   Little-Faiths may get to Heaven, but you must keep in the back rank
   while here--we cannot put you in the front of the battle!

   Though God may make you of service, we cannot expect you to be
   eminently of service. The man who would serve God must know himself to
   be saved! The effect of that live coal will be to fire the lips with
   heavenly flame. "Oh," says one man, "a flaming coal will burn the lips
   so that the man cannot speak at all." That is just how God works with
   us--it is by consuming the fleshly power that He inspires the heavenly
   might. Oh let the lips be burnt, let the fleshly power of eloquence be
   destroyed--but oh for that live coal to make the tongue eloquent with
   Heaven's flame--the true Divine power which urged the Apostles forward
   and made them conquerors of the whole world!

   According to the text the man who will be acceptable must offer himself
   cheerfully. "Here am I!" How few of us have in very deed given
   ourselves to Christ? It is with most professors, "Here is my half
   guinea, here is my annual contribution," but how few of us have said,
   "Here am I"? No, we sing of consecration as we sing a great many other
   things which we have not realized--and when we have sung it we do not
   wish to be taken at our word. It is not, "Here am I!" The man whom God
   will use must in sincerity be a consecrated man.

   I have explained that he may still keep to his daily work, but he must
   be consecrated to God in it. He must sanctify the tools of his labor to
   God and there is no reason why they should not be quite as holy as the
   bronze altar or the golden candlestick. You will observe that the
   person who thus volunteered for sacred service gave himself
   unreservedly. He did not say, "Here am I, use me where I am," but "send
   me." Where? No condition as to place is so much as hinted at. Anywhere,
   anywhere, anywhere--send me!

   Some people are militia-Christians--they serve the King with a
   limitation and must not be sent out of England. But others are
   soldier-Christians who give themselves wholly up to their Lord and
   Captain. They will go wherever He chooses to send them. Oh come, my
   Master, and be absolute Lord of my soul! Reign over me and subdue my
   every passion to do and be and feel all that Your will ordains. Blessed
   prayer! May we never be content till we get all that is to be gotten by
   way of joyful experience and holy power, nor until we yield all that is
   to be yielded by mortal man to the God whose sovereign right to us we
   claim!

   Notice one more thought, that while the Prophet gives himself
   unreservedly, he gives obediently, for he pauses to ask directions. It
   is not, "Here am I! Away I will go," but "Here am I! Send me." I like
   the spirit of that prayer. Some people get into their head a notion
   that they must do something uncommon and extraordinary, and though it
   may be most unreasonable and most irrational, it is for that very
   reason that the scheme commends itself to their want of judgment.
   Because it is absurd, they think it to be Divine! If earthly wisdom
   does not justify it, then certainly heavenly wisdom must be called in
   to endorse it!

   Now I conceive that you will find that whenever a thing is wise in
   God's sight it is really wise, and that a thing which is absurd is not
   more likely to be adopted by God than by man! Though the Lord does use
   plans which are called foolish, they are only foolish to fools, but not
   actually foolish. There is a real wisdom in their very
   foolishness--there is a wisdom of God in the things which are foolish
   to man. When a project is evidently absurd and ridiculous, it may be my
   own but it cannot be the Lord's and I had better wait until I can yield
   up my whims, and subject myself to Divine control, saying, "Here am I!
   Send me."

   In the last place--the work which such persons will be called to
   undertake. Isaiah's history is a picture of what many and many a true
   Christian laborer may expect. Isaiah was sent to preach very unpleasant
   truth, but like a true hero he was very bold in preaching it. "Isaiah
   is very bold," says the Apostle. Now if you are called of God either to
   preach or teach, or whatever it is, remember the things you have to
   preach or teach will not be agreeable to your hearers. Scorn on the man
   who ever desires to make truth palatable to unhallowed minds. If he
   modulates his utterances or suppresses the Truth which God has given
   him even in the slightest possible degree to suit the tastes of men, he
   is a traitor and a coward!

   Let him be drummed out of God's regiment, and driven from the army of
   God altogether! God's servants are to receive God's message, and
   whether men will hear or whether they will not, they are to deliver it
   to them in the spirit of old Micaiah, who vowed, "As the Lord my God
   lives, whatever the Lord said to me, that will I speak." But this is
   not the hardest task--the most severe labor is this--we may have to
   deliver unpleasant truth to people who are resolved not to receive it!
   To people who will derive no profit from it, but rather will turn it to
   their own destruction.

   You see in the text that ancient Israel was to hear but not to
   receive--they were to be preached to, and the only result was to be
   that their heart was to be made fat, and their ears dull of hearing.
   What? Is that ever to be the effect of the Gospel? The Bible tells us
   so. Our preaching is a savor of death unto death, as well as of life
   unto life. "Oh," says one, "I should not like to preach if that is the
   case." But remember, Brother, that the preaching of the Cross is a
   sweet savor of Christ either way. The highest object of all to a
   Christian laborer is not to win souls--that is a great object--but the
   great object is to glorify God! Many a man has been successful in this
   who did not succeed in the other. If Israel is not gathered, still, if
   we bear our testimony for God, our work is done.

   No farmer thinks of paying his men in proportion to the harvest. He
   pays his workers for work done, and so will it be with us, by God's
   Grace! And if I happen to be a very successful laborer here, I boast
   not, nor claim any large reward on that account. I believe that had I
   preached the Gospel with earnestness and waited upon God, and if He had
   denied me conversions, my reward would be as great at the last, in some
   respects, because the Master would not lay to my door a non-success
   which could not be attributed to myself.

   Now it would be a very pleasant thing for me to ask you whether you
   would go for God in your daily vocation and tell of Jesus to sinners
   who are willing to hear of Him--you would all be glad to do that. If I
   were to ask which sister here would take a class of young women, all
   anxious to find Christ, why you would all hold up your hands! If I
   could say, "Who will take a class of boys who long to find the Savior?"
   you might all be glad of such an avocation--but I have to put it
   another way lest you should afterwards be dispirited. Who among you
   will try and teach the Truth of God to a drunken husband?

   Who among you will carry the Gospel to despisers and profligates and
   into places where the Gospel will make you the object of rage and
   derision? Who among you will take a class of ragged roughs? Who among
   you will try and teach those who will throw your teaching back upon you
   with ridicule and scorn? You are not fit to serve God unless you are
   willing to serve Him anywhere and everywhere. You must, with the
   servant, be willing to take the bitter with the sweet. You must be
   willing to serve God in the winter as in the summer. If you are willing
   to be God's servant at all, you are not to pick and choose your duty
   and say, "Here am I, send me where there is pleasant duty." Anybody
   will go then!

   If you are willing to serve God you will say today, "Through floods and
   flames if Jesus leads, I will, by the Holy Spirit's aid, be true to my
   following." Now, though I have said nothing particularly with regard to
   foreign missions, I have preached this sermon with the view that God
   will stir you all up to serve His cause, and particularly with the hope
   that the missionary feeling being begotten may show itself in a desire
   also to carry the Gospel into foreign parts.

   Pastor Harms has lately been taken to his rest, but those of you who
   know the story of his life must have been struck with it--how an
   obscure country village, on a wild heath in Germany, was made to be a
   fountain of living waters to South Africa! The poor people had little
   care for the name of Jesus till Harms went there, and, notwithstanding
   that I have no sympathy with his Lutheran High-churchism and
   exclusiveness, I may say he went there to preach Christ with such fire
   that the whole parish became a missionary society, sending out its own
   men and women to preach Christ crucified.

   That ship, the Candace, purchased by the villagers of Hermansburgh with
   their own money, went to and from South Africa, taking the laborers to
   make settlements and to undertake Christian enterprise in that dark
   continent. The whole village was saturated with a desire to serve God
   and preach the Gospel to the heathen, and Harms at the head of it acted
   with a simple faith worthy of Apostolic times! I would that my God
   would give me what I should consider the greatest honor of my life--the
   privilege of seeing some of the Brothers and Sisters of this church
   devoted to the Lord and going forth into foreign parts.

   One gave his farm for students to be educated, another gave all he had,
   until throughout Hermansburgh it became very much like Apostolic days
   when they had all things in common, the grand object being that of
   sending the Gospel to the heathen. The day may come when we who have
   been able to do something for this heathen country of England may do
   something for other heathen countries in sending out our sons and
   daughters.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                  Sweet Savor

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 29, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I will accept you with your sweet savor." Ezekiel 20:41.

   GOD does not cease to observe the sins of His people. As the eyes of
   Moses never waxed dim, so the eyes of God do not grow dim with regard
   to the sins of His chosen. We may learn this from the recapitulation of
   those offenses which we find in the chapter before us and in many other
   places in Scripture. He looks down from Heaven and beholds their
   wanderings, the hardness of their hearts, the stubbornness of their
   will, their daily and continual violations of His statutes and
   commands. Mercy has some other source than that of laxness in the
   memory of God. He knows the sins of man and He hates the sins of His
   people just as much as the sins of other men. No, if there are sins
   which are worse in God's estimation than others, they are the sins of
   His own elect.

   But, notwithstanding this severe strictness, and although God must have
   a much clearer view of the evil of sin than any of us ever can, He
   freely pardons those whom He reserves. He casts their sins behind His
   back and remembers not their iniquity. He blots out their transgression
   like a cloud, and their iniquities like a thick cloud. He has a time to
   chasten but He has also a set time to bless. He afflicts, but He does
   not afflict from the heart. And when He turns in a way of Grace to His
   people, He then seems to be flying on the wings of the wind for He
   comes with all His soul most heartily and richly to display His favor
   and His love toward the objects of His choice.

   One would have thought that the persons described in this chapter never
   would have been acceptable to God. They had so thoroughly defiled
   themselves, and after so many trials had been so desperately
   incorrigible, that one would have supposed the chapter would have
   concluded with thunderbolts of vengeance and a terrible voice
   condemning them to be driven forever from the face of the Most High.
   Instead of this it concludes with mercy! The trumpet ceases its loud
   swell, and the melodious tone of the harp is heard in gentle notes of
   melody. The thunder and the lightning are over, the storm is past, and
   the still small voice, in refreshing calm, proclaims the infinite
   pardon that proceeds from a tender Father's heart.

   Our text seems to me very full of fatness. Its savor will be doubtless
   passing sweet to those who have grace to appreciate it. We shall
   contemplate it in two lights. First we have a promise that the persons
   of His people shall be accepted as a sweet savor. Sinners are accepted
   through the merits of Christ: "I will accept you with your sweet
   savor." I cannot accept you otherwise, but I will accept you thus.
   Then, secondly (which is more consistent with the context), we are
   assured that our offerings shall be accepted--"I will accept you with
   your sweet savor." I will not only love and receive you, but I will
   also receive your worship and your service.

   Your sweet savor, those same things which once you offered to idols,
   you shall from now on bring as an offering to Me and when I have
   accepted you and you are reconciled to Me, then I will accept your good
   works and your prayers, and your praises, too.

   ' I. First of all, as being the fundamental evidence of Divine Grace,
   THE LORD ACCEPTS THE PERSONS OF HIS PEOPLE THROUGH THE SWEET SAVOR OF
   THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. The merits of our great Redeemer are sweet savor
   in the nostrils of the Most High. Whether we speak of the active or
   passive righteousness of Christ there is alike an overpowering
   fragrance. Such was the merit of His active life by which He honored
   the Law of God and exemplified every precept like a precious jewel in
   the pure setting of His own humanity.

   Such, too, the merit of His passive obedience as He endured with
   unmurmuring submission, hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness--and with
   the ever-deepening stream of sorrow--and at length yielded to that
   unknown agony when He sweat great drops of blood in Gethsemane. And
   then when He gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to them that
   plucked out His hair. He stretched His hands to the nails and was
   fastened to the cruel wood that He might suffer the wrath of God on our
   behalf. These two things are sweet before the Most High, and for the
   sake of His doing and His dying, His substitutionary sufferings and His
   vicarious obedience, the Lord God of infinite Justice accepts us with
   the sweet savor of Christ.

   There are many sweet savors mentioned in the Old Testament. One of the
   first is the sacrifice of Noah where the word is used which is implied
   here. As soon as Noah came out of the ark he offered up clean beasts,
   and it is said, "the Lord God smelled a sweet savor of rest." That is
   the very word here--a sweet savor or a savor of rest. And Noah obtained
   a Covenant made with him and with all creatures on the face of the
   earth--that a flood should no more destroy the earth--that Covenant
   being given partly as the result of the sweet savor of rest. In like
   manner there is a Covenant made with the chosen seed through our Lord
   Jesus Christ who is unto us a sweet savor of rest because God delights
   in Him as our blessed Substitute and Representative.

   But I prefer to confine your attention this morning to one figure
   peculiarly instructive. These words, "sweet savor," appear to me to
   contain an allusion to the incense which was commonly offered in
   religious worship and particularly to the incense which was used in the
   Jewish tabernacle, of which you will find a description in the
   thirtieth chapter of the book of Exodus. In order that the sweet merits
   of the Lord Jesus may be the more fragrant to your understanding, I ask
   you to turn to that chapter and let me refer you to some points in
   which the holy incense brings out clearly before our eyes the qualities
   and excellencies of the merits of Christ.

   You will read at the thirty-fourth verse--"And the Lord said unto
   Moses, Take unto you sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum,
   these sweet spices with pure frankincense: of each shall there be a
   like weight: And you shall make it a perfume, a confection after the
   art of the apothecary, tempered together, pure and holy: And you shall
   beat some of it very small, and put of it before the Testimony in the
   tabernacle of the congregation, where I will meet with you: it shall be
   unto you most holy. And as for the perfume, which you shall make, you
   shall not make to yourselves according to the composition thereof; it
   shall be unto you holy for the Lord. Whoever shall make like unto that,
   to smell thereto, shall even be cut off from his people."

   Now you observe that this incense was sweet unto God--so, too, are the
   merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, as a Spirit infinitely and
   exclusively holy, delights in holiness! As a truthful Spirit He cannot
   be satisfied with anything that is untruthful. As a most just, and yet
   loving Being, He finds in the Person of Jesus Christ an expiation which
   was in every way honorable to Justice, and a revelation of Grace
   according to the goodwill of Divine love which is precious to Himself
   beyond all expression, and admirable to all holy creatures far beyond
   all blessing and praise. Whenever the great God contemplates His own
   dear Son, He feels an intense delight in surveying His Character and in
   beholding His sufferings.

   You and I, so far as we have been taught of God, must find infinite and
   unspeakable delight in the Person and work of Christ. But alas, we are
   like common people who look upon a fine picture without a cultivated
   understanding in the art of painting--we cannot perceive the whole
   beauty--we do not know the richness of its coloring and the wondrous
   skill of all its touches. Who but Jehovah understands holiness? Who
   like God knows what great love means? Or who save the Lord can
   comprehend justice and truth to perfection?

   Therefore it is that as He gazes upon that matchless masterpiece of
   Love and Justice, of Truth and Holiness, embodied in the Person of His
   dear Son, He finds that infinite satisfaction which our faith is
   perpetually struggling by small degrees to realize. There is no doubt a
   discipline by which every faculty may be educated. If I may use so
   homely an idea, the nostril of one man may be refreshed with a coarse
   perfume which would disgust another man of finer taste. The educated
   nostril may be able to discern between this and that savor till it is
   only to be gratified with something exceedingly refined and delicate.

   Adhering to the metaphor of the text, the Lord our God is so holy, and
   just, and true that the coarser virtues of mankind--the best of all
   that we can bring--might disgust Him! But when He looks upon His dear
   Son there is such a rarity of sweetness in the sacred confection of His
   blessed Character that He takes delight in it and the savor is sweet
   unto Him. We love Him, we delight in Him when we think of His
   Character. In our inmost souls we feel that there is nothing we could
   find fault with, but everything to admire and adore. And the most holy
   God finds even greater satisfaction!

   The merits of the Savior are so sweet a savor to Him that we strive in
   vain to reach the knowledge of it. The sweetness of the incense in the
   Temple was meant to set this forth. The incense, however, was not the
   result of one sweet drug, but of several mixed together. We have four
   mentioned. The Talmud says there were eleven--we do not know whether
   there were or were not--we are content to believe, as the Scripture
   tells us, that there were four. Many ingredients, then, are mixed and
   mingled together to make up the one surpassing sweetness of this
   incomparable perfume.

   And, Brothers and Sisters, it is certainly so in Christ Jesus. If we
   take the characters of other men, however excellent they may be, they
   only excel in some one, or possibly some two points. But when you
   contemplate the Savior you find all the virtues enshrined in Him. Other
   men are stars but He is a constellation! No, He is the whole universe
   of stars gathered into one galaxy of splendor! Other men are gems and
   jewels but His Character is perfect and matchless.

   If I look at Peter, I admire the crown imperial, where every jewel
   glitters--other men finish but a part of the picture, and the
   background is left--or else there is something in the foreground that
   is but roughly touched. But he finishes the whole, not the minutest of
   which is his courage. If I look at Paul, I am amazed at his industry
   and devotedness to the cause of God. If I look at John, I see the
   loveliness and gentleness of his bearing. But when I look to the Savior
   I am not so much attracted by any one particular virtue as by the
   singular combination of the whole. There are all the spices--the
   stacte, and the onycha, and the galbanum, and the pure
   frankincense--the varied perfumes combine to make up one perfect
   confection.

   Still more remarkable is the perfect balance of the Savior's Character
   as typified to us in the exact proportions of these spices. You observe
   they are to be of equal weight. If you look, there is not to be so much
   stacte, and then but half as much of galbanum, but each one in its fair
   proportion--they are to be of equal weight. So is it in Christ. It is
   difficult to get a fully-balanced character. You can see in some men
   indomitable energy, but you cannot see at the same time any delicate
   tenderness. You will see in another an exceeding tenderness which
   degenerates into effeminacy through want of some sternness to modify
   it.

   Who among you would wish to imitate Elijah? He is sterling in his
   integrity, a noble specimen of humanity, but the gentleness which
   should temper his fiery courage is so far lacking that much as you
   admire him you cannot love him. Even Moses--though I may venture to say
   that among those that are born of women there has never been a greater.
   There has never been one beside himself who could have his name
   ennobled in the same song with our great Prophet--the song of Moses,
   the servant of God and of the Lamb--yet, as you look at Moses,
   beautifully balanced as his character is in most respects, that
   condescending loveliness which glistens in the Savior you cannot detect
   about the glory even of the Hebrew lawgiver.

   Brethren, the Savior's Character has all goodness in all perfection! He
   is full of Divine Grace and the Truth of God. Some men, nowadays, talk
   of Him as if He were simply incarnate benevolence. It is not so. No
   lips ever spoke with such thundering indignation against sin as the
   lips of the Messiah. "He is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's
   soap. His fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor."
   While in tenderness He prays for His tempted disciple, that his faith
   may not fail, yet with awful sternness He winnows the heap and drives
   away the chaff into unquenchable fire!

   We speak of Christ as being meek and lowly in spirit, and so He was. A
   bruised reed He did not break, and the smoking flax He did not
   quench--but His meekness was balanced by His courage--and by the
   boldness with which He denounced hypocrisy. "Woe unto you, Scribes and
   Pharisees, hypocrites! You fools and blind, you serpents, you
   generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of Hell?" These
   are not the words of the milksop some authors represent Christ to have
   been. He is a man--a thorough man throughout--a God-like man--gentle as
   a woman, but yet stern as a warrior in the midst of the day of battle.
   The Character is balanced--as much of one virtue as of another. As in
   Deity every attribute is full orbed--justice never eclipses mercy, nor
   mercy justice, nor justice faithfulness--so in the Character of Christ
   you have all the excellent things, "whatever things are lovely,
   whatever things are true, whatever things are just, whatever things are
   pure, whatever things are of good report," you have them all. But not
   one of them casts a shadow on another--they shine each and all with
   undimmed splendor!

   Turning to the incense again, I shall want you to notice that all the
   ingredients of this incense were of the very finest kind--pure
   frankincense. And then again in the thirty-fifth verse, "pure and
   holy." And then the thirty-sixth verse--"most holy." So all the virtues
   of Christ were the best forms of virtue. His love was not love in word
   but in deed. His faithfulness was not the faithfulness of cynicism,
   which criticizes and finds fault--it was the faithfulness of a friend
   that loves at all times. Select any one trait in the Redeemer's
   Character, I mind not which it is, you shall find that in that respect
   He will surpass the greatest master of that virtue, be he whomever he
   may!

   Take His faith in God--I do not think we sufficiently admire the faith
   of Christ--that faith never wavers even in the time of His strong
   crying and tears. As David so richly describes it, He still trusts in
   God, rests on Him--appropriates the Divine name, "My God, My God," and
   which adoration exclaims, "You are holy, O You that inhabits the
   praises of Israel." Oh that mighty faith of His! You shall take
   Abraham's faith and put it side by side with the faith of Jesus and you
   find the Patriarch failing here and there, though he was the father of
   the faithful. But the faith of Jesus was steadfast and immoveable.

   Did it seem to stagger once when He said, "O My Father, if it is
   possible let this cup pass from me"? Oh, it never failed! His
   steadfastness was never more illustrious than when He thus spoke,
   "Nevertheless not as I will but as You will." Or, again,

   "Your will be done." Was not that faith exercised in purest submission?
   Take any other of the virtues (I have not time to do so this morning,
   nor is it necessary that I should, but), wherever you fasten your
   meditations you shall see Christ excels there-- His gold is the gold of
   Ophir--His jewels are of the first water--His wheat is the finest of
   the wheat--the fat of kidneys! And when He lays Himself upon the altar
   it is not as the lean bullock which of old Israel would bring to God,
   but as the fatted one offered with the whole strength and perfection of
   every part of Him unto the Most High! Every component part, then, of
   the incense was pure, and so was every part of the merit of Christ.

   You will not fail, also, to observe that there is no stint as to
   quantity. In some other parts of the temple service quantities are
   given, as, for instance, in the twenty-third and the following verses
   of this chapter. You have the quantities of each ingredient for making
   the anointing oil, yet here you have no quantities whatever for the
   incense. The anointing oil had five hundred shekels worth of one
   principal spice, and two hundred and fifty shekels worth of
   another--but this is to be made without limit--as if to indicate that
   the merits of Jesus Christ know no bounds whatever!

   Oh, when that sacred box of precious ointment was broken on the Cross,
   who knows how far the merit of it extended? It perfumed the earth to
   its utmost bound so that God has had patience with it. It acted as a
   salt to all creation so that it might not be destroyed, and the sweet
   perfume went up to Heaven. The angels knew it and returned their harps,
   and God perceived it, and with benignant smile looked upon the human
   race--

   "Oh the sweet wonders of that Cross, Where God the Savior loved and
   died! Her noblest life my spirit draws From His dear wounds and
   bleeding side." There is no end to the merit of Jesus! You lost
   Sinners, you need not think that it cannot avail for you. However great
   your sin its ill savor can all be quenched through the sweet savor of
   His perfect merit! And though your sins should be so many and so
   numerous that it should seem impossible but that the swift witnesses as
   avengers of blood should follow you up with their clamors, yet God
   regards more His Son than He does the sin of man, and has an eye to the
   merit of the Savior as well as to the demerit of the sinner. The first
   is greater than the second, so that He passes by transgression,
   iniquity, and sin, and remembers not the transgression of His people
   because His mercy in Christ Jesus endures forever. It is without stint
   or quantity.

   I hope I shall not weary you, but this seems to me to be a rich vein. I
   would observe that all through this incense is spoken of as being
   peculiarly holy, most holy unto God. The entire dedication of Christ's
   life and death to God is most remarkable. You can never see a divided
   aim about the Savior's action. When but a child, He said, "Know you not
   that I must be about My Father's business?" To the very last He was
   still consumed with the zeal of His Father's house. He never had a
   thought of fame. It is really wonderful how little Jesus Christ seemed
   to notice what people thought of Him.

   There used to be an idea that Christ did a great many things to prevent
   people from forming such-and-such erroneous impressions of Him. For
   instance, it was supposed that He was anxious, after His Resurrection,
   to make it clear that He was Himself and that He was not an impostor. I
   do not think such a motive ever entered into His mind. He was so simple
   and childlike that He acted out His whole self not perpetually guarding
   against misconstruction, nor restricting Himself because of the
   adversary. His Character was too transparent, and His actions were too
   unvarnished to admit of His continually locking up that loophole, or
   stopping up that gap. Not He! His life was clear, without a spot of
   defilement--His whole soul drifted right on to this one thing--the
   glory of God through the salvation of man.

   He was not deluded for a moment by the golden apples that were cast in
   His pathway. They would have made Him a king, but He was a King too
   great to stoop to an earthly crown! As temptation could not attract
   Him, so neither could trials and difficulties restrain Him. Like an
   arrow from a bow that has been drawn by a strong archer, He sped right
   onward to the great goal of His existence--the accomplishment of the
   work that God had given Him to do. "I have a baptism to be baptized
   with, and how am I straitened until it is accomplished!" He set His
   face to go up to Jerusalem--He never turned His face away until He
   could look up to Heaven and say, "It is finished!" and then He gave up
   the ghost. Christ's merits are most holy, purely offered unto God--no
   selfishness, no worldliness--everything Divine.

   This incense, although little is said of it, was, of course, compounded
   when the ingredients were all brought together. It had to be compounded
   with great care, according to the art of the confectioner. Now, there
   certainly is great art and wondrous skill in the composition of the
   Savior's life. Why there is wondrous skill about the record of it, for
   those who have denied the authenticity of the evangelists ought to
   accept a challenge which has often been put to them. Are there four
   narrations written? Would somebody who believes these to be forgeries
   kindly forge a fifth? Would somebody be pleased to write another which,
   though as much a forgery as any of the other four, should be consistent
   and have something new to recommend it?

   I would even venture to say if somebody attempted to make one new
   miracle, or write the fabulous record, they would find it as impossible
   to write a miracle on paper as to work the miracle--for there are some
   traits and points about the miracles of the Savior which betoken their
   genuineness, since to describe or imagine them were not possible! We
   could easily prove our point if this were the time, but it is not
   necessary. There is a matchless beginning in the life of the Savior and
   a matchless ending. In what is not done there is as much that is
   characteristic about Christ as in what is done. If you have ever read
   those spurious gospels which profess to contain the early life of the
   Savior, the protevangeleon, you will see that this absurd, ridiculous,
   preposterous composition never could be harmonized with the life of the
   Savior.

   What is not there even in the record is as wonderful, I say, as what is
   there! The whole life is a compound of the confectioner. But it seems
   that when compounded it had to be all bruised and broken. "You shall
   beat some of it small," says our version. Look at that "some of it."
   How did it get there? "You shall beat of it." Not "some of it," but
   "all of it." "You shall beat of it small, very fine." Now, certainly
   the whole life of the Savior was a process ofbruising Him very fine. He
   begins with grief. He concludes with agony. "Foxes have holes, and the
   birds of the air have nests," but He has not where to lay His head--and
   at last He has not a rag to cover Him--but hangs naked to His shame
   upon the Cross.

   His very grave is borrowed, just as was the manger in which He lay as
   an Infant. Altogether the whole sweetness of the life of Christ is
   brought out by the exquisite griefs which He is made to suffer. I
   question whether anybody knows anything about the sweetness of
   Christian Grace till he has been tried. We are told that when the ships
   are floating near Ceylon they can smell the perfume of the cinnamon
   groves--

   "What though the spicy breezes Blow softly on Ceylon's isle."

   But navigators tell us that the perfumes are only smelt in poetry--you
   never smell them there--in fact, cinnamon does not smell! And that we
   might wander through all those groves without knowing that they were
   odoriferous. But take the cinnamon and begin to grind it--begin to
   pound it, above all begin to burn it--then it is that you get the
   sweetness!

   And the good man's goodness is not known so much in his days of
   happiness and pleasure as in his times of sorrow and of grief. We must
   be put into the mortar. We must feel the weight of the pestle to get
   the sweetness from it. And the Savior's whole life was just that
   pounding beneath the heavy hammer of human wrath and at last of Divine
   anger against sin--and then the sweetness came forth. But this incense
   was most sweet to God when it came to the burning. It was put upon the
   altar amidst the hot coals and then the sweet perfume went up. So,
   Beloved, the very preciousness of Christ in its most extreme and best
   degree is to be seen when He is put upon the hot coals in Gethsemane,
   Gabbatha, and Golgotha.

   However, I need not tell you the tale over again. You loving hearts
   have learned it well. Your tender souls have wept all along the Via
   Dolorosa up to the Cross and through the hours of grief and suffering.
   You know what a sweet savor that must have been when the thrice holy
   Savior offered Himself as a holocaust to God that He might put away the
   ill savor of human guilt. Thus I have run through the whole. You will
   observe I do not stop to say a word about the four ingredients. It is
   very easy to spiritualize, and more especially the most difficult
   passages, because then you can say any nonsense you like. I have,
   however, omitted to do so. I do not really think there is anything to
   be said about them except just this--the stacte appears to have been a
   form of myrrh which dropped from the myrrh tree without cutting, and
   therefore was highly esteemed.

   The voluntary sufferings of Christ, in that He gave Himself and laid
   down His life--no man taking it from Him-- does certainly render His
   sufferings peculiarly delightful both to us and to God. As for the
   onycha there is a great dispute about it. The word seems to be allied
   with another signifying a distillation--and the Savior's blood is a
   marvelous distillation from His body, and His grief from His soul. The
   galbanum appears to have been a very bitter drug and it has been
   thought, therefore, by commentators, that it could not have been used
   as a sweet perfume. I think differently. It is well known that many of
   the most bitter tasting drugs are sometimes the sweetest smelling when
   they come to the fire. And honey, which is so sweet to the taste,
   becomes sour when laid on the flames.

   I think the bitterest form of galbanum would be the most significant if
   that is what is intended, for it would then express the bitterness of
   His griefs to His own taste, but the sweetness of the savor of these
   bitters to the Most High. Frankincense, especially, you know is
   exceedingly bitter tasting, but extraordinarily sweet when laid upon
   the hot bars of iron or upon hot coals. There were many sorts of
   frankincense--there was one which was very rare and highly esteemed
   which appears to have been the pure frankincense intended here. But
   whatever each of those drugs may have been, or may not have been, it is
   certain they made a compound which God reserved to Himself and enjoined
   that it should never be used by men for any sort of purpose. It was
   reserved for Himself to set forth the holy merits, the inimitable
   perfections, the transcendent glories of the Character of the
   sufferings of that precious Redeemer of whom God says to us, "I will
   accept you with your sweet savor."

   Now for two or three practical words before I pass on. Do you feel your
   need of this sweet savor? How can you hope to be accepted before God in
   yourselves? I think that the word "loathing," which occurred in our
   reading just now, is what we must feel with regard to our sinful
   selves. There may be some of you, very much growing in sanctification,
   who possibly look upon yourselves and congratulate yourselves on the
   progress that you have made. But I confess, if I know anything of the
   Divine life, that while I do feel myself more consecrated to Christ
   than ever I was, yet I do feel my unworthiness to be permitted to say
   so.

   My utter powerlessness to do anything as of myself is a present
   pressing and overwhelming thought with me--one that lowers me into the
   dust and ashes and makes me sometimes wonder that Christ should even
   touch such an one--and yet at the same time to hope that if God,
   foreseeing all this evil, could nevertheless look upon me, He will not
   cast me away. Brothers and Sisters, do you not feel that you cannot be
   accepted unless it is through this sweet savor? Well, then, when you
   feel this, will you, in the next place, prize that sweet savor? Speak
   of it in the highest and most eulogistic terms!

   You cannot exaggerate when you speak of the virtues and merits of the
   Redeemer. Set a high store by His Person! Prize His life, and like St.
   Bernard you may say--

   "Jesus, the very thought of You With sweetness fills my breast."

   Brethren, what a preciousness must there be in Him to overcome our want
   of preciousness! What a savor to put away our ill savor! What a
   cleansing power in His blood to take away sin such as ours! And what
   glory in His righteousness to make such unacceptable creatures to be
   accepted in the Beloved!

   And if you have gotten so far as to prize it, the next exhortation I
   would give you is never come before God without it. Turning back to
   that passage in Exodus you notice that the Lord says in the
   thirty-sixth verse, "You shall beat some of it very small, and put of
   it before the testimony in the tabernacle of the congregation, where I
   will meet with you." Oh, never assay to meet God without that precious
   incense! Never think of such a thing! As the Apostle tells us, "Our God
   is a consuming fire." Give Him this incense to consume, that He doesn't
   consume us! Bring Him this merit lest our demerit should compel Him to
   smite us as He did Nadab and Abihu when they offered strange fire
   before the altar.

   What a blessed thing, then, to stand in prayer and feel that you are
   offering up again the blood of Jesus! What a delightful exercise in
   praise to feel that your praise comes up accepted because of the
   incense which He offers! Oh, to live under the shadow of the atoning
   Cross! Brethren, we do not experience enough of this. I confess,
   sorrowfully, the wanderings of my own spirit away from Calvary. May the
   Master bind us to the horned altar where His blood was shed and may we
   never venture again to go away from that blessed spot! Do not attempt
   to meet God, except through the merit of this sweet savor.

   Take care, dear Friends, that you never doubt your acceptance when you
   once have it. You cannot be accepted without Christ. But, when you have
   once gotten His merit, you cannot be unaccepted. Notwithstanding all
   your doubts and fears, and sins, Jehovah's gracious eyes never look
   upon you in anger. Though He sees your sin and perceives it since He is
   Omniscient--He looks at you through Christ and sees no sin--for He
   answers the prayer of that hymn--

   "Him, and then the sinner see, Look through Jesus' wounds on me." You
   are always accepted in Christ, you are always blessed and beloved,
   always dear to the Father's heart!

   Therefore lift up a song and as you see the smoking incense of the
   merit of the Savior coming up perpetually before the sapphire throne
   let the incense of your praise go up also--

   "Now to the Lamb, that once was slain, Salvation, glory, joy remain!"

   II. It is certain from the connection that the text means that THE LORD
   WILL ACCEPT THE OFFERINGS OF HIS PEOPLE WHEN HE HAS ACCEPTED THEIR
   PERSONS. He will not only receive them into His love but all that they
   do for Him He will likewise receive. Before a man is accepted his best
   works must be unacceptable--they come from a fountain that is
   impure--and they are defiled. Moreover, a man who is not reconciled to
   God offers nothing to God.

   He may seem to do so, but he has always some sinister motive which
   renders all his doings selfish. He has something to gain thereby or
   some misery to escape, and therefore he does not serve God out of a
   pure motive.

   But as soon as the man knows that he is saved, being reconciled to God
   by the death of His Son, then God becomes his God and he worships Him
   as such--and his offerings are really presented to the Most High. These
   are accepted. Those things which we offer to God must be such as He has
   appointed. The sweet smelling savor must not be made of cassia and
   cinnamon, and calamus--it must be made of stacte and onycha, and
   galbanum and frankincense. Many persons serve God sincerely, but from
   lack of serving Him according to His ordained method their services
   cannot be accepted.

   God has given us a Statute Book, let us follow it. Let us not bring
   before God, as the Papist does, works of superstition, or works of
   supererogation--but let us bring such as are commanded--for to obey is
   better than sacrifice, to hearken, than the fat of rams. Let our lives
   be lives of obedience, not lives of fancy, superstition, and inventions
   of our own. Prayer, praise, consecration, giving, holy living--these
   are all ordained. Let us be diligent in the mixing up of these sweet
   savors. We must bring before God, if we would be accepted in our works,
   something of all the virtues. It must not be all galbanum nor all
   stacte--not all intrepid courage without any subdued reverence, nor all
   the simplicity of affection without any of the sublimity of faith--it
   must not be all self-denial though there must be some of it.

   Gravity itself must be tempered with cheerfulness. There must be
   something of every form of virtue to make up the blessed compound! We
   must endeavor to bring something of all exercises--not prayer without
   praise, nor works without prayer--not mental energy without spiritual
   gifts, nor gifts without holiness--it must be a mixture, a compound of
   the whole. We must bring something of all our powers--not all
   intellect, not all heart. It must be something of intellect in judgment
   and understanding--something of the heart in enthusiasm and
   joy--something of the body, for the members of the body are members of
   Christ.

   It must be much of the soul, for the soul's service is the soul of
   service. We must bring to God a compound of excellencies from all the
   powers which He has renewed and consecrated to Himself. Oh it were
   matchless if God the Holy Spirit should graciously enable us to imitate
   Christ in this that we might have some of all the Divine Graces, not
   lacking in any respect, but as a man of God thoroughly furnished unto
   every good work! We must, above all, pay great attention to small
   things. "You shall beat some of it very small." If we would bring a
   holy life to Christ we must mind our fireside duties as well as the
   duties of the sanctuary. We must be attentive as servants to our
   service, as masters to managing the household.

   We must look to our private devotions. We must look to our hearts'
   secret longings--there must be the ejaculation as well as the long
   prayer. There must be the grateful spirit as well as the song of
   praise. Oh, that we could bring to God a life beaten small so that even
   in little things the Holy Spirit might be manifest, working in us to
   will and to do according to His good pleasure! We must take care that
   this sweet incense of ours is not made for man nor used by man.
   Accursed is that life, however good, which lives only for man to gaze
   upon! But blessed is that life which is lived for God's sake and for
   Christ's sake--for higher motives than man's eye could suggest--and for
   a nobler reward than man's hand can ever give.

   To be holy unto God is the grand thing, my Brothers and Sisters! To
   truly feel that you are not living for self, that you are not even
   living for your country nor for your fellow man so much as you are
   living to the Most High God--the marks of whose ownership in yourself
   you desire to bear in your body and in your spirit! May it be yours and
   mine to have a life which, both in its prayer and praise, its giving
   and its ordinary living shall be redolent with the fullness of the
   Spirit of God--a perfume that may make our life like walking through a
   garden, a fragrance that may make us like the king's storehouse where
   all manner of precious fruits are laid up, and all manner of sweet
   frankincense stored away!

   You will say, "But there will be so much imperfection notwithstanding."
   Ah, that there will! "There may be much defilement when we have done
   our best." Ah, so it is! The best of men are still men at the best. But
   the word comes very sweetly--"I will accept you with your sweet savor."
   When God accepts you, He accepts what you do for His sake. He sees you
   no longer as a mere fallen man but as a man renewed by His Spirit. He
   counts you a vessel to honor! He puts these sweet things into you and
   loves them as He sees them in you. I know the prayer is broken, but it
   is the prayer of His own dear child--and therefore He whom we call
   "Abba, Father," accepts it! I know the praise has little of music in it
   to the tutored ear, but it is the praise of one whose heart loves God,
   and He hears no discord there.

   I know your gifts to His church and His poor are necessarily but
   little, for yours is the poor widow's portion perhaps, and you can give
   only your two mites. But I know that as they fall into the treasury,
   Jesus sits over against the treasury and hears sweet sounds in the
   dropping of your gifts. I know your life is such that you mourn over it
   every day, but still you serve God in it, and you long to serve Him
   more--and that love of yours is written in the Book of the King's
   record and you shall be His in the day when He makes up His jewels--and
   your works shall be His, too, for your works shall follow you to the
   skies when you rise in Jesus--and your reward even for a cup of cold
   water shall be as sure as it will be gracious! And your entrance into
   the joy of your Lord shall certainly be bestowed upon you according to
   the Divine Grace which is in Christ Jesus by which He has accepted you.

   Desire, dear Friend in Christ, to be such a savor! Make it your grand
   ambition that your life really may be fragrant to the Most High. Do not
   be satisfied to be an unbroken alabaster box. Do not be willing to be a
   flower that "wastes its sweetness on the desert air," or "a gem of
   purest ray serene" that is hidden in the caverns of seclusion. Seek to
   do something--seek to serve Christ! Pray that you may be a sweet savor
   of Christ unto God in every place where Providence may cast your lot.
   And if you are such a sweet savor, rejoice that you are so--rejoice
   that your name is written in Heaven!

   What? Though men shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for
   Christ's name sake, rejoice that you are numbered with the honorable
   multitude who have suffered for Jesus' sake! And though you are not
   knights that ride first in the battle, be thankful that you may be as
   the esquires that follow at their heels, willing for the fray and able
   to bear the buffeting which the Lord may appoint you! Care less and
   less for man's esteem. Remember that your holiness will never shield
   you from calumny. Rest assured that the most strict walking will never
   preserve you from the envenomed tongue of slander.

   If your life should be as pure as the crystal river that springs from
   beneath the throne of the Most High, there will be found some that will
   muddy that stream and mire it with their feet. Coals of juniper, hot
   coals of juniper shall be given unto you, O you false tongue! But as
   for you, Believer, care not for that tongue, though it is sharp as a
   razor, and though every cut of it is poisonous as the poison of an
   adder. Bear it! Bear it! For do you not understand that your incense
   was never meant for man's approbation, but for the Most High? It must
   be for God, and for God only! And if man cannot smell it, or appreciate
   its savor, what shall I say but, though it was meet that my pearls
   should not be cast before swine, if they have happened to be where
   swine may trample on them, the swine acts but according to its nature,
   and the pearl is not hurt by the swine's feet--it is still a pearl when
   trampled in the mire--a pearl that God's eyes will see and fetch out,
   notwithstanding all.

   And oh, dear Friends, bless the Lord Jesus day by day that your works
   are made accepted with yourself through Him! When you have done
   anything that is right, and good, and pure, bring it and lay it at His
   feet! Come here, you that toil with holy industry, and bring your
   sheaves to store in the garner of your Boaz whose fields you have
   reaped. Come here, you that have found jewels diving into the depths of
   human sin to bring them up, and lay these pearls at the feet of
   Solomon, who is master of the seas into which you have dived. "The
   earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. The world and they that
   dwell therein." And especially are we, the blood-besprinkled ones, the
   sacramental host of God's elect ordained as priests to offer sacrifices
   acceptable unto God.

   Oh, let us praise the love that bought us, the blood that redeemed us,
   the power that sustains us, the Grace that smiles upon us, the
   righteousness that covers us, the arm which supports us and the whole
   Redeemer who is able and willing, and before long will receive us to
   Himself and to our great reward! May we all look to Jesus and to His
   merit, and then go forth, for the love we bear His name, to show Him
   afresh in our own persons to the sons of men! The Lord accept this
   morning's offering for His name's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          Temptations On The Pinnacle

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 6, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle
   of the temple, and said to Him, If You are the Son of God, throw
   Yourself down, for it is written, 'He shall give His angels charge over
   You,' and, 'in their hands they shall bear You up, lest at any time You
   dash Your foot against a stone.' Jesus said to him, 'It is written
   again, You shall not tempt the Lord your God.'" Matthew 4:5-7.

   THE clearest and most important exposition of the Revelation of God in
   the inspired Book is the Revelation of God in the renewed man. Every
   Christian will discover, in proportion to his advances in Divine
   knowledge, that the very things which are written in these hallowed
   pages are written in his own experience. We never fully understand
   Divine Truth until we have experienced it. The diamond of Divine
   promise never glistens so brightly as when it is placed in the setting
   of personal trial and experience. And the gold of sacred Truth is not
   valued until it has been tried "so as by fire." Holy Scripture is full
   of narratives of temptations. Expect, therefore, Christian, that your
   life will be as abundantly garnished with them as is a rose with
   thorns.

   Provision is made in the Word of God for the assaults of Satan from all
   quarters and in all fashions--believe, therefore, most confidently that
   the wise provisions of forethought are not made in vain--but will be
   needed in your own proper person. You will have to do battle with those
   spiritual foes which have beset and buffeted other saints in days gone
   by, and you will be wise to array yourself in those pieces of heavenly
   armor which proved to be so great a safeguard to them in their seasons
   of warfare.

   This remark, that the Word of God is written out again in the life of
   the Christian, is emphatically true in that part of it which concerns
   the life of Jesus. Every Christian is the image of Christ in proportion
   as he is a Christian--in proportion as the Spirit sanctifies
   us--spirit, soul, and body. As the Spirit makes us like the Master we
   are conformed to Him. And this not only in the holiness and
   spirituality which sanctification produces, but also in our experience
   of conflict, sorrow, agony, and triumph. In all points Jesus was made
   like unto His brethren, and now it remains that in all things His
   brethren should be made like He.

   The Savior's public life begins and ends with temptation. It commences
   in the wilderness in a close contest with Satanic craft. It ends in
   Gethsemane in a dreadful affray with the powers of darkness. There are
   a few bright spots between, but the gloom of the desert deepens into
   the midnight darkness of the Cross--as if to show us that we, also,
   must begin with trial and must reckon upon ending with it. The victory
   of our Lord was won upon Golgotha in blood and wounds amid the
   blasphemous exultation of His foes--and the victory of the Believer
   will not be cheaply bought. Our crown is not to be won without
   wrestling and overcoming. We must fight if we would reign, and through
   the same conflicts which brought the Savior to His crown, must we
   obtain the palm branch of everlasting victory. Be it so, O Master! Only
   let us be prepared for it and by Your Grace may we be strengthened so
   that we may be more than conquerors through Him who has loved us.

   I shall, this morning, first of all take you, dear Friends, to look at
   the temptation itself as we have felt it. And then, secondly, I shall
   offer a few considerations deduced.

   I. First we are to VIEW THE TEMPTATION ITSELF. The landscape is colored
   by the glass through which the observer looks--but still the landscape
   is really seen. And so in giving you, this morning, much of that which
   I have myself been made to endure, I may color our Lord's trial--but
   you will see it notwithstanding--and the Holy Spirit will show you what
   is really of Jesus, and what is only mine.

   Our trials are sent us on purpose to make us comprehend our Lord's
   trials and especially is it so with ministers of the Gospel. Martin
   Luther was a mighty master in the art of consolation because there was
   scarcely a temptation, except that of covetousness, which he had not
   experienced. Melancthon bears witness of Luther that he was sometimes
   so tempted of the devil that he appeared to be at the point of
   death--the sap and strength of his life seemed to be dried up--and his
   soul was full of heaviness. After such seasons he would so preach that
   each of his hearers thought that he was speaking concerning him alone
   and wondered from where his knowledge was derived. He learned the art
   of spiritual navigation from having himself done business upon deep
   waters of spiritual tribulation. Luther's remark stands true that
   prayer, meditation, and temptation are the three best instructors of
   the Gospel minister--and since I have been much of late in the last
   school--I cannot do other than use what I have learned.

   Now it may be while I am describing this temptation of our Lord, or
   rather our own temptations as they are conformed to the temptations of
   Jesus, that I may meet the peculiar case of some troubled one who has
   been long in doubt and darkness and who may, today, find light and
   peace. If it is so, the Spirit of God shall be glorified and it shall
   be to me a sweet recompense for those gloomy hours through which I have
   lately groped my way.

   I first call your attention to the place of this temptation. "Then the
   devil took Him up into the holy city, and set Him on the pinnacle of
   the temple." It was a high place and a holy place, hence a double
   danger. It was a high place--the temptation could not have acted upon
   the Savior had He been sitting in the desert or kneeling in the
   garden--but aloft, above the city, on the towering pinnacle the
   foothold was slender, and the fall would have been terrible. Beneath
   Him lay a wondrous panorama--the courts of the Lord's House, the
   streets of the city, the towns and villages of Judea--and the broad
   acres of Immanuel's land.

   Little, however, would He care for all these, for His thoughts were
   concentrated upon the combat within. Yet the widened prospect must have
   added to the sense of elevation and so have aided the temptation.
   Brethren, it is very hard to stand in high places. Those of you who are
   in humble positions of society may be very grateful for the safety
   which usually grows out of lowliness. No doubt you envy those who are
   more known and more wealthy, but if you knew all, instead of envying
   them you would thank God for the lot which is meted out to you.

   I would be afraid to exchange my temptations with any other man and yet
   I know my own to be full more than I should be able to sustain were it
   not for the Grace of God and the promise, "My grace is sufficient for
   you." It is hard to carry a full cup without spilling some of the
   contents--when half full you may carry it more carelessly without a
   slip-- but when the golden chalice is full to the brim, beware, you
   cup-bearer of the King! You may walk along the plain, no, you may leap
   like the children at their play! You may sport at random where you
   will, but up along yon narrow knifelike ridge where awful precipices
   descend on either side, take care, O Traveler, for one slip may be
   fatal.

   Look beneath you through the grim mist which hides the depths below,
   and be deeply grateful for the invisible and Omnipotent hand which has
   sustained you until now. The remark as to high places does not merely
   apply to really high places of wealth, or influence, or fame, but to
   places high for us--comparatively high places of enjoyment and
   satisfaction. Nor must I exclude holy places from the remark. The
   mountain may be Tabor, but it is still a mountain. If you are called to
   the elevated position of one who dwells in rapt fellowship with Christ,
   there are temptations peculiar even to that happy state of mind.

   The pinnacle is none the less a pinnacle because it happens to be the
   pinnacle of the temple. No, let me here note that it is even more
   dangerous. The place was not only high but holy. Note how that is
   marked in the text. He took Him to the holy city and to the pinnacle of
   the temple--two words--as if to bring up vividly before the reader's
   mind the sanctity of the position. To stand in a high place, my
   Brethren, in God's House is very desirable and very honorable, but oh,
   it is both responsible and perilous! Let those beware whom God exalts
   in Israel! He of whom it is written that it were better for that man
   that he had never been born was no less than an Apostle. He who kept
   the bag and was the intimate friend of Christ is that man whose
   damnation surpasses all others in its flaming terrors.

   It is a very delightful thing, no doubt, to minister to a large
   congregation, and to be pastor of a numerous flock. It is a very good
   degree to earn to be an officer of the Christian Church. It is no small
   privilege to be permitted by the pen or by the tongue to edify
   multitudes of saints. But alas, the high places, even of God's temple,
   are dizzy places! And lofty positions in the Church are sites where
   temptations attack us which would be unknown to us if in the humble
   obscurity of a retiring piety we were to lie down in green pastures and
   feed beside the still waters. After all, if I might be allowed to envy
   anybody it would be the position of John Bunyan's Shepherd, singing as
   he feeds his flock in the valley--

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

   What do you think, Brethren, were the temptations which came upon the
   Savior on account of His position on the high and holy place? We
   frequently forget, when we are speaking of the Savior, that He was most
   truly Man. He was Divine without mitigation of the royalty and splendor
   of Deity--but He was Man--altogether such as we are, so that He felt as
   you and I would have felt in a similar condition. How, then, did He
   feel? Did He not tremble with fear of falling? Standing there and
   looking down, I believe the natural fear came over Him that He must
   fall, and that falling He would stain the battlements of the
   consecrated place and crimson the House of God with His own blood!

   You will think me singular in imagining that the Savior could be the
   subject of such feelings, but was He not a Man, and what man would feel
   otherwise? It is natural that a shivering emotion of dread should creep
   over anyone standing in so lofty and unprotected a position! Now this
   is a temptation--a temptation to which God's servants who are put upon
   the pinnacle of the temple will find themselves frequently subject. But
   is it a fault to be afraid of falling? Yes. No. It is no fault to be
   afraid of falling, else the Savior would not have felt it--He was holy
   and consequently no sinful emotion could cross His breast.

   But there is a something growing out of the fear of falling which is
   very faulty, namely, the temptation to do something desperate in order
   to escape from the position which is so full of peril. It is right for
   me to be afraid of falling into sin--it is not right for me either to
   mistrust God's Grace, which will sustain me--or to run to foolish means
   in order to escape from the particular peril in which I happen to be
   involved. Jesus did not doubt His Father's care--He could not, for He
   was perfect. But He did tremble because of the danger in which He was
   placed. He must have done so because He was a man of like passions like
   ourselves.

   Now, Brethren, may I picture some of you lifted up to such a position?
   Either in wealth, or in honor, or in communion, or in some way you are
   lifted up into a sphere of danger and you begin to say to yourself,
   "Suppose I should fall! Oh, suppose I should disgrace my profession and
   bring dishonor upon the cause of Christ? What if my foot should slip
   and I should defile the Church of God with the blood of my eternal ruin
   and of my present disgrace?" I can understand that thought crossing
   your mind without any sin being involved in it--no, with even a good
   resolve springing from it--namely, to walk humbly with your God.

   But I can suppose it to be the fulcrum upon which Satan may plant his
   lever and begin to work so as to bring you into a very sadly weakened
   and wretched state of mind. Oh Brethren, when I see others falling from
   their pinnacles! When I feel my own head grow dizzy! When I look down
   and see the ruin that must come upon every man who apostatizes from the
   faith! When I look up and see the holiness of God and then look down
   and feel the attractions of the world enticing and drawing me down to
   destruction I can but tremble! I cannot do otherwise, and I cannot
   understand the man who would not!

   If you are placed in such a position you must feel it--it is not
   possible for you to escape from the fear lest, after all, after having
   been honored and favored you should become a castaway. This seems to me
   to be the reason why the devil put our Lord on the pinnacle of the
   temple. The first effort of the devil was to sap the foundations of the
   Savior's strength with a doubt. The devil whispers to Him, "If--if You
   are the Son of God." Faith is the Christian's strength. He who doubts
   not, staggers not. Unbelief is the source of our chief weakness. As
   soon as we begin to distrust, our feet begin to slide. Hence, Satan,
   knowing this, injects that cruel and wicked suspicion, "If--if you are
   the Son of God."

   Notice the point of attack--it was our Lord's Son-ship. Satan knows
   that if he can make any of us doubt our interest in the Father's
   love--doubt our regeneration and adoption--then he will have us very
   much in his power. How can I pray, "Our Father which are in Heaven," if
   I do not know Him to be my Father? If the dark suspicion crosses my
   mind that I am no child of His, I cannot say with the prodigal, "I will
   arise and go unto my Father," for I do not know that I have a Father to
   go to! Having a Father, I feel sure that He will pity my infirmities,
   that He will feel for my needs, redress my wrongs, protect me in the
   hour of danger and succor me in the moment of peril.

   But if--if I have no Father in Heaven. If I am not His child, then,
   miserable orphan! What shall I do--where shall I flee? Standing on a
   pinnacle as God's child I shall stand there erect, though every wind
   should seek to whirl me from my foothold. But if He is not my Father
   and I am upon a pinnacle, then my destruction is inevitable and my ruin
   will be swift and total. "If you are the Son of God."

   Oh, dear Friends, beware of unbelief! Those who justify unbelief hold a
   candle to the devil. I cannot suppose myself doing better service to an
   ill cause than by excusing you in your unbelief of God, or excusing
   myself in it. God is faithful--why do we doubt Him? God is true--how
   can we suppose that He will be false? That we are His children is also
   true if we have believed in Jesus. If, having nothing, I have cast
   myself at the foot of the Cross. If, all guilty and defiled, I have
   seen in Jesus Christ all that my soul can need--then I am one with
   Jesus and a joint heir with Him. I must be the child of God because I
   am one with Christ Jesus, His only begotten and His well-beloved!

   Dear Brethren, let me exhort and stir you all up to seek after the full
   assurance of your son-ship with God the Father! Give no sleep to your
   eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids unless you know that you are in the
   Divine family! Remember that doubts here are perilous to the last
   degree and most of all perilous to those of you who stand upon the
   pinnacle! Let those doubt who are in the valley and they bring
   themselves sorrow--but those on the mountain must not doubt, for it is
   by faith alone that they can stand--and where to slip will be so
   destructive they must take care that their faith is firm and strong.

   Thus, you see, the Savior was first assailed with a malicious and cruel
   insinuation of doubt. The cunning Tempter has paved the way for the
   Satanic suggestion, "Cast Yourself down." That advice looks like the
   most absurd thing that could be suggested. He is afraid of falling, and
   is therefore bid to throw Himself down? Ah, but if you do not
   understand this it is because you are not acquainted with Satanic
   machinery! The human mind oscillates very strangely. Though at first it
   may be driven by main force from left to right, it naturally swings to
   the left again, returning by sheer necessity to the same point. There
   have been persons who have starved themselves to death from the fear of
   being poor and destitute-- and have brought on disease by fearing
   disease!

   There have been instances of persons who have sought to destroy
   themselves when condemned because they dreaded being hanged! What
   escape from death suicide can offer, it is hard to say, but some have
   tried it. In a position where I cannot stand, the natural thing is to
   throw myself down directly. You are afraid, as you stand on the brink
   of the cliff, afraid that you may fall over, and all the while a mad
   inclination to fall over may steal over you. It is strange, but then we
   are strange creatures. Though it looks to you as if it would be a very
   unlikely temptation to a man afraid of falling to say, "Cast yourself
   down," it is not unnatural! It is consistent with the well-known laws
   of consciousness that we are often tempted to do the very thing which
   we are afraid of doing, and to do it in order to escape from it. Cast
   yourself down, lest you should fall.

   Let me show you the shapes in which this temptation has come to some of
   us. The minister of Christ is placed in a position where his labors and
   his troubles are incessant. He is afraid, with so much to do and such
   delicate things to handle, that he may make a mistake and injure the
   Church which he designs to bless. The dark suggestion crosses his mind,
   "Give it up! Leave the work," that is to say, do the worst mischief
   that you can do to the Church in order to prevent your doing it any
   mischief!

   The same thing happens in business. You have been toiling hard to pay
   every man his own, to provide things honest in the sight of all men.
   You have been able to do it until now, but things are, at this moment,
   very unpropitious. Satan has whispered to many a tradesman, "Throw it
   up! Get out of it! Go somewhere else! Leave it, and flee the country."
   Take another case. You are a Christian and you wish to be an honor to
   the Christian Church. But you live in a family where there is
   everything uncongenial to your piety. You can scarcely get alone to
   pray. You certainly never hear a good word from any others of the
   circle. You have been fighting for God until now and the enemy is at
   this moment saying, "Do not try it any longer! Renounce your
   profession! Give it all up--go back to the world again!"

   In other words, in order that you may not dishonor Christ you are
   tempted to dishonor Him--and for fear lest you should fall, the whisper
   is, "Fall at once." It is strange, but strangely true! I thank God for
   the story of Jonah! That miserable, morose old Prophet has ever been a
   warning to some of us. When God said to Jonah, "Go to Nineveh and
   preach!" "No," thought Jonah, "I cannot do it. How can I go and preach
   to such a city? It will not be to my honor." So away he goes to
   Tarshish. He little knew that in trying to avoid trouble he was running
   into it!

   So it is also with us. You want to go to Tarshish to get away from
   Babylon, that is, you run into the depths of the sea to escape the
   rivers! You run into the fire to escape from the frying pan! Should I
   happen to be addressing a Christian who is passing through this
   terrible, severe, and fiery ordeal, I would point him to the Savior
   standing on the pinnacle of the temple, with the suggestion, "Cast
   Yourself down," and bid him imitate Him in standing fast and firm
   against the desperate foe. "Stand fast in the Lord, and having done
   all, still stand."

   The suggestion to cast Himself down was next backed up by a text of
   Scripture--wicked advice sustained by a foolish argument. "Throw
   Yourself down because He has given His angels charge over You, to keep
   You." You notice he knocks out the words, "in all your ways," which
   limits the protection promised. The Lord never promises to keep us in
   ways of our own choosing! If we go into By-Path Meadow, we go there
   without a guarantee of Divine protection, for the Word has it, "in all
   your ways." Every duty that is required of us, and every path that is
   mapped out by Providence shall have Divine protection accorded to its
   travelers. But if we go our own road we have no promise that we shall
   be cared for.

   When the devil takes something away from a text, he generally puts
   something of his own in its place. He therefore added these words,
   "lest at any time." His object was to make the text more general than
   it was--to take away its specialties, to break down its hedges, and to
   remove its landmarks. And so he says, "to keep You, lest at any time
   You dash Your foot against a stone." Old Master Trapp has well observed
   that in his day the king was bound to protect travelers on the king's
   highway between certain hours, "but," said he, "he did not promise to
   protect them out of the king's highway, nor did he promise to protect
   them in it if they traveled at all hours, for instance, at the dead of
   night."

   So we have a promise that along the King's highway to Heaven no lion
   shall be there, neither shall any ravenous beast go up from it, but the
   redeemed shall be found there. But if I strike off a path into the
   wilderness, or go away into the jungle of my own superstition and my
   own folly, I cannot expect protection. And if I begin to travel at any
   time, choosing my own times instead of waiting for the pillar of cloud,
   then I am not under the Divine protection, nor can I expect it.

   Does the text, as you find it in the ninety-first Psalm, give you any
   reason to believe that if you throw yourself down from the pinnacle God
   would bring you to the bottom safely? Certainly not! A fair reading of
   it only shows that God will keep us in the path of duty. And so, dear
   Friends, let us, when Satan tells us a Christian is all right and
   always safe, go where he may--let us respond to that, that it is true
   the Christian is safe in the way of duty, and will be kept in the path
   of God's commands--but he that presumptuously runs in the teeth of
   God's will, and disobeys the Most High must look to it lest a lion tear
   him in pieces!

   Brethren, it is a precious doctrine that the saints are safe! But it is
   a damnable inference from it that, therefore, they may live as they
   like! It is a glorious Truth that God will keep His people, but it is
   an abominable falsehood that sin will do them no harm. Remember that
   God gives us liberty, not license. And while He gives us protection He
   will not allow us presumption. I knew a person once when I was a
   child--I remember seeing him go into a country wake in a little village
   where I lived, though he was a professed Christian--going to spend the
   evening in a dancing booth. And with others he was drinking as other
   men did. And when I, in my warm zeal, said to him, "What are you doing
   here, Elijah?" his reply was, "I am a child of God and I can go where I
   like and yet be safe."

   And though for the moment I knew not what text to quote to answer him,
   yet my soul revolted from the man ever afterwards--for I felt that no
   child of God would ever be so wicked as to take poison in the faith
   that his Father would give him the antidote--or thrust himself into the
   fire in the hope that he should not be burned. If God sends me trouble
   He will yield me deliverance from it--but if I make trouble myself I
   must bear it. If Providence permits the devil to set me upon a
   pinnacle, even then God will help me. But if I throw myself down and go
   in the very teeth of Providence, then woe unto me, for I give proof by
   my presumption that the Grace of God is not in me at all!

   Yet the temptation is not uncommon. Do such-and-such a thing--your
   eternal interests are safe, therefore shun God's service, throw up the
   reins--and let the horses go as they will! God will guide them! Do not
   touch the tiller, the God of the wind will manage the vessel! Do not
   put your shoulder to the wheel at all but cry out to God to help you--
   and sit down and be lazy. That is the devil's talk and our poor silly
   distracted minds too readily drink it in! But if God gives us Divine
   Grace, we shall say, "God helps those who help themselves. God works
   for those that work for Him, and in the name of God I set up my banner.
   Wherever He will call me I will go, though it be through floods and
   flames. And if He sets me upon the pinnacle of the temple, I will do
   nothing but stand there till He takes me down. But as to throwing
   myself down in order to escape, O my Father, my God, by the love You
   bear me, help me to wrestle with this temptation and make me more than
   a conqueror through Your dear Son."

   Only one thing more remains to be spoken of while upon the text itself,
   and that is the answer which the Savior gave. He said, "It is written,
   You shall not tempt the Lord your God." I noticed, when I was carefully
   reading this verse over and thinking of it, that Jesus met a promise
   misused with a precept properly applied. At that moment the precept was
   worth more to Christ than the promise. Beloved, there are certain
   people who love the promise part of God's Word, but cannot bear the
   precept. We have men among us, who, when the minister preaches upon a
   sweet text, are greatly delighted! That is savory meat such as their
   soul loves! But if the pastor expounds a precept of God's Word, they
   turn upon their heel superciliously and say, "He is a legal preacher."

   It is not safe to pick and choose in the matters of Divine Truth! All
   hail, you fair promises! You meet me as the angels met Jacob at
   Mahanaim! But all hail, fair precepts! You meet me as Nathan met David
   and rebuke me for my sins! You, also, are my friends and I salute you
   and am glad to bear your company. Brethren, we cannot do without a
   promise, precept, exhortation, and rebuke. The compound of the
   Scripture, like the powders of the merchants for sweetness and
   excellence, must not be injured by being robbed of one single
   ingredient. Love the precept, I pray you. Be of the mind of David who
   wrote the whole of the one hundredth and nineteenth Psalm--not so much
   in praise of the promises as in praise of the statutes and the Laws of
   God as he found them given in that part of the Old Testament which it
   was his privilege to read.

   Sometimes a precept is the necessary counteracting principle to guard
   us from the perversion of a promise. Promises alone are like candy
   given to children, which, when too profusely eaten, bring on sickness.
   But the precept comes in as a healthy tonic so that you may feed upon
   the promise without injury. Brethren, is there one of you who is so
   false and faithless as to desire to shun God's service and God's love?
   Hear this--"You shall not tempt the Lord your God." You do so--you
   tempt God--you tempt Him to sanction your sin when you use wrong means
   in order to escape from danger. A Christian man in business who is
   going to stoop to a transaction that is not altogether clean in order
   to escape from his present dilemma is tempting God, for he asks God to
   help him and then uses evil tools to effect escape!

   Will you tempt God to assist you in defrauding your neighbor? Dare you
   ask God to aid you in doing what is not strictly upright? Do not dare
   to do this! "You shall not tempt the Lord your God." The Christian
   worker who dares to run away from work and says, "God will take care of
   me"--what is he doing? He is asking God one of two things-- either to
   destroy him, which God will not do, for He is a faithful God. Or he is
   tempting Him to uphold him and comfort him when he is not in the path
   of duty--which it would be wrong for God to do since He cannot give the
   sweetness of His comfort and the joy of His countenance to a man who
   would thereby be countenanced and encouraged in sin.

   Beware of provoking God to jealousy! Let your walk be such that the
   Lord may be honored by it and may look down with complacency upon you.
   Do not run to such shifts as would involve your asking God to assist
   you in a wrong thing in order to effect your deliverance. Though there
   are great depths beneath you, you cannot fall while He upholds. Though
   others are dashed in pieces and you can hear the crash of their fearful
   fall, yet he upholds the righteous. Though your own brain turns giddy
   and you are ready to slip from your foothold, yet the eternal God is
   your refuge and underneath you are the everlasting arms!

   Your extremity of weakness shall be the opportunity of His power. And
   when you fall back faint and ready to die, then it is that the angelic
   wings shall be of service and the cherub-helpers shall bear you up in
   their arms, lest you dash your foot against a stone! Only be very
   courageous and confident, and say unto the Fiend of Hell, "Get away
   from me, for the God who allowed me to be placed here never did forsake
   me and never will! And while He is for me I will not fear." What may
   occur is no business of mine, it rests with Him. It is mine to stand in
   the path of duty, for thus I shall be in the place of safety.

   II. I have said much upon the temptation itself, and now in closing I
   wish to offer A FEW CONSIDERATIONS DEDUCED FROM THE WHOLE. The first is
   this--it is a commonplace thought, but it has tasted like nectar to my
   weary heart--Jesus was tempted as I am. You have heard that Truth of
   God a thousand times--have you grasped it? He was not exempted from any
   of the sinful temptations which occur to us! He was tempted to the very
   same sins into which we fall!

   Do not dissociate Jesus from yourself. It is a dark room which you are
   going through, but Jesus went through it before. It is a sharp fight
   which you are waging, but Jesus has stood foot to foot with the same
   enemy! It was a great encouragement to the Macedonians in their weary
   marches when they saw Alexander toiling always with them. Had Alexander
   always been riding on Bucephalus when the rest of them were marching,
   they would have grown weary. But Alexander marched like a common
   soldier. And when water was scarce Alexander thirsted with them, and
   refused to drink of the little water which was reserved as a royal
   luxury. "No," he said, "I will suffer with my men."

   They won their battles and they drove the Persian rabble before them as
   lions drive a herd of sheep, principally through the personal prowess
   of Alexander. First to leap into the ditch, first to cross the river or
   scale the rampart, always adventuring himself for death or glory--every
   man grew into a hero at the sight of the hero! Let it be so with
   followers of Jesus! He stays not in the pavilion when His children are
   in conflict. He robes not Himself in scarlet apparel like a king at his
   ease--but He buckles on His armor and puts on His helmet--and above the
   cry of them that contend for mastery may be heard His cry, "I have trod
   down strength."

   Jesus goes so far into the fight that He advances beyond the front
   rank, and can say, "I have trod the winepress alone, and of the people
   there was none with Me." Oh Brothers and Sisters! Let us be of good
   cheer! Christ has trod the way before us and the bloody footprints of
   the King of Glory may be seen along the road which we traverse at this
   hour! There is something yet sweeter--Jesus was tempted, but Jesus
   never sinned! Then, my Soul, it is not necessary for you to sin, for
   Jesus was a Man--and if one Man endured these temptations and sinned
   not--then by the same Grace another may do so!

   I know it seems to some of you beginners in the Divine life that you
   cannot be tempted without sinning, but believe me, this is not only
   possible, but I hope attainable by you. A man may be tempted to run
   away from the service of God, but he may hate the temptation and then
   there is no sin in it to him. If I should meet a thief on the road
   today who should ask me to break into a person's house, I should at
   once condemn the suggestion--do you think I should sin because I
   happened to be tempted in that way? Not at all! The sin would lay with
   the tempter, not with the tempted person who instantaneously rejected
   the suggestion.

   If I were to dally with the thief and say, "How much is to be gained by
   it? What are your plans? I will go with you if so-and-so," then I sin.
   But if I say at once, "How dare you come to me with such a temptation?
   I loath it," then I should commit no sin. Often God's servants, in
   their worst and most bitter temptations, are, to a great extent, free
   from sin and are to be pitied--not to be blamed. John Bunyan has a
   famous picture of Christian going through the Valley of the Shadow of
   Death. When the fiends whispered temptations in his ears, "So," said
   he, "I did verily think that these were in my own heart," whereas they
   were only temptations of the devil, and not his own. And because he
   hated them there was no sin in them--to him I mean. Of course there was
   sin to the person who made the suggestion, but not to the person
   suffering it, inasmuch as he stopped his ears against it and refused to
   touch it.

   Now, Christian, in this you may be encouraged, that you may go through
   the fiercest possible temptation heated seven times hotter, like
   Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, and yet the fire may not injure you but you
   may come out with not so much as the smell of fire upon you though you
   have trod in the midst of the glowing coals!

   The third thing which comforts us, is this--Jesus not only did not
   fall, but He gloriously triumphed! Satan received a desperate fall and
   a deep discouragement as the result of this conflict, and as Jesus
   overcame, so may we. Jesus is the representative Man for His people.
   The Head has triumphed and the members share in the victory. While a
   man's head is above the water you cannot drown his body. The head is
   above the great floodwaters of temptation, and we, who are the lower
   members, are not drowned, nor shall we be! We shall wade through the
   swelling current and land safely upon Canaan's side. "They feared as
   they entered into the cloud," it is said of the disciples on the Mount,
   but their Master was with them there and therefore their fears were
   frivolous.

   We, too, are fearing because we have entered the cloud or are in the
   midst of it. But our fears are needless and vain, for Christ is with
   us, armed for our defense! Brothers and Sisters, our place of safety is
   the bosom of the Savior! Perhaps we are tempted just now in order to
   drive us nearer to Him. Blessed be any wind that blows me into the port
   of my Savior's love! Happy, happy, happy wounds which make me seek the
   beloved Physician! Yes, blessed Death, which with black wings shall
   bear me up to my Savior's Throne! Anything is good that brings us to
   Christ--anything is mischievous that parts us from Him. Come, you
   Tempted, wherever you wander! Come to your tempted Savior! Come, you
   cast-down and troubled ones, however much dismayed, come to Him--

   "Though now He reigns exalted high
   His love is still as great."

   He forgets not the temptations through which He passed, and He is ready
   to succor and to help you in the same.

   Ah, but there are some here who do not know Him--some who say, "We do
   not understand this sermon, for we never feel such temptations." I can
   understand why not. You see, you have no spiritual life. The tree
   planted by the river feels not the chill which breeds in the marsh and
   lurks in the swamp. But put a man there and before long you will see
   him shivering from head to foot! And the carnal mind, dead in sin,
   knows not the fog of temptation which lurks around him! But oh, if you
   were alive unto God your struggle would begin and you would cry to the
   strong for help! My advice to you is that which I gave to the Christian
   just now--the Believer must go to Christ for help--and so must you.

   There is balm in Gilead! There is a Physician there! Sinner, if you
   look to Christ you shall live! Though you stand today upon the
   pinnacle--for life is such--though death is your dreadful fate and the
   fiery lake is your everlasting portion, presume not! Dash not yourself
   further into sin! Plunge not into ruin but lift your eyes upwards and
   say, "My God, my Father, help me! God the Son who did redeem with
   precious blood, wash me from my sin! Spirit of the living God renew me
   in heart and life," and it shall be done, for, "he that asks, receives,
   he that seeks, finds, and to him that knocks it shall be opened."
   "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved."
     __________________________________________________________________

                         A Lesson From The Great Panic

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 13, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are
   made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." Hebrews
   12:27.

   IT is a most popular error that the world stands still and is fixed and
   immovable. This has been touted as an astronomical theory, but as a
   matter of practical principle it still reigns in men's minds. Galileo
   said, "No, the world is not a fixed body, it moves." Peter had long
   before declared that all these things should be dissolved. At last men
   believed the astronomer--but they still doubt the Apostle, or at least
   forget his doctrine. Though it is clear as noonday in Scripture and in
   experience that stability is not to be found beneath the moon, yet men
   are forever building upon earth's quicksand as if it were substantial
   rock, and heaping up its dust as though it would not all be blown away.

   "This is the substance," cries the miser, as he clutches his bags of
   gold. "Heaven and Hell are myths to me." "This is the main chance,"
   whispers the merchant as he pushes vigorously his commercial
   speculations. "As for spiritual things they are for mere dreamers and
   sentimentalists. Cash is the true treasure." Ah, Sirs, you base your
   statements upon a foundation of falsehood! This world is as certainly a
   mere revolving ball as to human life as it is astronomically! And hopes
   founded on it will as surely come to nothing as will card houses in a
   storm. Here we have no abiding city and it is in vain to attempt to
   build one. This world is not the rock beneath our feet which it seems
   to be--it is no better than those green, but treacherously soft and
   bottomless bogs which swallow up unwary travelers!

   We talk of terra firma as if there could be such a thing as solid
   earth! Never was an adjective more thoroughly misused, for the world
   passes away and the fashion thereof. Every now and then, in order to
   enforce this distasteful truth upon us, the God of Providence gives the
   world, in some way or other, a warning shake. The Lord has only to lay
   one finger upon the world and the mountains are carried into the midst
   of the sea, while the waters of the ocean roar and are troubled until
   the mountains shake with their swelling.

   The most solid fabrics of human skill and industry are dissolved at the
   voice of the Most High. Though they appear to possess the firmness of
   earth and claim the sublimity of Heaven, yet one Divine word shakes
   earth and Heaven in a moment. Looking back through history you will
   observe many periods of very tremendous shakings--the records of which
   are indelibly engraved upon human memory. An empire has been piled up
   by conquest and cemented by policy and power. Monarchs of gigantic mind
   have been sustained by armies of indomitable valor and great dynasties
   have been established whose reign promised to be as enduring as the
   sun. But God has shaken, and the diadem has fallen, and the kingdom
   become desolate.

   Babylon sat as a Queen and said, "I shall see no sorrow," but she
   became desolate and her palaces crumbled into a heap of ruins. The
   power of Persia wore the aspect of permanence and proudly claimed
   universal dominion, but the iron rod of Alexander broke it in pieces as
   a potter's vessel. Nor could the Macedonian empire long continue but
   soon gave place to the mightier power of Rome, which, with all its
   valiant legions, lasted but its time and then, like a bowing wall, fell
   headlong to the ground. Even as a moment's foam dissolves into the wave
   that bears it and is lost forever, so dynasties, republics, empires all
   pass away. As a dream, when one awakes, their image is gone forever.

   Between the intervals of these great revolutions there have been
   changes less extensive but still of the same warning character. Every
   now and then in our commerce God gives a serious shake to our affairs.
   Men usually have a degree of confidence in their fellow men, and on the
   strength of this legitimate confidence, business flourishes. But, all
   of a sudden, as though seized with madness, they say in their haste
   with David, "All men are liars," and clamor for their gold. The boat is
   quite able to ferry them all across the stream if they will have
   patience--but they are carried away with the notion that it will soon
   be swamped.

   And therefore they push and fight to get on board all at once and bring
   to pass the very evil which they feared! Had they but a little patience
   and a little forbearance--were they much less greedy and much more
   considerate of others-- things might still go well enough. But
   selfishness takes fire at the least suspicion, blazes into mistrust,
   and setting its neighbor's house on fire to save its own candle, soon
   finds its own dwelling in flames, too. Greed is so afraid lest one
   brick of its house should be stolen that it pulls out the cornerstone
   to keep it safe under the bed--and the whole building tumbles about its
   ears.

   Few of us ever dreamed of seeing such a panic as that of the last two
   days, and now, pausing in the midst of it, it may be well to look
   around. What about these commercial shakings? How can we account for
   them? Are they not results of the law of change and instability which
   is stamped upon every created thing? Instead of wondering at panics, we
   may well wonder that they do not come more often! In considering the
   body of the commonwealth, we may say of it as Dr. Watts does of our
   natural body--

   "Strange that a harp of thousand strings Should keep in tune so long."

   No wonder that the machine of commerce sometimes gets out of order! The
   wonder is that with so much dirt of trickery, deceit and covetousness,
   it goes on at all! Considering the depravity of the heart of man, it is
   perfectly marvelous that human governments are so stable and that
   mortal affairs run so smoothly. We can only attribute it to the
   presiding Providence of God that there are not many more crashes and
   disasters. But still what of these shakings? If they must come, what
   must we say of them? Why, this much--that ultimately they are among the
   greatest blessings which God sends us--for with all their attendant
   calamities they shake only the things which may be shaken. While the
   things which cannot be shaken remain, and remain in a healthier state
   because the unsound and rotten things have been discovered and removed.

   We shall regard our text as declaring a great general principle, that
   God shakes in order that the things which can be shaken, may fall. And
   that the things which cannot be shaken, may remain. We will try to
   carry out that principle to practical purpose this morning.

   I. First the original drift of the statement refers to THE OLD JEWISH
   DISPENSATION. The ceremonial law was a very wonderful system of types
   and figures. To the spiritually-minded Israelite it was an illustrated
   book full of precious teaching. Prophets and kings delighted to study
   it. Such men as David and the like perused its sacred pages both day
   and night with ever fresh delight. But, after all, the Jewish
   dispensation, with all its outward splendor and inward meaning, was
   still a thing that could be shaken--and therefore when its time of
   shaking came, all the created part of it passed away--and only its
   eternal truths remained.

   Today we find the Jew, but we do not find the Mosaic economy. Israel
   has neither priest, nor sacrifice, nor altar, nor temple. Jerusalem is
   trod under foot by the Gentiles and Zion's hill no longer echoes to the
   voice of Psalms. Judah's sons are banished far away and her daughters
   dwell in exile. The outward economy was shaken at the coming of our
   Lord and as an external thing has ceased to be. How was it that it
   could be shaken? One reason was that it had so much to do with
   materialism. It needed an altar of earth or stone and such altars the
   hand of the spoiler can overturn. It required a bullock that has horns
   and hoofs, and such sacrifices the plague may slay. It demanded a
   priest of the house of Aaron and a race of men may be cut off from the
   families of the nations. It needed a tabernacle or a temple, and a
   building made with hands is readily demolished--it could be shaken.

   The veil of the temple has been rent. The great stones of the temple
   are thrown down. A priest with Urim and Thummim no more appears and a
   consecrated altar no longer smokes. Where is the ark with its mystic
   cherubim? Where the table of showbread, and the golden candlestick, and
   the tables of stone? These were but things which are made, and they
   have been shaken and removed. But the things which cannot be shaken
   still remain. Our spiritual altar still endures. Our great High Priest
   still lives. Our house not made with hands is still eternal in the
   heavens. Our spiritual faith depends not upon materialism.

   We have no altar of brass or stone--our Lord Jesus sanctifies our
   offerings. We have no incense of frankincense and onycha--the merits of
   our Savior are sweeter by far. We need no temple nor holy of holies
   within the veil, for we worship God in spirit, and--

   "Wherever we seek Him He is found, And everyplace is hallowed ground.

   We have given up all that which binds unseen realities to the shadows,
   which are seen. And now we are no more as to our faith in bondage to
   the beggarly elements of matter, time, and space. The Jewish religion
   could be shaken because it could be combated by material forces.
   Antiochus could profane its altars. Titus could burn its temple and
   cast down the walls of the sacred city.

   But no invader can pollute the heavenly altar of our spiritual faith by
   brute force, or destroy the celestial bulwarks of our hope by fire and
   sword. Material forces are not available in our warfare, for we wrestle
   not with flesh and blood. The tyrant may burn our martyrs and cast our
   confessors into prison, but the pure Truth of Jesus is neither consumed
   by fire nor bound with chains! It has within itself essential
   immortality and liberty. The doctrine that Christ Jesus came into the
   world to save sinners is no more to be wounded by the sword of
   persecution than is the ocean to be scarred by the keels of navies.

   When winds may be manacled, when waves are fettered, and when clouds
   may be shut up in dungeons--then, no not even then--may the Word of God
   be bound. The free spirit of the Cross of Christ cannot be vanquished
   by armies, nor can legions tread it down. If our devotion hovered
   around an earthly shrine and could only be presented by a certain order
   of men robed in a peculiar garb and chanting a peculiar ritual, then
   the Truth of Christ might be put down for awhile, if not extinguished.
   But we depend on none of these things! We can as well worship God in
   barns as in basilicas, in catacombs as in cathedrals! Farmers and
   paupers are as much priests to God as presbyters or prelates--and
   solemn silence may yield as true praise as the voices of the sons of
   music with all their pipes and organs. Our religion is so spiritual
   that Death itself, in ridding us of these material bodies, shall rather
   assist than injure our devotions! We laugh to scorn both spear, and
   sword, and buckler! Our holy faith is beyond the reach of carnal
   weapons.

   Moreover, the Mosaic economy passed away because it could be affected
   by time. The ark was made of long-enduring gopher wood, but it has
   yielded to time. The veil was one of the most costly and durable
   fabrics, but it yielded to the strain and was rent from top to bottom.
   The temple itself, if it had not been destroyed by the enemy, would
   have grown gray with age, for age strikes with impartial hand buildings
   both holy and profane. "Now that which decays and waxes old is ready to
   vanish away."

   But see the doctrine of the Cross of Christ! No time affects it. The
   message of salvation by Divine Grace is as fresh today as when Peter
   preached it at Pentecost! The great command, "Believe and live," has as
   much life-giving power about it as when it was first applied by the
   Holy Spirit. No time affects the promise of the Father, the merit of
   the blood of Jesus, or the energy of the Divine Spirit--therefore our
   faith remains.

   Beloved Friends, many more shakings may come. Romanism, which is a
   spurious reproduction of the materialism of Judaism, needs a shake to
   destroy it. Puseyism, an equally gross and carnal combination of the
   outward and visible with the inward and unseen, will also pass away
   when its hour comes. But the faith once delivered to the saints will
   outlive every change! The symbol is transient, the spiritual Truth of
   God is eternal! Over every form of material worship there shall be
   pronounced the sentence, "Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to
   ashes"--but the pure spiritual faith of Jesus Christ can never die--the
   blessed doctrine that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto
   Himself, and all those glorious doctrines which cluster around the
   Cross of Christ shall survive "the wreck of matter and the crash of
   worlds."

   They shall not only remain, but remain in greater clearness and in
   fuller power because the things that could be shaken are taken
   away--created things only dim the luster of the Cross--and art made by
   human sin is a veil to hide the Redeemer's glory! The more completely
   they are removed the more plainly shall we see the Cross of Christ in
   open vision. "They shall perish, but you remain. And they all shall wax
   old as does a garment, and as a vesture shall you fold them up, and
   they shall be changed: but you are the same, and your years shall not
   fail."

   II. We now turn the light of our text upon another subject. ALL THAT IS
   TRUE IN OUR PROFESSED CREEDS AND STANDARDS WILL STAND WHEN MERE
   OPINIONS ARE SHAKEN. Some of us, though young, are old enough to
   recollect a great many theological panics--panics very nearly as
   foolish as that in Lombard Street--for there are other old ladies
   besides those who rush to the bank to draw out their deposits.

   It is not so very long ago that we had a certain "Rivulet" controversy.
   Then came the noisier battle of the "Essays and Reviews." By-and-by a
   live bishop fired off an arithmetical cannon at Moses and now all sorts
   of writers are hammering away at the "Life of Christ." What may be next
   we cannot tell. When these attacks occur there is generally a very
   great alarm among timid Believers. They say, "What will happen now?
   People do not respect authority. They used to receive sound teaching
   because they were taught it. Now they want to know the reason of
   everything. Alas, Master, what shall we do?"

   It is true that men are beginning to raise very serious questions, and
   some which will not be answered today nor tomorrow. They want us to
   prove that the Bible is the Word of God instead of accepting it as
   such. The skepticism which questions everything is very rife and cannot
   be stifled, for it persists in putting its questions again and again,
   and saying, "No, I will never be quiet until I get an answer." Is there
   any real cause for fear in all this? Will the Truth of God, as it is in
   Jesus, suffer damage from these attacks? My Brethren, I believe that it
   has not suffered and will not sustain an injury, but, on the contrary,
   will be made the more triumphant!

   I cannot excuse or even make an apology for those who make these
   attacks upon the Word of God--to their own Master they stand or fall.
   Above all I cannot say a word in the defense of certain professed
   ministers of Christ who only exercise their calling to undermine that
   which they profess to have been called to defend. But, Brethren,
   whoever may be the instruments--whether they are professed men of God
   or overt servants of the devil--I do not believe that controversial
   shakings can lead to the destruction of a single Truth, but to the
   bringing out of that which is true and separating it from falsehood.

   During the Reformation period the pulpits resounded with the doctrine
   of justification by faith and little else, and many heresies arose
   until attention was directed to other Truths equally necessary to
   edification--so that a more complete Gospel testimony was promoted.
   Just now the tug of war seems to gather around the doctrine of future
   punishment which I believe to be as certain as the existence of God and
   the inspiration of Holy Scripture! Struggle against it will only bring
   out that Truth of God more and more clearly, and will make the
   ministers of Christ thunder it out with greater certainty, and so, by
   God's Grace, sinners will be alarmed and driven to the Cross of Christ
   for comfort. Never be afraid, my Brethren--the Truth of God will bear
   threshing and lose nothing but the husk which surrounded it!

   Fear not for the Truth of God because of the ability and education of
   its foes! The wisest man living is a fool when he fights against the
   Truth as it is in Jesus, and you will be a match for him when he is on
   the side of wrong. Do not give infidelity credit for a vast amount of
   sense and learning--it is only folly masking itself under the garb of
   philosophy, metaphysics, and outlandish jargon. If I cannot defend what
   I believe, I am afraid I shall begin to doubt it myself--and therefore,
   for my own sake, I will make myself master of the point, if possible.
   And if in the study of it I do not meet with an answer which may
   satisfy my opponent, if I meet with one which satisfies my own
   conscience, I shall be all the better and stronger a Christian for it,
   and so good will come out of evil.

   Shake away, Sir! Sift away! Not one grain of wheat will fall to the
   ground! I stood this week by the side of a church which once was a
   considerable distance inland but now it stands just by the ocean side.
   Almost every year a great mass of the clay cliff falls into the sea,
   and in a year or two this parish church must fall. It stands now in
   quietude and peace, but on a certain day it will all be swallowed up
   into the sea, as certainly as the elements still work according to
   their ordinary laws. I could not help thinking that the edifice was a
   type of certain ecclesiastical bodies which stand upon the clay cliff
   of State-craft, or superstition.

   The tide of public enlightenment, and above all the ocean tide of God's
   Spirit is advancing and wearing away their foundation till, at last,
   the whole fabric must go down. What then? Will you hold up your hands
   and cry, "The Church of God is gone?" Forbear the foolish utterance!
   God's Church is safe enough. Look yonder--there stands the Church of
   God upon a stormy ridge where the sea always dashes and perpetually
   rages on all sides--and yet she fears no undermining because she is
   built on no clay cliff, but on a Rock against which the waves of Hell
   shall not prevail! Then let your earth-born, State-propped churches go!
   Swallow them up, O sea of time! Swallow them all up and leave no wreck
   behind!

   But the Church of the living God shall stand all the more glorious
   because of the ruin which has overtaken her rivals and discovered their
   human origin. I need not, however, enlarge, because you can all see it
   is so, if you look back in history. And you may rest assured that what
   was true a hundred years ago will be true now, and that the more there
   is of strife against the Gospel, the more the Gospel will prevail!
   Therefore let us not fear, but rejoice confidently in our God.

   III. The principle may be applied in a third direction: THE REAL IN
   OUTWARD PROFESSION STANDS, NOTWITHSTANDING TIMES OF SHAKING. There are
   seasons when the professing Church undergoes fearful trials.

   She suffered in olden times the ordeal of persecution. Edicts and writs
   were issued forbidding all worship in the name of Jesus. Cruel
   penalties were the reward of those who were faithful to the doctrine of
   the Cross. The rough wind howled dreadfully, and the result was that
   the Church, which had been overgrown with hypocrisy, was speedily freed
   from pretenders and only those remained whose faith could bear the
   fire.

   The Church was thus refined by persecution and might have thanked her
   persecutors for having put her through the blessed process. Nowadays we
   are not so much subject to this test, but the world still hates us. It
   now fawns upon the Christian--it invites him to share her joys and bids
   him be no longer rigid and strict. It offers him rich rewards and soft
   speeches if he will but compromise a little and not be too sternly pure
   and upright.

   What of this? Is it not the same purifying process? By all means let
   those who love the world go to it! And let those who value the world's
   pleasures have them! If it were possible for me to put a hedge all
   round this church so that none of you should be tempted to enter the
   theater or enter into giddy company--if I could put a wall all round so
   that none of you should ever be tempted into the gin-palace or the
   playhouse--I should not dare to do it! For what would you then be? You
   would only cease from these things because you could not get at
   them--the taste for such vanities, if it is in your hearts--would be
   uncured.

   If you were hypocrites you would not be so likely to be found out, if
   never tried. And those of you who are genuine would never grow into
   strong men, but remain Christian babies--nursed and dressed by
   others--but not at all able to run alone. The blandishments of the
   world are only another form of that fan which is in Christ's hand, with
   which He purges the great visible heap lying upon the threshing-floor
   of His Church. When some of you fall into temptation, though we cannot
   but weep over you, yet we do not know but what your outwardly falling
   into temptation may only have discovered the rottenness and wickedness
   of your heart--and so we may be well rid of you! And you yourself, in
   the long run, may have your eyes opened to much secret evil which
   otherwise you would never have detected.

   At certain times discord has marred our churches. Blessed be God we
   have not felt it here, but when it does come I am not certain that that
   is altogether a matter of regret. There are parties and strife--and all
   this is sin--but when the Church is shaken, those that can be shaken
   will be shaken. And they will slide off, some this way and some that.
   But those who cannot be shaken will stand fast in their integrity and
   defend the faith once committed to the saints. There may also happen
   great fallings into sin. Some who have been prominent in the Church may
   make shipwreck. When this occurs, woe, indeed, is it to the whole
   community, and sorrow to every member.

   But still I am not certain but what there may be a gain even in the
   loss, for then those are discovered whose faith may have stood in the
   wisdom of man--who have been depending on human countenance and not
   following holiness for its own sake--and others who have merely been
   led by associations and not by principle, are led to great searching of
   heart. I would sorrow in all cases of failure, but not as though I had
   no consolation, for, my Brethren, those only are shaken that may be
   shaken. But those who are rooted and grounded in Christ and are truly
   what they profess to be will stand fast unto the end.

   That old oak in the forest is one of the noblest works of God. Look at
   it just now bursting into full leaf, bearing well its verdant honors
   and making a picture worthy of the artist's rarest skill. What are
   these dry pieces of wood which strew the ground beneath it? What are
   these large branches which rot under its shade? It is needless to ask,
   for we all know that they fell from the tree during winter's storms. Is
   it a cause of regret for the sake of the tree that those rotten
   branches were broken off? It may be a lamentation as far as concerns
   the broken boughs, but the tree itself would never have been so
   healthy, and never looked so complete if the rotten branches had been
   suffered to abide. When the hurricane came howling through the woods,
   the old tree shivered in the gale and mourned as it heard the cracking
   of its boughs. Yet now it is thankful because the sound healthy
   branches with sap and life in them are all there, and the withered ones
   no longer encumber the trunk.

   Summing this matter up in a word or two, I do not think times of storm
   to a Church are in the long run to be regretted--a calm is much more
   dangerous. The plague-bearing mist settles and festers in the vale till
   the atmosphere becomes deadly, even to the casual passenger. But the
   storm fiend, as men call him, leaps from the mountains into the sunny
   glades of the valley and with terrific vigor hurls down the habitations
   of men and tears up the trees by the roots. But meanwhile all is
   superabundantly compensated by the effectual purging which the
   atmosphere receives. Men breathe more freely and Heaven smiles more
   serenely now that the heaviness of the death-damp is gone, and the
   poisonous vapor clings no longer to the river's bank and the valley's
   side.

   IV. We will further apply the principle to OUR OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
   Beloved Friends, this principle, which is true without, is equally sure
   within. There will come to every sincere Christian a time of inward
   shaking, testing and convulsion. We have included much in our
   experience which is not real. We think we know a great deal which is
   nothing better than boastful ignorance. How many times we have imbibed
   the conceit that we were becoming very humble when we were never more
   proud than when we thought so! We have felt as if we were conquering
   all our besetting sins and at that very moment Satan was laughing at us
   because we mistook a sleeping sin for a dead sin!

   We are puffed up with the fancy that we are rich and increased in
   goods, whereas all that we have put in at the front door has been
   stolen at the back door, and more. We have put our spiritual money into
   a bag that is full of holes. We have been heaping up that which is not
   bread and spending our labor for that which profits not. The soul's
   conflict comes and we are troubled because we do not care to be
   disturbed in our false peace! But ah, how much we need disturbing! I
   know some of you do not relish soul-searching sermons. When I give you
   one which acts like the refiner's fire you can scarcely endure it. You
   want to have the soft pillows of the promises laid under your head, and
   savory meat placed by your side.

   Searching sermons you wish to be few and far between. But these times
   of self-examination are fully as necessary as times of nourishing and
   comfort. And when they visit your inner man they are loaded with
   blessings and are to be received with gratitude and thanksgiving. Dear
   Friends, let me mention a few methods of soul-shaking. Affliction is
   one of them. The man thought that he had resigned everything to
   God--death came and took away his child. Where was his resignation
   then? Perhaps it stood that trial. But lo, the Lord removes
   another--how now, good Sir? A second time-- do you still bear it?

   Alas, the third shaft smites another beloved one! Can you still, in all
   things, own His hand? Do you still stand to the surrender? You say,
   "Yes." May it prove so when the trials come! You said the other day,
   dear Friend, "I do not think I am worldly-minded. I hope my affection
   is set upon things above, and not on things on the earth." How have you
   found it during the last two or three feverish days? You sang the other
   day, as we sang this morning--

   "Let mountains from their seats be hurled Down to the deep, and buried
   there. Convulsions shake the solid world-- Our faith shall never yield
   to fear." How stood your faith on Friday when the banks suspended
   payment? Did you play the man or play the fool? When the great waters
   were let loose was your ark seaworthy, or did it prove a poor leaky
   hulk?

   We have, I fear, much more resignation in name than in fact, and more
   faith in fancy than in reality. You think sometimes that now you really
   do love God with all your heart and soul, and strength--and that
   nothing can come in to make you think harshly of Him. But will not a
   sharp blow from the rod alter your tune? Do you kiss the rod, or do you
   begin to kick like a willful child? Can you say with Job, "Though He
   slay me, yet will I trust in Him. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken
   away: blessed be the name of the Lord"? Tribulations, losses, crosses,
   sicknesses and bereavements are very stern trials--and the things
   within us which may be shaken will be shaken by them.

   But if we can bear them well and trustingly, and yet praise and bless
   God for all--we have evidence of possessing gracious qualities which
   cannot be shaken and therefore will remain. What a shake temptation
   gives us! We spoke of that last Sunday morning. How commonly is it the
   lot of God's people! Temptations will assail us of a sort that we never
   dreamed of. We are tempted to deny God, to doubt the Deity of Christ,
   to mistrust the Truth of Scripture. We are tempted to presumption, to
   every form of sin--and there are times when temptations follow each
   other so quickly that we do not know which way to look nor where to
   turn!

   We use the great shield of faith as best we can, but it seems to us if
   it could not avail us to ward off the innumerable darts. Ah, what shall
   we do then? Why, Brethren, we shall then know whether our grace is the
   Divine Grace of God or the grace of man! We shall now see whether we
   have the faith of God's elect or not! The faith of God's elect can
   write "Invicta" upon its shield! It is unconquered and unconquerable!
   But the faith which springs from mere human reason will speedily give
   way like a pasteboard helmet, or a wooden sword. O sharp Temptation!
   Terrible as you are to me, yet I thank God for you because the trial of
   my faith, which is much more precious than that of gold which perishes,
   though it is tried by fire, shall redound to the glory of God and to my
   own comfort!

   There is a time of shaking coming which none of us shall be able to
   avoid. If we could live without affliction and without temptation,
   which I think is impossible, yet we cannot enter into the Promised Land
   without passing through the river of death, unless the Lord shall come.
   What a test will the hour of death be! Beloved Friends, certain
   professors cannot endure to have a suspicion raised concerning the
   sincerity, vitality, and power of their godliness. They say, "Why
   should the minister set me questioning myself as to whether I am saved
   or not? Is it not best for me to believe that I am saved and so go on
   cheerfully till I die?"

   Beloved, may this tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth before I shall
   knowingly assist any of you in being comfortable in presumption. True
   faith can bear examination, and even courts it! The preaching which
   says to its hearer, "You are not to examine yourself. Take it for
   granted that it is all well with you," is a preaching that comes from
   the bottomless pit and does the devil's work--it is not a ministry
   which God has sent! If my faith will not bear human examination it will
   never bear God's examination. And if when I am in health I dare not sit
   down by the hour together to look over my soul's estate, what shall I
   do in the swellings of Jordan?

   If even now I am half afraid, what shall I be then? And if I dare not
   now look certain texts of Scripture in the face, but am obliged to
   forget that they are in the Bible in order to be at peace in my own
   heart, oh, what shall I do when those texts will force themselves upon
   me, and will not take my indifference for an answer, but will demand of
   my conscience that it should feel their power? Let me beseech you while
   you rest simply and alone upon Christ--be sure that you rest sincerely
   and with your whole heart upon Him. Do not make mistakes about your
   soul's eternal matters, for mistakes here will be fatal! Be built upon
   the Rock, and be surely built on it!

   Do not be afraid of being shaken now, because you must be shaken before
   long. That silent chamber must be inhabited by you and on that bed you
   must be stretched. You will hear the warning voice of Death in the
   silent tread of those who expect your departure, and in the faint
   whisper of the physician as he warns your friends that there is no
   hope.

   You will be compelled to gaze into worlds unknown. You will hear the
   booming of the deep sea of eternity. And oh, if a fear should molest
   you, then how dark will your descent be into the valley!

   But oh, Beloved, if you can be confident then, with what joy will you
   face your last hour! And with what triumph enter into eternity! How can
   you expect to be confident then if you are self-indulgent now, and will
   not dare to try your estate? Come, have a friendly suit, as it were, in
   the heavenly chancery between your soul and your hopes today, lest
   there should be a fatal suit against you--a suit brought on by Divine
   Justice--which shall end in your total bankruptcy throughout eternity!

   God grant that we may not be afraid of being shaken. For if we cannot
   bear shaking now, what shall we do at the last? What has been the
   result of all the shaking through which we have passed up to now? I
   think it has been this--we have had a great deal removed from us which
   was of no use to us. We could boast once rather more loudly than we
   dare to do now. I must confess that the longer I live the more of a
   fool I feel myself to be. I am in myself weaker, more distrustful, more
   conscious of sin--more hopeless of self-assistance than ever. The more
   strength I get from God the weaker I discover myself to be in and of
   myself.

   There were a few things that I thought I knew once, but except those
   things which God has taught me, I now find that I know nothing. I
   suppose that the further we proceed in the way to Heaven the more we
   shall be dissatisfied with ourselves because our daily trials and
   troubles have the effect of bursting many of those bubbles in which we
   once put our confidence. All the wooden centers must be taken away from
   our masonry, for God builds His arches so that they will stand without
   supporting frameworks. The dog-shores must all be knocked away from our
   ship, for it is not meant to be high and dry on the shore--it is to be
   launched upon a sea of everlasting glory.

   The dross is consuming! Blessed be God for that, for the precious metal
   gains by the loss. Our outward man decays, but the inward man is
   renewed day by day. Go on, Great Shaker of Heaven and earth, and shake
   from me my mere pretensions, my presumptions and empty professions, for
   the genuine work of Grace will be helped!

   V. I must now bring before you ALL THAT YOU HAVE IN POSSESSION. The
   things, which can be shaken, will be removed, but things that cannot be
   shaken will remain. We have many things in our possession at the
   present moment which can be shaken, and it ill becomes a Christian man
   to set much store by them. The poorest man among us has many
   providential blessings for which to be grateful this morning, but the
   richest among us has nothing earthly upon which he can depend.

   Wife and children make glad our hearth. We have a little place which
   may be very homely, but it is our home and we love it. Some of you are
   prospering and thriving traders. Others are merchants who have almost
   accumulated a competency--be grateful for all this--but do not forget
   that these are things which may be shaken. The cheek of the wife may
   grow pale. The lustrous eyes of the little ones may soon become dim.
   The house may be left a heap of ashes. The property may take to itself
   wings and fly away--there is nothing stable beneath these rolling
   skies--change is written upon all things.

   Yet, my Brethren, some of us have certain "things which cannot be
   shaken," and I invite you, this morning, to read over the catalogue of
   them, that if the things which can be shaken should all be taken away
   you may derive real comfort from the things that cannot be shaken and
   will remain. In the first place, whatever your losses may have been you
   enjoy present salvation. You are, this morning, standing at the foot of
   His Cross, trusting alone in the merit of Jesus' precious blood--and no
   rise or fall of the markets can interfere with your salvation in
   Him--no breaking of banks, no run upon your credit can touch that! A
   sinner saved!

   I remember the time when I thought that if I had to live on bread and
   water all my life, and to be chained in a dungeon all my days, I would
   cheerfully submit to that if I might but get rid of my sins. When sin
   haunted and burdened my spirit, I am sure I would have counted the
   martyr's death to be preferable to a life under the lash of a guilty
   conscience. Now, your sins are all gone! There is not one left in God's
   book! Through Jesus' blood you are clean, and that is a comfort which
   cannot be removed--

   "Once in Christ, in Christ forever; Nothing from His love can sever."

   In the next place, you are a child of God today. God is your Father. No
   change of circumstances can ever rob you of that. If you were a peer of
   the realm you might be degraded. If you have walked among the rich you
   might be thrust out from their society. Father and mother might forsake
   you but you can never lose this joyous fact--you are an heir of God,
   joint-heir with Jesus Christ! Coming out of losses and poverty,
   stripped bare, you can say, "He is my Father still. Naked I came out of
   my mother's womb and naked shall I return--but to my Father shall I
   return, and in my Father's house are many mansions--therefore I will
   not be troubled."

   You have, this day, another permanent blessing, namely, the love of
   Jesus Christ. He who is God and Man loves you with all the strength of
   His affectionate Nature. Now, nothing can rob you of that! You can look
   to the Cross and know that He who died on it died for you! And He who
   reigns in Heaven reigns for you and pleads for you. No catastrophes can
   deprive you of that. Austria and Prussia may go to war, if they please,
   and Italy or France may join in the turmoil. Blood may flow like water.
   Established rule may be shaken by revolution and a fierce mob may ride
   roughshod over the world. But these things shake not the fact that
   Jesus loves you: "My beloved is mine, and I am His."

   Cattle plagues may come and mildews may blast the rising corn, but
   though the fig tree may not blossom, and the flocks may cease from the
   field, and the herds from the stall, yet will I rejoice in the Lord,
   for Jesus loves me still! Jesus is still faithful! Jesus is still true!
   Beloved, you have another thing, namely this Truth of God that whatever
   may happen to you, you have God's faithful promise, which holds true,
   that all things shall work for your good. Do you believe this? You need
   it just now and therefore let me recall it to your recollection. It is
   true that you cannot see the good in the trouble itself, but it works
   for good. Sometimes deadly poisons may be antidotes against other
   poisons, and the worst afflictions may be antidotes against far worse
   ones.

   The ship rocks! What a wave was that! What a sea the vessel shipped!
   She rocks again, the sails fly to ribbons. How the yards are snapping!
   The masts will go by the board! The frail ship will be wrecked! The
   danger is imminent, she must be wrecked! The rocks are ahead and she
   must be dashed upon them! Not so, you passenger in the ship of
   Providence, not so! Do you see who it is that is at the helm, and do
   you not know that He who steers the ship also wings the winds and gives
   force to the waves? God is not the God of the vessel only, but also of
   the stormy sea! Therefore go where you may be quiet. Take yourself to
   the hind part of the ship near to the Steersman, and go to sleep in
   peace. It is the best thing you can do, for the ship is safe--

   "Though winds and waves assault her keel, He does preserve it, He does
   steer. Even when the boat seems most to reel, Storms are the triumph of
   His art. He will not close His eyes, nor yet His heart." Once more. If
   everything should melt away, yet you have "a city that has foundations,
   whose Builder and Maker is God." Sometimes foreign princes, when they
   have been afraid of a revolution, have invested all their money in the
   English funds, and then they have said, "Now come what may, my
   prosperity is safe." Ah, well, it is a blessed thing to invest all your
   wealth in the heavenly funds and then let the earth go to ruin--our
   treasure is safe. Let the world, like an old water-logged hulk, go down
   if she will--it is a wonder that she keeps afloat so long--let her go,
   I am in the lifeboat which can never sink! And I shall soon be on shore
   where tempests cannot blow.

   Oh, to rest in assured hope, the hope that makes not ashamed! The hope
   that shall never be confounded! The hope that when days and years are
   passed, we shall see the face of Jesus and dwell with Him forever!
   Courage, Brothers and Sisters--our best portion and richest heritage
   remains--and cannot be moved. Rejoice in this, and be of good cheer
   this day!

   Ah, but there are some of you who have only what may be moved, and you
   are, therefore, sure to lose your all! Go away and mourn and lament.
   Better still, go to the Cross, stand under the foot of it, and you
   cannot be shaken there. Look up to the flowing of the Savior's blood
   and trust Him, for nothing can ever shake you then! As for those of us
   who possess the things which cannot be shaken, let us stand fast and be
   of good courage. Whatever may happen during this week, let us play the
   man. Let us show that we are not such little children as to be cast
   down by what may happen in this poor fleeting state of time. Our
   country is Immanuel's land! Our hope is above the sky and therefore
   calm as the summer's ocean! We will see the wreck of everything and yet
   rejoice in the God of our salvation. The Lord fill us with His peace
   for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                            An Immovable Foundation

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING, MAY 13, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" Psalm
   11:3.

   WE are walking along through the vineyard of this Psalm, plucking the
   clusters on the right hand and on the left, when suddenly, with a
   tremendous roar, the "if of our text, like a young lion, leaps out upon
   us. What shall we do with it? Let us play the man, like Samson, and
   rend it as though it were a kid and doubtless we shall find honey in
   it, and shall have again to put forth our riddle, "Out of the eater
   came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." These
   "ifs" are terrible lions, but when Divine Grace enables us to slay
   them, they become good storehouses for sweetness.

   As the children of Israel spoiled the Egyptians and made themselves
   rich from the spoils of their oppressors, both when they left Egypt and
   after the passage of the Red Sea, so let us gather riches of comfort
   and arms for future warfare from this "if which threatens to enthrall
   the mind of the Christian and hold him in the chains of fear and doubt.
   It comes to us as a keen shaft from the camp of the foe, but by the
   Grace of God we will fit it to our string, and with the arms of faith
   shoot it back again and may God in mercy guide it to the joints of some
   foeman's harness.

   This "if" may have a bitter taste at first, but I am persuaded that it
   will have a wholesome effect upon us to use it. Yes, it will yield some
   spiritual sustenance to our souls. We will welcome its searching and
   shaking power now, as it will only tend to prepare us for the time when
   the four winds may come upon our house and the blast of the Terrible
   One be as a storm against the wall. If we use this giant battering ram
   "if," now, it will show us our weakness and our strength so that we may
   correct the one and rejoice over the other.

   We shall take this "if in two ways. First, we shall consider it as an
   "if which is nothing but an "if." And secondly, we shall consider it as
   an "if" which is a great deal more than an "if."

   I. We shall first CONSIDER THIS "IF" AS BEING NOTHING BUT AN "IF." "If
   the foundations are removed, what can the righteous do?" My Brethren,
   there are certain spiritual foundations which God has laid in Zion
   which never can be removed. There are certain foundations against which
   the gates of Hell cannot prevail--which time cannot shake--and which
   eternity will only confirm. If we venture to speak of these foundations
   being removed, it can only be in hypothetical terms and with the word,
   "if"-- for there must always be in our souls the conviction that the
   foundations of God stand sure.

   I will mention a few of these foundation--things which we know cannot
   be removed, but we will ask the question-- if they should be removed,
   what then? First we will take the foundation Book. This Word of God,
   this Revelation of Himself which He has made to us by Prophets and by
   seers, by Apostles and by evangelists, and by His own dear Son. This
   Book we believe to be true even in its jots and tittles. Whatever form
   of thought we may adopt as to the method of inspiration, we believe
   this Book to be inspired throughout, and we accept all its utterances
   as the teachings of the Most High.

   From the first Word of it to the last we give our "unfeigned assent and
   consent" to it as being nothing less and nothing more than the Word of
   Jehovah, the Lord our God. But if it should not be so, what can the
   righteous do, then? If, after all, the attacks of modern skeptics
   should have some force in them. If they can dislodge part of the Word
   of God from its sure resting place. If first one stone shall topple
   from the summit of the battlements and then another shall be loosened
   from the embankment, and by-and-by its enemies should come to work with
   their great bars upon the very lowest and most valuable stones in the
   wall--what then?

   What if the Book should be a delusion? What if it should be false? Ah,
   then, my Brothers and Sisters, what can the righteous do? Oh, it had
   been better for us that we had never been born than that the Bible
   should not be true! Here is the only balm that heals the wounds that
   sin has made! Here is the only bread that satisfies the hungering of
   our spirits! If that is not true, O God, why did You create us, and why
   did You suffer such a Book as that to come across our path to mock us,
   supplying, as it does, all that hope can desire, and all that our
   deepest interests can crave after?

   Oh, cruel God, to permit so sweet a dream to charm us even for a while,
   if it is not true! But oh, Beloved, we come back with a sacred recoil
   to this--it is true--it must be true and if for no other reason because
   it so suits the craving of our inward consciousness. Because it so
   uplifts us out of the natural beggary and meanness of our condition and
   puts us on such a heavenly footing. It makes us commune with the Most
   High and fills us with such rapt and heavenly thoughts! It must be
   true, or else what could we do?

   Cling, then, to the Divine authority of the Scriptures with a death
   grip! Let those give up the Inspiration of the Bible who can afford to
   do so, but you and I cannot! Let those cast away the sure promise of
   God who have got something else to comfort them--who can go to their
   philosophy or turn to their self-conceit. But as for you and for me, it
   is a desperate matter for us if this Book is not true, and therefore
   let us be ready to defend it at all costs, and if need be, to die for
   it! Oh, Brethren, it were better to die, this Book being true, than to
   live, this Book being false!

   It were better for us that all the miseries of this life should fall
   upon us, this Book being an unmoved foundation, than for all the joys
   of life to be ours if this Book is once taken away. Clasp it to your
   heart! Enfold it in your bosom! Hold it as the very core of your life's
   comfort and the very strength of your existence! Remember that if this
   is removed there is nothing for the righteous to do but despair and
   die. I hope we shall always sing--

   "Should all the forms which men devise Assault my soul with treacherous
   art, I'll call them vanity and lies, And bind this Bible to my heart."

   But now we turn from the foundation Book to the foundation doctrine.
   What is the foundation doctrine? I shall not shock any one of you if I
   say that it is admitted by all evangelical Christians that the standing
   or falling in the Church is that of justification by faith. The Church
   which holds that doctrine is in the body--the church which is tampering
   with that doctrine is not in the body. I will not merely say the church
   that is not holding it, but the church that is not holding it in the
   most distinct form is not to be acknowledged as a part of the body of
   Christ.

   Justification by faith alone is such a Truth of God that it must not be
   hidden. To obscure those words, legible in their own light--"Believe
   and live"--is to commit high treason against the majesty of God and to
   make one's self an outlaw from God and from mercy! The great standing
   or falling doctrine, then, is this--"Whoever believes that Jesus is the
   Christ is born of God." "Therefore we are justified by faith, and not
   by the works of the Law."

   We hold that it is of faith that it might be of Divine Grace through
   Christ Jesus. Holding this Truth of God--that every soul who believes
   in Christ is thereby made a partaker of the merit of His passion and is
   saved--what joy and peace are opened up to us! Some of us live in a
   sense of pardon. Oh, Brethren, this is a river to swim in, when we can
   sing--

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

   Oh, the blessedness--as Ainsworth translates it--"The heaped-up
   blessedness of the man whose iniquity is forgiven, and whose sin is
   covered." Oh, the blessedness of being justified by faith, and of
   possessing peace with God! But if that is removed, what can the
   righteous do? My Brethren, the righteous can do nothing! They can do
   nothing, and they must at once give up their peace, give up their joy,
   give up their hopes--and then give up existence altogether. This one
   thing I know--though I have preached my Master's Gospel with perpetual
   industry and have sought to honor Him--yet I have no more hope of
   Heaven apart from the merits of Christ than the greatest criminal that
   is banished from his country for his crimes.

   That poor wretch who was, till lately, under sentence of death for many
   murders, would have as good a hope of entering into eternal life as the
   best among you were it not for this precious doctrine--that is to say,
   she would have no hope, and you would have no hope, either--for we are
   all alike shut up under condemnation. Good or bad, righteous or
   unrighteous, we are all alike condemned under the Law of God, and there
   would be no more hope for one than for another if this doctrine of
   salvation by faith in Christ were not true. We are all in this one boat
   together--I mean as many of us as have believed--the weakest cannot
   sink unless the ship goes down, and the strongest cannot float unless
   the ship should bear them.

   If this foundation were removed, I will ask you gray-haired saint,
   hoary with many years of service, what could you do? You bow your head
   and say, "Alas, my master, what could I do but die in despair?" I would
   ask the bravest of Christ's Apostles, the most earnest and
   indefatigable of the servants of the living God, what could they do if
   salvation was not the result of faith in Christ, and they would reply
   unanimously, "We were of all men the most miserable if our only hope
   were gone!"

   But oh, Brethren, we will come back to this, that it is by faith in the
   blood of Jesus that we are saved. For this doctrine let us be prepared
   to bear any reproach. And for the spread of this doctrine let us make
   any exertions. Let us publish it to every wind! Let us invoke the help
   of every wave to bear it abroad! My Brothers and Sisters, help those of
   us who are engaged in telling out this precious truth of salvation by
   faith, and then proclaim it far and wide yourselves.

   Distribute it in a printed form! Speak of it with your warm and loving
   lips! Tell it, tell it the wide world over that there is a foundation
   already laid in Zion--a cornerstone elect and precious! Proclaim that
   "other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, Jesus Christ
   the righteous!" Proclaim that "whoever believes in Him is not
   condemned."

   We will now go a step further. We have had the foundation Book and the
   foundation doctrine, and now we come to the foundation fact. The fact
   upon which our faith rests is this, that "God was in Christ reconciling
   the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." The
   great fact on which genuine faith rests is this, that "the Word was
   made flesh and dwelt among us," and that having taken upon Himself the
   form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of man, He became
   obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross, for us.

   The great Truth which makes the Gospel worth proclaiming is the Truth
   that "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners," that Christ
   also has suffered for sin, "the Just for the unjust that He might bring
   us to God." "Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree."
   "For the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we
   are healed." In one word, the great fact on which the Christian's hope
   rests is substitution.

   The vicarious sacrifice of Christ for the sinner. Christ suffering for
   the sinner. Christ's being made sin for us that we might be made the
   righteousness of God in Him. Christ offering up a true and proper
   expiatory and substitutionary sacrifice in the place and stead of as
   many as the Father gave Him, who are recognized by their trusting in
   Him--this is the cardinal fact of the Gospel. Now, if this is true,
   what will we not do? Do? Why, we will sing of Christ in time, and sing
   of Him in eternity! We will sit at the foot of His Cross and--

   "View the flowing Of the Sa vior's precious blood. With Divine
   assurance knowing He has made our peace with God."

   We will praise Him when we get to Heaven and sing, "Unto Him that loved
   us and washed us from our sins in His blood." But--oh, horrible "but"!
   If this is not true--if God was never Incarnate, if God never did in
   the Person of His Son Jesus bleed and die--if no Atonement was ever
   made for human guilt, then howl because of it! Let each man put his
   hands upon his loins as a woman in childbirth, and let sorrow pierce
   the heart of every child of Adam--for sin must be punished--and if it
   was never punished in Christ it must be punished upon each one of us!
   Wrath, and a certain terrible looking for judgment and fiery
   indignation--these are all that await us!

   "As when a man wipes a dish and turns it," said the Prophet, even so
   will it be with us--wiped out and turned upside down if it were not
   true that Christ died. As when the potter with a rod of iron breaks the
   vessel into shivers, so should we, too, be broken into shivers with
   each particle to be full of pain and covered with grief, if it were not
   that Jesus died. Oh, if this foundation were removed what could we do?
   But it cannot be removed! We know it! We rest on it! We trust in it!
   And our joy is to hold it, to understand and to study it, to be
   actuated and moved by it in every part of our life and conversation.
   But if it were removed what could the righteous do?

   There is just now, and there has been for many years, a direct attack
   made upon the doctrine of the Atonement. Men cannot bear substitution.
   They gnash their teeth at the thought of the Lamb of God bearing the
   sin of man. Ah, but we will proclaim it in defiance of them and hurl it
   in their teeth! We will neither dilute it, nor change it, nor fritter
   it away in any shape or fashion. It shall still be Christ a positive
   Substitute, bearing human guilt and suffering in the place of men, for
   if this is not so what could we do?

   We cannot, dare not give it up for it is our life! I have thus given
   you three matters, and now just a word upon another point, namely, the
   foundation work. The blood of Jesus, Brethren, must be applied by the
   Spirit of Divine Grace, and the foundation of our inward confidence
   must be in the work of Grace in our own souls.

   Now the foundation in us was laid in repentance, and in faith in
   Christ--and we have gone on to build thereon, much, I am afraid, of
   wood, hay, and stubble, but still, something of gold, and silver, and
   precious stones. Now, if the Grace of God could cease to work. If the
   eternal love of Jehovah could be removed, and if the effectual might of
   the Holy Spirit's arm could be withdrawn, what could you and I do?
   Would it not be as hard to get to Heaven by the Gospel as by the Law if
   it were not for the work of Grace in us?

   Brethren, Calvary is no nearer to Heaven than Sinai if the Spirit of
   Grace works not in us. If Christ is not crucified in us, His being
   crucified for us will be of no avail! We must have Christ formed in us
   the hope of Glory. Now, what do you say, Brothers and Sisters? Suppose
   this foundation work were all removed--what could you do? Do? Why the
   brightest of you would become as smoking flax without light! You who
   are pure as crystal now in your daily life would become like a polluted
   stream! You who now are the delight and joy of the Church of God would
   be as reprobate silver cast out, or as salt that has lost its savor and
   is fit neither for the land nor for the dunghill.

   We must ever keep in mind that we are only channels for Divine
   Grace--we are not even pools and reservoirs--we must have a continual
   supply of Divine gifts. We must have an abiding union with the fountain
   of all good or we should soon run dry. And only as fresh streams flow
   into us are we kept from becoming mere dry beds of sand and mire. But
   we know that He will never fail us. This spring is high up in Heaven
   near the Eternal Throne and it ripples down through the means of Grace
   from the God of all Grace--and we receive daily of His fullness Grace
   for Grace.

   Joyful truth for us, that because He lives we must live also! Till
   Jesus bows His head in death, we, the living members of His mystic
   body, can never droop or fail. His might is our strength. His resources
   our never failing supply. And we, through His Spirit, are daily tended
   and sustained--

   "Oh! To Grace, how great a debtor, Daily I'm constrained to be!"

   Were that Grace once gone what should I do? Hold fast, then, to that
   which you have received, that no man take your crown. Cling to the
   doctrine of the work of the Spirit with a death grip! Never give it up.
   Having begun in the Spirit do not seek to be made perfect in the flesh.
   Do not look to excitement. Do not let your faith stand in the wisdom or
   the speech of man, but in the power of God, and in the invincible might
   and majesty of the Holy Spirit! If you go anywhere else, the foundation
   will be removed and then what can you do? O God! You have begun the
   good work and You will carry it on and perfect it unto the day of
   Christ. This foundation shall not be removed.

   Once more, there is also a foundation hope--something which we may, I
   think, call a foundation--since our joy and our peace very much depend
   upon it. You and I possess tonight, dear Friends, a hope which is
   sometimes called "a blessed hope," and at another time, "a good hope."
   It is a hope partly that Christ may come and a hope that when He comes,
   "we shall be like He, for we shall see Him as He is." It is a hope that
   whether He comes in our lifetime or not, yet, if we fall asleep, we
   shall sleep in Jesus. We have a hope that sometimes bursts out into a
   song and then we tune it in warbling such as this--

   "On Jordan's stormy banks I stand, And cast a wishful eye To Canaan's
   fair and happy land, Where my possessions lie."

   Or sometimes it is--

   "Jerusalem! My happy home! Name ever dear to me.
   When shall my labors have an end, In joy, and peace, and you?"

   Or, perhaps it is--

   "Jerusalem the golden, With milk and honey blest. Beneath your
   contemplation
   Sink heart and soul oppressed.
   We know not, oh! we know not,
   What joys await us there!
   What radiance of Glory,
   What bliss beyond compare."

   At any rate, whatever notes we may use to warble out the hope, the hope
   is still the same--

   "It is the hope, the blissful hope,
   Which Jesus' Grace has given.
   The hope when days and years are past,
   We all shall meet in Heaven." Now, if that were removed, what could we
   do?--
   "What is there here that I should wait? My hope's alone in You.
   When will You open Glory's gate, And take me up to You?"

   "Whom have I in Heaven but You? There is none upon earth that I desire
   besides You." Take Heaven away, and the world to come, and what a
   dreary desert, what blackness and darkness, what a gulf of mad despair
   it would speedily become! But, oh, Brethren, that foundation cannot be
   removed! Because He lives, we shall live also. "Father, I will that
   they, also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, that they
   may behold My Glory." That hope abides sure and steadfast! Let us think
   of it more than we do.

   Let us plume our wings of flight every now and then. Come, you birds of
   Heaven, you eaglets of God--how is it that you keep below upon the
   earth as though you had no wings? Come, plume your callow pinions and
   begin to fly! The clouds are your atmosphere--beyond there is the blue
   sky where all is fair and clear. Up with you! Up, nearer to God, nearer
   to eternity, nearer to your home, nearer to your everlasting mansion.
   Remember that you--

   "Nightly pitch your mo ving tent A day's march nearer home," and let
   the thought that you shall soon be--"Forever with the Lord" come over
   your hearts and sweep like the touch of some master harpist's hand as
   he sweeps the ten-stringed instrument and wakes it up to thunders of
   sacred melody. Be glad in the Lord, you righteous, and shout for joy,
   you upright in heart! This foundation cannot be removed and you need
   not fear!

   II. And now we change our note for a few minutes. Let us TAKE THIS "IF"
   AS BEING SOMETHING MORE THAN AN "IF." The foundations may be
   removed--not the spiritual foundations at all, but the temporal
   foundations. The foundations of civil government, the foundations of
   commerce, the foundations of one's estates, the foundations of trust
   between man and man--these may be removed. They have been grievously
   and terribly shaken during the last few days.

   War may arise. There seem to be many indications of a coming tempest
   and when the eagles are gathered together to the prey, the fight will
   probably thicken. And instead of a few combatants it may be that there
   will be a multitude of nations engaged in a terrible slaughter and the
   foundations of the various kingdoms of Europe may be removed.
   Revolution, too, may come. We remember 1848, and some of you, perhaps,
   are old enough to go farther back than that, to dates when revolutions
   were the order of the day.

   There are some who are always putting on their blue spectacles and who
   can see very wonderful revolutions here. May their heads never ache
   before their predictions come to pass, but still these things may
   occur, for men are men, and if they should, what then? If the
   foundations should be removed, what would the righteous do? A panic has
   come and man does not trust his fellow man. But he plays the fool, the
   wild lunatic in the street, destroying commerce for the sake of
   commerce--and to get gain, himself--destroying the tree that bears the
   fruit.

   I suppose no greater proof of folly could have been known in the
   nineteenth century than might have been seen last Friday in Lombard
   Street. If anyone had whistled for a thousand fools, he need not have
   traveled a thousand yards, but might have found them on the spot! Now,
   if there should be such a thing, there may be ground for all this fear,
   for the foundations of human things are not made by God--they are only
   man's management, and consequently they may be shaken--but what then? I
   am going to suppose the very worst--that the social fabric is rocking
   like the walls of old Jericho and that the very foundations are
   falling.

   I will even suppose that the cornerstone is being removed. What then?
   What can the righteous do? Well, he can do as well as another man and
   he can do a great deal better! Let me tell you what he can do. The
   first thing he can do, if the worst comes to the worst, is that he can
   bear it with a holy equanimity. He can say, "The Lord gave, and the
   Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." If the ship is
   wrecked, his treasure is not aboard it. He knows that if the banks
   should break, he will only part with some of his odd spending
   money--His true treasure is up there--not in an iron chest where the
   burglar can break through, but--

   "Hid with Christ in God
   Beyond the reach of harm," so that if the worst comes, he can still
   fold his arms and say, "It is written, 'I will never leave and never
   forsake you,' and so long as I have bread to eat and raiment to put on,
   so long will I bless the name of the Lord Most High from the rising of
   the sun to the going down of the same."

   Now, dear Friends, prove this if it should happen to you. Do not do as
   the worldling does, who puts his hand to his fevered brow and says, "I
   am a ruined man!" You cannot be a ruined man. Do not say, "I have lost
   my all!" You cannot lose your all--your all is Christ--and Christ is
   not to be lost. Just accept the blow. Kiss the rod. Touch the hand that
   smites, and say, "Blessed be You, my Father, for it is the Lord."

   Then the Christian not only bears the worst patiently but the next
   thing he can do is to hope for the best cheerfully. I think if there is
   any man who can see clearest, even a spot of blue sky, it should be the
   Christian. "Oh," he says, "things are not what they seem. The dark
   cloud has a silver lining! Light is sown for the righteous and gladness
   for the upright in heart." It is very much in the struggle of life to
   keep a brave heart. And you, Christian, have many arguments for doing
   so. Why bow your head at yonder crested billow as though you should be
   drowned by it? O Man, it will only wash your face!

   It is all that it will do for you, and you shall lift your brow, when
   the spray has cleared it, towards Heaven, and shall see your God the
   better because the dirt is washed out of your eyes. Therefore, look
   cheerfully for something bright in the midst of the darkness. Out of
   all this apparent loss, God can bring for you true gain in spiritual
   things. You may part with things temporal with equanimity, if they are
   likely to be restored to you transmuted by God's alchemy into things
   spiritual and eternal.

   If God takes away from His people, He can restore again, as in the case
   of Job, twice as much as they had before, even in worldly goods--and
   with these a gracious work of His Spirit in the heart--which is more to
   be desired than gold, yes, than much fine gold. Adam was laid asleep
   and God took a rib and made it into a helpmeet for him. If God shall
   take anything from you, yes, though it lies near your heart, do not
   mourn as one that has no hope.

   In patience possess your soul. Rest on the Lord, for He will bring it
   to pass that out of all this shall come a spiritual power which, in
   after days shall gladden your heart and make you the joyful parent of
   much good to others in this world of sin and woe. Christ became poor
   that He might make many rich. And in His poverty He was as a lamb
   before its shearers dumb, and opened not His mouth. His prayer was,
   "not My will, O Father, but Yours be done." So may we hold our peace,
   if God has done it. Never charge God foolishly, but say, "The Lord gave
   and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

   If the foundations are removed what can the righteous do? Why, they can
   do one thing--they can do the right. They cannot guarantee results, but
   they can do the right. They cannot tell whether they shall fail in
   business or not, but they can be upright. They cannot tell whether the
   fall of this house or the crash of that bank may injure them, but they
   can tell that they will have clean hands and come out of it all with a
   spotless character. And when everything is lost there is but little
   lost if honor still remains, and if, by Divine Grace integrity is still
   preserved. He that wears the herb hearts-ease in his bosom is richer
   than he that can wear diamonds upon his fingers, if those fingers are
   stained with guilt.

   It is comparatively easy to be correct and upright when these things
   pay--when we can, by them, secure the esteem of our fellow men and that
   confidence which is as good as money to a man in business, because of
   the credit it brings with it. But it is quite another thing to do the
   right when it means to strip oneself of all and to give up long-loved
   and cherished possessions, hopes, and prospects, both for ourselves and
   family.

   This is the hour of temptation when Satan comes with his glory and
   wealth in one hand and a suggestion of evil in the other. He bids us
   open our lap to receive them, reminding us that to deny him is to close
   with injury and loss to reputation, to our business, and to our loved
   families at home. How many have made the dread compact with the Prince
   of Darkness! They have gained the world but lost their soul! They have
   sold their birthright for a mess of pottage and bartered Heaven for
   Hell! Time has been taken and eternity rejected. The honor of men has
   been esteemed more than the praise of God.

   They have grasped the gold and it has been a millstone round their
   neck, and into the deepest depths of woe it has dragged them. Lost!
   Lost! Lost forever! Oh, that men were wise, that they would remember
   this--that they would consider their latter end. For what can a man
   give in exchange for his soul? Come what may, trust in God and do the
   right.

   There is another thing we can do if the foundations are removed,
   namely, if we have a hand to spare we will help a comrade. If the
   foundations are removed and there is a common calamity, when others are
   selfish the Christian man will hear his Savior's words--"You shall love
   your neighbor as yourself." "Well," he says, "it is a time of general
   suffering. And when a boat is at sea with a few survivors from a wreck,
   no man hoards his biscuit--no man keeps that little drop of pure fresh
   water wholly to himself--but like a generous man he divides his biscuit
   with his fellow sufferers and drinks his drop with the rest."

   So will the righteous do. When things are bad they will say, "Now is
   the time for me to exhibit some degree of generosity." I like the
   action of a man who was once waited upon for a subscription, and
   contrary to expectation, gave the minister who asked him a very large
   check--I think it was one hundred pounds. The minister was about to
   retire when the merchant, happening to open one of his letters, found
   that he had lost a vessel worth from ten thousand to twenty thousand
   pounds. He called the minister and said, "You must give me back that
   check, I have just opened a letter and found that I have been a very
   great loser."

   The poor country minister, whose chapel was in a very bad plight,
   looked very blank about the matter. But the merchant said, "I find my
   money is going fast. I suppose I have not made good use of it, and so
   the Master has taken it away, but I will save some of it anyhow." And
   he wrote out another check for five hundred pounds. Now, this was a
   right way of acting--provided, of course, the money was his own--for no
   man has a right to give away other people's property.

   But if it were his own, this was the true and wise pathway to choose to
   make some of it safe--a much better plan than when my lord comes fresh
   from his bank with his money in his hand, and says, "Go and do
   likewise, my brave fellows! Get your money out like this!" And then
   finds five minutes afterwards that somebody else has his money without
   giving him a receipt for the deposit, or anything of the kind--for it
   has gone into the hands of a pickpocket who is not so much to be
   blamed, perhaps, in such cases as he might have been in some others.

   Now, I can recommend to you when things are going bad, to make good
   investments. "Give a portion to seven and also to eight, for you know
   not what evil may be upon the earth." "Make unto yourselves friends of
   the mammon of righteousness, that when you fail they may receive you
   into everlasting habitations." Once again. There is something more
   which the righteous man can do if the foundations are removed, and that
   is, he can trust in God that it will be well in the end. The worldling
   says, "It will be all the same a hundred years from now." The Christian
   says, "I do not want to look so far ahead as that. It is all right
   now."

   But the wind blows! "It is all right." But the waves dash! "It is all
   right." But all the sails are reefed! "It is all right!" But the ship
   flies before the wind! "It is all right." But there are rocks ahead!
   "It is all right." Why? "Because He who is at the helm knows all about
   it. He created both wind and wave and He knows how to cope with the
   storm. I cannot see that it is right, but I know that it is, and I walk
   by faith, and not by sight." Oh, Christian, this is what you can do! If
   the foundations are removed you can bring faith into heavenly exercise,
   and you can sail against the wind.

   The night may be dark and dreary but it will usher in the brighter
   morn! And merrily will the celestial music and songs greet his ears as
   the fresh dawning light triumphs over the fleeing darkness and spreads
   itself till it bathes with its splendor all things which were even in
   the darkness working together for the good of God's people. Yes, the
   rough March winds and the dreary April showers were all fulfilling
   their task then--and now we can see it and rejoice in it as well as in
   their result. We will sing in our dungeon with Paul and Silas, for all
   is well now as it will be hereafter in Heaven. It is only in degree and
   realization that earth's joys differ from Heaven's to the true Believer
   in Christ.

   Lastly, if the foundations are removed, the righteous can commune with
   Christ therein. We should never have such fellowship with Jesus as we
   do if we had not such troubles as we have. You cannot see the stars in
   the daytime but they tell us that if you go down into a well you can.
   Sometimes God sinks wells of trouble and puts His servants into
   them--and then they see His starry promises. You might hunt in vain for
   glowworms by day, but they shall all be seen at night--and so shall the
   comfortable words and thoughts of Holy Scripture.

   The fireflies shall flash best at night when the sunlight is gone, and
   so oftentimes the light of the promises is better seen in the night of
   trouble than in the day of outward prosperity. The black foils of
   trouble shall bring out the brighter jewel of Divine Grace. You cannot
   know Christ except by following in His footsteps. Poverty will reveal
   Him who for our sakes became poor. Sickness will show Him whose visage
   was more marred than any man's. Shame will teach you His shame--and
   suffering will reveal to you His suffering.

   And even death itself, which shall remove the foundations, shall give
   you conformity to His death that you may have part in His resurrection.
   Courage then, my dear Brothers and Sisters, and to the question, "If
   the foundations are removed, what can the righteous do?" give this
   answer, "We can do as the righteous ought to do. We can do as God
   enables us to do." Let us go and show the world what that will be and
   let the superiority of our faith and of our religion reveal itself in
   our times of darkness and in our hours of suffering.

   I have been thinking all the while I have been thus talking that this
   text has an application to those who are not righteous because if the
   righteous cannot do anything if the Grace of God fail, then what can
   the wicked do? They can do nothing, but then they can do as much as the
   righteous, who can do nothing either--and so here is comfort for the
   very worst, and for those who feel themselves to be farthest from God.
   So long as the foundation stands there is hope for every soul that
   believes, and though you are the worst of the worst, yet if you trust
   Christ there is hope for you! Though there would not be any if the
   foundations were removed, even if you were the best of the best.

   Come, then, needy Sinner! Come, though years of sin have heaped up
   their iniquities upon you! Come to Jesus--He can cleanse you. Trust
   Him, trust Him! Trust Him now, and you are saved and shall be His in
   the day of His appearing! Build on this foundation! Christ Jesus died
   for the ungodly. Trust Him to save you and when the floods arise, and
   the rain descends, and the winds blow, your house shall never fall
   because it is built upon a rock, a foundation that can never be
   removed!

   I would that some here tonight would learn to leave the treacherous
   path of sin and seek an interest in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
   Do you know that the road you tread is undermined and that sooner or
   later you will fall through, and sink on, on, on through the grave into
   the pit which has no bottom, the lake which burns with fire and
   brimstone? Turn! Turn! Why will you die? There is a sure foundation
   which cannot move--on which you may build and never fear an overthrow!

   Come, then, with all your load of guilt, and rest at once and forever
   on Him who says, Come unto Me, and him that comes I will in nowise cast
   out. Heaven and earth may pass, but He will save to the uttermost all
   who come by faith to Him. God bless these remarks to you according to
   His will, for Jesus' sake. Amen.--

   "Yes! He is mine! And nothing of earthly things,
   Not all the charms of pleasure, wealth, or power,
   The fame of heroes, or the pomp of kings
   Could tempt me to forego His love an hour.
   'Go, worthless world,'I cry, 'with all that's yours.
   Go I to my Savior's am, and He is mine.
   Whatever may change, in Him no change is seen,
   A glorious sun that wanes not, nor declines.
   Above the clouds and storms He walks unseen,
   And sweetly on His people's darkness shines:
   All may depart--I fret not, nor repine,
   While Imy Savior's am, and He is mine."
     __________________________________________________________________

                           Joy And Peace In Believing

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 20, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Joy and peace in believing.'" Romans 15:13.

   I WOULD address myself, this morning, to a special class and if there
   should be no spiritual instruction for others, I trust that they will
   follow what is said with their prayers, that the word may be useful to
   those for whom it is mainly intended. There are a large number of
   persons who profess to have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ but who
   assert that they have no joy and peace in believing. They do not make
   this profession by union with the Christian Church or in any open
   manner, but when they are pushed upon the matter of personal salvation,
   they will sometimes tell us, "I do believe in Christ, but still I am so
   unhappy, I am so miserable, that I cannot believe that I am saved."

   That statement being tantamount to this--that the Word of God declares
   that whoever believes in Jesus is not condemned--but they assert that
   they have believed in Jesus and nevertheless they are haunted with
   fears of condemnation which lead them to believe that they cannot have
   been delivered from the wrath to come. Now, I shall suppose that the
   persons whom I am trying to address this morning are sincerely anxious
   to be saved and that they are not raising this difficulty by way of
   cavil. If they are cavilers, I shall not attempt to deal with them this
   morning.

   Such persons need a discourse to themselves. I am speaking to tender
   hearts, or to those who desire to have tender hearts--to those who have
   their faces towards Jerusalem though as yet they travel in the dark. If
   you are really desirous to obtain joy and peace through believing, we
   trust God may bless you to the obtaining of it this morning. We
   suppose, also, that the persons whom we are addressing are not laboring
   under any bodily sickness such as might bring on hypochondria feelings
   and those despondencies which are rather the symptoms of physical
   disease than marks of spiritual feeling.

   I believe there are some persons who are beyond the reach of the
   preacher and who must be dealt with, if treated at all successfully, by
   the ordinary physician. Their case has gone beyond the limits of
   argument. Their mind has got into a disordered condition and the body,
   also, and therefore both body and mind must be set right by some other
   means before it is likely that spiritual reasons will prevail upon
   them. Provided you are sane people in some measure of health, and that
   you are sincere persons, we think that with God's blessing we may be
   the means of comfort to you this morning.

   At any rate, we will try. And we will begin by making two observations.
   We grant to you that joy and peace are exceedingly desirable things. We
   hope you will never be satisfied until you get them and enjoy very much
   of them--until you are, in fact, as the text puts it--filled with joy
   and peace. For your own sakes this is very desirable because your
   present condition is a very mournful and unhappy one. It is still more
   desirable for the sake of your acquaintances and kinsfolk, for they set
   down your present despondency to your religion, and so you tend,
   unwittingly, to dishonor the Cross of Christ.

   I know you would be willing to suffer anything sooner than that the
   Gospel should be evilly spoken of. But it is evilly spoken of through
   you, and necessarily so, because you cannot expect carnal persons to
   have a discernment between your religious feelings, which are right,
   and those which are wrong. They set your present despondency down to
   religious feelings of some sort and with one sweeping verdict they are
   apt to condemn religion altogether.

   Now you do not wish this, surely for their own good--for you desire
   them to find peace. With all your anxiety for yourself you are not
   selfish--you wish others to enjoy peace in Christ. You would consent, I
   believe, to the loss of your right eye if your husband and children, if
   your wife and friends might be reconciled to God by the blood of the
   Cross. At present, however you are standing in the way--and instead of
   assisting by proving that "her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all
   her paths are peace," you are doing an injury to those dear immortal
   souls by the misrepresentation which you give them. I grant again that
   this is done unwittingly, but alas, you are as surely injuring them as
   if you designed to do them evil.

   But a second remark I must also venture upon, namely that you must take
   care, while valuing joy and peace, that you do not overestimate them.
   Remember that joy and peace are, though eminently desirable, not
   infallible evidences of safety. There are many persons who have great
   joy and much peace who are not saved. Their joy springs from a mistake,
   and their peace is the false peace which does not rest upon the rock of
   Divine Truth but upon the sand of their own imaginations. It is
   certainly a good sign that spring is come, that you find the weather to
   be so warm, but there are very mild days in winter.

   I must not infer because the heat of the sun is at such and such a
   degree, that therefore it is necessarily spring. And, on the other
   hand, we have had very cold days this week--cold days which, if we had
   to judge by such evidences, might have convinced us that we were rather
   in November than in May. And so, joy and peace are like fine sunny
   days. They come to those that have no faith that are in the winter of
   their unbelief, and they may not visit you who have believed. Or, if
   they come, they may not stay, for there may be cold weather in May and
   there may be some sorrow and some distress of mind even to a truly
   believing soul.

   Understand that you must not look upon the possession of joy and peace
   as being the absolutely necessary consequence of your being saved. A
   man may be in the lifeboat, but that lifeboat may be so tossed about
   that he may still feel himself exceedingly ill and think himself to be
   still in peril. It is not his sense of safety that makes him safe--he
   is safe because he is in the lifeboat--whether he is sensible of it or
   not. Understand, then, that joy and peace are not infallible or
   indispensable evidences of safety, and that they are certainly not
   unchanging evidences.

   The brightest Christians lose their joy--and some of those that stand
   well in the things of God, and concerning whom you would entertain no
   doubt--entertain a great many suspicions, however, about themselves.
   Joy and peace are the elements of a Christian, but he is sometimes out
   of his element. Joy and peace are his usual state, but there are times
   when, with fights within and wars without, his joy departs and his
   peace is broken. The leaves on the tree prove that the tree is alive,
   but the absence of leaves will not prove that the tree is dead.

   True joy and peace may be very satisfactory evidences, but the absence
   of joy and peace, during certain seasons, can often be accounted for on
   some other hypothesis than that of there being no faith within. And,
   once more, I pray you, dear Friends, not to seek joy and peace as the
   first and main thing. Let your prayer be, "Lord, give me comfort, but
   give me safety first. Forbid that I should take comfort except from
   Your right hand." Use Toplady's vow, which he puts into verse--

   "/ will not be comforted Till Jesus comforts me."

   Believe that it were better for you to go all your life in darkness and
   to end in everlasting life and light, than to enjoy much of what you
   thought to be heavenly joy here, and then to go into outer darkness,
   where there is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Be anxious
   to be happy, but be more anxious to be holy. Be desirous after peace,
   but be more desirous, still, to get a good hope through Christ from
   which that peace may flow.

   I like the fruit of the tree, but if I transplant the tree and put it
   into my garden, I should like that better. I like the gold from the
   mine, but if I may become the possessor of the mine itself, I should
   much prefer it. I like joy and peace, but I like better, still, that
   sacred faith which looks to Christ and brings me joy and peace as a
   consequence.

   Well now, having thus paved the way by these remarks, we come more
   distinctly to the text. The text speaks of joy and peace in believing.

   I. And the first observation shall be this--THE TEXT MAY BE USED TO
   CORRECT TWO ERRORS very, very common and very dangerous. The first of
   the two errors the text corrects is the error of supposing that there
   is a way of joy and peace through self. This is the broad road that
   leads to death, but it is full of travelers. In different forms and
   ways the most of men are trying to obtain joy and peace through
   something done by themselves, instead of resting upon the finished work
   of the Savior.

   Some look for joy and peace through good works. Now I can suppose that
   if you and I had never sinned, joy and peace would have been the
   consequences of perfect holiness. Adam in the garden must have had joy
   as the result of serving so good a Master, and he must have felt peace
   when at nightfall he could say, "O God, I have kept Your command, and I
   have not touched the forbidden fruit." Still the fear would haunt him,
   "perhaps I may do so," and that dark suspicion would go far to dampen
   his joy and disturb his peace.

   But do you think that this can bring you solid peace? Since you and I
   have broken God's Law, any rational joy and peace are impossible under
   the Covenant of Works, for whatever may be the perfection of our future
   life, it can make no atonement for the past. You have broken the
   alabaster vase--you may preserve the fragments if you will--but you
   cannot make it whole again. You have spoiled the perfection of your
   obedience, and having ruined it, God cannot receive it at your hands.
   YOU may try if you please, but take my word for it, (for I have tried
   it, too), it is as unlikely for you ever to get peace by attempting to
   obey God's Law as it is to gather grapes from thorns or figs from
   thistles.

   Many who are conscious of this run to another form. They say, "Then I
   will do my best, and having done my best I shall, at any rate be able
   to say, 'Well, I can do no more.' " A man who is drowning may say that,
   but it is no solace to him as the billows close over him. In yonder
   burning house the woman in the upper story who has thought over all the
   plans of escaping finds it no sort of comfort to say, "I have done all
   I can and can therefore do no more."

   What if you should do all you can? I am afraid none of you will ever do
   it, yet if you should there is no peace or joy to be found in that.
   Some try the plan of scrupulous observance of all religious ceremonies!
   Now, however much these rites and services may differ externally, yet
   trusting in them is the same in all cases. You, all of you, feel vexed
   with the Romanist that he can rely upon confession, upon penance
   imposed by his priest, or upon the hearing of masses.

   You are indignant with the Puseyite that in a professedly Protestant
   church he should put confidence in his baptism and confirmation, and so
   on. But are you equally indignant with yourself that you should rely
   upon your own prayers or upon your own tears? Is there any more virtue
   before God in your prayers than in the prayers of priests? There
   certainly is no less, but is there any more? Is there any more virtue
   in your tears than there may be in those of a so-called saint? I tell
   you that if you trust in these things, your holiest emotions and your
   best desires are nothing but an antichrist--foul and unclean--which God
   will abhor!

   The way of salvation is not by your holiness nor by your ceremonies,
   nor by anything upon which you can put your hand. "If you lift up your
   hammer upon it," said God of His altar, "you have polluted it." And so
   have you, if you have put your little finger to the work. Unless it is
   all of Christ and not of yourself you have polluted it. And God will
   see to it that no joy or peace shall ever come to you by that road. Do
   not, therefore, try it! Do not try to get joy and peace by penitential
   feelings, by humbling yourself, by consecrating your life, or by any
   attempts of this kind. These things are good, pre-eminently good in
   themselves if they are used lawfully--but to rest in them will be your
   ruin. As to your present peace and joy--it can never be obtained by
   work or by anything from yourself.

   But the text also corrects another common error, namely, turning the
   text upside down. There is such a thing as joy and peace in believing,
   and some simpletons, therefore, infer that there is such a thing as
   believing in joy and peace! I believe there is such a thing but that it
   is of Satan, and that the sooner we are clear of it the better. My dear
   Friend, to get joy and peace through believing is one thing--it is
   God's plan of salvation--but to get your believing as the result of
   your joy and peace is quite another thing. It is of yourself, and is a
   snare of Satan. Beware of it!

   You will get peace just as the florist gets his flower from the
   bulb--but you will never get the bulb from the flower. Take the tulip
   and try it. That fine flower will come up if you put that ugly bulb
   into the ground and give it time. You will get the glory of the flower
   before long. But take the flower and put it into the best prepared
   earth and see if you will ever get the bulb! Now joy and peace are the
   soul's flower. And if you get faith into the ground, joy and peace will
   come of it. But if you get joy and peace first and say, "Now I
   believe," no you do not--it is not believing--it is the very opposite
   of it!

   You must not, therefore, reverse the laws and rules of right procedure.
   Let me just argue this point with you. To trust Christ because you feel
   happy is, in the first place, irrational. Now suppose a man should have
   said during the last panic, "I feel sure that the Bank my money is in
   is safe." Why? "Because I feel so easy about my money." Now anybody
   would say to him, "That is no reason."

   Suppose he said, "I feel sure that my money is safe," and you had said,
   "What is the reason?" "Why because I believe the Bank is safe." "Oh,"
   say you, "that is right enough. That is good reasoning." But here you
   put the effect in the place of the cause and try to make that a cause,
   but you cannot do it. If a man should say, "I have got a large estate
   in India." How do you know? "Why, because I feel so happy in thinking
   about it." "Why, you fool," say you, "that is no proof whatever, not
   the slightest." But if he says to you, "I feel very happy," and you ask
   him why, and he replies, "Because I have got an estate in India." "Oh,"
   say you, "that may be right enough."

   A man may be thankful for that which he rightly possesses, but to make
   joy and peace the evidence of facts from without is supremely
   ridiculous! For a man to say, "I know I am saved, because I am happy,"
   is most irrational--while to be happy because you are saved is right
   enough. Oh, I pray you, take care that you do not act irrationally
   before God! Or take another view of this thought. Suppose I am in fear
   this morning about the health of some dear friend. "Well," I say, "I
   should like to have my friend healthy, but I want to feel myself safe
   about that friend. I do not know anything about the state of my friend
   just now, and I am uneasy. Now I can tell you if I could get to feel
   easy, then I should be convinced that my friend was well."

   "Why," you would justly reply, "there is no connection between the two
   things. The proper mode of procedure is to try and find out whether
   your friend is well, then you will feel easy." But you say, "I should
   believe I was saved if I felt happy." Is there any reason in that? On
   the contrary, first of all believe that you are saved and then
   happiness shall come of it. But you cannot believe that you are saved
   while you persist in doing what God tells you not to do--looking to
   your own joy and peace, instead of looking to the finished work of
   Jesus Christ.

   While this is illogical and inconsistent it is also very irreverent.
   You say to God, "O God, You tell me to trust Christ and I shall be
   saved. Well, I cannot trust Christ but I can trust my own feelings. And
   if I were very happy I could believe that He would save me." Oh let the
   words I have spoken be forgiven, if they sound like blasphemy, but I
   think they have the essence of blasphemy in them. What? Are my poor
   changeable frames of feeling to be set up in preference to the word of
   Christ? He tells me if I trust Him I shall be saved, and I reply to
   Him, "I cannot trust Your word, Jesus, but I could rely upon it if I
   felt so-and-so." That is to say I could trust myself but I cannot trust
   Him. Weep, dear Friends, that you should have been guilty of such
   irreverence, and do not persist in it!

   Once again, is it not very egotistical? Here is a person who has God to
   deal with and has the Divine promise--"He that believes on Him is not
   condemned." And instead of confiding in this, he says, "No, I shall
   believe nothing which I do not feel. When I feel I am saved, I shall
   believe it. When I have joy in consequence of being saved, then I will
   trust Christ to save me." That is, "I will trust Him for nothing, but I
   will set up my own feelings and my own knowledge over and above the
   promises and the positive declarations of a dying Savior."

   May the Lord forgive you, my dear Friends, who are in this state of
   heart, for being so guilty in this thing. I think, if nothing else
   should make you feel your sinnership, you ought to feel it on this
   account--that you find it hard to trust Christ. If you were what you
   should be, remember that to trust Christ would be the natural outgoings
   of your nature. But because your nature is what it ought not to be, it
   becomes so hard for you to trust the truthful One while you think it so
   easy to trust in what is fickle as the wind and false as the deceitful
   sea.

   Well, I have just exposed these two matters and want your patient
   attention while I seek to bring out the truth of the text. We are
   finished with the errors that are not in it--now for the Truth of God
   that is in it.

   II. The great truth of the text is THAT BELIEVING IN CHRIST IS THE TRUE
   GROUND FOR JOY AND

   PEACE. What is believing in Christ? In one word it is trusting Christ.
   He is sent of God to save sinners and those sinners who trust in Him to
   save them are saved. Faith then, the faith which is the ground of our
   joy and peace, is a simple trust in Christ.

   Now I feel sure, from what we understand of mental science as well as
   from the teaching of God's Word and one's own experience, that if a man
   unfeignedly trusts Christ, he must, in the main, have joy and peace. I
   think you will see this. There is a sinner who feels himself guilty
   before God, but he hears enough of the Gospel to understand that God
   has devised a plan of salvation. The very believing of that must give
   some sort of peace.

   The sinner would say, "I thought I could not be saved, but now the very
   whisper of that word, 'Savior,' gives me some hope. The black thought
   that it is impossible for me to be saved is gone. There is evidently a
   possibility, for there is a desire on God's part, or else He would not
   have provided a plan by which men might be saved." When, however, the
   sinner comes to look at the Gospel more carefully, he perceives, in the
   suitability of the plan, another cause for joy. "Why," he says, "I see
   it is thus--God will save me not on account of anything I do or am, but
   out of pure Divine Grace! I see that He has provided a salvation, not
   for the good, but for the bad-not for those who have something to
   recommend themselves to Him--but for those who have nothing to
   recommend but everything to disqualify them for His favor!

   "And I see," says the sinner, "as I look at the Gospel, that the way to
   get a hold of this is not by feeling any good feeling--if so, it were
   impossible! Not by doing any good works, else it were also beyond my
   power! But I perceive that the method of salvation is that of believing
   in the Savior. Now, if my heart is but right. If I really am desirous
   of salvation, what is it that I am expected to believe?" Already he
   feels a certain sense of joy at the thought of such a plan! By works he
   felt he could not be saved, but he begins to hope that it may be by
   that plan of faith which requires neither good feelings nor good works!

   And so he opens his ears and his heart, too, and says, "Master, what is
   it I am to believe? Only tell me what it is. I am so sick of sin and so
   sad at heart that if I am to have joy and peace in believing, tell me!
   And if it is reasonable, if there is anything in it which a man can
   believe, I am prepared to accept it at once." Very well then, and so
   far we shall be agreed that the mere understanding that there is a
   Savior, and the information that that Savior is to be received by
   believing in Him has a tendency to give some joy and peace.

   But now to the point. When the sinner asks, "What is it I am to believe
   in order to have peace? In whom am I to trust?" he is told that he is
   to look for his salvation, present and to come, wholly from the hands
   of Christ, and then he will be saved. "Oh," says he, "but what sort of
   a Christ is this I am to confide in? Is He worthy of my trust? That is
   all I want to know." And the reply we give to the sinner is this--we
   have trusted Christ for these reasons--

   1. We have trusted Him because of the wonderful union of His Natures.
   He is God, and we know that whatever God undertakes He is able to
   accomplish. But He is Man, and feeling that He is like ourselves, a
   man, we realize that He has the requisite tenderness to deal with such
   poor sinners as we are--compassed about with infirmities. We are
   prepared to rely upon Him because of His Godhead, which renders Him
   Omnipotent.

   We are equally glad to trust Him because of His Manhood, which makes
   Him kind and considerate for our infirmities. It seems to us that if we
   believe Jesus Christ to be God and Man, it is not difficult to place
   ourselves in the hand of Incarnate Deity.

   2. But next, we trust Him because of the evident truthfulness of His
   Character. We have read the four Evangelists through, and we find Him
   scorning every subterfuge. His Character seems to us to be resplendent
   with the Truth of God. We think that no exaggeration was used when it
   was said, "And we beheld His Glory, the Glory of the only begotten of
   the Father, full of Grace and Truth."

   Our Lord seems to us to be the most tender of Men and the most truthful
   of Men, too. We cannot believe that He would lie. Moreover, when we
   consider Him to be God we understand that God cannot lie and we feel
   inclined to think that every promise He has given will be kept. We
   believe that if He undertakes to save, Heaven and earth may pass away
   but He will do what He has promised.

   Now we think this is a good reason for our confidence if there were no
   others. Could we suspect the Savior we should find it difficult to
   trust Him, but as we cannot imagine a cause for suspecting Him, we (and
   oh, that you may be brought to the same pass!) feel shut up to
   believing Him. And when He says, "Come unto Me all you that labor and
   are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," we trust Him and we get
   rest! And we believe that ifyou trust Him you will get rest, too.

   Millions of spirits before the Throne of God all bear witness to the
   trustworthiness of Christ. He did not fail one of them--Mary Magdalene
   or the thief on the cross, or Saul of Tarsus, or even blaspheming
   Peter--they have all found Him able to save to the uttermost them that
   come unto God by Him. And we therefore believe Him because of His
   Nature and of the trustfulness of His Character.

   3. But the main reason, perhaps, why we believe Him is because He tells
   us, and God tells us, that He was sent of God on purpose to save. God
   has set forth Christ. Christ did not undertake this work on His own
   account apart from heavenly authorization. He is called "Messiah," that
   is, the Sent of God.

   Now it seems to us that if God sent Christ on purpose to save, and
   Christ comes into the world and says, "Trust, and I will save you," He
   has God to back Him and the everlasting honor of the Eternal Trinity is
   pledged to every soul that comes to rest on Christ to be saved. I
   venture to say that unless you can make God a liar, you must believe in
   Christ! And if you are not prepared to trust Christ, remember you do
   what John says, and I hope you shudder at the thought of doing it--"He
   that believes not God has made Him a liar, because he believes not the
   record that God gave of His Son."

   4. Another reason why we trust Christ is because we conceive that the
   merit of His sufferings must be great enough to save us. Beloved
   Hearer, if you cannot trust Christ, will you come with me a few
   minutes?

   Can you see the Son of God agonizing in the garden? Your Maker lies on
   the ground. Can you see Him taken before Herod and Pilate, and there
   mocked and scourged and spit upon? Can your eyes endure to see that
   spectacle of grief when the plowers made deep furrows on His blessed
   back? Can you believe that He is very God of very God, and yet is
   suffering thus? Can you see Jehovah grind Him to powder between the
   upper and the nether millstone of His wrath?

   Can you hear Him say, "It is finished"? Can you mark the fearful shriek
   of "Eloi! Eloi! Lama Sabacthani?" Can you believe that this is the Son
   of God--standing for sinners and suffering all this weight of wrath and
   punishment for us-- and yet think that He is not worthy of being
   trusted to do that for which He died?

   Oh, Sinner! Let me tell you, when I heard it said to me, "Look unto
   Christ and be saved," I did look and when I saw God suffering for me,
   the perfect Son of man bleeding for me--the Immaculate and Innocent One
   afflicted for me--and Jehovah Himself suffering for me in the Person of
   His own dear Son, I could not help believing!

   And it does seem to me this morning that if you really believe that all
   this has occurred, and that Christ bids you trust Him, you will not say
   any more, "I cannot trust Him." I hope you will say instead, "I cannot
   help trusting Him." The thing commends itself so to me--if Christ died
   to save--He is able to save.

   5. We have still another reason. After our Lord had died and was buried
   He was put into the tomb, but He could not be held there. On the third
   day He rose again from the dead and now He ever lives to make
   intercession for us. He is gone up on high with this resolve upon His
   heart, that He will plead for sinners, and that every sinner that seeks
   God through Him shall find peace by Him. This day I hope your faith
   believes it. This day the Savior, once slain, stands a living priest
   before the Father's Throne, and this is His plea, "Father, forgive
   them. Father, forgive them."

   Now it is written that He is able to save them to the uttermost that
   come unto God by Him, seeing He ever lives to make intercession for us.
   Now we feel as if a living Savior being what He is and having done what
   He has done must be able to save, and we therefore trust Him.

   Now then, if you wind it all up, and say to me, "Why do you personally
   believe you are saved?" I will tell you. I believe I am saved, I know I
   am--and the ground of my assertion is not because I feel I am nor yet
   because I can preach to you about it, nor because I sometimes or
   generally feel joy and peace--but I believe I am saved because I-God
   knows I do--trust myself wholly and entirely in the hands of Him whose
   business it is to save sinners.

   I find my name in the Bible. Why do you look at me? Have you never
   heard of the little child that sat reading the Bible, and someone said
   to her, "Why do you read that Book so much?" She said, "I have always
   loved to read it since I found my name in it." "Found your name in it!"
   "Yes," said she, "here it is." And she pointed to the text, "This is a
   faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came
   into the world to save sinners." "That is my name, Sir. That is my
   name--for if you are not a sinner, I am."

   I know myself to be laden with iniquity, to be defiled with all sorts
   of sin in my holiest times. I have not one good work that I dare think
   of, much more, trust to! But being what I am, unworthy, undeserving,
   and Hell-deserving, I trust Christ to save me--and if He does not save
   me, He is not as good as His word! But I have no suspicion about that--

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

   And now I get joy and peace! But if I wait for joy and peace, and
   afterwards trust, I go the wrong way to work, and put the cart before
   the horse. Then I have begun to expect a harvest before I sow the
   wheat--to expect the flower before I cultivate the stem--and I shall be
   mistaken and go down to the pit with a curse because I would not obey
   the command, "Believe and live." We will now close with the last point.

   III. Remember that THE PRINCIPLE OF THE TEXT IS OF CONSTANT
   APPLICATION--JOY AND PEACE ALWAYS COME THROUGH BELIEVING. I have told
   you we do not always have joy and peace, but still, in the main, joy
   and peace are the result of believing, and they are results, not
   sometimes, but in every case.

   For instance, as soon as a person is saved one of the earliest
   evidences of spiritual life is a great battle within. Some have the
   notion that as soon as they are saved they shall never have to fight.
   Why, it is then that you begin the campaign! The moment you get into
   Canaan, what are you to do? Canaan is yours now--you have passed out of
   the wilderness. It is all yours--what have you got to do? Why you must
   ever seek to drive those Canaanites out, and you will fight continually
   till you get to Heaven!

   You did not expect this. Well, but you shall have joy and peace while
   the fighting is going on! Is it possible to be fighting with inbred
   sins and yet to have joy and peace? My dear Friends, it is not only
   possible, but it is the only chance we have of victory! I know that
   some of you--and I deeply sympathize with you--are fighting with your
   bad temper and with many other imperfections. But you have not believed
   in Christ, and you have not any joy and peace--and you cannot conquer
   that evil spirit.

   Of course you cannot, because while you are distressed in mind, that
   helps to irritate you! But if you simply believe Jesus, and get joy and
   peace, oh, then you can use the sword against that bad temper of yours!
   You will say to these little worries, "Be off with you! I have
   something more to think of! I have something sweeter to cheer me than
   anything you can bring to annoy me."

   Why, you will say to yourself, "I trust Christ to save me, and I know
   He will do it, for He is no liar, and oh, now it is that I feel peace,
   and now, Lord, help me to overcome that temper of mine! Enable me to be
   holy like You, since You have done so much for me--now lend me
   strength." But you cannot do this, nor hope to conquer except by the
   blood of the Lamb. Go and wash in the fountain He has opened and you
   shall be more than a conqueror through Him that has loved you.

   Furthermore, remember that even after you are secure in Christ, and
   accepted before God, and clothed in Jesus' righteousness, you may
   sometimes get despondent. Christian men are but men, and they may have
   a bad liver or an attack of bile, or some trial, and then they get
   depressed if they have ever so much Divine Grace. I would defy the
   Apostle Paul himself to help it. But what then? Why then you can get
   joy and peace through believing.

   I am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none
   of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to. But I
   always get back again by this--I know I trust Christ. I have no
   reliance but in Him, and if He falls I shall fall with Him. But if He
   does not, I shall not. Because He lives, I shall live also--and I
   spring to my legs again and fight with my depressions of spirit and my
   down castings, and get the victory through it! And so may you! And so
   you must, for there is no other way of escaping from it.

   In your most depressed seasons you are to get joy and peace through
   believing. "Ah!" says one, "but suppose you have fallen into some great
   sin--what then?" Why then the more reason that you should cast yourself
   upon Him! Do you think Jesus Christ is only for little sinners? Is He a
   doctor that only heals finger-aches? Beloved, it is not faith to trust
   Christ when I have no sin! It is true faith when I am foul, and black,
   and filthy--when during the day I have tripped up and fallen and done
   serious damage to my joy and peace--to go back again to that dear
   Fountain and say, "Lord, I never loved washing so much before as I do
   tonight, for today I have made a fool of myself. I have said and done
   what I ought not to have done, and I am ashamed and full of confusion,
   but I believe Christ can save me, even me, and by His Grace I will rest
   in Him still."

   That is the true way of Christian life and the only way of getting joy
   and peace. Go to Christ even when sin prevails. "Yes, but," I hear one
   say, "I am so afraid of presumption." Well, I am not sorry that you
   are, but when you are most afraid of presumption the true way to get
   joy and peace and to be kept from presumption is by believing. They say
   that "like cures like." Certainly belief cures presuming! Trusting
   Christ cures trusting self!

   Dear Friend, when you are afraid of presuming, believe! When you say,
   "Perhaps, after all, I may be cast away," then go to the Cross and say,
   "But if I am I will be cast away trusting in Christ." "Pshaw," says the
   devil, "you fool! Do you think that such a sinner as you can ever be
   perfectly saved?" Say to the devil, "Whether I am a fool or not I do
   not know, but if I am not saved, I will be damned trusting Christ. If I
   am cast away, I will be cast away hanging to the Cross."

   Stick to this, dear Friends, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in
   Him." You cannot help having joy and peace then--

   "And when your eye of faith is dim,
   Still hold on Jesus, sink or swim.
   Still at His footstool bow the knee,
   And Israel's God your strength, your peace shall be."

   Only let your confidence be not in your peace, not in your joy, but in
   Christ.

   Now, I will finish with this declaration. If you can get into such a
   state that all the sins that were ever committed should swear that they
   will block your pathway to peace. If all the suggestions of Hell that
   ever came up from the infernal pit should surround you at one time. If,
   in his own proper person, the very Prince of Hell should stand across
   the way and swear to spill your soul's blood.

   If, in addition to this, the light of God's countenance should be
   hidden from you, and no promise should seem to come comfortably with
   power to your soul. And if, over and above this, every Christian
   minister should be silent, or have no word for you but condemnation,
   and every Christian should turn his back on you and tell you that you
   were a hypocrite, a deceiver, a foul and lost villain. And if
   conscience should come in at the back of these and say, "Every word of
   this is true, you are all this."

   Yet, yet in that fearful extremity, if you can believe, you are saved!
   If you can then come, even in the most abject, filthy, leprous,
   horrible condition--so that the blackness of Hell were whiteness
   compared to you! And the hardness of adamant were softness compared to
   your horrible and obdurate heart--yet if you can come and believe
   Christ is able to save to the uttermost, and you can fling yourself as
   a helpless, lost one at the foot of His dear Cross and resolve to live
   or to die there, you shall never perish! Neither shall any pluck you
   out of His hand, for He will save and you will rest in His love!

   And if you believe in Him you can no more perish than He can perish!
   And, unless He can be untrue and reverse His promise--and cast His
   blood upon the ground to be spilt in vain--it is not possible that a
   soul trusting in Jesus should be lost! May God bless this testimony to
   you! I have brought you to the water, but I cannot make you drink. I
   can bring Christ to you in the preaching, but I cannot bring you to
   Christ. However, I can pray this, that the Lord Jesus may now bless the
   word and seal it home, both to heart and conscience, for His name's
   sake.

   One word, before we part, to those who know neither joy nor peace
   through faith in Jesus and have no wish to share these blessings with
   us because they are satisfied with the delusions of the god of this
   world. Weigh for one moment your so-called joy with ours and put your
   peace as you conceive of peace into the scale against ours. Judge now.
   Is your joy as pure? Has it no alloy? Are your cups without dregs and
   your delights without bitterness? Is it as lasting as ours? Will it
   never be cut off? Does your sun never go down? Do your riches never
   take to themselves wings and fly away?

   Does no moth corrupt, no thief break through and steal? Is it as
   powerful to fill the heart at all times? Does it never pall? Are you
   never weary of your delights? Can you live upon them forever and wish
   no higher good than to have them continued through eternity? Do your
   pleasures ennoble and exalt? Are you led by them ever higher and
   higher? Do they elevate you as a man, and develop every higher power
   and faculty of your being? Do they give you a power and a strength in
   the path of duty, and never lead astray to folly?

   Or are they prone to spread snares for your feet, and to beguile you
   into evil ways? Ponder these questions, and, if I am not mistaken, you
   will learn to despise your present state and seek that joy and peace
   which come through believing in Jesus. May it be so! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                             The Garden Of The Soul

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "A place called Gethsemane." Matthew 26:36.

   THOUGH I have taken only these few words for my text, I shall endeavor
   to bring the whole narrative before your mind's eyes. It is a part of
   the teaching of Holy Writ that man is a composite being--his nature
   being divisible into three parts--"spirit," "soul," and "body." I am
   not going to draw any nice distinctions tonight between the spirit and
   the soul, or to analyze the connecting link between our immaterial life
   and consciousness and the physical condition of our nature and the
   materialism of the world around us. Suffice it to say that whenever our
   vital organization is mentioned, this triple constitution is pretty
   sure to be referred to.

   If you notice it carefully, you will see in our Savior's sufferings on
   our behalf that the passion extended to His spirit, soul, and body--and
   although at the last extremity upon the Cross it was hard to tell in
   which respect He suffered most, all three being strained to the
   utmost--yet it is certain there were three distinct conflicts in
   accordance with this threefold endowment of humanity. The first part of
   our Lord's dolorous pain fell upon His spirit. This took place at the
   table in that upper chamber where He ate the Passover with His
   disciples. Those of you who have read the narrative attentively will
   have noticed these remarkable words in the thirteenth chapter of John
   and the twenty-first verse: "When Jesus had said these things, He was
   troubled in spirit, and testified and said, Verily, verily, I say unto
   you, that one of you shall betray Me."

   Of that silent conflict in the Savior's heart while He was sitting at
   the table no one was a spectator. Into any man's spiritual
   apprehensions it was beyond the power of any other creature to
   penetrate. How much less into the spiritual conflicts of the Man Christ
   Jesus? No one could by any possibility have gazed upon these veiled
   mysteries! He seems to have sat there for a time like one in the
   deepest abstraction. He fought a mighty battle within Himself. When
   Judas rose and went out it may have been a relief. The Savior gave out
   a hymn as if to celebrate His conflict! Then, rising up, He went forth
   to the Mount of Olives.

   His discourse with His disciples there is recorded in that wonderful
   chapter, the fifteenth of John, so full of holy triumph, beginning
   thus, "I am the true vine." He went to the agony in the same joyous
   spirit like a conqueror, and oh, how He prayed! That famous
   prayer--what a profound study it is for us! It ought, properly, to be
   called "The Lord's Prayer." The manner and the matter are alike
   impressive. "These words spoke Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to Heaven
   and said, Father, the hour is come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son
   also may glorify You." He seems to have been chanting a melodious paean
   just then at the thought that His first battle had been fought--that
   His spirit, which had been troubled--had risen superior to the
   conflict, and that He was already victorious in the first of the three
   terrible struggles.

   As soon as this had occurred there came another hour, and with it the
   power of darkness in which not so much the spirit as the soul of our
   blessed Lord was to sustain the shock of the encounter. This took place
   in the garden. You know that after He had come forth triumphant in this
   death struggle He went to the conflict more expressly in His body,
   undergoing in His physical Nature the scourging, the spitting and the
   Crucifixion--although in that third case there was a grief of spirit
   and an anguish of soul likewise which mingled their tributary streams.
   We would counsel you to meditate upon each separately, according to the
   time and the circumstance in which the pre-eminence of any one of these
   is distinctly referred to.

   This second conflict which we have now before us well deserves our most
   reverent attention. I think it has been much misunderstood. Possibly a
   few thoughts may be given us tonight which shall clear away the mist
   from our understanding and open some of the mystery to our hearts. It
   seems to me that the agony in the garden was a repetition of the
   temptation in the wilderness. These two contests with the Prince of
   Darkness have many points of exact correspondence.

   If carefully pondered you may discover that there is a singular and
   striking connection between the triple temptation and the triple
   prayer. Having fought Satan at the first in the wilderness, on the
   threshold of His public ministry, our Lord now finds him at the last in
   the garden as He nears the termination of His mediatorial work on
   earth.

   Keep in mind that it is the soul of Jesus of which we now speak while I
   take up the several points consecutively, offering a few brief words on
   each. THE PLACE OF CONFLICT has furnished the theme of so many
   discourses that you can hardly expect anything new to be said upon it.
   Let us, however, stir up your minds by way of remembrance. Jesus went
   to the GARDEN to endure the conflict because it was the place of
   meditation. It seemed fit that His mental conflict should be carried on
   in the place where man is most at home in the pensive musings of his
   mind--

   " The garden contemplation suits." As Jesus had been accustomed to
   indulge Himself with midnight reveries in the midst of those olive
   groves, He fitly chooses a place sacred to the studies of the mind to
   be the place memorable for the struggles of His soul--

   "In a garden man became
   Heir of endless death and pain."

   It was there the first Adam fell, and it was meet that there--

   "The second Adam should restore
   The ruins of the first."

   He went to that particular garden, it strikes me, because it was within
   the boundaries of Jerusalem. He might have gone to Bethany that night
   as He had on former nights, but why did He not? Do you not know that it
   was according to the Levitical law that the Israelites should sleep
   within the boundaries of Jerusalem on the Paschal night? When they came
   up to the temple to keep the Passover they must not go away till that
   Paschal night was over. So our Lord selected a rendezvous within the
   liberties of the city that He might not transgress even the slightest
   jot or tittle of the Law.

   And again, He chose that garden, among others contiguous to Jerusalem,
   because Judas knew the place. He wanted retirement, but He did not want
   a place where He could skulk and hide Himself. It was not for Christ to
   give Himself up--that were like suicide. It was not for Him to withdraw
   and secrete Himself--that were like cowardice. So He goes to a place
   which He is quite sure that Judas, who was aware of His habits, knows
   He is accustomed to visit. And there, like one who, so far from being
   afraid to meet His death, pants for the Baptism with which He is to be
   baptized, He awaits the crisis that He had so distinctly anticipated.

   "If they seek Me," He seemed to say, "I will be where they can readily
   find Me, and lead Me away." Every time we walk in a garden I think we
   ought to remember the garden where the Savior walked, and the sorrows
   that befell Him there. Did He select a garden, I wonder, because we are
   all so fond of such places, thus linking our seasons of recreation with
   the most solemn mementoes of Himself? Did He recollect what forgetful
   creatures we are, and did He therefore let His blood fall upon the soil
   of a garden, that so often as we dig and delve therein we might lift up
   our thoughts to Him who fertilized earth's soil, and delivered it from
   the curse by virtue of His own agony and griefs?

   Our next thought shall be about the WITNESSES. Christ's spiritual
   suffering was altogether within the veil. As I have said, no one could
   describe it. But His soul-sufferings had some witnesses. Not the
   rabble, not the multitude--when they saw His bodily suffering that was
   all they could understand--therefore it was all they were permitted to
   see. Just so, Jesus had often shown them the flesh, as it were, or the
   carnal things of His teaching when He gave them a parable. But He had
   never shown them the soul, the hidden life of His teaching. This He
   reserved for His disciples.

   And thus it was in His passion. He let the Greek and the Roman gather
   around in mockery and see His flesh torn, and rent, and bleeding--but
   He did not let them go into the garden with Him to witness His anguish
   or His prayer. Within that enclosure none came but the disciples. And
   mark, my Brothers and Sisters, not all the disciples were there. There
   were a hundred and twenty of His disciples, at least, if not more, but
   only eleven bore Him company then. Those eleven must cross that gloomy
   brook of Kidron with Him. And eight of them are set to keep the door,
   their faces towards the world, there to sit and watch--only three go
   into the garden--and those three see something of His sufferings.

   They behold Him when the agony begins, but still at a distance. He
   withdraws from them a stone's cast, for He must tread the winepress
   alone and it is not possible that the priestly Sufferer should have a
   single peer in the offering which He is to present to His God. At the
   last it came to this, that there was only one observer. The chosen
   three had fallen asleep, God's unsleeping eyes alone looked down upon
   Him. The Father's ear alone attended to the piteous cries of the
   Redeemer--

   "He knelt, the Savior knelt andprayed, When but His Father's eyes
   Looked through the lonely garden's shade On that dread agony. The Lord
   of all above, beneath, Was bowed with sorrow unto death!" Then there
   came an unexpected visitor. Amazement wrapped the sky as Christ was
   seen of angels to be sweating blood for us! "Give strength to Christ,"
   the Father said as He addressed some strong-winged spirit--

   "The astonished seraph bowed his head, And flew from worlds on high."

   He stood to strengthen, not to fight, for Christ must fight alone. But
   applying some holy cordial, some sacred anointing to the oppressed
   Champion who was ready to faint, He, our great Deliverer, received
   strength from on high and rose up to the last of His fights.

   Oh, my dear Friends, does not all this teach us that the outside world
   knows nothing about Christ's soul-sufferings? They draw a picture of
   Him. They carve a piece of wood or ivory, but they do not know His
   soul-sufferings--they cannot enter into them! No, the mass of His own
   people do not know them, for they are not made conformable to those
   sufferings by a spiritual fellowship. We have not that keen sense of
   mental things to sympathize with such grieving as He had, and even the
   favored ones, the three--the elect out of the elect--who have the most
   of spiritual graces and who have, therefore, the most of suffering to
   endure, and the most of depression of spirits--even they cannot pry
   into the fullness of the mystery!

   God only knows the soul-anguish of the Savior when He sweat great drops
   of blood! Angels saw it, but yet they could not understand it. They
   must have wondered more when they saw the Lord of Life and Glory
   sorrowful with exceeding sorrowfulness, even unto death, than when they
   saw this round world spring into beautiful existence from nothingness,
   or when they saw Jehovah garnish the heavens with His Spirit, and with
   His hand form the crooked serpent. Brethren, we cannot expect to know
   the length and breadth and height of these things! Only as our own
   experience deepens and darkens shall we know more and more of what
   Christ suffered in the garden.

   Having thus spoken about the place and the witnesses, let us say a
   little concerning THE CUP ITSELF. What was this "cup" about which our
   Savior prayed--"If it is possible let this cup pass from Me"? Some of
   us may have entertained the notion that Christ desired, if possible, to
   escape from the pangs of death. You may conjecture that although He had
   undertaken to redeem His people, yet His human nature flinched and
   started back at the perilous hour. I have thought so myself in times
   past. But on more mature consideration I am fully persuaded that such a
   supposition would reflect a dishonor upon the Savior.

   I do not consider that the expression "this cup" refers to death at
   all. Nor do I imagine that the dear Savior meant for a single moment to
   express even a particle of desire to escape from the pangs which were
   necessary for our redemption. This "cup," it appears to me, relates to
   something altogether different. Not to the last conflict, but to the
   conflict in which He was then engaged. If you study the words--and
   especially the Greek words--which are used by the various Evangelists,
   I think you will find that they all tend to suggest and confirm this
   view of the subject.

   The Savior's spirit, having been vexed and having triumphed, was next
   attacked by the Evil One upon His mental Nature, and this mental Nature
   became, in consequence, most horribly despondent and cast down. As when
   on the pinnacle of the temple the Savior felt the fear of falling, so
   when in the garden He felt a sinking of soul, an awful despondency, and
   He began to be very sorrowful. The "cup," then, which He desired to
   pass from Him was, I believe, that cup of despondency and nothing more.

   I am the more disposed so to interpret it, because not a single word
   recorded by any of the four Evangelists seems to exhibit the slightest
   wavering on the part of our Savior as to offering Himself up as an
   atoning Sacrifice. Their testimony is frequent and conclusive--"He set
   His face to go towards Jerusalem." "I have a baptism to be baptized
   with, and how am I straitened till it is accomplished." "The Son of Man
   goes, as it is written of Him." You never hear a sentence of reluctance
   or hesitancy. It does not seem to be consistent with the Character of
   our blessed Lord, even as Man, to suppose that He desired that final
   cup of His sufferings to pass away from Him at all.

   Moreover, there is this, which I take to be a strong argument--the
   Apostle tells us that He was "heard in that He feared." Now, if He
   feared to die, He was not heard, for He did die. If He feared to bear
   the wrath of God, or the weight of human sin, and really desired to
   escape from them, then He was not heard, for He did feel the weight of
   sin, and He did suffer the weight of His Father's vindictive wrath.
   Thus it appears to me that what He feared was that dreadful depression
   of mind which had suddenly come upon Him so that His soul was very
   heavy. He prayed His Father that that cup might pass away--and so it
   did--for I do not see in all the Savior's griefs afterwards that
   singular overwhelming depression He endured when in the garden.

   He suffered much in Pilate's hall. He suffered much upon the tree. But
   there was, I was almost about to say, a bold cheerfulness about Him
   even to the last, when for the joy that was set before Him He endured
   the Cross! Yes, when He cried, "I thirst," and, "My God, My God, why
   have you forsaken Me?" I think I notice a holy force and vigor about
   the words and thoughts of the Sufferer which not the weak and trembling
   state of His body could extinguish! The language of that twenty-second
   Psalm, which seems to have struck the keynote, if I may so speak, of
   His devotion on the Cross, is full of faith and confidence.

   If the first verse contains the bitterest of woe, the twenty-first
   verse changes the plaintive strain. "You have heard (or answered) Me"
   marks a transition from suffering to satisfaction which it is
   delightful to dwell upon. Now, perhaps some of you may think that if
   this cup only meant depression of the spirits and dismay of the soul it
   was nothing of much significance, or at least it weakens the spell of
   those words and deeds which twine around Gethsemane. Permit me to beg
   your pardon. I know personally that there is nothing on earth that the
   human frame can suffer to be compared with despondency and prostration
   of mind. Such is the dolefulness and gloom of a heavy soul, yes, a soul
   exceedingly heavy even unto death that I could imagine the pangs of
   dissolution to be lighter!

   In our last hour joy may lighten up the heart, and the sunshine of
   Heaven within may bear up the soul when all outside is dark. But when
   the iron enters into a man's soul he is unmanned, indeed! In the
   cheerlessness of such exhausted spirits the mind is confused. Well can
   I understand the saying that is written, "I am a worm and no man," of
   one that is a prey to such melancholy. Oh that cup! When there is not a
   promise that can give you comfort. When everything in the world looks
   dark. When your very mercies frighten you and rise like hideous
   specters and portents of evil before your view.

   When you are like the brothers of Benjamin as they opened the sacks and
   found the money, but instead of being comforted said, "What is this
   that God has done unto us?" When everything looks black and you seem,
   through some morbid sensitiveness into which you have fallen, to
   distort every object and every circumstance into a dismal caricature,
   let me say to you, that for us poor sinful men this is a cup more
   horrible than any which inquisitors could mix! I can imagine Anne Askew
   on the rack, braving it out, like the bold woman she was, facing all
   her accusers and saying--

   "I am not she that lets My anchor to fall; For every drizzling mist My
   ship's substantial," but I cannot think of a man in the soul-sickness
   of such depression of spirits as I am referring to, finding in thought
   or song a soothing for his woe.

   When God touches the very secret of a man's soul, and his spirit gives
   way, he cannot bear up very long. And this seems to me to have been the
   cup which the Savior had to drink just then--from which He prayed to be
   delivered--and concerning which He was heard. Consider for a moment
   what depressed His soul. Everything, my Brothers and Sisters,
   everything was draped in gloom and overcast with darkness that might be
   felt! There was the past. Putting it as I think He would look at it,
   His life had been unsuccessful. He could say with Isaiah, "Who has
   believed Our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" "He
   came unto His own, and His own received Him not."

   And how poor was that little success He did have! There were His twelve
   disciples, and one of them He knew to be on the way to betray Him.
   Eight of them were asleep at the entrance to the garden and three
   asleep within the garden! He knew that they would all forsake Him, and
   one of them would deny Him with oaths and curses! What was there to
   comfort Him? When a man's spirit sinks he needs a cheerful
   companion--he needs somebody to talk to. Was not this felt by the
   Savior? Did He not go three times to His disciples?

   He knew they were but men, but then a man can comfort a man in such a
   time as that. The sight of a friendly face may cheer one's own
   countenance and enliven one's heart. But He had to shake them from
   their slumber, and then they stared at Him with unmeaning gazes. Did He
   not return back again to prayer because there was no eye to pity, and
   none that could help? He found no relief! Half a word sometimes, or
   even a smile--even though it be only from a child--will help you when
   you are sad and prostrate. But Christ could not get even that! He had
   to rebuke them almost bitterly. Is not there a tone of irony about His
   remonstrance--"Sleep on now and take your rest"?

   He was not angry, but He did feel it. When a man is low-spirited he
   feels more keenly and acutely than at other times. And although the
   splendid charity of our Lord made that excuse--"The spirit is willing
   but the flesh is weak," yet it did cut Him to the heart and He had an
   anguish of soul like that which Joseph felt when he was sold into Egypt
   by his brothers. You will see, then, that both the past and the present
   were sufficient to depress Him to the greatest degree. But there was
   the future--and as He looked forward to that, devoted as His heart was,
   and unfaltering as was the courage of His soul (for it were sacrilege
   and slander, I think, to impute even a thought of flinching to
   Him)--yet His human heart shrank back in fear!

   He seemed to think--"Oh, how shall I bear it?" The mind started back
   from the shame and the body started back from the pain, and the soul
   and body both started back from the thought of death and of death in
   such an ignominious way--

   "He experienced them all-- The doubt, the strife, The faint, perplexing
   dread. The mists that hang over parting life All gathered round His
   head-- ThatHe who gave man's breath might know The very depths of human
   woe." Brethren, none of us have such cause for depression as the Savior
   had! We have not His load to carry and we have a Helper to help us whom
   He had not, for God, who forsook Him, will never forsake us. Our soul
   may be cast down within us but we can never have such great reason for
   it, nor can we ever know it to so great an extent as our dear Redeemer
   did.

   I wish I could picture to you that lovely Man--friendless like a stag
   at bay with the dogs compassing Him round about and the assembly of the
   wicked enclosing Him, foreseeing every incident of His passion, even to
   the piercing of His hands and His feet, the parting of His garments,
   and the lots cast upon His vesture--and anticipating that last
   death-sweat without a drop of water to cool His lips! I can but
   conceive that His soul must have felt within itself a solemn trembling
   such as might well make Him say, "I am exceedingly sorrowful even unto
   death." This, then, seems to me to be the "cup" which our Lord Jesus
   Christ desired to have passed from Him and which did pass from Him in
   due time.

   Advancing a little further, I want you to think of the AGONY--which we
   have been accustomed to call this scene in the garden. You all know
   that it is a word which signifies "wrestling." Now there is no
   wrestling where there is only one individual. To this agony, therefore,
   there must have been two parties. Were there not, however mystically
   speaking, two parties in Christ? What do I see in this King of Sharon
   but, as it were, two armies? There was the stern resolve to do all and
   to accomplish the work which He had undertaken.

   And there was the mental weakness and depression which seemed to say to
   Him, "You cannot! You will never accomplish it." "Our fathers trusted
   in You and You did deliver them. They cried unto You and were
   delivered. They trusted in You and were not confounded." "But I am a
   worm and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people." So
   that the two thoughts come into conflict--the shrinking of the
   soul--and yet the determination of His invincible will to go on with it
   and to work it out. He was in an agony in that struggle between the
   overwhelming fear of His mind and the noble eagerness of His spirit.

   I think, too, that Satan afflicted Him--that the powers of darkness
   were permitted to use their utmost craft in order to drive the Savior
   to absolute despair. One expression used to depict it I will handle
   very delicately--a word that, in its rougher sense, means, and has been
   applied to persons out of their mind and bereft for awhile of reason.
   The term used concerning the Savior in Gethsemane can only be
   interpreted by a word equivalent to our "distracted." He was like one
   bewildered with an overwhelming weight of anxiety and terror. But His
   Divine Nature awakened up His spiritual faculties and His mental energy
   to display their full power. His faith resisted the temptation of
   unbelief.

   The heavenly goodness that was within Him so mightily contended with
   the Satanic suggestions and insinuations which were thrown in His way
   that it came to a wrestling. I should like you to catch the idea of
   wrestling as though you saw two men trying to throw one another,
   struggling together till the muscles stand out and the veins start like
   whipcord on their brows. That were a fearful spectacle when two men in
   desperate wrath thus close in with each other. The Savior was thus
   wrestling with the powers of darkness and He grappled with such
   terrible earnestness in the fray that He sweat, as it were, great drops
   of blood--

   "The powers of Hell united pressed
   And squeezed His heart, and bruised His breast!
   What dreadful conflicts raged within
   When sweat and blood forced through His skin!"

   Observe the way in which Christ conducted the agony. It was by prayer.
   He turned to His Father three times with the same words. It is an index
   of distraction when you repeat yourself. Three times with the same
   words He approached His God--"My Father, let this cup pass from Me."
   Prayer is the great cure-all for depression of spirit. "When my spirit
   is overwhelmed within me, I will look to the Rock that is higher than
   I." There will be a breaking up altogether, and a bursting of spirit
   unless you pull up the sluices of supplication and let the soul flow
   out in secret communion with God! If we would state our griefs to God
   they would not fret and fume within and wear out our patience as they
   sometimes do.

   In connection with the agony and the prayer there seems to have been a
   bloody sweat. It has been thought by some that the passage only means
   that the sweat was like drops of blood. But then the word "like" is
   used in Scripture to signify not merely resemblance but the identical
   thing itself. We believe that the Savior did sweat, from His entire
   Person, great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Such an
   occurrence is very rare, indeed, among men. It has happened some few
   times. Books of surgery record a few instances, but I believe that the
   persons who under some horrifying grief experience such a sweat never
   recover--they have always died.

   Our Savior's anguish had this peculiarity about it, that though He
   sweat, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground so
   copiously as if in a crimson shower, yet He survived. His blood must
   needs be shed by the hands of others, and His soul poured out unto
   death in another form. Remembering the doom of sinful man--that he
   should eat his bread in the sweat of his face--we see the penalty of
   sin exacted in awful measure on Him who stood for sinners. As we eat
   bread this day at the Lord's Table, we commemorate the drops of blood
   that He sweat. With perspiration on his face and huge drops on his
   brow, man toils for the bread that perishes--but bread is only the
   staff of life.

   When Christ toiled to give life itself to men, He sweat, not the common
   perspiration of the outward form, but the blood which flows from the
   very heart itself. Would that I had words to bring all this before you!
   I want to make you see it. I want to make you feel it. The heavenly
   Lover who had nothing to gain except to redeem our souls from sin and
   Satan, and to win our hearts for Himself, leaves the shining courts of
   His eternal Glory and comes down as a poor, feeble, and despised Man!

   He is so depressed at the thought of what is yet to be done and
   suffered and under such pressure of Satanic influence, that He sweat
   drops of blood, falling upon the cold frosty soil in that moon-lit
   garden. Oh the love of Jesus! Oh the weight of sin! Oh the debt of
   gratitude which you and I owe Him!--

   "Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too
   small! Love so amazing, so Divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all!"
   We must proceed with the rich narrative to meditate upon our SAVIOR
   CONQUERING. Our imagination is slow to fix upon this precious feature
   of the dolorous history. Though He had said, "If it is possible, let
   this cup pass from Me," yet presently we observe how tranquil and calm
   He is when He rises up from that scene of prostrate devotion! He
   remarks, as though it were in an ordinary tone of voice, some expected
   circumstance--"He is at hand that shall betray Me. Rise, let us be
   going." There is no distraction now. No hurry, no turmoil, no
   exceedingly sorrow even unto death. Judas comes, and Jesus says,
   "Friend, why are you come?"

   You would hardly know Him to be the same man that was so sorrowful just
   now. One word with an emanation of His Deity suffices to make all the
   soldiery fall backwards. Soon He turns round and touches the ear of the
   high priest's servant and heals it as in happier days He healed the
   diseases and the wounds of the people that flocked round Him in His
   journeys. Away He goes, so calm and collected that unjust accusations
   cannot extort a reply from Him! And though beset on every hand, yet is
   He led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers
   is dumb, so He opens not His mouth.

   That was a magnificent calmness of mind that sealed His lips and kept
   Him passive before His foes! You and I could not have done it. It must
   have been a deep profound peace within which enabled Him to be thus
   mute and still amidst the hoarse murmur of the council and the
   boisterous tumult of the multitude. I believe that having fought the
   enemy within He had achieved a splendid victory! He was heard in that
   He feared, and was now able in the fullness of His strength to go out
   to the last tremendous conflict in which He met the embattled hosts of
   earth and Hell--and yet unabashed after He had encountered them all--to
   wave the banner of triumph and to say, "It is finished."

   Let us ask, in drawing to a conclusion, what is the LESSON FROM ALL
   THIS? I think I could draw out twenty lessons, but if I did they would
   not be so good and profitable as the one lesson which the Savior draws
   Himself. What was the lesson which He particularly taught to His
   disciples? Now Peter, James, and John, open your ears! And you,
   Magdalene, and you, Mary, and you, the wife of Herod's steward, and
   other gracious women, listen for the inference which I am going to
   draw! It is not mine--it is that of our Lord and Master Himself. With
   how much heed should we treasure it up! "What I say unto you I say unto
   all, Watch." "Watch," and yet again, "Watch and pray lest you enter
   into temptation."

   I have been turning this over in my mind to make out the connection.
   Why, on this particular occasion, should He exhort them to watch? It
   strikes me that there were two sorts of watching. Did you notice that
   there were eight disciples at the garden gate? They were watching, or
   ought to have been. And three were inside the garden. They, too, were
   watching, or ought to have been.

   But they watched differently. Which way were the eight looking? It
   strikes me that they were set there to look outwards--to watch lest
   Christ should be surprised by those who would attack Him. That was the
   object of their being put there. The other three were set to watch His
   actions and His words--to look at the Savior and see if they could
   help, or cheer, or encourage Him.

   Now you and I have reason to look both ways, and the Savior seems to
   say as we look upon the agony--"You will have to feel something like
   this, therefore watch." Watch outwards--be always on your watchtower
   lest sin surprise you. It is through sin that you will be brought into
   this agony. It is by giving Satan an advantage over you that the
   sorrows of your soul will be multiplied. If your foot slips your heart
   will become the prey of gloom. If you neglect communion with Jesus, if
   you grow cold or lukewarm in your affections, if you do not live up to
   your privileges you will become the prey of darkness, dejection,
   discouragement, and despair. Therefore, watch, lest you enter upon this
   great and terrible temptation.

   Satan cannot bring strong faith, when it is in healthy exercise, into
   such a state of desolation. It is when your faith declines and your
   love grows negligent, and your hope is inanimate that he can bring you
   into such disconsolate heaviness that you see not your signs, nor know
   whether you are a Believer or not. You will not be able to say, "My
   Father," for your soul will doubt whether you are a child of God at
   all. When the ways of Zion mourn, the harps of the sons and daughters
   of Zion are unstrung. Therefore, keep good watch, you who like the
   eight disciples are charged as sentinels at the threshold of the
   garden.

   But you three, watch inward. Look at Christ. "Consider Him that endured
   such contradiction of sinners against Himself." Watch the Savior and
   watch with the Savior. Brothers and Sisters, I should like to speak
   this to you so emphatically that you would never forget it! Be familiar
   with the passion of your Lord! Get right up to the Cross! Do not be
   satisfied with that, but get the Cross on your shoulders--get yourself
   bound to the Cross in the spirit of the Apostle when he said, "I am
   crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live."

   I do not think that I have had sweeter work to do for a long time than
   when, a few weeks ago, I was looking over all the hymn writers and all
   the poets I knew of for hymns upon the passion of the Lord. I tried to
   enjoy them as I selected them, and to get into the vein in which the
   poets were when they sung them. Believe me, there is no fount that
   yields such sweet water as the fount that springs from Calvary just at
   the foot of the Cross! Here it is that there is a sight to be seen more
   astounding and more ravishing than even from the top of Pisgah!

   Get into the side of Christ--it is a cleft of the rock in which you may
   hide until the tempest is passed. Live in Christ. Live near to Christ
   and then let the conflict come and you will overcome even as He
   overcame! And rising up from your sweat and from your agony you will go
   forth to meet even death itself with a calm expression on your brow,
   saying, "My Father, not as I will, but as You will."--

   "My God, I love You, not because I hope for Heaven thereby,
   Nor because they who love You not
   Must burn eternally.
   You, O my Jesus, You did me
   Upon the Cross embrace.
   For me did bear the nails and spear,
   And manifold disgrace.
   And griefs and torments numberless,
   And sweat of agony!
   Yes, death itself--and all for me
   Who was Your enemy.
   Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,
   Should I not love You well?
   Not for the hope of winning Heaven,
   Nor of escaping Hell.
   Not with the hope of gaining anything,
   Nor seeking a reward
   But as You Yourself have loved me,
   O ever-loving Lord,
   Even so I love You, and will love,
   And in Your praise will sing
   Because You are my loving God,
   And my Eternal King."

   I hope that this meditation may be profitable to some tried Christians
   and even to impenitent sinners likewise. Oh that the pictures I have
   been trying to draw might be seen by some who will come and trust in
   this wondrous Man, this wondrous God who saves all who trust in Him!
   Oh, rest on Him! "Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as
   white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as
   wool." Do but trust Him and you are saved! I do not say you shall be
   saved some day, but you are saved tonight!

   The sin which was on your shoulder, heavy as a burden when you came
   into this house, shall all be gone. Look now to Him in the garden, on
   the Cross, and on the Throne! Trust Him! Trust Him! Trust Him NOW!
   Trust Him ONLY! Trust Him wholly--

   "Let no other trust intrude-- None but Jesus
   Can do helpless sinners good."

   May the Lord bless you, everyone in this assembly, and at the Table may
   you have His Presence. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               Sin Laid on Jesus

   A Sermon

   (No. 694)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, June 10th, 1866, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his
   own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."--Isaiah
   53:6.

   THE VERSE OPENS with a confession of sin common to all the persons
   intended in the verse. The whole of the elect people of God seem to me
   to be here represented; they have all fallen, those of them who have
   lived to years of responsibility have all actually sinned, and
   therefore in common chorus they all say from the first who entered
   heaven to the last who shall enter there, "All we like sheep have gone
   astray." But the confession while thus hearty and unanimous, is also
   special and particular: "We have turned every one to his own way."
   There is a peculiar sinfulness about every one of the individuals; all
   are sinful, but each one with some special aggravation not found in his
   fellow. It is the mark of genuine repentance that while it naturally
   associates itself with other penitents, it also feels that it must take
   up a position of loneliness. "We have turned every one to his own way"
   is a confession importing that each man had sinned against light
   peculiar to himself, or sinned with an aggravation which he at least
   could not perceive in his fellow. This confession being thus general
   and particular has many other traits of excellence about it of which we
   cannot just now speak. It is very unreserved. You will observe that
   there is not a single syllable by way of excuse; there is not a word to
   detract from the force of the confession. It is moreover singularly
   thoughtful, for thoughtless persons do not use a metaphor so
   appropriate as the text: "All we like sheep have gone astray." Not like
   the ox which "knoweth its owner," nor even like the ass which
   "remembers its master's crib nor even like the swine which if it
   wandereth all day long cometh back to the trough at night, but "like
   sheep we have gone astray;" like a creature cared for but not capable
   of grateful attachment to the hand that cares for it; like a creature
   wise enough to find the gap in the hedge by which to escape, but so
   silly as to have no propensity or desire to return to the place from
   which it had perversely wandered; like sheep habitually, constantly,
   wilfully, foolishly, without power to return, we have gone astray. I
   wish that all our confessions of sin showed a like thoughtfulness, for
   to say that we are "miserable sinners" may be an increase of our sin
   unless we have really felt it, to use words of general confession
   without our soul entering into them may be but a "repentance that
   needeth to be repented of," an insult and mockery to high Heaven vented
   in that very place where there ought to have been the greatest possible
   tenderness and holy fear. I like the confession of the text because it
   is a giving up of all pleas of self-righteousness. It is the
   declaration of a body of men who are guilty, consciously guilty; guilty
   with aggravations, guilty without excuse; and here they all stand with
   their weapons of rebellion broken in pieces, saying unanimously, "All
   we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own
   way."

   I hear no dolorous wailings attending this confession of sin; for the
   next sentence makes it almost a song. "The Lord hath laid on him the
   iniquity of us all." It is the most grievous sentence of the three; but
   it is the most charming and the most full of comfort. Strange is it
   that where misery was concentrated mercy reigned, and where sorrow
   reached her climax there it is that a weary soul finds sweetest rest.
   The Savior bruised is the healing of bruised hearts.

   I want now to draw the hearts of all who feel the confession to the
   blessed doctrine set forth in the text: the Lord hath laid on Christ
   the iniquity of us all.

   We shall take the text first by way of exposition; then by way of
   application; and we shalt conclude with serious and I hope profitable
   contemplation.

   I. First, let us consider the text by way of EXPOSITION.

   1. It may be well to give the marginal translation of the text,
   "Jehovah hath made to meet on him the iniquity of us all." The first
   thought that demands notice is the meeting of sin. Sin I may compare to
   the rays of some evil sun. Sin was scattered throughout this world as
   abundantly as light, and Christ is made to suffer the full effect of
   the baleful rays, which stream from the sun of sin. God as it were
   holds up a burning glass, and concentrates all the scattered rays in a
   focus upon Christ. That seems to be the thought of the text, "The Lord
   hath focused upon him the iniquity of us all." That which was scattered
   abroad everywhere is here brought into terrible concentration; upon the
   devoted head of our blessed Lord all the sin of his people was made to
   meet. Before a great storm when the sky is growing black and the wind
   is beginning to howl, you have seen the clouds hurrying from almost
   every point of the compass as though the great day of battle were come,
   and all the dread artillery of God were hurrying to the field. In the
   center of the whirlwind and the storm, when the lightnings threaten to
   set all heaven on a blaze, and the black clouds fold on fold labor to
   conceal the light of day, you have a very graphic metaphor of the
   meeting of all sin upon the person of Christ; the sin of the ages past
   and the sin of the ages to come, the sins of those of the elect Who
   were in heathendom, and of those who were in Jewry; the sin of the
   young and of the old, sin original and sin actual, all made to meet,
   all the black clouds concentrated and brought together into one great
   tempest that it might rush in one tremendous tornado upon the person of
   the great Redeemer and substitute. As when a thousand streamlets dash
   down the mountain side in the day of rain, and all meet in one deep
   swollen lake; that lake the Savior's heart, those gushing torrents the
   sins of us all who are here described as making a full confession of
   our sins. Or to take a metaphor not from nature but from commerce;
   suppose the debts of a great number of persons to be all gathered up,
   the scattered bonds and bills that are to be honored or dishonored on
   such and such a day, and all these laid upon one person who undertakes
   the responsibility of meeting every one of them without a single
   assistant; such was the condition of the Savior; the Lord made to meet
   on him the debts of all his people so that he became responsible for
   all the obligations of every one of those whom his Father had given him
   whatsoever their debts might be. Or if these metaphors do not suffice
   to set forth the meaning, take the text in our own version, "The Lord
   hath laid on him the iniquity of us all;" put upon him as a burden is
   laid upon a man's back all the burdens of all his people; put upon his
   head as the high priest of old laid upon the scape-goat all the sin of
   the beloved ones that he might bear them in his own person. The two
   translations you see are perfectly consistent; all sins are made to
   meet, and then having met together and been tied up in one crushing
   load the whole burden is laid upon him.

   2. The second thought is that sin was made to meet upon the suffering
   person of the innocent substitute. I have said "the suffering person"
   because the connection of the text requires it. "He was wounded for our
   transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of
   our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed." It is in
   connection with this, and as an explanation of all his grief, that it
   is added, "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." The Lord
   Jesus Christ would have been incapable of receiving the sin of all his
   people as their substitute had he been himself a sinner: but he was, as
   to his divine nature, worthy to be hymned as "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord
   God of Sabaoth;" and, as to his human nature, he was by miraculous
   conception free from all original sin, and in the holiness of his life
   he was such that he was the spotless Lamb of God, without spot, or
   wrinkle, or any such thing, and therefore he was on all accounts
   capable of standing in the room, place, and stead of sinful men. The
   doctrine of the text is, that Jesus Christ, who was man of the
   substance of his mother, and who was, nevertheless, very God of very
   God, most true and glorious Creator, Preserver, did stand in such a
   position as to take upon himself the iniquity of all his people,
   remaining still himself innocent; having no personal sin, being
   incapable of any, but yet taking the sin of others upon himself--it has
   been the custom of theologians to say--by imputation; but I question
   whether the use of that word, although correct enough as it is
   understood by us, may not have lent some color to the
   misrepresentations of those who oppose the doctrine of substitution. I
   will not say that the sins of God's people were imputed to Christ,
   though I believe they were; but it seems to me that in a way more
   mysterious than that which imputation would express, the sins of God's
   people were actually laid upon Jesus Christ; that in the view of God,
   not only was Christ treated as if he had been guilty, but the very sin
   itself was, I know not how, but according to the text it was somehow
   laid upon the head of Christ Jesus: "For he hath made him to be sin for
   us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in
   him." Is it not written, "He shall bear," not merely the punishment of
   their sin, nor the imputation of their sin, but "He shall bear their
   iniquities"? Our sin is laid on Jesus in even a deeper and truer sense
   than is expressed by the term imputation. I do not think I can express
   it, nor convey the idea that I have in my own mind, but while Jesus
   never was and never could be a sinner,--God forbid that the blasphemous
   thought should ever cross our lips or dwell upon our heart!--yet the
   sin of his people was literally and truly laid upon him.

   3. It has been asked, Was it just that sin should thus be laid upon
   Christ? Our reply is fourfold. We believe it was rightly so, first
   because it was the act of him who must do right, for "the Lord hath
   laid on him the iniquity of us all." Jehovah, he against whom the
   offense was committed, and who has ordained that the sin of the people
   spoken of should be laid upon Christ. To impugn this, then, would be to
   impugn the justice of Jehovah, and I pray that none of us may have the
   hardihood to do that. Shall the potsherd venture to strive with the
   potter? shall the thing formed contend with the Creator of all things?
   Jehovah did it; and we accept it as being right, caring not what men
   may think of Jehovah's own deed. Remember, moreover, that Jesus Christ
   voluntarily took this sin upon himself. It was not forced upon him, he
   was not punished for the sins of others with whom he had no connection
   and against his will; but He his own self bare our sins in his own body
   on the tree, and while bearing it said, "No man taketh my life from me,
   but I lay it down of myself." It was according to his own eternal
   agreement made with the Father on our behalf; it was according to his
   own expressed desire, for he had a baptism to be baptized with, and he
   was straitened until it was accomplished; and therefore whatever of
   injustice might be supposed, it is removed by the fact that he who was
   mainly concerned in it was himself voluntarily placed in such a
   position. But I would have you remember, beloved, that there was a
   relationship between our Lord and his people, which is too often
   forgotten, but which rendered it natural that he should bear the sin of
   his people. Why does the text speak of our sinning like sheep? I think
   it is because it would call to our recollection that Christ is our
   Shepherd. It is not, my brethren, that Christ took upon himself the
   sins of strangers. Remember that there always was a union of a most
   mysterious and intimate kind between those who sinned and the Christ
   who suffered. What if I say that it is not unjust but according to law
   that when a woman gets into debt her husband should bear it? And the
   church of God sinning it was but right that her Husband, who had
   espoused her unto himself, should become the debtor on her behalf. The
   Lord Jesus stood in the relationship of a married husband unto his
   church, and it was not, therefore, a strange thing that he should bear
   her burdens. It was natural for the next of kin to redeem the
   inheritance, it was most seemly that Immanuel, the next of kin, should
   redeem his lost church by his own blood. Recollect that there was a
   union closer even than the marriage bond, for we are members of his
   body. You shall not punish this hand of mine without making the
   sentient nature which dwells in the brain to suffer therewith; and does
   it seem strange to you that when the inferior members of the body have
   transgressed the Head should be made to suffer? It seems to me, my
   brethren, that while substitution is full of grace, it is not
   unnatural, but according to the laws of everlasting love. Yet there is
   a fourth consideration that may remove the difficulty of sin being laid
   upon Christ. It is not only that God laid it there, that Jesus
   voluntarily took it, and moreover was in such a union with his church
   that it was natural that he should take it, but you must remember that
   this plan of salvation is precisely similar to the method of our ruin.
   How did we fall, my brethren? Not by any one of us actually ruining
   himself. I grant you that our own sin is the ground of ultimate
   punishment, but the ground of our original fall lay in another. I had
   no more to do with my fall than I have to do with my restoration; that
   is to say, the fall which made me a sinner was wholly accomplished long
   before I was born by the first Adam, and the salvation by which I am
   delivered was finished long before I saw the light by the second Adam
   on my behalf. If we grant the fall,--and we must grant the fact,
   however we may dislike the principle,--we cannot think it unjust that
   God should give us a plan of salvation based upon the same principle of
   federal head-ship. Perhaps it is true, as has been conjectured by many,
   that because the fallen angels sinned one by one, there was no
   possibility of their restoration; but man sinning, not one by one in
   the first place, but transgressing under a covenant head, there
   remained an opportunity for the restoration of the race by another
   covenant head-ship. At any rate we, accepting the principle of the
   federal head-ship in the fall, joyfully receive it as to the
   restoration in Christ Jesus. It seems right, then, on these four
   grounds, that the Lord should make the sins of all his people to meet
   upon Christ.

   4. I beg you to observe in the fourth place, that lying upon Christ
   brought upon him all the consequences connected with it. God cannot
   look where there is sin with any pleasure, and though as far as Jesus
   is personally concerned, he is the Father's beloved Son in whom he is
   well pleased; yet when he saw sin laid upon his Son, he made that Son
   cry, "My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" It was not possible
   that Jesus should enjoy the light of his Father's presence while he was
   made sin for us; consequently he went through a horror of great
   darkness, the root and source of which was the withdrawing of the
   conscious enjoyment of his Father's presence. More than that, not only
   was light withdrawn, but positive sorrow was inflicted. God must punish
   sin, and though the sin was not Christ's by his actually doing it, yet
   it was laid upon him, and therefore he was made a curse for us. What
   were the pangs, which Christ endured? I cannot tell you. You have read
   the story of his crucifixion. Dear friends, that is only the shell, but
   the inward kernel who shall describe? It is certain that Christ not
   only bore all that humanity could bear, but there was a Deity within
   which added extraordinary strength to his humanity, and enabled it to
   bear far more than it would otherwise have been able to endure. I doubt
   not that in addition to this the Godhead within gave a peculiar
   sensitiveness to the holiness of Christ's nature, so that sin must have
   become even more abhorrent to him than it would have been to a merely
   perfect man. His griefs are worthy to be described according to the
   Greek Liturgy as "unknown sufferings." The height and depth, the length
   and breadth of what Jesus Christ endured nor heart can guess, nor
   tongue can tell, nor can imagination frame; God only knows the griefs
   to which the Son of God was put when the Lord made to meet upon him the
   iniquity of us all. To crown all there came death itself. Death is the
   punishment for sin, and whatever it may mean, whatever over and beyond
   natural death was intended in the sentence, "In the day thou eatest
   thereof thou shalt surely die," Christ felt. Death went through and
   through him, until "he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." "He
   became obedient to death, even to the death of the cross."

   5. Dear friends, for a moment think of the result of all this. Sin
   meets on Christ and Christ is punished for sin, and what then? Why then
   sin is put away. If the penalty be endured justice asks no more. The
   debt discharged--there is no debt; the claim made and the claim
   met--the claim ceases to be. Though we could not meet that claim in our
   proper persons, yet we have met it in one who is so united and allied
   to us that we are in him even as Levi was in the loins of Abraham.
   Jesus himself also is free. Upon him the gathered tempest has spent
   itself, and not a single cloud lingers in the serene sky. Though the
   waters came his love has dried them up, his suffering has opened the
   sluices, and made the floods for ever spend themselves. Though the
   bills were brought he has honored them all, and there is not one
   outstanding account against a single soul for whom he died as a
   substitute.

   6. We cannot close the exposition of this verse without just remarking
   upon the "us" here intended. "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of
   us all." It is usually conceded by us who hold the doctrine of
   particular redemption that there was in the death of Christ very much
   of generality and universality. We believe that the atonement of Christ
   was infinite in value, and that if Christ had decreed to save every man
   of woman born, he need not have suffered another pang; there was
   sufficient in his atonement if he had so willed it to have redeemed the
   entire race. We believe also that by the death of Christ there is a
   general and honest invitation given to every creature under heaven in
   terms like these:--"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be
   saved." We are not prepared, however, to go an inch beyond that. We
   hold that from the very nature of the satisfaction of Christ it could
   not have been made for any but for his elect; for Christ either did pay
   the debts of all men or he did not; if he did pay the debts of all men
   they are paid, and no man can be called to account for them. If Christ
   was the surety of every man living, then how in the name of common
   justice is Christ to be punished, and man punished too? If it be
   replied that the man would not accept the atonement, then I ask again,
   Was there a satisfaction given, for if so it was given whether the man
   accepts it or not, or else satisfaction by itself is powerless until
   man puts efficacy in it, which is preposterous to suppose. If you take
   away from us the fact that Christ did really satisfy for those for whom
   he stood, we cry like Jacob, "If I am bereaved I am bereaved;" you have
   taken away all that is worth having, and what have you given us in its
   place? You have given us a redemption, which confessedly does not
   redeem; you have given us an atonement, which is made equally for the
   lost in hell and for the saved in heaven; and what is the intrinsic
   value of such an atonement? If you tell us that Christ made a
   satisfactory atonement for every one of the human race, we ask you how
   it was that he made an atonement for those that must have been in the
   flames of hell thousands of years before he came into this world? My
   brethren, ours has the advantage of universality in its proclamation
   and in its bona fide offer, for there is no man living who shall
   believe in Jesus who shall not be saved by Christ; but it has a greater
   advantage than this; namely, that those who do believe are saved by it,
   and they know that Christ made such an atonement for them that for them
   to be punished for sin would be as much a violation of justice as it
   would of mercy. O my soul! thou knowest this day that all thy sins were
   made to meet on Christ, and that he bore the punishment for them all.

   "He bore that we might never bear,

   His Father's righteous ire."

   Here is a rock to stand on, a safe resting-place for those who trust in
   Jesus. As for you who trust him not, your blood be upon your own heads!
   If ye trust him not, ye have no part nor lot in this matter, ye shall
   go down to your own punishment to bear it yourselves; the wrath of God
   abideth on you; you shall find that the blood of Jesus has made no
   atonement for your sins. You have rejected the invitation that was
   given, and put far from you the cross of Christ, and upon your heads
   the pardoning blood shall never drop, and for you it shall never plead,
   but you must perish under the law, seeing you refuse to be saved under
   the gospel.

   II. Let us come briefly to the APPLICATION.

   Dear hearer, a friend now puts a question to you. There is a countless
   company whose sins the Lord Jesus bore; did he bear yours? Do you wish
   to have an answer? Are you unable to give one? Let me read this verse
   to you and see if you can join in it. I do not mean join in it saying,
   "That is true," but feeling that it is true in your own souls. "All we
   like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way,
   and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." If there be in
   you this morning a penitential confession which leads you to
   acknowledge that you have erred and strayed like a lost sheep, if there
   be in you a personal sense of sin which makes you feel that you have
   turned to your own way, and if now you can trust in Jesus, then a
   second question is not wanted; the Lord hath laid on him your iniquity,
   and the iniquity of all such as confess their sin and look alone to
   Christ. But if you will not trust to Christ, I cannot say to you that
   the Lord hath taken the sin from you and laid it upon Christ, for in my
   soul I know that living and dying as you now are, that sin of yours
   will rise up in judgment against you to condemn you. Dear friend, I
   will venture to say to you, are you reconciled to God's way of getting
   rid of sin? Do you feel any joy in your heart at the thought of Jesus
   bearing sin for you and suffering for you? If you do not, I cannot
   offer you the consolation, which the text gives to those who submit to
   it. But let me ask you, do you mean to bear your sin yourself? Do you
   know what that means? Jesus smarted when he bore the sin of his people,
   but what a smart shall yours be when you bear your own! "It is a
   fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." There are some
   now-a-days who are mightily angry at the doctrine of everlasting
   punishment; I, too, might be angry at it if it were an invention of
   man; but when it is most certainly threatened in God's Book, it is vain
   for me to kick against the pricks; my question should not be, "How can
   I dispute against it?" but "How can I escape from it?" Dear hearer, do
   not venture into God's presence with your sins upon yourself; even our
   God is a consuming fire, and his fury will break forth against you when
   you come to stand there. Have you an imagination that your own merits
   may make atonement for sin? I pray you think what Christ had to do
   before he could cast sin off from himself, what griefs he bore, through
   what an ocean of wrath he passed; and do you think that your poor
   merits, if they be merits, can ever avail to do what the Savior
   suffered so much to accomplish? Do you hope to escape without a
   punishment? If you do, let me pray you to think the matter over; for if
   God smote his own Son, do you think he will permit you to go scot-free?
   If the King of Glory, when he only takes others' sins upon him, must
   needs die, what think you will become of you, poor worm of the dust?
   Think you that God will be unjust in order to save you? Do you suppose
   that he will be hail fellow, well met! with you, and revoke his own
   sentence, because you do not choose to be saved by a plan which is both
   just to him and safe to you? Shall God be unjust to pander to your
   fancies, or indulge your lusts? Sinner, bow the knee to this plan of
   salvation, for be it known to you--and I speak now, knowing what I say,
   and coolly too--there is, none other plan of salvation under heaven.
   There may be other ways of salvation preached, but other foundation can
   no man lay than that which is laid, Jesus Christ the Righteous. If thou
   shalt struggle after salvation individually, and hope to get to heaven
   apart from the head-ship of Christ, thou mayest struggle, but thou
   shalt be like the Jews of old, who had a zeal for God but not according
   to knowledge; if thou shalt be going about to establish thine own
   righteousness, but not submitting thyself to the righteousness of
   Christ, thou shalt perish. But let me ask thee, does not this plan
   commend itself to thee? If I trust Jesus, this is to me the evidence
   that he took my sins and suffered in my stead. Oh the joy it gives me!
   I speak to you honestly of my own experience now; there is no doctrine
   that fires my soul with such delight as that of substitution. The
   doctrine of atonement, as it is often preached, is a hazy, misty doing
   of something by which the law is honored, or perhaps dishonored, for I
   scarce know which to call it; this yields me no joy; but when I know
   that Christ was literally and positively, not metaphorically and by way
   of figure, but literally and positively the substitute for his own
   people, and when I know that trusting in him I have the evidence of
   being one of his people, why my soul begins to say, Now let me live!
   I'm clean, through Jesu's blood I'm clean. Now let me die! for I shall
   boldly stand in the day of resurrection, through Jesus my Lord. Why,
   soul, it seems to me as if it were enough to make you leap into the
   arms of Christ, crucified! covered with blood for you! disinterestedly
   suffering for his own enemies that they might live! Oh stay not away!

   "Come, guilty souls, and flee away

   Like doves to Jesu's wounds;

   This is the welcome gospel-day,

   Wherein free grace abounds.

   God loved the church, and gave his Son

   To drink the cup of wrath;

   And Jesus says he'll cast out none

   That come to him by faith."

   III. Now consecrate a few minutes to hallowed CONTEMPLATION.

   You do not want talk, you want thought: I will give you four things to
   think of. The first is the astounding mass of sin that must have been
   laid on Christ. Now do not jump at it, and say, "Yes, the sins of the
   millions of his elect." Do not leap at that, get at it by degrees.
   Begin with your own sin. Have you ever felt that?--your own sin. No,
   you never felt the full weight of it; if you did you would have been in
   hell. It is the weight of sin that makes hell. Sin bears its own
   punishment in its own weight. Do you remember when you felt that the
   pains of hell get hold upon you, and you found trouble and sorrow? That
   hour when you called upon the name of the Lord, saying, "O Lord, I
   beseech thee, deliver my soul!" Then you only felt as it were the
   little end of your sins, but all your sins, what must they weigh! How
   old are you? You know not how old you may be before you enter into
   rest, but all the sins of all your years he carried. All the sins
   against light and knowledge, sins against law and gospel, week-day
   sins, Sabbath sins, hand sins, lip sins, heart sins, sins against the
   Father, sins against the Son, sins against the Holy Ghost, sins of all
   shapes, all laid upon him; can you get the thought now? Now multiply
   that. Think of the sins of all the rest of his people; persecutions and
   murders at the door of such an one as Saul of Tarsus; adultery at the
   door of David--sins of every shape and size, for God's elect have been
   among the chief of sinners; those whom he has chosen have not been the
   best of men by nature, but some of them the very worst, and yet
   sovereign grace delighted to find a home for itself where seven devils
   had dwelt before, nay, where a legion of devils held their carnival.
   Christ looks abroad among the sons of men, and while a Pharisee is
   passed by, Zaccheus the publican is selected--and the sins of all these
   with their full weight laid upon him. The weight of sin would have
   crushed all these into hell for ever, and yet Christ bore all that
   weight; and what if I venture to say the very eternity and infinity of
   wrath that was due for all that mass of sin, the Son of God,
   marvellously sustained by the infinity of the Godhead within, bore and
   sustained the whole. I would like to stop a minute and let you turn it
   over, but when you go home perhaps you will spend half an hour very
   profitably in thinking that

   "The enormous load of human guilt

   Was on my Savior laid;

   With woes as with a garment he

   For sinners was array'd."

   2. The next subject I offer you for contemplation is this, the amazing
   love of Jesus, which brought him to do all this. Remember Paul's way of
   putting it. "Scarcely for a righteous (or strictly just) man will one
   die; peradventure for a good (or benevolent) man one might even dare to
   die; but God commendeth his love towards us in that, while we were yet
   sinners, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly." When Christ has
   renewed us by his Spirit, there may be a temptation to imagine that
   some excellency in us won the Savior's heart; but, my brethren, you
   must understand that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. Not
   that infant washed and swaddled, not that fair maiden with the jewel in
   her ear, and with the pure golden crown upon her head, not that lovely
   princess, presented like a chaste virgin to her husband; no, that was
   not what Jesus saw when he died. He saw all that in the glass of his
   prescience, but the actual condition of that fair maid was very
   different when he died for her; she was cast out, unwashed, unsalted,
   unswaddled, in her blood, a foul, filthy thing. Ah! my brethren, there
   is no filthy thing under heaven so filthy as a filthy sinner. When
   there was not a ray of beauty to be discovered in us, when neither
   without nor within a single thing could be found to commend us, but we
   were morally altogether abhorrent to the Holy nature of Christ,
   then--oh wondrous grace!--he came from the highest heaven that the mass
   of our sin might meet on him. I met with this question the other day,
   which seemed a novel one to me. The question was asked thus: "Suppose
   you had a child that had the leprosy, or some other foul disease.
   Suppose this dear child of yours was infected and contaminated to the
   most loathsome degree in every part, till the eyes were blinded and the
   hands were rotting, and the heart was turning to stone, and the whole
   body was covered with wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores. Now,
   suppose there were no cure for this child but for your perfectly sane
   and healthy soul, suppose it to be such, to be put into that child's
   body, and for you to bear that child's diseases instead of that child;
   would you consent to it?" I can suppose a mother's love yielding even
   to that; but the more disgusted you had been with those putrifying
   sores, the more terrible would the task become. Now, that only touches
   the fringe of the work, which Jesus did for us when he himself took our
   sins and bore our sicknesses. Such a wonderful union is there between
   Christ and the sinner that I venture to say there are some expressions
   in the New Testament and in the Old with regard to Christ's connection
   with the sin of man that I would not dare to use except as direct
   quotations from Holy Writ; but being there you shall see how wondrously
   the love of Jesus Christ induced him to take upon himself our sad
   condition and plight. But, oh the love! oh the love! Nay, I will not
   speak of it; ye must muse upon it. Silence is sometimes the best
   eloquence; and it will he best for me to say to you, oh the depths of
   the love of Jesus! unsearchable, past finding out! God over all,
   blessed for ever, should have laid on him the iniquity of us all!

   3. Wonder of wonders that I need another minute to set you thinking on
   another subject, the matchless security which this plan of salvation
   offers. I do not see in what point that man is vulnerable who can feel
   and know that Christ has borne his sin. I look at the attributes of
   God, and though to me, as a sinner, they all seem bristling as with
   sharp points, thrusting themselves upon me; yet when I know that Jesus
   died for me, and did literally take my sin, what fear I the attributes
   of God? There is justice, sharp and bright, like a lance; but justice
   is my friend. If God be just, he cannot punish me for sin for which
   Jesus has offered satisfaction. As long as there is justice in the
   heart of Deity, it cannot be that a soul justly claiming Christ as his
   substitute can himself be punished. As for mercy, love, truth, honor,
   everything matchless, Godlike and divine about Deity, I say of all
   these, "You are my friends; you are all guarantees that Mince Jesus
   died for me I cannot die." How grandly does the apostle put it! It
   seems to me as if he never was worked up by the Holy Spirit to such a
   pitch of eloquence as when speaking about the death and resurrection of
   the Savior, he propounds that splendid question, "Who shall lay
   anything to the charge of God's elect?" There, where eternal justice
   sits upon a flaming throne, the apostle gazes with eye undimmed into
   the ineffable splendor, and though some one seems to say, "The Judge
   will condemn," he replies, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of
   God's elect? It is God that justifieth." Can he justify and then
   condemn us? He justifies those for whom Christ died, for we are
   justified by his resurrection. How then shall he condemn? And then he
   lifts up his voice yet again--"Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ
   that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who sitteth at the right
   hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." On other grounds a
   man must feel unsafe, but here he may know himself sure. Go ye that
   will, and build upon your sandy foundations; run up your
   superstructures till they are as high as Babel's tower, and tumble
   about your ears unable to support their own weight; but as for me, my
   soul shall rest upon this solid rock of substitution; and clinging to
   the rock with confident resolve, I know that I have no cause for fear
   since Jesus died for me.

   4. Lastly, I desire to give you as a subject for contemplation, and I
   pray you do not forget it, this question, What then are the claims of
   Jesus Christ upon you and upon me? Brethren and sisters, I have
   sometimes wished to be eloquent; never when I had a cause to plead in
   which I was myself involved, but when I have had to speak for Jesus.
   But indeed, there is no need of eloquence here. Your hearts shall be
   the pleaders, his agonies shall be the plea. Did our blessed Lord take
   your sin, my brethren, and suffer all its terrific consequences for
   you, so that you are delivered. By his blood and wounds, by his death,
   and by the love that made him die, I conjure you treat him as he should
   be treated! Love him as he should be loved! Serve him as he should be
   served! You will tell me that you have obeyed his precepts. I am glad
   to hear it. Are you sure that you have? "If ye love me, keep my
   commandments." Have you kept the ordinances as he delivered them? Have
   you sought to be obedient to him in all respects? In all your Lord's
   appointed ways have you scrupulously pursued your journey? If you can
   say this I am not content; it does not seem to me that with such a
   leader as Christ mere. obedience should be all. Napoleon singularly
   enough had power to get the hearts of men twisted and twined about him;
   when he was in his wars theme were many of his captains and even of his
   private soldiers who not only marched with the quick obedience of a
   soldier wherever they were bidden, but who felt an enthusiasm for him.
   Have you never heard of him who threw himself in the way of the shot to
   receive it in his bosom to save the Emperor? No obedience, no law could
   have required that of him, but enthusiastic love moved him to it; and
   it is such enthusiasm that my Master deserves in the very highest
   degree from us. It is out of and beyond all categories of law, it is
   far exceeding all that law ventured to ask, and yet not supererogation
   for all that, for ye are not under the law but under grace; and ye will
   do more out of love than ye would have done out of the compulsion of
   demand. What shall I do for my Master? What shall I do for my Lord? How
   shall I set him forth? My brethren and sisters, my highest aim before
   God, next to the conversion of the unconverted among you, is this, that
   you who do love Christ may really love him and act as if you (lid. 1
   hope you will never become a dead cold church. Oh may my ministry never
   help to lull you into such a state as that! If Jesus Christ does not
   deserve everything of you he does not deserve anything; you do not know
   anything of his claims if you do not feel that

   "If you could make some reserve,

   And duty did not call;

   You love the Lord with zeal so great

   That you must give him all."

   Christ stands for me, oh may I learn to stand for him, and plead for
   him, and live for him, and suffer for him, and pray for him, and preach
   and labor for him as he may help me! May I remind you each individually
   as you all followed your own way, and individually had some sin to
   increase that burden, pay him individual service? Contribute of your
   substance to the common work of the church, and do that constantly, and
   as a matter of delight. Our College, which is doing so much service
   greatly needs, and demands the help of all who love our work, and love
   the Lord's truth. But in addition to that, do something for yourself,
   speak for Christ yourself, have some work in hand on your own account.
   Do, I say again, at all times assist the work of the combined body, for
   that will be a great work, God being in us as our life and stay, and
   let no man withhold of his substance from Christ's cause; but still
   that is not all, he does not ask your pocket only but your heart. It is
   not the pence, it is the activities of the soul; it is not the
   shillings and the guineas and so on, but it is your very inmost soul,
   the core of your spirit. O Christian, by the blood of Jesus devote
   yourself to him again! In the old Roman battles it sometimes happened
   that the strife seemed dubious, and a captain inspired by superstitious
   patriotism would stand upon his sword and devote himself to destruction
   for the good of his country, and then, according to those old legends,
   the battle always turned. Now, men and brethren, sisters, every one of
   you who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, devote yourselves this
   day to live, to die, to spend, and to be spent for King Jesus. You will
   be no fool, for no man ever had an ambition more worthy. You will not
   be devoting yourself to one who does not deserve it. You know how much
   you owe him; nay, you do not know, to the fullest extent, the depth of
   your obligation, but you know you owe him all that you have; your
   escape from hell and your hope of heaven. Follow me this morning in
   these verses--

   "Tis done, the great transaction's done;

   I am my Lord's, and he is mine:

   He drew me, and I follow'd on,

   Charm'd to confess the voice divine.

   Now rest, my long-divided heart;

   Fix'd on this blissful center rest;

   With ashes who would grudge to part,

   When call'd on angel's bread to feast?

   High heaven, that heard the solemn vow,

   That vow renew'd shall daily hear;

   Till in life's latest hour I bow,

   And bless in death a bond so dear."

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Isaiah 53.
     __________________________________________________________________

           The Axe at the Root--A Testimony Against Puseyite Idolatry

   A Sermon

   (No. 695)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, June 17th, 1866, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall
   worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such
   to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship
   him in spirit and in truth."--John 4:23-24.

   THE WOMAN'S CONSCIENCE had been aroused by Christ's declaration of her
   sin. He was touching upon matters of the most vital importance, and her
   depraved heart naturally shrunk from the lancet, From the truth which
   was becoming inconveniently personal she flew to that natural resort of
   the carnal mind, namely, to religions discourse upon points of outward
   observance. Instead of confessing her sin, and asking how it may be
   forgiven, she must needs say, "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain;
   and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."
   The carnal heart dreads the contact of spiritual truth, and finds a
   most convenient way of avoiding it by running to questions of holy
   places, holy times, and holy customs. Jesus, to her astonishment,
   informs her that the question which she had asked was of only temporary
   importance. There had been a time when it was well to know that
   salvation was of the Jews, and that the rival temple of the Samaritans
   was an imposture; but he says in effect to her, "Woman, believe me that
   question is of no importance now, for the hour cometh, yea and now is,
   when the external is to be abolished and the ritualistic is to be put
   away, and a purer, simpler, and more spiritual worship, is to take its
   place."

   The worship which our Lord Jesus Christ established involved a change.
   That is implied in the expressions here used. He announced to her that
   the hour was just then come when all questions about this or that place
   must cease, and be superseded by spiritual worship. Our Lord gave a
   very brief, but I think a very instructive description of what this
   worship was to be. If you observe carefully the words, you will see
   that it was a distinguishing kind of worship, for he mentions true
   worshippers. There had been but little distinction before; so long as
   they all passed through the same outward form they all seemed to be
   worshippers; but a distinction was now to be made clear and manifest.
   Merely outward worshippers were now false worshippers, and only those
   who pressed into spiritual worship were to be regarded as true. The
   gospel of Christ is a great discerner and an accurate judge. Christ has
   the winnowing fan in his hand; he sits as a refiner; he is compared by
   the prophet to the "refiner's fire" and to "fuller's soap;" and hence
   you see he discerns at once between worshippers and worshippers. There
   they stand both alike with bended heads, perhaps both repeating the
   same words, but the Savior distinguishes: "there is," saith he, "a
   false worshipper, and there is a true worshipper, and he alone who is
   spiritual is true." He announces further that under the gospel God is
   to be worshipped in the character of a Father; true worshippers shall
   worship the Father. This had not been the case before. The Lord had
   been adored as the Adonai, and reverenced as Jehovah; but to say "Our
   Father which art in heaven" remains the prerogative of the enlightened
   Christian who, having believed in Christ, has received power to become
   a son of God. True Christian worship addresses God, not merely as
   Creator and Preserver, or as the great Lord of the Universe, but as one
   who is very near of kin to us, our Father, beloved of our souls. Jesus
   likewise states that gospel worship is to be of a kind which does not
   result from the man himself merely, but comes from God, and is a work
   of grace. This is implied in the sentence, "The Father seeketh such to
   worship him," as if no true worship would come from any man unless God
   sought it. True devotion under the Christian dispensation is not merely
   human but also divine. It is the work of the Spirit in the soul
   returning to its author; or as our hymn puts it--

   "Prayer is the breath of God in man,

   Returning whence it came."

   These are very grave points, and draw a broad line of distinction
   between the living worship of the chosen of God and the dead formal
   worship of the world which lieth in the wicked one.

   Furthermore, the Savior goes on to say that they who worship God are to
   worship him "in spirit." No longer with the visible sacrifice of a
   lamb, but inwardly trusting in him who is the Lamb of God's passover;
   no more with sprinkled blood of goats, but heartily relying upon the
   blood once shed for many; no longer worshipping God with ephod,
   breastplate, and mitre, but with prostrate soul, with uplifted faith,
   and with the faculties not of the body but of the inward spirit. We who
   worship God under the Christian dispensation are no longer to fancy
   that bodily exercise in worship profiteth anything, that genuflexions
   and contortions are of any value, but that acceptable worship is wholly
   mental, inward, and spiritual.

   But he adds, lest there should seem an omission in the description,
   "must worship him in spirit and in truth;" for though we should profess
   to worship God only with the spirit and so despise forms, yet unless
   the soul shall truly love, and really adore, and sincerely bow, our
   worship will be as unacceptable as though it were formal and outward.
   See then, brethren, putting the whole three together, the worship under
   the Christian dispensation which God ordains, and which he accepts
   through Christ Jesus, is a worship distinguished by an inward vitality
   from the outward worship of the carnal mind. It is the worship of a
   child towards a father, feeling within himself a kinship with the
   divine; it is a worship wrought in us by God the Holy Ghost, because
   the Father has sought us out and taught us how to worship him. It is a
   worship which is not outward, but of the inner man, and occupies not
   hand, eye, and foot, but heart and soul and spirit: and it is a worship
   which is not professional and formal, but real, hearty, earnest, and so
   acceptable before God.

   Let me give a sketch of this worship as it actually exhibits itself. A
   man may have been to a place of worship from his youth up, and he may
   have fallen into a habit of repeating a sacred form every morning and
   every evening, he may even have been a tolerably diligent reader of the
   Word of God, and yet though this may have been continued for sixty
   years and more, he may never once have worshipped God after the fashion
   prescribed in the text. But see him! the Father seeks him, truth comes
   home to his soul, and in the light of that truth he feels himself a
   sinner, and feeling himself so, he cries, "Father, I have sinned." That
   is his first true worship. See, brethren, his spirit feels it, he means
   what he says. All that he said before was as nothing, but that first
   cry "I have sinned" has in it the vitality of worship. He hears the
   story of the cross, the full atonement made by God's appointed
   sacrifice, and he prays, "Lord, I believe in Jesus, and I trust him;"
   here is another specimen of true worship; here is the spirit resting
   upon God's appointed sacrifice, and reverencing God's way of salvation
   by accepting it. Being saved by the precious blood of Jesus, he cries,
   "Father, I bless thee that I am saved, I thank thee that my sins are
   washed away." This is true worship. Whether a man sings in the
   assembly, or sings alone; whether he prays aloud, or prays in silence,
   if he feels gratitude to God for pardon received, he offers the true
   worship. The whole of the Christian's life, consisting as it must do of
   dealings with the invisible God through Jesus Christ by his heart, is a
   life of worship, and when at last he comes to die, you perceive that
   his worship will not cease with death, because it has always been
   spiritual, and did not depend upon the body. So that while the outward
   man faileth him, the inward spiritual man grows more strong in devotion
   than ever it was before; and when at last the spirit leaves its earthly
   tenement, and is disembodied, it has still a song for God, and
   throughout eternity its spiritual worship can continue; which worship
   must have been suspended if it had been connected with the body, and
   not with the immortal part of man.

   If I understand the Savior's words, and I hope I do, not only
   theoretically but practically, he means that those of us who are his
   true worshippers must worship him with our better and our nobler part,
   and our soul, with all the power she has, must pay reverence to the
   unseen God, Brethren, this is the kind of worship that men will not
   render to God; they will render him anything else but this; and until
   divinely effectual grace shall work such worship in man's heart it is
   obnoxious to him; he will worship God with robes, and incense, and
   flowers, and banners, but he will not consent to worship him in spirit
   and in truth.

   I. I shall proceed to my work by giving A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY
   OF WORSHIP, in connection with the doctrine that we are now to worship
   more manifestly than ever God in spirit and in truth. It appears from
   Scripture that worship before the flood was of the very simplest form.
   The outward ordinances were very few; the chief of them being the
   offering of sacrifice. This was probably instituted by God himself when
   he clothed Adam and his wife with skins of beasts; it has been thought
   that he then indicated to them the slaughter of beasts for sacrifice.
   Certain it is that the first worship of fallen man was by sacrifice.
   There was connected with this no doubt the meeting of gracious hearts
   for prayer, and also the ministration of truth, for Enoch also, the
   seventh from Adam, prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord; so
   that they appear to have had what was tantamount to a ministry, and the
   sons of God had appointed times for meeting. But this simple form of
   worship seems to have been too high, too spiritual for fallen man at
   the first; at any rate the seed of the serpent could not endure it, for
   Cain at the very first commenced a schism; instead of bringing a
   sacrifice by blood he must needs bring a sacrifice of the fruits of the
   ground. Perhaps he was a man of taste, and desired to bring something
   that should look more decorous than a poor bleeding victim; he would
   lay those rich grapes, those ruddy fruits upon the altar; and those
   fair flowers that gemmed the bosom of earth, surely he might consecrate
   those. At any rate he was the first man who set up taste and self as
   the guide in religious worship, and God had no respect unto his
   sacrifice. The two stood by their altars; Abel by faith, exercising
   spiritual worship, offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain;
   Cain's offering was possibly even more fair to look upon but it was of
   his own invention; Abel was accepted, but Cain discarded. The ultimate
   result of man's sinfulness in connection with this early type of
   worship was general neglect of all religion. The sons of God seem to
   have maintained their simplicity for a time, but at last by unholy
   alliances with the ungodly race there arose a widespread neglect of all
   thought of God, so that they were married and given in marriage, they
   ate and they drank till the day when the flood came and swept them all
   away. Depraved nature thus refused to render spiritual worship. After
   the flood we find worship restored in very much the same form: let us
   distinguish it as the patriarchal method of worship. The head of a
   family was accustomed to offer sacrifice, and no doubt if Job be taken
   as a type thereof family prayer and household religion were maintained,
   But you see very early the indication that man, although he could not
   forget God, for the deluge had struck to the very heart of manhood an
   awful dread of the Most High, began to interpose symbols and visible
   objects between God and himself. The use of teraphim became very
   common; so that in the house even of Abraham's ancestors teraphs were
   found; and when we come down to the time of Jacob, we find one of his
   wives stealing her father's images, thus proving that Laban, one of a
   once God-fearing family, had become a worshipper of God through the
   medium of images. Thus was it among those who still had some knowledge
   of God; but the nations being dispersed, soon lost the pure idea of the
   invisible One, and worshipped gods of their own devising. From the
   plagues of Egypt, which were no doubt intended to be a blow against all
   Egypt's gods, we find out that, in addition to the worship of the calf
   or bull, the Egyptians paid religious reverence to flies, the river
   Nile, the elements, beetles, and all kinds of creatures; and throughout
   the world, as a general rule, through the introduction of visible
   symbols of the unseen Being, the Lord himself had become forgotten, and
   spiritual worship had almost ceased, except in one elect household; and
   even there, alas! how fallen had spirituality become!

   Keeping to the line of grace, we shall now introduce you to the
   ceremonial form of worship which God instituted after the more
   spiritual method had entirely broken down. He saw that the children of
   Israel whom he loved were but a mob of slaves; their spirits had been
   broken by bitter bondage; like the poor African race of the present
   day, they seemed as a whole incapable of rising at once to mental
   dignity, and needed to pass through a generation or two before they
   could as a nation achieve manly self-government. So when he brought his
   people out of Egypt the Lord did not try them with an altogether
   spiritual form of worship; because of the hardness of their hearts
   among other reasons, though he was still to be worshipped as a spirit,
   yet he gave them certain outward signs by which they might be enabled
   to understand his character. A great deal has been made of the
   symbolical worship of the Jew, as if it were an excuse for the manmade
   symbolism of the Roman and Anglican Antichrist. We would remark that
   nothing ought to be made of it at all now, since it has been positively
   declared many times in Scripture that the age of the shadow has gone,
   and that the age of the substance now reigns. Whatever may or may not
   have been the excellence of the old Jewish economy--and being divinely
   ordained, God forbid we should say a word against it--yet the apostle
   Paul always talks of it as being but a yoke of bondage to which we are
   no more to submit ourselves, being but the shadow and not the very
   image of the good things which were to come; and he speaks of it as a
   thing so passed away, that to go back to it is to go back to the
   rudiments, and not to go onward in the full-grown manliness of
   Christianity. If there were no other passage my text might show that
   the ceremonialism of the Jew is no excuse whatever for ceremonialism
   now, but that we ought to stand in direct contrast to that, hearing the
   Savior declare, that whatever may have been before his time, the hour
   had come when the true worshipper must worship the Father in spirit and
   in truth.

   Remember that symbolical worship was suitable merely to the infancy of
   God's church, and that now having received the Spirit of God to dwell
   in us it would be as unsuitable as would the swaddling bands of
   babyhood to full-grown men. Besides, even while it existed it was
   spoken of as soon to be superseded by a new and better covenant. It was
   frequently broken through by divine authority. Elijah though not at all
   of the house of Levi offered sacrifice, and prophet after prophet as he
   arose manifested and declared by his actions that God did not intend to
   give the Levitical form of worship undivided sway, but that when he
   poured his Spirit upon special men they were to break through all
   ritual regulations in order to show that they were not meant to be
   fixed and permanent.

   It is not sufficiently remembered that the most of God's people in the
   Jewish nation had very little to do with this symbolical worship. When
   they were all in the wilderness, and gathered round the one tent called
   the tabernacle, they might all see the fiery cloudy pillar; but when
   they came into the land which God had given them, what had they most of
   them to see? Why the temple itself the most of them would only see once
   or twice in a year. Scarcely any one ever saw the ark, the cherubim, or
   the golden candlestick; they were always within the veil, and only once
   in the year did the high priest enter that sacred place. Even the place
   where the sacrifices were carried on continually, no one entered but
   the priests; so that to at least eleven tribes out of twelve the
   ceremonials were mainly invisible. Little was done outside the court of
   the priests, but the most of the sacrifices, and of the typology of
   Judaism, was as much a hidden thing as the spiritual things of God are
   to us at the present day; and thus there was a great exercise of the
   spiritual faculties, and comparatively little of outward display.
   Moreover, it is to be remembered that there was nothing whatever
   visible for the Jew to worship. It is not so in the symbology of that
   false Church which is trying to raise up and revive the beggarly
   elements; there men bow before a cross; a piece of bread inside a box
   is reverenced and treated with worship; cast-off clouts and rotten
   rags, called relics, are the objects of adoration; but there was
   nothing like this with the Jews, they did worship toward the temple,
   but they did not adore the temple, or mercy-seat, the altar, or any
   other emblem. Is it not said expressly, "Ye saw no similitude"? When
   God descended upon Sinai, and all the people worshipped there, they saw
   nothing which they dared to worship; God was to them still invisible,
   and they had to exercise their mental faculties in the worship of the
   invisible God. When at one time it was thought that the miraculous
   powers of the brazen serpent entitled it to worship, Hezekiah called it
   Nehushtan, that is, a piece of brass, and broke it to pieces. So that
   with all its splendor of imagery, embroidered vest, and glittering
   breastplate, to a great extent there was a powerful element of
   spirituality even about Aaronic worship; I mean, of course, only to
   spiritual men. David himself utterly outstripped the outward, when he
   declared, "Sacrifice and offering thou dost not desire;" and when he
   said again, "Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it thee."
   The prophet declares that God is weary of their sacrifices, and in
   another place the Lord himself says that if we could come before him
   with rivers of oil, or ten thousand of the fat of fed beasts, he would
   not accept us with these. To obey is better than sacrifice, is told us
   even under the law. So that even there, though not so distinctly as
   now, the spirituality of worship was taught and declared.

   But, dear friends, what became of this accommodation of worship to the
   childhood of the church? You know that very soon after Israel came out
   of Egypt they said, "Let us make gods that they may go before us." They
   could not do without a visible God. Do not think that when they set up
   the calf they meant to worship the calf instead of Jehovah, that would
   be a slander upon them; they worshipped Jehovah through the calf--that
   was their plea, for they said, "Tomorrow is a feast unto Jehovah." They
   thought to represent Jehovah by a bull, "they changed their glory into
   the similitude of an ox that eateth grass." Though severely rebuked, it
   was the constant sin of Israel to desire to worship God under the
   favourite Egyptian emblem of the bull. At last they had so far gone
   into idolatry that they were driven far away; and in captivity they
   were so chastened, and moreover brought into such contact with the
   abominations of idolatry that they were heartily sick of it, and no Jew
   has been an idolater ever since. Still, spiritual worship they would
   not offer, and therefore fell into rigid ritualism, reverencing the
   mere letter of the law, and fighting over trifling refinements of
   regulation and observance; so that in Christ's day they made broad
   their phylacteries and the borders of their garments, but they forgot
   the Great Spirit who is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.

   Since that day the Lord has been treated by carnal men in one of three
   ways; either God is adored by outward symbols as among Brahminists,
   Romanists, Puseyites, and other idolaters; or else he is worshipped
   through ritualism, as among too many who claim to be orthodox, who
   contend for pre-arranged, and unbending forms; written or unwritten as
   the case may be: or else men show an utter indifference to God
   altogether, and then rush into superstitious reverence for something or
   other which is evil, and therefore to be dreaded and spoken of with
   awe. This is the history of religious worship, that let spiritual
   worship assume what form it may, man always will if he can, get away
   from it and forget his God and set up something seen, instead of bowing
   down before the unseen; hence the necessity of the second commandment
   in the Decalogue, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or
   any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the
   earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not
   bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a
   jealous God, and so on." This is not a command against worshipping
   another God, that is the first commandment, but a command against
   worshipping God under any shape, or through any medium or under any
   symbol; for he is a spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in
   truth and not by symbols. Against this command the human mind is always
   dashing itself, and in one shape or another idolatry is the ruling
   religion of mankind.

   Christ comes to tell us that now his worship is to be wholly spiritual,
   even the altar which belongs to antediluvian times is gone, for we have
   an altar of another kind; even the sacrifice which belonged to the
   early period has departed like a shadow, because we have the sacrifice
   of Christ in which to trust. As for the institutions which suited the
   infancy of the church, they also have disappeared, for now Jesus would
   have the worship of men enlightened by the indwelling of the Holy
   Ghost; he would have us understand that a perfect revelation demands of
   us, that in the perfection of our spiritual powers we should adore the
   invisible God without the interference of visible signs. Now he would
   have us cast away all outward types and signs, except the two which he
   has himself ordained, and even these are types of the Savior's manhood
   and not of his Godhead at all, to be only valued because of the
   spiritual communion which they enable our hearts to hold with Jesus;
   baptism being intended for spiritual men, that they may enter into the
   Savior's death and burial, and the Lord's supper that the same persons
   may remember his body broken and his blood shed for them; the water,
   the bread, the wine, being mere emblems, not to be treated with
   reverence, but put to their proper emblematic use.

   II. I shall now, in the second place, try to ACCOUNT FOR THE EXTREME
   RARITY OF SPIRITUAL WORSHIP. The reason is, my brethren, because man
   has fallen. If man were what he once was, pure and holy, I cannot
   conceive of his wanting holy places and crosses, copes, and dalmatics,
   crosiers, and chasubles. I cannot conceive of the temptation to bow
   down before a bull, or a Virgin Mary, or a wafer. There the noble
   creature walks in paradise, and if he reclines beneath a shady tree, he
   lifts up his eyes and says, "My Father, thou hast made this grateful
   shade, here I will adore thee;" or if he walks in the full heat of the
   sun, he says, "My God, it is thy light that shineth on me,--I adore
   thee." Up yonder on the mountain's brow, or down by the gleaming river,
   or the silvery lake, he needs build no altar, his altar is within
   himself; be needs make no temple, his temple is everywhere. The morning
   is holy, and the evening is holy; he hath no prescribed hour of prayer,
   it is devotion all day long; his morning bath is his baptism; each meal
   is his Eucharist. Depend upon it, the nearer we get back to the
   nakedness of worship, the nearer we get to its truth and purity; and it
   is because man has fallen, that as his body wants clothing, so he is
   always dressing up his religion.

   Moreover, it is far more difficult to worship God in spirit than in
   form. To patter through a dozen Ave Marias or Paternosters is so easy,
   that I can nearly go to sleep over them: to repeat a form of prayer in
   the morning and evening is a very small matter, and one can be thinking
   of the shop all the while; to go to church or chapel so many times a
   week is a cheap duty, and withal one may still be a thief or a
   hypocrite; but it is hard, very hard, to bring the heart down to humble
   penitence, and the soul to holy meditation. The last thing that most
   people will do is to think. The noblest part of our nature is still the
   least exercised. Humbly to tremble before God, to confess sin before
   him, to believe him, to love him--this is spiritual worship! Because
   this is so hard, men say, " No, no, let me crawl on my knees around a
   shrine! Let me kneel down before a pyx, let me help to make a cope, or
   to manufacture some pretty piece of millinery for the priest to wear.
   Let me go every morning to the steeple house and come out in half an
   hour, and feel I have done my religion." That is quite easy, but the
   hard part of religion is the part of spiritual worship.

   And yet again, to worship God spiritually men would have to part with
   their sins. There is no effect produced upon a man's conscience by his
   being sprinkled, or by his taking the sacraments, he can do all that
   and be as much a pleasure-lover, or a worshipper of Mammon, as he was
   before; but, to worship God spiritually, a man must give up his sins,
   must overcome his pride and lust, and his evil concupiscence must be
   cast out of him. Many persons might honestly declare, "I do not mind
   worshipping God if it consists in doing penance, or going without meat
   on Fridays; but if I am to give up my sins, love God, seek Christ,
   trust to him, I cannot attend to that." Furthermore, man, for the most
   part, somehow cannot get the idea of this spiritual worship into his
   brain, Oh the many times I have tried to preach spiritual worship here,
   and yet I am conscious that when I try at it I do not interest many of
   you, and some of you think, "if he would only give us more metaphors,
   more anecdotes, and so on;" I say I will do that, for I believe we
   should speak by parable, but sometimes I do not know how to clothe
   these spiritual things without making you look at the clothing rather
   than the spirit. It is not your worshipping God by words in hymns and
   prayers, or sitting in a certain place, or covering your faces at
   certain times that is acceptable to him; true worship lies in your
   heart paying reverence to him, your soul obeying him, and your inner
   nature coming into conformity to his own nature, by the work of his
   Spirit in your soul; and because men can scarcely get the idea of this
   till the Holy Spirit gives it to them, this is a reason why it is so
   rare, so exceedingly rare. There is one other reason, dear friends, why
   spiritual worship is unusual, and that is because man cannot traffic in
   spiritual religion. The priest is up at arms directly. " Oh," saith he,
   "spiritual! spiritual! why they will do without me one of these days.
   Spiritual--why, if you tell these people that every place is holy, and
   that there are no holy places; and that one believer is as much a
   priest as another, and that prayer is as acceptable at home, as it is
   in a particular spot, why," says he, "there is an end of me." Yes, sir,
   there is an end of you, and the sooner the better for the world; for of
   all the curses that have ever fallen upon the human race the priesthood
   is the worst. Its claims are imposture, and its actions are full of
   deceit, In the age of witches and ghosts priesthood might be tolerated,
   but he who now sets himself up as a priest is as much a common nuisance
   as a fortune-teller. Nothing has been such a nightmare upon the
   intellect of man; nothing has sat like old Sindbad the Sailor upon the
   back of humanity, like the pretensions of priesthood. God forbid that
   Christianity should even for a moment endorse the lie! Christ has put
   it all down. Christ says, "All ye are brethren," and he says of the
   whole body of his elect, "Ye are a royal priesthood." Concerning all
   the saints, Scripture declares, "Ye are God's clergy," for that is the
   Greek word in the passage--"Ye are God's heritage." We know no clergy
   and no laity; we know nothing whatever now of priesthood and of the
   common people, for ye are made priests and kings unto God to offer
   spiritual sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

   III. Turning from that point, a third subject is this, WHY IS SUCH
   WORSHIP TO BE RENDERED? Why did not God ordain worship by windmills as
   in Thibet? Why has he not chosen to be worshipped by particular men in
   purple and fine linen, acting gracefully as in Roman and Anglican
   churches? Why not? He gives two reasons which ought to suffice. The
   first is, he himself seeks spiritual worship. It is his own wish that
   the worship should be spiritual, And in the second place, he is himself
   a spirit, and is to be spiritually worshipped. Whatever kind of worship
   the great Ruler desires he ought to receive, and it is impertinence on
   my part if I say to him, "No, not that, but this." It is true I may
   say, "I am very sincere in all this, very earnest in it. It suits my
   taste. There is a beauty about it; it excites certain emotions which I
   think to be devotional." What is all that but saying, "Great God, thou
   hast chosen such-and-such a way of being worshipped, but I will not
   render it to thee?" Is not that in effect saying, "I will not worship
   thee at all;" for must not worship, to be worship, be such as the
   person worshipped himself will accept? To invent our own forms of
   worship is to insult God; and every mass that is ever offered upon the
   Romish altar is an insult to heaven, and a blasphemy to God who is a
   Spirit. Every time any form of worship by procession, celebration, or
   ceremonial of man's invention is offered to God, it is offered in
   defiance of this word of Christ, and cannot and will not be received;
   however earnest people may be they have violated the imperative canon
   of God's Word; and in fighting for rubrics they have gone against the
   eternal rubric that God as a Spirit must be worshipped in spirit and in
   truth.

   The second reason given is, that God is a Spirit. If God were material,
   it might be right to worship him with material substances; if God were
   like to ourselves, it might be well for us to give a sacrifice
   congenial to humanity; but being as he is, pure spirit, he must be
   worshipped in spirit. I like the remark made by Trapp in his commentary
   on this passage, when he says that perhaps the Savior is even here
   bringing down God to our comprehension; "for," saith he, "God is above
   all notion, all name." Certainly, this we know, that anything which
   associates him with the grossness of materialism is infinitely removed
   from the truth. Said Augustine, "When I am not asked what God is, I
   think I know, but when I try to answer that question, I find I know
   nothing." If the Eternal were such an one as thou art, O man, he might
   be pleased with thy painted windows. But what a child's toy must
   coloured glass be to God! I can sit and gaze upon a cathedral with all
   its magnificence of architecture, and think what a wonderful exhibition
   of human skill; but what must that be to God, who piles the heavens,
   who digs the foundation of the deep, who leads Arcturus with his sons?
   Why, it must be to him the veriest trifle, a mere heap of stones. I
   delight to hear the swell of organs, the harmony of sweet voices, the
   Gregorian chant, but what is this artistic sound to him more than
   sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal? As a sight, I admire the
   choristers and priests, and the whole show of a grand ceremonial; but
   do you believe that God is imposed upon by those frocks and gowns of
   white, and blue, and scarlet, and fine linen? It seems to me as if such
   a notion brings down God to the level of a silly woman who is fond of
   finery. The infinite God, who spreads out the heavens and scatters
   stars with both his hands, whom heaven and earth cannot contain, to
   whom space is but a speck, and time is as nothing, do you think that he
   dwelleth in temples made with hands, that is to say, of man's building?
   And is he to be worshipped with your organs, and your roodscreens, and
   your gaudy millinery? He laugheth at them, he treadeth on them as being
   less than nothing and vanity. Spiritual worship is what he regardeth,
   because he is a Spirit. My brethren, if you could get together a
   procession of worlds, if you could make the stars walk along the
   streets of some great new Jerusalem, dressed in their brightest array;
   if instead of the songs of a few boys or men you could catch the
   sonnets of eternal ages; if instead of a few men to officiate as
   priests you could enlist time, eternity, heaven and earth to be the
   priesthood, yet all this would be to him but as a company of
   grasshoppers, and he would take up the whole as a very little thing.
   But let me tell you that even God himself, great as he is, does not
   despise the tear that drops from a repentant eye, nor does he neglect
   the sigh that comes from a sinner's soul. He thinks more of your
   repentance than of your incense, and more of your prayers than of your
   priesthoods. He views with pleasure your love and your faith, for these
   are spiritual things in which he can take delight; but your
   architecture, your music and your fine arts, though they lavish their
   treasures at his feet, are less than nothing and vanity. Ye know not
   what spirit ye are of. If ye think to worship my God with all these
   inventions of man, ye dream like fools. I feel glowing within me the
   old iconoclastic spirit. Would God we had men now like Knox or Luther,
   who with holy indignation would pull in pieces those wicked mockeries
   of the Most High, against which our soul feels a hallowed indignation
   as we think of his loftiness, and of that poor paltry stuff with which
   men degrade his name.

   IV. WHAT THEN? What is the practical drift of this? Why two things.

   The first is, my dear brothers and sisters, I mean you who have learned
   to worship God in spirit and in truth, who have got above the beggarly
   elements of the outward, and can worship him in spirit and in truth,
   what then? Why, in the first place, let us be particularly jealous of
   anything which looks at all like going back to ceremonialism. As a
   matter of taste I have a great liking for noble architecture. Many an
   hour have I lingered in the ruins of some splendid abbey or our own
   majestic buildings still used for sacred worship. I have a great
   delight in a well-painted window. I cannot say that I like most
   Dissenting painted windows, because they look to me as if they were a
   sort of would be if you could. I cannot say I have any kind of liking
   for most of our Dissenting Gothic, for it seems to me such a paltry
   thing to build a front just like St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, and
   then as if to cheat the Lord to make the back part shabby. I cannot say
   I care for that kind of thing. But a really splendid place of worship I
   admire, as a matter of taste. I like an organ very well, as a matter of
   musical taste. But, my brethren, I feel that these are times when we
   must stand out even against allowable things, lest going one step we
   should go another. I do pray you therefore if you have any influence
   anywhere always use it in favor of simplicity, and if you see at any
   time in the churches of which you are the members a tendency to creep
   on to something a little nearer, a little towards the way of Rome, cry
   "Halt!" Let us rather go back to the barns in which our fathers
   worshipped, or better still to the hill side, and to the green sward
   than go forward to anything like symbolism, which will tempt the soul
   away from spiritual worship. We ought ourselves to guard against
   falling into formalism by means of simplicity, for we may do it the one
   way as well as the other, by laying it down as a rule that a service
   must begin with prayer or begin with singing, that the preacher must
   preach at such a time in the service, that the service must commence,
   continue, and conclude in some fixed fashion; that seems to me to have
   a tendency to breed another form of ritualism inconsistent with
   worshipping God in spirit and in truth. I am afraid I have hardly grace
   enough to worship God by two or three hours together in silence as our
   Quaker friends do. I do enjoy a quarter of an hour's silence every now
   and then; to sit quite still seems to me to be an admirable way of
   getting into contact with God. Our service is so much words, words,
   words, that I am almost afraid you get to think as much of words as
   other people do of banners, and flags, and so on. Now, to sit still, to
   get might away from words, if so your heart keeps to God, is better
   even than preaching and singing. Juan De Yaldes, a Catholic, but a good
   Protestant for all that, remarks that the vulgar in seeking to remember
   Christ by the crucifix do not exercise their mind but stop at the
   crucifix, and therefore that which was intended to be a help becomes a
   hindrance; so the learned get their bibles which should help them to
   think upon divine things, but being content with having read the letter
   of Scripture they often fail to reach the spiritual truth which it
   containeth, and so after all do not worship God. Remember that while we
   should be jealous of anything which would make it easy to be formal of
   worship which might be adopted, yet we may still after all have missed
   the main thing, the worshipping of God in spirit and in truth.

   Let us make it a matter of heart-searching as to whether we ourselves
   have been in the habit of worshipping the Father in spirit and in
   truth. Dear friends, I am jealous of some of you that you do not do
   this. If the preacher happens to be away you do not feel in so good a
   frame; somebody else takes my place, and there are certain feeble folk
   among you who feel as if the sabbath had lost its enjoyment. But God is
   here, and you might worship God as much surely without me as with me;
   and though the instruction received from one man may not seem so
   edifying as that which may come from another, and possibly may not be
   so, yet still if your object be the worship of God, which should be the
   main object of our gathering, surely you should do that as well under
   the ministry of Mr. A. as Mr. B. I am afraid too that many of you are
   content with singing through the hymn; now all that singing which is
   not thought-singing is of no use; you may have very sweet voices but
   God does not regard your voice, he hears your heart, and if your heart
   does not sing you have not sung at all. When we stand up to pray it may
   be that the preacher's words may happen to be suitable to your case,
   but it is not prayer so far as you are concerned, though it may be as
   far as he is, unless you join in it. Recollect that if you do not put
   your hearts into the worship of God, you might for that matter as well
   be at home as here; you are better here than at home for other reasons,
   because you are in the way where good may come to you; but for
   worship's sake you might as well have been in bed as here. You who have
   no spiritual worship may even clog the devotions of those who have; an
   invisible savor of death unto death may be stealing from you, helping
   to pollute or to render dead the worship of those who truly adore God.
   At any rate, my dear hearers, if you have not with your whole hearts
   loved and worshipped God, repent over it, and pray the Holy Ghost to
   make you spiritual. Go to Christ's cross, and trust in him; then, and
   not till then, will you be capable of adoring the most High God in a
   style in which he can accept your worship. God grant that this may be
   impressed upon the hearts of all of us, that we may worship God in
   spirit and in truth.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--John 4:1-30.
     __________________________________________________________________

                       Turning Back in the Day of Battle

   A Sermon

   (No. 696)

   Delivered by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back
   in the day of battle."--Psalm 78:9.

   I DO NOT THINK that it has ever been clearly ascertained to what
   particular historical event Asaph here refers, but I do not find that
   any of the commentators mention a very obscure passage in the First
   Book of Chronicles, which I venture to suggest may give us the
   explanation. In the first Book of Chronicles, the seventh chapter and
   the twentieth verse, you read:--"And the sons of Ephraim, Shuthelah,
   and Bered his son, and Tabath his son, and Eladah, and Tabath his son,
   and Zabad his son, and Shuthelah his son, and Ezer, and Elead, whom the
   men of Gath that were born in that land slew, because they came down to
   take away their cattle. And Ephraim their father mourned many days, and
   his brethren came to comfort him." This event appears to have occurred
   while the children of Israel were still in Egypt. It has been supposed
   by some that these sons of Ephraim made a raid upon the promised land,
   and attacked the men of Gath. Believing the land to be theirs by
   promise they went to take it before they had divine authority so to do.
   They made God's decrees the rule of their life instead of God's
   revealed will, and so they soon fell into trouble,--as those people
   always do who make that mistake,--and their father Ephraim mourned over
   them many days. But it appears to have been rather an attack made upon
   them by some men of Gath. The people seem some of them to have been of
   Egyptian origin, and they probably made an attack upon the cattle of
   the men of Ephraim. These young men defended their cattle for a time,
   but at last--if this be the event, which this Psalm refers to--it would
   appear they turned their backs and so fell slain. That may or may not
   be. Still there are other passages in history, which might serve to
   illustrate the text. You are aware that Joshua was of the tribe of
   Ephraim, and probably on account of this, the ark of God was first
   placed at Shiloh. On the occasion when Hophni and Phineas were slain,
   the children of Israel, we are told, fled. It appears to have been the
   peculiar duty of the men of Ephraim, in whose tribe Shiloh was, to
   guard the ark. It may be possible that they were set around the ark as
   a body-guard to it, but fled at the approach of the Philistines, or
   fell slain together with Hophni and Phineas on that terrible and
   disastrous day. If this is the event alluded to you will find the
   history of it in the fourth chapter of the First Book of Samuel.
   Perhaps, however, reference is made to the whole history of the tribe
   of Ephraim, that though they were well armed and were dexterous men in
   the use of the bow, yet on many occasions they turned their backs in
   the day of battle. Whether any of these explanations interpret the
   historical reference or not, the subject in itself will furnish us with
   a theme for meditation.

   I. We will first consider for a little while WHAT THESE MEN DID.

   They turned their backs. When the time for fighting came they ought to
   have shown their fronts. Like bold men they should have kept their face
   to the foe and their breast against the adversary, but they
   dishonorably turned their backs and fled. This, I am sorry to say, is
   not an unusual thing amongst professing Christians. They turn back;
   they turn back in the day of battle. Some do this at the first
   appearance of difficulty. "There is a lion in the way," saith the
   slothful man, "I shall be slain in the streets." They hear that there
   is some trouble involved in Christian service, or that some persecution
   may be met with in the pursuit of truth, and straightway they look
   before they leap, as the world hath it, and turn back from the way
   which they supposed to be that of safety. Timorous and Mistrust come
   running down the hill crying, "The lions! the lions!" and thus may a
   pilgrim turn back towards the City of Destruction.

   Others are somewhat braver. They bear the first brunt. When the
   skirmishers begin these are as bold as any; they can return blow for
   blow, and you bear them boast, as they buckle on their armor, at such a
   rate, that you would suppose, if you did not know that boasters are
   seldom good at fighting, that they must certainly be victorious. During
   the first thrust they stand like martyrs and behave like heroes, but
   very soon, when the armor gets a little battered, and the fine plume on
   their helmet a little stained, they turn back in the day of battle.

   Some professors bear the fight a little longer. They are not to be
   laughed out of their religion; they can stand the jeers and jests of
   their old companions. When they find that they have got the cut direct
   in the society which once loved them so much they can put up with that,
   and they are very much complimented by themselves on having done it.
   "Cowards," say they, "are those who flee; but we shall never do this."
   But by and by the skirmishers have done their work, and it comes to a
   hand-to-hand fight; the struggle begins to be somewhat more arduous,
   and now shall we see what metal they are made of. The enemy gets hold
   of them, and

   "That desperate tug their soul might feel

   Through bars of brass and triple steel."

   Then they find that they are being hugged in the wrong place; they are
   touched in a tender part, and so they also turn back in the day of
   battle!

   And, alas! sad as it is to say it--firmly as we believe that every
   child of God is safe, yet is it true that many who profess to be so,
   after having fought so long that you would suppose the next thing would
   be for them to rest upon their laurels and receive their crown, just at
   the very last they fall and turn hack! We have seen grey-headed
   apostates as well as juvenile ones. There have been those who seemed to
   wear well for a time, but at last one crushing blow came which they
   could not bear, and they gave way before it! Oh, brethren, it is only
   those who persevere to the end that will be saved, and only those who
   have a true faith in Jesus Christ have a sure evidence of their
   election of God; these be they who shall be clothed with white raiment,
   and shall sit down upon his throne for ever. But, how many who bade
   fair to do this, after all turn back!

   I may be describing--I hope I am not--some actual case here. Some of
   you may say as you turn the thought over in your minds,--

   "My feet had almost gone;

   My steps had well nigh slipped."

   That young man over yonder was so much jeered at the other day by those
   with whom he works, that he felt it was very unkind, and he did think
   something about renouncing his religion altogether. And my other
   brother yonder, who has had so many losses, has lately had such a time
   as he never had before, and he thinks nobody else ever had; and he
   cries, "God has forsaken me." He cannot just now say, "Though he slay
   me yet will I trust in him;" but he thinks, "Surely I had better turn
   to the world; I had better leave my religion and give it up, for I am
   encompassed about with such a terrible conflict that I shall never win
   the victory!" Ah! brethren, these are often the trials that God sends,
   and it is by these that he separates the chaff from the wheat, and lets
   us see who are true soldiers, and who are only the lacqueys who wear
   regimentals, but have not the soldier's heart pulsing beneath the
   scarlet. God grant us grace to be found at last men that turned not
   back in the day of battle.

   If I take the history of the children of Ephraim, I should say that
   they turned their backs and failed to defend the ark. There are some
   who, when they are defending the truth, shun controversy. They are of
   such a timid disposition--a loving disposition they call it--that as
   soon as ever the war-trumpet sounds they find it to be their duty to
   attend to the baggage in the rear. They are very brave men indeed in
   that particular quarter of the conflict where it does not happen to
   rage; but there in the van, where the corpses are piled on heaps, and
   where the battle-axes drip with gore, they never will be found, because
   they have not the courage to fight and to conquer for Jesus. As far as
   they are concerned the ark of God may be taken by the Philistines,
   because they turn their backs.

   These Ephraimites ought, too, as Joshua had set them the example, to
   have conquered Canaan, and to have driven out the Canaanites still
   left. Ah! my brethren, there are some of you whose sins still live,
   because you have turned your backs upon them, but not in the right
   sense, for you have turned your backs against contending with sin.
   There is that bad temper of yours--you have given up trying to curb it
   now. You say, "Well, you know many of God's children have bad tempers,"
   whereas you know that this is very wicked talking. You ought to slay
   that Agag. You have no business to tolerate a bad temper. You must
   never have any peace with that spiteful temper, or that hasty temper of
   yours; you must down with it, or else it will down with you, and if you
   do not overcome it, it will overcome you. Rest assured that you are
   guilty, and that you turn your back if you do not fight with it. So too
   with that worldliness of yours and that want of a prayerful spirit. If
   you say, "Well, I will be content to be as I am; I will not try after a
   high state of piety," you turn your backs, my brethren. You ought to
   slay all these Canaanites, and you must in Christ's name do it, and not
   spare so much as one of them, but say, "they compass me about, like
   bees, yea, they compass me about, but in the name of the Lord will I
   destroy them."

   And then, when these people turned their backs, Canaan was not won. So
   it is with you. The Lord's kingdom is not yet fully extended, and just
   when you ought to be pushing far and wide the conquests of the cross,
   and be letting this great city of ours know that the King reigneth
   mighty to save, you turn back in the day of battle. There are some
   Christians here who are doing nothing. I should not say this, perhaps,
   if I were preaching on Sunday, for I thank God that I could not in my
   own heart say it of my own members; the most of them are doing, I
   believe, as much as lieth in them, or if not, I hope they very soon
   will be. But I am persuaded that there are many other Christians who
   are not doing what they should do, but are shrinking from practical
   service. They come in here, perhaps, on a Thursday night, and get a
   little bit, and they go elsewhere on other evenings of the week and
   pick up sweet morsels and crumbs. They like feeding very well, but they
   do not like work so much. There is a certain little company that come
   here on week-day evenings, into whose ears I should like to whisper,
   and ask them what they are doing for Christ. They are spiritual
   vagrants who go from one place to another, but have no settled home
   where they work for the Master, and they are of very little credit to
   anybody. We must all of us have a sphere of labor, and though I am glad
   to see all of you, as many as like to come, yet I pray you do have your
   own place for your own work, and do not be like the children of Ephraim
   who "turned back in the day of battle."

   II. Having thus observed what these men of Ephraim did, we come to look
   at the inopportune time WHEN THEY DID IT.

   They turned back, and their doing so would not have mattered much had
   they done it in a day of feasting. They could always be spared then,
   but that was not when they did it. They always had their faces to the
   front when there was any feasting to be done. They turned back; when?
   On holidays, when the banners waved high and the silver trumpets
   sounded? No; they were in the front then! Exeter Hall! May meetings!
   How many people are in the front there and then? When there is
   something sweet to feed upon they do not think of turning back. But
   these people turned back on rather a different occasion; they turned
   back in the day of battle. They turned back, it seems then, just when
   they were to be tried. Ah! how much there is we do that will not stand
   trial! How much there is of godliness which is useful for anything
   excepting that which it is meant for! It is all in vain for me to say,
   if I have bought a water-proof coat, that it is good for everything
   except keeping the water out. Why, then it is good for nothing, and so
   there are some Christians who have got a religion that is good for
   every day except the day when it has to be tested, and then it is good
   for nothing. An anchor may be very pretty on shore, and it may be very
   showy as an ornament when it lies on the ship's deck or hangs from the
   side, but what is the good of it if it will not hold when the wind
   blows and the vessel needs to be held fast? So, alas! there is much of
   religion and of godliness, so called, that is no good when it comes to
   the day of trial. The soldier is truly proved to be a soldier when the
   war-trumpet sounds and the regiment must go up to the cannon's mouth.
   Then shall you know, when the bayonets begin to cross, who has the true
   soldier's blood in him; but ah! how many turn back when it really comes
   to the conflict, for then the day of trial is too much for them!

   They turned back at the only time when they were of any sort of use. A
   man who has to fight is not of any particular use to his country, that
   I know of, except when there is fighting to be done. Like a man in any
   other trade, there is a season when he is wanted. Now, if the Christian
   soldier never fights, of what good is he at all? That is a very
   remarkable passage in one of the prophets, where the Lord compares his
   people to a vine, and then he says of them, in words of which I will
   give the sense, "If the vine bears fruit it is very valuable, but, if
   it bears no fruit, then it is good for nothing at all." An oak without
   fruit is valuable for its timber, and even thorns are useful, for you
   may make a hedge of them. Smaller plants may be used for some medicinal
   purposes, but the vine, if it bear no fruit, is absolutely good for
   nothing. "Will a man even make a peg of it, whereon to hang a vessel?"
   saith the prophet. No, it is of no service whatever. So is it with the
   Christian. If he be not thorough and true he is no good at all; you can
   make nothing of him whatever; he is, to use Christ's expressive words,
   "Neither fit for the land nor even for the dunghill, and men cast him
   out." Who would enlist a soldier that knew he would turn back? and who
   amongst us would like to be in his regiment? Take off his colors, play
   "The Rogue's March," and turn him out of the barracks! And this is what
   will come to some professors who turn back in the day of battle! Their
   regimentals will be torn off, and they will be excluded from the church
   of God because they turned back in the day of trial and at the time
   when they were needed.

   They turned their backs, too, like fools, in the day when victory was
   to be won. The soldier wants to distinguish himself; he wants to rise
   out of the ranks; he wants to be promoted. He hardly expects an
   opportunity of doing this in time of peace; but the officer rises when
   in time of war he leads a successful charge. And so it is with the
   Christian soldier. I make no advance while I am not fighting. I cannot
   win if I am not warring. My only opportunity for conquering is when I
   am fighting. If I run away when there is a chance of winning the crown,
   then I am like the ship that does not come out of harbour when there is
   a fair wind, or like the man who does not avail himself of the high
   tide to get his vessel over the bar at the harbour's mouth. I cannot
   win without fighting, and therefore I thank God when the trial comes,
   and count it a joy when I fall into manifold temptations, because now I
   may add to my faith one virtue after another, till my Christian
   character is all complete. To throw away the time of conflict is to
   throw away the crown. Oh simple heart! Oh silly heart! to be afraid of
   suffering for Jesus! You are, in fact, afraid of reigning with him, for
   you must do the one if you would do the other. You, young woman, who
   are so alarmed at a little laughing, recollect you cannot go to heaven
   without being laughed at sometimes in the circle in which you move, or
   the family in which you live. He that will live a godly life in Christ
   Jesus must suffer persecution. Since, then, this is the way to heaven,
   why do you turn from it? Be not like these children of Ephraim who
   turned back when there was a crown to be won.

   They turned back, once more, when turning back involved the most
   disastrous defeat. The ark of God was taken. "Ichabod," the enemy
   cried, for the glory was departed from Israel, because the children of
   Ephraim turned back in the day of battle. And so, dear friends, unless
   God gives you preserving grace to stand fast to the end, do you not see
   that you are turning back to--what? To perdition. You do not turn back
   merely to the world. That is what it looks like, perhaps, to you, but
   you really turn back to hell. If, after having once put your hand to
   the plough, you look back, you are unworthy of the kingdom; but what
   are you worthy of? Why, those "reserved seats" in hell! Did you ever
   think of that? There are such, and let me quote a passage, which proves
   it. We are told in one place of darkness "reserved" for some who were
   "wandering stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for
   ever!" When you turn back you turn back to those reserved places where
   the darkness is more black and the pain more terrible. Oh! may God save
   you from ever turning back in the day of battle! This, then, is when
   they did it--they turned back in the day of battle.

   III. But now let us notice, WHO THEY WERE THAT TURNED BACK.

   They were "children of Ephraim," and they are described as "being armed
   and carrying bows," or bows throwing forth sharp arrows. They were men
   of a noble parentage. They were the children of Ephraim. Joshua was of
   that line, and he was the greatest of conquerors, who led the people
   into the promised laud. And you professors, you profess to be descended
   from our Joshua,--Jesus the Conqueror, and will you turn back? Are you
   followers of the Savior who gave his back to the smiters, and his
   cheeks to them that plucked off the hair, and are you afraid or ashamed
   of anything? He gave his face to be spat upon, and will you hide your
   faces at the mention of his name, because fools choose to laugh at you?
   Followers of Joshua, and vet afraid? Followers of Jesus, and yet blush?
   God grant that we may never blush, except when we think that we ever
   blushed at the thought of his Son! Oh! thou dear, despised, and
   persecuted One, I see thee on thy way amidst the scoffers. One plucks
   thy beard; another pulls thy hair; a third casts his accursed spittle
   into thy face; another beats thee; another cries, "Let him be
   crucified." They mock thee with all forms of mockery. Taunt and jeer
   they heap upon thee. They fill thy mouth with vinegar, and give thee
   gall to drink. They pierce thy hands and thy feet, and yet thou goest
   on along thy way of kindness and of mercy! And I--what have I ever
   suffered compared with thee? And these thy people--what have any of
   these endured, or what can they endure, compared with all thy griefs?
   Thy martyrs follow thee. Up from their fiery stakes they mount to their
   thrones. Confessors follow thee; from dungeons and from racks their
   testimony sounds. And, shall we, upon whom the ends of the earth are
   come, in these softer and gentler times, shall we turn back, and say we
   know not the Man? O God, forbid! but do thou keep us faithful unto
   thee, that we, the sons of Ephraim, may not turn back in the day of
   battle.

   Then, again, they were armed, and had proper weapons, weapons which
   they knew how to use, and good weapons for that period of warfare. And
   as Christians, what weapons have we? Here is this "Sword of the Spirit,
   which is the Word of God." Here is a quiver, filled with innumerable
   arrows, and God has put into our hands the bow of prayer, by which we
   may shoot them, drawing that bow by the arm of faith against our
   innumerable foes. What weapons of holy warfare do you want better than
   those which this sacred armoury supplies? Read the last chapter of the
   Epistle to the Ephesians, and see how the apostle, with a triumphant
   glorying, takes you through God's armoury, and bids you look at the
   various pieces of armor, and the various weapons that are provided for
   you. If you lose the battle, it is not for want of being armed, and if
   you desert from the ranks, it is not for the want of bows.

   But what is more. Another translation seems to show that these
   Ephraimites were very skillful in the use of the bow, and yet they
   turned back. Oh! may God grant that none of us who have preached to
   others, and preached to others with fluency and zeal may ever have our
   own weapons turned against us. I may make a confession here now. I have
   read some of my own utterances and have trembled as I have read them,
   and afterwards I have wept over them, not wanting to alter them, not
   regretting them, but fearing and trembling lest I should have my own
   words used in judgment against me at the last great day, for there can
   be no more dreadful thing that for a man to have known and taught the
   Word to others, and then to hear the Master say,--just listen to
   it,--"Thou wicked servant! Out of thine own mouth will I condemn thee!"
   O God! Condemn me out of anybody's mouth rather than out of my own. It
   will be a dreadful thing to have known how to use the bow, and yet not
   to win the victory one's-self; to have been a sort of drill-sergeant to
   God's people, showing them how to use the weapons, and then not to have
   fought the battle one's-self! This will be a terrible thing! Some of
   you know how to use this Bible. You are acquainted with it, you have
   studied its doctrines, you know the points of divinity and theology,
   you are well read up in the teachings of God's Word; you know how to
   use the bow. And some of you pray very sweetly at prayer-meeting. Ah!
   beloved, what I said about myself may well apply to you. Some of you
   are Sunday-school teachers and others tract distributors, and you all
   know how to use the bow. I hope I can say to you who sit here that I
   have, like Saul, taught you to use the bow. We have sought to teach you
   young men to use God's Word both in prayer and in other exercises of
   your holy faith; but, beloved, if you turn back, the art, which you
   have learned, shall rise up in judgment against you to condemn you! If
   as professors taught the use of God's Word you are marched out to
   fight, but have not courage enough for the conflict, and turn your
   backs and slink into inglorious ease or into vain-glorious
   self-righteousness, or into false glorious pleasure, oh! how terrible
   must be your ruin at the last! May you not be like the children of
   Ephraim, who, though skilled in the use of the bow, yet turned back in
   the day of battle! This, then, is who they were.

   IV. And ask ye now--WHY DID THEY DO IT?

   Why did they, indeed? We might well have been at a loss to tell, for
   they were armed and carried bows. What then was the reason? The Word of
   God tells us and gives us three reasons. You will find them in the
   verses following the text. "They kept not the covenant of God and
   refused to walk in his law, and forgot his works, and his wonders that
   he had showed them."

   "They kept not the covenant." Oh! that great covenant, "ordered in all
   things and sure," when you can fall back upon that how it strengthens
   you! When you can read in it eternal thoughts of divine love to you,
   and can hear Jesus say, "I give unto my sheep eternal life, and they
   shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand." How
   it encourages you to go forward! You cannot be killed, you are
   invulnerable, you have been dipped in the covenant stream that makes
   you invulnerable from head to foot. Why, then, should you fear to face
   the foe? If you forget that covenant you will soon turn back, and so
   prove that you are not in it; but the remembrance of it gives strength
   to God's people to persevere, since they feel that God's purpose is
   that they shall persevere, and so win the victory. The covenant,
   however, not only secures safety, but it also provides all sorts of
   blessings. If a Christian always had his eye on the covenant storehouse
   he could never desert his God for the world. Will a man leave a
   treasury that is full of gold to go to a beggar's cottage for money?
   Will a man turn from the flowing stream that comes cool and fresh from
   Lebanon's melting snow to go and drink of some filthy stagnant pool?
   No, not he, and when a man knows the treasures of grace that are in
   Christ Jesus, and remembers that it pleased the Father that in him
   should all fullness dwell, and that he hath made him a covenant for the
   people, will such a man turn back? Assuredly not, but every promise of
   the covenant will enable him to face his foes and prevent his turning
   back in the day of battle. Perhaps, however, the covenant which we
   forget is the covenant we feel we made with Christ in the day when we
   said, "My beloved is mine, and I am his," when we give ourselves up in
   a full surrender, body, soul, and spirit, to God. Oh! let us never
   forget that covenant! Supposing we should lose our character for
   Christ's sake? Did we not give Christ our character to begin with? You
   are of no use in the ministry, my dear brother, if you are not quite
   willing to be called a fool, to be called a thief, or even to be called
   a devil! You will never be successful if you are afraid of being
   pelted. The true minister often finds his pulpit to be a place but
   little preferable to a pillory, and he is content to stand there,
   feeling that all the abuse and blasphemy which may come upon him are
   only the means by which the world recognises and proves its recognition
   of a God-sent man. Oh! to rest upon the covenant which is made in
   grace, and to hold fast the covenant which Christ has compelled us to
   make with him, resolved that even should he take all away, our joy, our
   comfort, and our ease, we will still stand to it, and still keep the
   covenant.

   Another reason why they turned back was that "they refused to walk in
   his law." When we get a proud heart we very soon get beaten, for with
   the face of a lion, but the heart of a deer, such an one is afraid of
   the world. If I am willing to do what God tells me, as he tells me,
   when he tells me, and because he tells me, I shall not turn back in the
   day of battle.

   They also seem to have turned back because they had bad memories. "They
   forgat his works, and the wonders that he had showed them." My dear
   friends, we the members of this church have seen many of God's wonders,
   and have rejoiced in them, and if we were to forget these we should
   lack one means of comfort in our own darkness. Some of you have had
   very wonderful manifestations of the Lord's kindness, and if you forget
   all these I should not wonder if you should prove to be a mere
   professor and turn your back, for God's true people are like that Mary,
   whom all generations call "blessed," they treasure these things in
   their hearts. We ought to stir up our remembrances of God's
   loving-kindness, for if we do not it will soon he a powerful reason for
   our turning back in the day of battle. Oh! have we not fought in days
   gone by, and shall we now be afraid? Have we not slain old Giant Grim?
   Did we not fight with dragons and with lions? Have we not gone through
   the Valley of the Shadow of Death? Have we not had a conflict with
   Apollyon himself foot to foot, and shall Giant Despair or his wife Mrs.
   Diffidence make us afraid? No, in the name of God we will use the good
   old sword, the true Jerusalem blade that we wielded aforetime, and we
   shall yet again be more than conquerors through him that loved us. Let
   us, then, not forget God's works in the days of yore, lest we fail to
   trust him in the days that are to come. This was why they turned back.

   V. And now the last enquiry is--WHAT WAS THE RESULT OF THEIR TURNING
   BACK?

   One result of their turning back was, that their father mourned over
   them. We are told, in the passage I quoted first, that "Ephraim their
   father mourned for them many days." What a lamentation it brings into
   the Christian church when a professor falls! There is one heart, which
   feels it with peculiar poignancy--the heart of him who thought he was
   the spiritual father of the person so falling. There are no griefs
   connected with our work like the grief of mourning over fallen
   professors, especially if these happen to be ministers, men who are
   armed and carry bows, for when they turn back, well accoutred and well
   skilled in war, it is heart breaking work indeed! I do not exaggerate,
   but I know I only speak the sober truth, when I say that if I could
   submit to any form of corporeal torture that I have ever heard of, I
   would be willing to bear it sooner than submit to the torture I have
   sometimes felt over members of this church, or what is worse, over
   young men educated in our College, or what is worse still, over
   ministers who have been for some time settled over their flocks. If at
   any time you desire to be malicious towards the man whom you look upon
   as your spiritual father; if you would send an arrow through his very
   liver and smite him with a dagger in the core of his heart, you have
   nothing to do but I to turn back in the day of battle and you have done
   it. It were better that you had never been born than that you should go
   back to the world. It were better that you should be taken out of this
   house a corpse than that you should live to disgrace the profession
   which you have espoused, especially those of you who stand in a
   prominent place. O God, keep us who witness before the multitude, keep
   us by thine eternal power, keep us as the apple of thine eye, hide us
   beneath the shadow of thy wings, or else we who are chief and foremost,
   though armed and carrying bows, shall yet turn back in the day of
   battle.

   Another result, which you perhaps will think more important far, was
   that owing to their turning back the enemy remained. Owing to many
   Christians not doing what they ought to do in the day of battle,
   Romanism is still in this land, and infidelity is rife. If in the days
   of Elizabeth and Cranmer men had acted up to the light they then had,
   we should not be as we now are, a semi-Popish nation. Had Luther
   himself been faithful to some of the light to which he shut his eyes,
   he might have inaugurated a more perfect Reformation than that for
   which we are still devoutly grateful to God and for which we always
   cherish his memory. There was a want of thoroughness even in that day.
   And at the present moment, if some of our brethren were but faithful to
   their own convictions, they would not be bolstering up an alliance of
   the State with a depraved Church; they would not dare to perform some
   ceremonies which are atrociously bad, and many of us, if we acted
   according to our inward monitor, would not do many things which we are
   now doing. Oh! may God give us grace to smite the foe! What has sin to
   do in this world? Christ has bought the world with his blood, and oh!
   for grace to clear sin out of Christ's heritage! The earth is the
   Lord's, and the kingdoms thereof, the world and they that dwell
   therein; and if we were but faithful to God we should not turn back in
   the day of battle, and Rome and all our foes would be slain.

   Then, again, if we did not turn our backs, the country would be
   conquered for Christ. I do not like the way in which some brethren say,
   that if we were more faithful half London would be saved. I say that I
   believe God's purpose is achieved, but still we are bound to speak of
   our sins according to their tendencies, and the tendency of our want of
   confidence in God, and our not boldly persevering, is to destroy souls.
   Paul talked once of destroying with meat him for whom Christ died, that
   being the tendency to destroy such souls if they could be destroyed. So
   humanly speaking, the darkness of the world at present is owing to the
   unfaithfulness of the church, and if the church had been as true to
   Christ as she was in the first century, long ere this there would not
   have been a village without the gospel, nor a single empire in the
   world in which the truth had not been proclaimed. It is our turning
   back in the day of battle that leaves Canaan unconquered for our Lord.

   But, worse than this, the ark itself was actually taken. My dear
   friends, those of you who are armed and carry bows, men of learning,
   men who understand the Scriptures, 1 do pray you, do not turn back just
   now, for just now seems to be a time when the ark of God will be taken.
   It can never really be so, but still we must mind that it be not the
   tendency of our actions. We are in great danger from what some people
   will not believe, but what is most certainly a fact, and that is the
   marvellous increase of Popery in this land. There are certain brethren
   who are always harping upon this one string, till we have grown sick of
   the theme, but, without at all endorsing their alarm, I believe there
   is quite enough for the most quiet and confident spirit to be alarmed
   at. The thing has become monstrous, and there is need to awaken the
   anxious care and the earnest efforts of God's church. You need not be
   long without good evidence of this. Every nerve is being strained by
   Rome to win England to itself, and, on the other hand, while we have
   less neology, and less of all sorts of scepticism throughout the whole
   country, I am afraid that we have more of it than we used to have
   inside the church itself. There are many doctrines that are now matters
   of question, which I never heard questioned ten years ago. I am not
   altogether sorry for this, but rather glad, because there are some
   doctrines which are not preached now, but which will be preached more
   in future in consequence of doubts being thrown upon them. But it is a
   very ominous sign of the times, that most of those truths which we have
   been accustomed to accept as being the received and orthodox faith of
   Christendom are now being questioned, and questioned too by men who are
   not to be despised, men who from their evident earnestness, from their
   deep knowledge, and from their close attention to the matter, deserve a
   hearing in the forum of common sense, even if they do not deserve it
   from spiritual men. We must all of us hold fast the truth now. If there
   is a man who has got a truth, let him draw his bow and shoot his arrows
   now, and not turn back in the day of battle. Now for your arrows! Now
   for your arrows! The more our foes shall conspire against Christ, the
   more do you make war against them. Give them double for their double;
   reward them as they reward you. Spare no arrows against Babylon. "Happy
   shall he be that taketh thy little ones and dasheth them against the
   stones." Happy shall he be who slays the little errors, who kills the
   minor falsehoods, who does battle against Popery in every shape and
   form, and against, infidelity in all its phases! If we do not come to
   the front now, the ark of God, as far as we are concerned, will be
   taken!

   And then, worst of all, we shall hear the Philistines shouting while
   God's church is weeping! The Philistines are good hands at shouting.
   They shout rather loudly about nothing, but when they get a little they
   bark loudly enough then. If they see but one Christian turn back what
   rejoicing there is! They ring the bells and make great mirth over the
   fall of the very least among us, but if those of us who are armed and
   carry bows should turn back in the day of battle, oh "Tell it not in
   Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of
   Philistia rejoice, lest the sons of the uncircumcised triumph!" God
   grant that we may never make mirth for hell. If Satan must have
   merriment may he find it anywhere rather than in us. Oh! may we stand
   at last, and, having done all, may we still stand.

   To conclude, brethren. If we do not stand fast, you know what will come
   of it. Supposing the churches of which we are members do not stand
   fast, what will come of you and what of me? What became of Shiloh? What
   became of Ephraim? Instead of the ark being any longer in the custody
   of Ephraim it was taken away from Shiloh, and God transferred the
   custody of it to Judah, and it rested upon Mount Zion under the
   government of King David. So, mark you, whenever a church becomes
   unfaithful, and turns back in the day of battle, God takes away from it
   the keeping of his ark and entrusts it to others. "I have looked upon a
   neighbor of thine," saith he, "who is better than thou," and so he
   takes the sword and gives it to David, and thus perhaps may he do with
   us. There are many churches that were once flourishing but now are
   deserted altogether. So it may be with us individually, and with the
   churches at large unless we are faithful to God.

   Now, I have said nothing to the unconverted. My drift seemed to be to
   speak to professing believers. Some of you say you never went to this
   war, and therefore you will not turn back; you never made a profession.
   Ah! dear friends, it will be a very poor excuse at the last great day
   to say, "I never made a profession." Did you ever hear of a thief being
   brought up at the Mansion House before the Lord Mayor who said, when he
   was accused of being a thief, "Why, my Lord, I am not a very honest
   man; I never professed to be; I never professed that I would not pick
   people's pockets; I never professed that I would not steal a watch if I
   had the chance; I was regularly known as a thief; I never professed to
   be anything else, therefore you cannot blame me." If a man should make
   such a defense as that, I should think it very likely that the Lord
   Mayor would give him an extra six months, and I think it would serve
   him very well right. You smile at this, but the very same argument may
   be applied to you. "Well," you say, "you know I do not make any
   profession of religion;" that is to say, you do not make any pretense
   of serving and loving the God who made you, who gave you life, and has
   kept and preserved you in it; you do not make any profession of being
   washed in the precious blood of Christ; you do not make a profession of
   being on the road to hell. Well, may God save you from that excuse, and
   may he give you grace to look it in the face and say, "Well, I do not
   dare even to hope that I am saved; I know I am not." Then, my brother,
   if you are not saved, you are lost. I would like to stop while you turn
   that thought over, and when you have done so I would say, "The Son of
   Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."

   May God's eternal mercy seek and save you, and, if it be his will, may
   he find you, and lead you to put your trust in Jesus Christ, and
   resting upon him, and looking to his cross, you shall not, as the
   children of Ephraim did, "turn back in the day of battle."

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 78.
     __________________________________________________________________

                         God'S Cure For Man'S Weakness

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 24, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Out of weakness were made strong." Hebrews 11:34.

   SOME kinds of weakness are of God's appointment and necessarily
   incident to manhood. They are not sinful, and therefore we may continue
   to be subject to them without regret. In reference to such weaknesses
   it may be that after beseeching the Lord even thrice to remove them it
   may be for our good that they should remain. Then will our gracious God
   give us, in place of removing the weakness, this reply, "My grace shall
   be sufficient for you." This is a case of in weakness being made
   strong, and there are many of God's saints who daily experience so
   blessed a privilege. They are weak, and continue weak. They have
   infirmities which they once wished to have removed but which now they
   are content to bear, for now they are of the same mind with the
   Apostle--they glory in their infirmity because when they are weak they
   are strong.

   But, dear Friends, there is another kind of weakness which is sinful--a
   weakness which springs not from nature but from fallen nature--not from
   God's appointment, but from our sinfulness. And out of this we should
   desire to be delivered. We cannot pray for strength in sinful weakness,
   but must earnestly plead for strength to come out of it and to be made
   strong. This seems to me to be the particular blessing which faith is
   said to have obtained in the text, "out of weakness were made strong."
   It is the inestimable privilege of many a Christian to be strong in
   weakness when the weakness is only one of infirmity, but it is an
   equally precious gift to be made strong out of weakness when that
   weakness is of a sinful kind.

   Looking round the Church at large, with as impartial an eye as we can
   summon, we are afraid that for the most part it is nowadays comparable
   to a huge infirmary rather than a camp filled with brave soldiers. Both
   ministers and private members of the Church are very generally weak in
   one way or other. They are living, but they are sickly. They are
   working for God, but they are working in a feeble, inefficient manner.
   If I look upon the camps of the Lord's enemies, whether Puseyite or
   Broad Church, I see intelligence and vigor so apparent that I am apt to
   think that never was error more earnest, more active, more intense than
   just now!

   There is a reality about the efforts of our opponents which may well
   alarm us--and when I look to the camp of the Lord Jesus Christ I lament
   a predominant lukewarmness, a want of enthusiasm and deficiency in
   force, which, if it does not betoken a departure from God in heart,
   certainly indicates very great feebleness in the vital parts--producing
   comparative weakness in all the parts.

   I desire this morning to speak to those who are weak--weak where they
   ought not to be--and who feel a growing tendency to rest content in
   that weakness. I would stir up those who are beginning to imagine that
   weakness is the normal and proper state of a Christian--that to be
   unbelieving, desponding, nervous, timid, cowardly, inactive, heartless,
   is at worst a very excusable thing. I want, if God wills, to show to
   the sinfully weak ones that their condition is not proper at all. I
   want to show that it is a work of faith to lift us out of it--not to
   help us in our evil weakness--but to deliver us out of it and to make
   us strong, reversing our present condition by enabling us to be mighty
   in the work of God.

   Since the text teaches that faith is the grand cure for spiritual
   feebleness, I shall, first, cite a few cases of cure. In the second
   place I shall analyze the remedy. In the third place I shall endeavor
   to administer it, and in the fourth place I shall say a word of praise
   to the Physician who prescribes it.

   I. At the outset we have said that faith is the cure for spiritual
   weakness, and I have to MENTION CASES OF CURE. I shall not now cite
   cases from the Old Testament of bodily cures which have been worked by
   faith, though I might mention Hezekiah, who, being sick unto death,
   was, by faith in God's promise, restored to life and his period of
   existence lengthened fifteen years.

   In the Apostolic times it was through faith that many sicknesses were
   made to fly before the healing touch of the Apostles. That power of
   healing has probably become extinct, or is lying dormant in the
   Church--yet there are still indications that faith has some power in
   that direction. I cannot but think that when honest John Wickliffe,
   raising himself up in the bed of sickness, said to the monks who
   surrounded him, expecting him to die and tempting him to recant, "I
   shall not die, but live to declare the wicked deeds of the monks"--I
   cannot but think that his faith had much to do with his cure.

   Had he been a man of a timorous, wavering frame of mind, his sickbed
   might have been his deathbed--but the vital forces were all thrown into
   energetic action by the mental energy of his faith and the crisis was
   safely passed. I do not know how far faith may still operate upon the
   bodily frame, for there is certainly an intimate connection between the
   soul and the body. Those wondrous cases recorded in the life of
   Dorothea Trudel of Zurich indicate the singular power of faith to
   assist in the cure of the body by its calming influence on the mind.

   That admirable woman, who has but just departed this life, became the
   founder of a hospital in which cures were worked mainly by the means of
   prayer and faith--cures which have been substantiated in the best
   possible manner, namely, by her enemies having dragged her before the
   law courts of Zurich for practicing medicine without a diploma, when
   she proved that the only medicine used was directing the mind to Christ
   and proclaiming the Gospel, by which a holy calm spread over the mind
   and the body derived manifest benefit.

   Such cases, and others which we have noticed, go to show that if we had
   more faith in the living God it might sometimes be possible for the
   soul to so overmaster the body that out of weakness we might still, in
   Hezekiah's fashion, be made strong. These hints are not, however, to
   the point, and relate rather to a theory than to the revealed Truth of
   God. That faith strengthens Christian men has been proved often in the
   history of the Church of God. The Church's weakness springs mainly and
   mostly from a want of faith in her God and in the Revelation which God
   has entrusted to her.

   When men believe intensely they act vigorously. And when their
   principles penetrate their very souls and become precious to them as
   life itself, then no suffering is too severe, no undertaking is too
   laborious, and no conflict too heroic. They will enter upon
   impossibilities--laugh at them and overcome them--when once they know
   of a surety that the principles which move them are most certainly from
   God. This seems to me to be the great work which Luther did in his day
   under God, the Holy Spirit's power. He brought back the Church to the
   strength offaith, and then her whole force returned.

   The man knew but very little of the Truth of God. Upon the doctrine of
   justification by faith he was clear as the sun at noonday, but he was
   half a Romanist in most other respects. But this one all-important
   thing he did for the Church--he made her believe in God and in God's
   Truth with a vigorous decision which had almost ceased from among men.
   Though he knew not all the weapons of the Divine armory, yet the one he
   did know he wielded with such bravery of faith and such tremendous
   dogmatism that his resolute soul shamed others into steadfastness!

   See the man as he goes into Worms, defying a host of devils, though
   they were as many as the tiles on the roofs of the houses! See him
   standing up in the Diet of Worms and alleging that he could not
   retract, so help him God! See him in his earlier days, nailing up his
   theses upon the church doors as sailors nail their colors to the
   mast--or rending the Pope's bull in pieces and casting it into the
   fire! As men resolved on conquest break down the bridges behind them
   and render retreat impossible, it was the man's faith in God that
   helped him to do great exploits, and the Church learned from him to
   believe that "God everywhere has sway, and all things serve His might."

   When the Church once more believed firmly, her spirit returned to her
   and like a giant refreshed with new wine, she recommenced her race. In
   the modern revival under Whitfield and Wesley the restoration of faith
   was the source of restored strength. Those Brethren, differing in
   doctrine as they did, had this point in common, namely, that they were
   intense believers in the indwelling power and Presence of the Holy
   Spirit in the Church. Men had been disputing and trying to prove or
   disprove everything. Sermons were frequent upon such topics as whether
   there was a God or not.

   Now you never find Whitfield or Wesley wasting time over such matters!
   They were so full of God's Spirit, and could see Him so clearly
   everywhere at work, that they felt no need of proving it. While men
   were discussing as to whether the

   Scriptures were inspired and divines were writing books upon the
   evidences, these men preached the Gospel and infidelity fled before
   them! An age destitute of spiritual life generally amuses itself by
   trying to prove what is not worth proving, or wasting its energy upon
   external things to the neglect of the inward--an age spiritually alive
   takes itself to the Lord's work and treats all doubt as folly and sin.

   The followers of Whitfield and Wesley, instead of proving with
   diffidence and apologizing for the Gospel with half-heartedness, came
   forth with, "Thus and thus said the Lord." They mounted their pulpits
   as mo! They proclaimed the Truth of God and men owned its power till
   from one end of the land to the other the dry bones arose to life and
   stood as an exceeding great army.

   Brethren, our Churches must come back to the old faith and to a firm
   belief in it! If you do not believe the articles of your faith, reject
   them and do not be sham believers. If the doctrines which you profess
   are indeed, true, grip them, hold them fast, get them engraved upon
   your souls and burnt into your consciences. Have faith in God and the
   Truth--that the Truth of God cannot be destroyed nor God defeated.
   Vitality and power in your faith will soon send force and life into all
   the other parts of your spiritual manhood!

   What has been proved upon the largest scale has been true in all other
   instances. For instance, the weakness of depraved human nature always
   gives way before the energy of that faith which the Spirit works in us.
   The sinner, aroused in his weakness, sighs dolefully--

   "I would but cannot sing,
   I would but cannot pray.
   I would but cannot
   Break the bonds of sin.
   I would but cannot melt my heart
   And soften it in penitence. "

   When the sinner is pointed to the Cross and comes to trust himself with
   Jesus--viewing the blood sprinkled and the righteousness worked
   out--then the man can pray, can sing, can melt in penitence or can rise
   up in flames of love!

   The inability of human nature is instrumentally removed by the energy
   of faith. It was through believing that you became strong. If you had
   continued to live by work, or by feeling you would have been still as
   weak as ever--but when you looked out of self to Christ and trusted Him
   it was then your strength came to you! The same is true of subsequent
   spiritual weakness. Christians who are alive unto God and are endowed
   with some Divine strength, are attacked at times with a spiritual,
   universal decline. Just as we sometimes see a strong and healthy person
   growing pale and wan, losing appetite and falling into sickness until
   he becomes a mere skeleton because a general sapping and undermining of
   the constitution has come upon him, so have I seen it with Christians.

   They do not lose life, but they do lose all their energy and become as
   listless and lifeless as some of you probably now are in body through
   the heat of the air. Then they can scarcely walk, much less run, and
   mounting with wings as eagles is quite out of the question. Such
   persons will bear witness that the only way of recruiting their
   strength is by faith. They must come again to the first principles and
   trust their souls anew with Jesus--believing over again with a novelty
   of energy the old doctrines of the Gospel! They must go to God as to a
   real God in believing prayer and then they will not long remain weak.

   Out of weakness faith is sure to make us strong, and the change
   effected in us is equal to that which we see in a man who, having been
   long confined to his couch, at last returns to his labor showing no
   tokens whatever of disease. I have still been dealing with the great
   principle of the text on a large scale--we will now particularize a
   little more. Take a few forms of weakness. Many Believers who are
   vigorous in many respects are troubled with a hesitancy in their
   testimony-- they cannot speak up for Jesus. Whenever they try to say a
   good word--nervousness, or something akin to it--restrains them. They
   say with Moses, "Lord, I am slow of speech." They hesitate, or are
   still.

   There is no cure for hesitancy in the confession of Christ equal to
   faith! Observe Moses. He is so hesitating that God gives him Aaron to
   be his spokesman! But read through the history and Moses is the better
   orator of the two. Aaron has a golden mouth, but by degrees the
   confidence that Moses feels in his commission enables him to rebuke
   Aaron. And when Aaron goes up to Mount Hor to sleep in the arms of God,
   Moses stands up and in that last sermon he delivered, and that Psalm he
   sung before the assembled multitude you cannot detect the slightest
   trace of slowness of speech! The man overcome his weakness by faith--a
   holy faith gave him a holy courage--and the tongue once bound became
   unloosed. I should advise some of you to try it. A strong dose of the
   essential oil of believing taken every morning and evening would enable
   you to tell sinners all around what a dear Savior you have found.

   Another common weakness among Christians is timidity. Modesty is
   beautiful but it may degenerate to cowardice. It is well to be
   humble--it is never well to be weakly fearful. Some are always afraid.
   They dare not try this and dare not try that. And if they happen to be
   placed in office where they can influence others by their counsels,
   they are shockingly bad officers because they are always keeping the
   Church back from victory from a fear of defeat. What is a sure cure for
   timidity? Faith--belief in the Truth of God, in the right, in God, in
   invisible energy--in helps which we cannot see and aids which we should
   not have dreamed of. This shakes off timidity.

   Take as a specimen Barak. Barak is slow to go up against the enemies of
   God till Deborah, the mother of Israel, says she will go with him.
   Women sometimes lend superior courage to men, and the weaker sex proves
   itself the stronger. Look at Barak! After he has once believed in the
   power of God he marches to the fight and wins the victory! And he is
   commemorated in soul-stirring words by the poetess, "Awake, awake,
   Deborah; awake, awake, utter a song; arise, Barak, and lead your
   captivity captive, you son of Abinoam." Mighty to conquer was the man
   who was timid to fight! When faith gave him courage it made him
   triumph. Carry a vial of strong faith along with you and a good draught
   thereof will drive off fainting fits. This is the true strong water,
   the genuine elixir, the famous cordial, the heavenly aqua vitae.

   A frequent form of weakness is despondency which is so common in
   English Churches as to be as much a national disorder as consumption.
   It is not so common among you as it was, but still more so than I could
   wish. We are not so joyful and frivolous as our Galician neighbors, and
   we are not quite so go-ahead as our trans-Atlantic friends. I am afraid
   as Englishmen we have a natural tendency to become despondent. I know I
   feel it myself, and in the circle where I move it is not at all
   uncommon. Brethren, despondency is not a virtue! I believe it is a
   vice--I am heartily ashamed of myself for falling into it--and I am
   sure there is no remedy for it like a holy faith in God!

   Asaph, of old, was very subject to this weakness and he said to
   himself, "Why are you cast down, O my Soul, why are you disquieted
   within me?" But what was the medicine he took? "Hope in God, for I
   shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance." That was the
   remedy and David prescribes it too, when he says, "Trust in Him at all
   times, you people. Pour out your hearts before Him." Despondency
   hamstrings a man. It makes him weak in the arena of conflict when he
   ought to be like a well-trained athlete struggling with his foe and
   contending for the mastery. Christian, beseech your Lord to increase
   your faith in Him, your trust in the unseen, your reliance upon His
   promise and fidelity--for when you get more faith you will rise
   superior to that weakness--and out of the weakness you will be made
   strong!

   Impatience, too--impatient murmuring--is another form of Christian
   weakness in which we must not expect to be made strong in Divine Grace,
   but must plead for Grace to get out of it. It strikes me that Job may
   naturally have been an impatient man. He utters many very tart and
   snappish things to his friends--not one whit more sharp than they
   deserved--but he held fast to his integrity as if he had been a very
   Pharisee at first. But notice how strong he was and how clear of his
   weakness, when by Divine Grace, he could say, "Though He slay me, yet
   will I trust in Him!"

   There was the medicine, you see--trusting in God. Job, full of faith,
   sitting on a dunghill, is a far more splendid sight than the Great
   Mogul upon his throne. I do not believe Heaven and earth ever saw a
   more majestic spectacle than the Patriarch on the dunghill covered with
   boils, scraping himself with a potsherd and yet saying, "Shall I
   receive good from the hands of the Lord, and not receive evil?"
   Princes, potentates and kings--your power never reached to this! And
   even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed so gloriously as poor
   Job!

   Brothers and Sisters, if we had more faith in God that He makes all
   things work together for good to them that love Him, we should not grow
   so impatient! We should bear the pain, the cross and the loss with
   greater equanimity-- feeling--"My Father sent it. My Father overrules
   it. Good will come of it." Perhaps you are weary of this list of
   weaknesses, but I must add one more, namely, weakness in overcoming
   besetting sins. I hope we are not among those who make light of sin.

   A genuine Christian dreads sin. He will not say, "Is it not a little
   one?" for he knows that a little sin is like a small dose of a very
   potent poison. He knows it is sufficient to destroy our peace and
   comfort. There are some sins which really seem as if we could not get
   the mastery over them. I will name one--a passionate disposition. A
   person who is of quick temper may get into the condition of thinking,
   "Well, I was born so and cannot help it. I always shall be of a quick
   temper." You always will be if you think that, but it strikes me that
   the Grace of God must have power to overcome evil tempers, and that
   your hope will be in believing that yours can be overcome and in
   struggling to mortify this among the other affections of the flesh.

   I know, personally, men who were once very passionate but are now
   gentle. They were once likely to take fire as readily as tinder to a
   spark, but now they would stand fire right well. And if I had to select
   patient men, I would select those very men who were notorious for their
   fearful tempers in years gone by. "Well," my dear Friend, you will say,
   "I cannot do it, Sir." No, I know you cannot. But there is One who can.
   The eternal God who is your helper can surely help to make you a
   reasonable being and rid you of this madness--for anger is temporary
   insanity. Surely God can make you morally sane and bring you back to a
   calm state of mind--only believe in His power and seek to be wholly
   sanctified by His Grace--spirit, soul and body--and you will see that
   as He cast a legion of devils out of a man in days gone by He can now
   cast this devil out of you so that you will not be pestered with it any
   longer.

   You may have to watch it as a householder watches a thief, but you will
   get it out of doors and keep it at arm's length. Oh for Divine Grace to
   get our temper under foot and keep it there, that though it may have a
   tendency to rise we may keep it down! Anyway, whatever may be our
   besetting sin--and we all have something against which we ought to
   strive--there have been cases in which such weaknesses have been cured
   by faith. We have not time to stop to mention any modern instances but
   we know many. I trust some of us could cite our own history as an
   instance of what faith in God can do. "Out of weakness they were made
   strong."

   II. We will turn to our second head and ANALYZE THE MEDICINE. The
   subject is so very wide that I must confine myself to one instance and
   shall speak of the medicine as it would be mixed and compounded for a
   man struggling at very dreadful odds against a gigantic system of evil.
   He is very weak but through faith he becomes strong. One of the first
   ingredients of faith's medicine is a sense of right. Everybody admits
   that when a man is sure that right is on his side he finds strength in
   that belief.

   Even if two men are going to court with one another, the one who knows
   that his case is founded upon justice enters the court with much more
   strength of mind than he who is conscious of several flaws in his suit
   and only trusts to the blessed uncertainty of the law. There is truth
   in the old saying that "a good conscience is the best armor." It is not
   of very great use in a real battle for, unfortunately, bullets have no
   respect for saint or sinner--when in the way they are pretty sure to
   kill anybody who stops them--but a good conscience is of the utmost
   value in the battle of principle.

   A man who cannot argue, yet knows he is right will somehow or other
   stand his ground. He says, "my opponent has more wit than I have. He
   understands logic better than I, but I know I am right." And to know
   you are right necessarily gives you strength. Faith is a belief in the
   rightness of that which God reveals, a trusting in its truth. And who
   does not understand that a man who believes, therefore, becomes strong?

   A second ingredient is heavenly authority. Everybody knows that a man
   who is naturally weak will often act very bravely when he has authority
   to back him. Let the Christian combatant feel--as feel he will when he
   has faith--that he is armed with Divine authority and you will not
   wonder if from a dwarf he rises to a giant! "This," he says, "is not my
   quarrel. I believe it to be God's war--the Truth of God which I
   maintain at such hazards is no dogma of my own invention--it is God's
   own offspring. God has sent me to fight for it--God puts the words into
   my mouth."

   A man, thus conscious that he has a mission from Heaven, cannot be
   afraid! He must be mighty! And when a man feels, in addition to that,
   that God's decree appoints him to accomplish a certain end. That God's
   promise declares that he shall succeed. And that from the eternal
   nature of truth it cannot sustain defeat--then surely he stands like a
   rock in the midst of the billows and he cannot waver! He casts all
   thought of fear to the winds.

   Mixed with this is a consciousness of heavenly companionship which
   makes the Believer courageous. Many a man who would have been afraid to
   go to battle alone has marched along very cheerily because of the many
   thousands who are hurrying to the same battle. The Christian feels that
   he has the companionship of his God and Savior. Jesus' name is
   "Emmanuel, God with us." The best of all is God is with us. If we
   suffer, Jesus suffers in one of His members. If we are slandered and
   reproached for Jesus' sake, it is the Cross of Christ which we are
   carrying, and Jesus bears it with us. We hear the more than angel
   whisper, "Fear not, I am with you."

   Come then, let us sing as we march onward--

   "If on my face for Your dear name,
   Shame and reproach shall be,
   I'll hail reproach and welcome shame,
   If You remember me."

   In addition to all this faith has an expectation of supernatural help.
   Faith hears the wheels of Providence working on her behalf. Mohammed,
   in his earlier career, though his faith was but mere fanaticism, yet
   gave great courage to his men by the daring things which he said and
   did. As he threw the handful of dust into the air he believed that his
   foes were blinded, and his soldiers won an easy victory. He declared
   that he heard the noise of angels' horses as they came to the fight and
   no sooner had he thus spoken than every man grew brave.

   Now the Christian, not in imagination, but in spiritual fact, can hear
   the wings of angels flying to the rescue of Divine Truth. Here I see
   today the hand of a man, but I see also with it the wing of an angel!
   God works for His people. The evil He hinders and restricts. The good
   He speeds and multiplies. Therefore, strong in invisible succors, we
   must not wonder that out of weakness the Believer is made strong!

   I must not omit one powerful ingredient in faith's life-draught--it is
   the prospect of ultimate reward. Faith bows her head in the day of
   battle when the poisoned arrows fly like hail. She whispers to herself,
   "I may fall, but I shall rise again." And she vows, by the eternal God,
   that when she rises it shall be with the same banner in her hand for
   which she fought. She knows that in the end she cannot, must not,
   fall--that she shall conquer! When a man fears defeat he will probably
   bring it upon himself, for his fear ensures it. But when a man does not
   know how to be defeated, the little petty disasters of the way all
   contribute to his ultimate victory.

   So, Christians, you who are warring for God and His Truth, I hope you
   will not despair because of the gloomy aspect of the present age. It
   may appear as if infidelity and Puseyism together would eat out the
   very heart of God's Church, but courage, my Brethren, courage! These
   foes will eat up one another one of these days, or there shall rise a
   man out of their own ranks who will be their downfall. We may yet live
   to thank God for the apparent retrograde movements of today, for upon
   this the Lord may ride to a brighter ultimate triumph! Faith is strong
   because she is sure of victory! Faith takes to herself this
   thought--that in the victory she shall share her reward.

   What will men not do for a crown? Even for an ivy crown the Grecian
   athlete would strain every nerve. Now they did it for a corruptible
   crown--but we for an incorruptible! Faith makes the crown of eternal
   life glitter before the Believer's eyes. It waves before him the palm
   branch. Sense pictures the grave, loss, suffering, defeat, death,
   forgetfulness--but faith points to the resurrection, the pompous
   appearance of the Son of Man, the calling of the saints from every
   corner of the earth, the clothing of them all in their triumphant array
   and the entrance of the blood-washed conquerors into the Presence of
   God with eternal joy! Thus faith makes us, out of weakness, to become
   strong.

   Let me remind you that the essential ingredients of faith's comfort are
   just these--faith sees the invisible and beholds the substance of that
   which is afar off. Faith believes in God--a present, powerful God full
   of love and wisdom effecting His decrees--accomplishing His purposes,
   fulfilling His promises, glorifying His Son. Faith believes in the
   blood of Jesus, in the effectual redemption on the bloody tree. It
   believes in the power of the Holy Spirit, His might to soften the stone
   and to put life into the very ribs of death! Faith grasps the reality
   of this Book--she does not look upon it as a sepulcher with a stone
   laid on it--but as temple in which Christ reigns, as an ivory palace
   out of which He comes riding in His chariot, conquering and to conquer.

   Faith does not believe the Gospel to be a worn-out scroll, to be rolled
   up and put away. She believes that the Gospel, instead of being in its
   dotage, is in its youth! She anticipates for it a manhood of mighty
   struggles, and a grand maturity of blessedness and triumph. Faith does
   not shirk the fight--she longs for it because she foresees the victory.
   I would compare faith to an emperor of whom we have read that he
   summoned his counselors and generally judged as to whether he should go
   to war by their opinion. But he did it in the following manner--if they
   warned him that it would be a very fearful war, if they said that the
   enemy's cities would never be taken, that the armies on the other side
   were too numerous to be conquered, and the provinces too extensive to
   be held--he would reply, "We will do it then, for if there is anything
   which you gentlemen think to be easy, it is beneath the dignity of the
   emperor and the troops whom he commands. But if you reckon it
   impossible there is a clear field for honor!"

   Was it not a man fit to be a soldier of such a prince, who when told
   that the Persian arrows were so numerous that they would obscure the
   light of the sun, replied, "We shall fight splendidly in the shade."
   Surely he was akin to

   Alexander, who, when they said that the Persians were as the sands on
   the seashore, replied, "One butcher is not afraid of a whole flock of
   sheep." So let it be with us! Let us feel that we are men of another
   mold than to be afraid. Let us feel that believing in God we do not
   know how to spell "coward." And as to fear of defeat or fear of man--we
   give that up for the craven dogs who slink at their master's heels, and
   wear their master's collar, and eat the garbage which his bounty throws
   to them.

   We care not for the things that are seen! We have learned to live upon
   angels' diets and to eat the bread which comes down from Heaven. Our
   motto is, "Courage! Courage!" And our belief is that the day shall
   come--

   "When the might with the right And the right with the might Forever
   more shall be. And come what may To stand in the way, That day the
   world shall see."

   III. The third point is to ADMINISTER THIS MEDICINE, but no time
   remains, and besides I cannot do it. You must go to Him who compounded
   it, namely, the blessed Spirit of the living God, and take with you
   this prayer, "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief." And this other one,
   "Lord, increase our faith." But I will give you a few hints. Some of
   you are going through a present personal difficulty--you are
   embarrassed in money matters, or a child is sick, or the wife is dying,
   or some other Providential trial is vexing you--you are saying, "I
   cannot bear it!"

   I will not pray with you that you may be comforted in that sinful
   weakness but I will, and do beseech you to ask for faith in that
   Father's hand which wields the rod that you may get out of the
   weakness, and may now be made strong to suffer with holy patience what
   your loving Father's wisdom appoints for you. Others have a spiritual
   duty before you, but you are shirking it because of its difficulty. You
   do not like to "go through the ordeal"--that is what you call it. You
   are disobediently timid.

   Now, I shall not ask God to comfort you in that weakness--you know your
   Master's will, and you do it not--may you be beaten with many stripes
   and may the stripes be blessed to you. I will ask that, knowing your
   duty, you may rise out of that weakness by believing that God will help
   you to obey, and so out of weakness you may be made strong. Some of you
   are called, where you live, to contend earnestly for God and for His
   Truth. You have many adversaries and your weakness makes you withhold
   your testimony. You have been trimming a good deal--you have been
   worshipping that modern Diana called Charity--which is the devil in the
   form of an angel of light--instead of bringing out all the Truth of
   God, you have given up the corners of it.

   I shall not ask that you may have any comfort in such weakness. May you
   be ashamed of having been ashamed of Christ and of His Cross! But I do
   plead with God for you that believing the very sweepings of His Truth
   to be precious, and the very cuttings of the diamond of the Gospel to
   be worth fighting for, you may escape from your weakness and be made
   strong in life and death to declare God's truth boldly.

   Some or you are always doubting your Father's love, the faithfulness of
   Christ and your own interest in Him. I will not comfort you in such a
   state. I will not pray God to comfort you while you are in it, but I do
   ask you to pray that you flee from such weakness. Do not doubt your God
   till you have cause to doubt Him. Oh, Brothers and Sisters, if you will
   never distrust the Lord Jesus till He gives you an occasion for
   distrust and till there is something in His Character which should
   rationally excite your suspicion, you will never disbelieve again! I
   pray you seek more faith and you will rise out of your fears.

   You who are afraid of dying--and there are some such here--shall I ask
   that you may be made strong while in that weakness? No. I dare not!
   Jesus Christ did not come to give you comfort while you are under the
   fear of death. He came to deliver those who, through fear of death, are
   all their lifetime subject to bondage. The plea shall be, therefore,
   that you may have such faith in God and such a view of the Canaan on
   the other side of the flood that you may look forward with delight, or
   at least with resignation, to the time when you shall pass the river
   and be forever with the Lord! The text says out of weakness, Brothers
   and Sisters, and oh, may God grant that some of you who have been lying
   spiritually on a sickbed may through this sermon be made to take up
   your bed and walk! May all weakness be left behind even as the child
   leaves the little garments of the nursery behind him when he becomes a
   man.

   IV. My last work was to PRAISE THE PHYSICIAN, and who is this? Who is
   it that has taught us to believe? It is our Father who is in Heaven who
   has taught us and bids us trust Him--blessed be His name! Join with
   me--you need not sing with those lips--let your heart sing as you say,
   "Blessed be our heavenly Father who has given us precious faith in Him.
   Source of all goodness, foundation of all confidence, we adore You for
   teaching us the sweet art of trusting You!"

   Let us also, with equal thankfulness, bless the Lord Jesus, for we had
   never been capable of faith in the invisible God if there had not been
   a Mediator by whom we might come to Him. Blessed be those wounds and
   those agonies, and that death which is the door of our faith in the
   Father's love! Blessed, moreover, be that mysterious Person, the Holy
   Spirit, for faith is His gift and if it is to be increased in us, He
   must increase it. "O blessed Spirit, be You forever praised for putting
   such a jewel as faith into our poor hearts! And blessed be Your power
   for keeping it there, for Satan would long ago have stolen it! And
   blessed be Your energy which shall keep it till I am beyond the reach
   of the foe."

   Brothers and Sisters, do not let what I have said this morning merely
   pass your ears. I am persuaded that though I have not put it as I could
   wish there is a great deal of practical value in the truth which I have
   stated. You must be strong. This is not an age in which weak
   Christianity will do. It is strong energetic religion that we need now,
   and you cannot obtain it except by gaining strong faith and much of it.
   Plead for it, and then, when you shall have obtained it, the world
   shall feel your power, God shall be glorified, and Christ's name shall
   be lifted high.

   You who have no faith at all may learn something here. It is only by
   faith that the impotence and inability of human nature is overcome so
   that the soul receives Christ unto salvation. May the Holy Spirit work
   that faith in you to your eternal salvation, for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                Seeing Is Not Believing, But Believing Is Seeing

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 1, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT
   CORNWALL ROAD CHAPEL, BAYSWATER.

   "Whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet
   believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,
   receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls."

   1 Peter 1:8,9.

   A VERY formidable difficulty frequently besets earnest but uninstructed
   minds who are seeking the Savior. They do not find it difficult to
   believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He is a Savior, that He is
   mighty to save--their difficulty lies in getting at Him. They believe
   that the medicine will cure, but their question is, how shall they
   drink it? They are convinced that a touch of the hem of the Savior's
   garment would heal their diseases, but their question is how to touch.
   By what means shall they be brought into contact with Christ and a
   Savior become the Savior of their souls? The constant aim of the Gospel
   ministry should be to remove such difficulties as these out of the way
   of coming souls, and we shall try this morning, as God shall help us,
   to lift out that stone and fill up that miry place in the king's
   highway that some may today be enabled to come to Jesus--understanding
   what that coming means--and exercising it before they leave this house.

   It is very common to meet with persons who say, "I wish that I had
   heard the Savior--actually heard Him speak. If I could have listened to
   that matchless eloquence of which it is written, 'Never man spoke like
   this Man,' I should have been convinced, melted, led to penitence and
   inspired with faith. I wish I could have heard Him pronounce those
   words, 'Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I
   will give you rest.' I would have leaped from among the crowd, and I
   would have cried, 'Master, I come! Your invitation draws me! Here I am,
   a heavy-laden sinner, give me rest.' "

   You have also wished that you had been able literally to touch Him--to
   have put your finger into the print of the nails--and to have thrust
   your hand into His side. It seems to you that then you could have
   believed. If you might have been privileged with even the touch of the
   woman who did but touch the hem of His garment, much more if you might
   have been privileged to lean your head upon His bosom with John, you
   would then have believed, you think, as a matter of course, and there
   would have been no sort of difficulty in the way of your salvation. You
   have sighed, "Oh that I could have heard, have touched, and have seen
   Him! These would have been three pearly gates through which I might
   have come at Him. I could have reached Him then, if I might but have
   exercised my senses upon His blessed Person."

   Your soul has lingered over the thought of seeing Him. You have
   especially wondered whether it would have been possible to have seen
   Him upon Tabor with His garments glistening whiter than any fuller
   could have made them, and yet not have believed! You have thought it
   impossible! You have said, "If I could have been among the disciples in
   the garden of Gethsemane to have seen the bloody sweat and marked the
   tokens of the drops of blood on the frosty ground. And if I could, with
   tearful eyes have seen Him at the scourging and the spitting. If I
   could have wondered and wept with Mary at the foot of the Cross and
   seen the blood drop from His hands and feet, I should then have been
   saved! It would have been easy to believe if there had been something
   to see."

   At first sight, indeed, this is a very plausible statement and seems as
   if there must be truth in it. But believe me, my dear Hearer, there is
   none at all! And I may say of the Savior very much what Abraham said of
   Lazarus, You have the Gospels and the Epistles, and you have the
   abiding Presence of the Holy Spirit. And if you believe not, neither
   would you have believed if you had been among the company who saw
   Jesus, touched Him and listened to His voice. It is a mistake, a great
   mistake--as I think a moment's reflection would show you--to conceive
   that contact with Jesus through the senses would produce faith.

   Mark the fact that out of the mass who did see Jesus, and who did hear
   Him, few, very few believed. The crowd which gathered round the
   Crucifixion, which might seem to be the most moving scene in the story,
   were not bettered by what they saw. As the multitude gazed, instead of
   tears they yielded laughter! Instead of penitence they exhibited
   blasphemy! There they gathered, thousands of them of all sorts, the
   highest and the lowest, the intelligent and the uneducated, and all
   alike they spat the venom of their hatred upon the Crucified One. They
   cried, "If He is the Son of God, let Him come down from the Cross."
   Seeing was not believing, but disbelieving and hating!

   They had beheld His miracles before His being nailed to the Cross. They
   had seen dead Lazarus come forth from the tomb and marked those that
   had leprosy and other incurable diseases suddenly healed. They had,
   moreover, feasted upon the bread which He Himself had created for them,
   and yet they believed not. Why, then, do you conclude that you would
   have done so? There is nothing better in your heart than in the hearts
   of other men! Doubtless you would have seen all, and have been
   astonished and possibly affected--but the probabilities are that you
   would have remained what you are now, if not something worse--an
   unbeliever, an unsaved one.

   Besides, it should never be forgotten that those who did believe in
   Jesus Christ in His own day had to get out of and beyond the sphere of
   the senses in order to believe. Let me show you what I mean. I am not
   certain that what they saw helped them to believe. I think it did the
   reverse. I grant you that to see the holiness and the self-consecration
   of the Lord Jesus must have had a convincing influence upon gracious
   hearts. But then, let me ask you, would the sight of the deep poverty
   of the Man of Sorrows lead you to believe in His Godhead? Would an
   association with Him in His rejection and dishonor lead you to believe
   in His celestial Glory?

   Is it likely that if you had seen Him betrayed and dragged away to an
   ignominious doom that the shameful scene would have been an assistance
   to your faith? Would not your faith have had need to triumph over all
   that the eye beheld, and would it not have been needful to use the
   soul's eyes rather than the poor optics of the body in order to see the
   Son of God in the Son of Man? How was the Messiah-ship, the Godhead,
   the Glory and the power of Christ to be seen by the eye? That which was
   seen was to a great extent hostile to faith, contradictory to it, and
   faith, to be exercised, had to struggle with what it saw.

   Does not the Prophet tell us that when we shall see Him there is no
   beauty that we should desire in Him? He is a root out of a dry ground.
   He is a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. That which was seen
   of the Christ was a difficulty in the matter of faith instead of being
   an assistance to it. Yet further, I say when they did believe they went
   beyond the mere evidence of sense. Even Thomas, in that celebrated
   interview with Christ, when he made the utmost use of seeing, and
   touching, and handling, went much farther than mere sight could conduct
   him. The putting of his finger into the print of the nails, and
   thrusting his hand into the side was convincing evidence that Christ
   had risen, but it does not seem to me to be evidence of what Thomas
   drew from it--namely, "My Lord and my God."

   Here faith went beyond what the finger revealed. The eye and hand
   showed a wounded man--but faith could see Godhead and authority--and
   therefore bowed and accepted the risen Man as being from now on her
   Lord and her God! Now a number of reflections of this kind I think
   would go very far to show you that instead of it being certain that had
   you seen and heard and touched the Savior you would have believed, it
   is, on the contrary, quite certain that you might not have believed.
   And that if you had done so it would not have been the result of your
   seeing, but it would have had to be accounted for on quite another
   ground, namely, that described by the Savior, when He said to Peter,
   "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed
   this unto you."

   You would not have had faith in Christ as the result of sight. The Holy
   Spirit must have worked faith in you if you had received it. That same
   Spirit who is able and willing to give you faith today though now you
   see not the Savior! The question returns, "If I cannot come into
   contact with the Savior by seeing, by hearing, by touching, tell me how
   I may, for I do desire that virtue should come out of Him to me. I am
   sick. I would be healed. I am lost. I would be saved. But by what means
   can I attain unto that salvation which He came upon earth to bestow?"

   The answer is in the text and we shall bring it out by the following
   method--First, we will observe how we come into contact with Jesus.
   Secondly, what virtue flows from that contact. And then, thirdly, what
   then?--What are the inferences from this Truth of God?

   I. To begin, then, upon this point--HOW DO WE COME INTO CONTACT WITH
   JESUS? The uppermost point of contact, the most apparent and visible in
   the Believer's life, is love. Observe--"Whom having not seen you love."
   The Apostle Peter twice puts in the "not seen," as if he felt that
   though he, himself, had seen or had been with Jesus in the most private
   of His retirements, yet these Hebrew saints, strangers scattered
   throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, had not
   seen Jesus.

   He dwells much on the fact because he knew that they were types and
   specimens of all succeeding Believers, of us among the rest. Therefore,
   recording the fact that they had not seen Jesus, he describes them as
   loving Him whom they had not seen. Now then, dear Fiends, the first
   point of contact with Christ is love and I think I can show you that we
   can, no, that we do love Him whom we have not seen! Jesus Christ is
   Incarnate God. He who fills all things and yet is not contained by all
   things that are made because He is greater than them all, condescended
   to become bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.

   He was born of the virgin and laid in the manger. In His flesh we have
   not seen Him. We might have gazed upon that Infant's face and seen Him
   in the flesh and yet we might not have loved Him. But now, as our
   believing hearts think of Him as Incarnate, our minds go back to
   Bethlehem and Nazareth, and our recollection pictures Him as a Man
   among us men. And as our soul sees Him, first as an Infant of a span
   long, and then suffering all our infirmities and tempted in all points
   like as we are--and when we reflect that He need not have suffered so,
   but condescended to cast aside His Glory wherein He counted it not
   robbery to be equal with God that He might be on a level with us--why,
   then, without seeing Him we love Him!

   Blessed Man, blessed God, condescending to be Man for me! At the very
   thought of Your leaving the highest throne of Glory, I love You! Foxes
   have holes and the birds have nests, but You had not where to lay Your
   head, and yet You were Lord of All! My soul needs not to see You--she
   loves You!

   We believe, moreover, that as a Man there were beauties in His
   Character of such a sort that it must have been impossible,
   spiritually, to appreciate them without loving Him. Now we never saw
   Him when He forgave His enemies, when He answered meekly those who
   railed at Him. We never saw Him in all His splendid life of
   disinterested philanthropy, nor do we regret that we did not. But when
   we read the story of His life, our heart pictures Him who went about
   doing good--and falling adoringly by faith at His feet, we say--Such a
   character is lovely! Such a Person commands our hearts! And though we
   have not seen Him, yet the mental sight of His portrait as it is drawn
   by those four master artists, the Evangelists, wins our affections and
   holds our souls fast.

   It is true, too, that we never saw the Redeemer's grief. We never
   peered into that face, more marred than that of any man. We did not see
   Him in the garden in His agony, nor behold Him upon the Cross when the
   cry of, "Lama Sabacthani!" startled Heaven and earth. But we have mused
   upon all, and with the spirit's eye have seen all. We need no great
   strength of imagination to think of Him until Ecce Homo--"Behold the
   Man!"--rings as clear from the page of Scripture as though it came from
   Pilate himself.

   We have realized, by meditation, the scars upon His back where the
   plowers made deep furrows. We have thought upon the crown of thorns and
   marked the ruby drops. We have considered Him staggering beneath His
   Cross along the Via Dolorosa. We have marked Him as His hands and feet
   were pierced. We have counted the purple drops and said, "Thus our sins
   were washed away." And though we have not seen Him, we do not need
   sight to make us love Him, for the very thought of Him--the
   contemplation of His intense agony for us who were His
   enemies--constrains us to love Him. We are fastened to that Cross
   forever, crucified with Him--the nails which fasten us being the mighty
   love He bore us.

   Now, Beloved, though we never saw Him dead and did not handle that
   sorely marred but blessed Body--that casket for awhile deprived of its
   inestimable jewel, His sinless soul--yet when we think of Him as lying
   in the cold prison of the tomb, embalmed in spices, we cannot but shed
   tears which are only wiped away by the glorious truth of His
   Resurrection! So all the story through we feel that in each one of the
   positions the Savior commands from us as much love as if we had been
   present there to see Him.

   No, perhaps the sight might have produced too much astonishment, if not
   terror, to have permitted us to indulge with freedom the holy passion
   of consecrated love. Possibly we might have been so amazed,
   astounded--perhaps even alarmed when we saw the circumstances which
   surrounded the Master's grief--that we might have forgotten Him in His
   surroundings. But now we can sit alone in our little upper room, or
   beneath some silent shade in the calm retreat which so well agrees with
   prayer and praise--and there, all alone and quiet--we can bring the
   Savior before our mind and feel that we love Him.

   Now, my dear Hearer, I think you will see that this, although it does
   not seem to be so real a contact as touching Him, is truly, if you
   think of it, more real. I may see things and yet not truly perceive
   them. You may travel through a country without understanding it. You
   see a thousand things in daily life which do not sufficiently catch
   your mind for you really to grasp them. But here is a case in which,
   without the exercise of sight, it is quite plainly within the range of
   our ability to get the very soul, and heart, and essence of the entire
   matter. And after all, it is not the seeing--that must ever be
   external--it is the thinking upon the thing, the understanding, the
   being affected with it which is the real point of contact.

   So, love to Christ becomes as real a means of union, as strong a bond
   to bind as ever sight and touch could be, and infinitely more so. You
   may touch without realizing, but you cannot love a fiction, you cannot
   love a myth. Love makes the Savior real to the heart. When I preach
   sometimes, and my love is cold, and my zeal is flagging, I talk about
   the Master as though He were but an historical person, someone that had
   lived and gone. But when my heart is warm towards Him! Then I talk of
   Him as though He were in the pulpit with me! As though I could see Him!
   As though you, too, could see Him! As though I was speaking of our own
   familiar Friend who was here in the midst of us!

   Beloved, every spiritual mind knows, and I need not remind him of it,
   that love realizes Christ and thus the contact which love makes between
   Christ and the soul is more real than any which the hands or the eyes
   could form.

   But the text tells us of another point of contact--"Though now you do
   not see Him, yet believing." We are again reminded here that we do not
   see, but we are assured of the possibility of believing in Him without
   sight. I must take you again to the Savior's life. Beloved, we did not
   see Him die--that terrible misery, that fearful ignominy we never did
   behold. We did not sit still during the three hours of black darkness
   which covered all the land! We did not hear Him say, "I thirst," nor
   mark them as they thrust the sponge full of vinegar up to His blessed
   lips! But we have believed on Him.

   Ah, have I not, by faith, made real to myself the Savior on the Cross?
   Have I not, by faith, seen Him and cast myself there and said, "Ah,
   Lord, I trust my whole eternity with You? My soul, my spirit, my body,
   everything that is mine trusts in You." I know, and you know who have
   believed Him, that you could not, if you saw Him, trust Him more really
   than you do now. His death is the unsupported pillar of your confidence
   and the sole foundation of your hope. In Christ you have believed, and
   you know that your sins are forgiven, that His righteousness is imputed
   to you, and that you stand accepted in the Beloved.

   This is not to you a matter of hope--it is a matter of firm conviction.
   If you perish you will perish at the foot of the Cross. But you are
   convinced you will never perish there. You have not seen, but you have
   believed. As to His Resurrection, also, you did not see Him when He
   rose early in the morning from the tomb and the watchmen in terror fled
   far away. But you have believed in Him as risen. Have you not thus
   believed? We are persuaded that Jesus lives and we derive consolation
   from the fact. We believe concerning Him that death has no more
   dominion over Him. Immortal, He cannot die again. The lamb of the
   Jewish Passover was slain every year, but He, our Lamb, lives no more
   to die for He has accomplished the work of His death and now lives to
   carry on the work of His great after-life.

   We trust Him! Why not? What more reason for trust could I have if I had
   seen Him rise than I have now, when I believe the fact? I cast myself
   upon the Truth of God that my Lord is risen! I believe that because He
   lives I shall also live! And it is possible to believe this as firmly
   as though we saw it! Beloved, at this moment Christ is in Heaven
   pleading for us! We cannot see the ephod and the breastplate. We cannot
   hear the tones of majestic love in which our great High Priest pleads
   before His Father's Throne! But we believe that He intercedes
   successfully for us.

   We choose Him to be our Advocate in every case of sore distress, in
   every case of grievous sin! We believe that because He is at the
   Father's right hand He is able to save unto the uttermost them that
   come unto God by Him and we leave our suit with Him in perfect
   confidence. Believing in Jesus brings us into as real a contact with
   Him as seeing Him could possibly produce, for you cannot believe in
   what you think to be fiction. You cannot trust your soul and your best
   and most weighty interests with a mere myth. Your faith must be
   convinced of Christ and must have had communion with Him, or else it
   would not be faith at all! So you see, dear Friends, both love and
   faith are two clear points of contact. These are the two bonds which
   unite us to the Savior.

   While some go about teaching that there is a connection with Jesus
   brought about by infant sprinkling and by confirmation--by what certain
   gentlemen are pleased to call "the blessed Sacraments"--we solemnly
   testify in the name of Him that lives and was dead, that the true way
   of coming to Jesus lies in faith and love. And without these you may
   baptize and confirm and give sacraments ad nauseam--but you have not
   approached the Lord! The true Christ is not there at the font, nor
   there with the lawn sleeve, nor there at the altar, nor with your
   acolytes and other performers--He is to be found where the heart longs
   after Him, where the soul trusts Him, where the spirit loves Him. Even
   the two Scriptural ordinances are but in the outer court and are
   nothing of themselves. The true keepers of the door of Jesus' house are
   faith and love.

   I read the other day of a certain renovated Puseyite synagogue having a
   path up to it called the Via Crucis. I must confess to having had but
   slender acquaintance with the play-things and nursery games of that
   sect. I have no idea of what is meant by their Via Crucis, but this I
   know, the true Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, is to believe and to
   love. We were told not long ago by an Anglican priest that the history
   of the spiritual life was portrayed in the edifice in which he
   officiated. He began with regeneration in the font, and led his hearers
   by easy stages till he perfected them in the chancel or up in the
   steeple, I cannot remember which!

   All that may sound very pretty--I think it shamelessly immature! To me
   it looks like a return to the absurd superstitions of the Dark Ages. I
   have no more reverence for their genuflections, performances, and
   theatrics than for the incantations of an old hag who pretends to be a
   witch! There is nothing manly, much less Divine, in the new-fangled

   Romanism! God's religion is spiritual-- theirs is carnal and sensuous.
   "The day comes, and now is, when they that worship the Father must
   worship Him in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such to
   worship Him."

   For spiritual men there is not needed incense, banners, wide-sleeved
   garments, or crosses, nor any external thing-- only the mental action
   of the inward nature exercised upon the Lord Jesus in love and trust.
   How simple this is! There is a story told of a certain farmer in France
   who, in the days of bad farming, produced wonderful crops from his
   ground. All his neighbors believed him to be addicted to witchcraft and
   when they summoned him for the practice of it, he brought up before the
   court his two sturdy lads, his oxen, and his plows. He said, "These are
   the implements of my witchcraft! I simply work hard."

   Now I fear there are many who, if asked what is the way of their coming
   into union with Christ, have all sorts of mysterious, laborious
   inventions. But we bring before you nothing but just these--trust and
   love! These are the instruments of our religion. Like the Apostles, we
   need no wagon to carry with us our altar, our vestments and other
   paraphernalia--we preach the Gospel and exhort men to faith and
   love--we have no need of drapery, architecture, rubrics and ceremonies.
   Trust and love! These two things brining the spirit into contact with
   the Lord Jesus Christ! And we are prepared against all the world to
   hold these two things and believe that were those other things to fail,
   and turn out to be a delusion and a lie, these will succeed to the
   salvation of the soul. "Whom having not seen you love. Though now you
   do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice."

   Still, the point is that carnal people will imagine that if there could
   be something to touch or smell they should get on, but mere believing
   and loving are too hard for them. Yet such thought is not reasonable
   and I can show you why. Occasionally one meets with an illiterate
   working man who will say to those whose occupation is mental, "I work
   hard for my living," insinuating that the mind-worker does not work at
   all. Yet I ask any man who is engaged in a mental pursuit whether he
   does not know that mental work is quite as real work--and some of us
   think more so--as working with your hands. The thing is mental, but is
   none the less real.

   An illiterate man cannot see that it is work, but he who is capable of
   mental labor soon feels the reality of it. Just transfer that thought.
   Coming into contact with Christ by touch looks to most people to be
   most real because their animal nature is uppermost. Coming into contact
   with Jesus by the spirit seems to them to be unreal only because they
   know nothing of spiritual things. Thoughtless persons think that mental
   pain is nothing. Mere animal men will often say, "I can understand the
   headache, I can understand the pain of having a leg cut off." But the
   pain of injured affection, or of receiving ingratitude from a trusted
   friend--this is by the rough mind thought to be no pain at all. "Oh,"
   he says, "I could put up with that."

   But I ask you who have minds, Is there any pain more real than mental
   pain? Is it not the sharpest when the iron enters into the soul? Just
   so the mental operation--for it is a mental operation--of coming into
   contact with Christ by loving Him and trusting Him is the most real
   thing in all the world! And no one will think it unreal who has once
   exercised it. So then, poor seeking Sinner, it comes to this--you have
   not to go anywhere, or say anything, or do anything--but, sitting where
   you are, if you can trust the Son of God with your soul, if you can
   love the altogether Lovely One, the thing is done!

   There is life in a look, we often say, but this is the kind of
   look--the look is loving and trusting--they go together, they are born
   at the same time. We love those we trust, and we trust those we love,
   and if you love and trust Jesus you are saved.

   II. I must have your patient attention to the second part of the
   subject--WHAT VIRTUE IS THIS WHICH FLOWS FROM HIM? When a soul has
   touched Him by love and faith, what virtue comes? The Apostle answers,
   "Whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet
   believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,
   receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls." The
   first result of trusting and loving Christ is joy, and joy of a most
   singular, remarkable kind. It is far above all common joy. It is spoken
   of as "inexpressible"--"joy inexpressible."

   Now earth-born joys can be told to the full. One man can tell his joy
   to his fellow and his fellow understands, for he is earth-born, too.
   But spirit-born joys cannot be told because we have not yet received a
   spiritual language. I suppose that is the language reserved for Heaven
   where spiritual minds shall talk to spiritual minds without being
   confined to the poor poverty-stricken words of earth so necessary to us
   while yet in the body. The joy is inexpressible because you cannot
   possibly describe its true essence. If a man should try to tell all
   spiritual joys to his fellow he would feel silenced like Paul, and feel
   that he had heard things which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

   Holy Rutherford, in his letters, has gone far to picture to us what the
   Christian's joy is, and so has Solomon in the Book of the Song. But
   carnal men cannot comprehend Rutherford, and as to the Canticles, there
   is no book in the Bible which staggers a worldling so much as the Song.
   He says, "Oh, it is a mere love tale." Of course it is to you, O carnal
   Reader, but the reason is in yourself. It was not possible for Solomon
   to put into language the experience of Divine Love, except by the use
   of metaphors. He had to describe love as we have to describe God,
   speaking after the manner of men, and so he must speak after a natural
   sort and therefore the golden Canticle looks as if it were an earthly
   nuptial ode, whereas it is so high that the uninstructed cannot attain
   to it.

   The joy of Believers is unspeakable because there is no telling it.
   Earthly joy is often exaggerated. You can describe it in words too
   flatteringly expressive, but you cannot act thus with a Christian's
   joy. His joy is one that speaks better through his eyes than his lips!
   It makes his countenance glow with delight. I have seen men's faces lit
   up with Heaven's sunlight when the joy of the Lord has been shed abroad
   in their hearts. The very people who a day ago looked dull and heavy
   look as if they could dance for mirth because they have found the
   Savior and their soul is at peace through Him.

   The Apostle adds that it is full of glory. Many sensual joys are full
   of shame--a man with a conscience dares not tell them to his fellows.
   The joys of sense are oftentimes unfit to be whispered in the dark, and
   the joys of the world are mostly too selfish to be boasted of. The joy
   of making money is not full of glory, nor is the joy of killing one's
   fellows in battle. There is no joy like that of the Christian, for he
   dares to speak of it everywhere, in every company. We will tell the
   devils in Hell that we are not ashamed to glory in the Cross and we
   will tell unbelievers upon earth the same!

   We will dare to say it to the teeth of the worst of men that we have a
   joy they know nothing about. And in Heaven we shall not be ashamed to
   tell to principalities and powers of those draughts of love which we
   have been made to drink from the well of Christ Jesus--in whom, though
   now we see Him not--yet believing, we rejoice with joy inexpressible
   and full of glory! Why is this joy of the Christian so inexpressible
   and full of glory? I think it is because it is so altogether Divine. It
   is God's own joy! It is Christ's own joy! Can you guess what the joy of
   God is? No, perhaps not--but every Christian has within himself a
   portion of the joy of God, for God joys in Christ and glorifies Himself
   in Jesus--and so do we, also, joy and glory in Him whom having not
   seen, we love.

   Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus, it is for you to prove to
   the world by your daily walk and conversation that it is so! For my own
   part, I will bear my own personal witness that I never knew the meaning
   of that little word "joy" till I knew Christ. I knew the childish glee
   of boyhood. I understand, alas, something of the frothy joy upon the
   cup of sin, but let me say--I am speaking to those of my own age
   especially--if I had to die like a dog and there was no hereafter. If I
   had nothing for my faith but the happiness which it yields me in this
   life, I would be a Christian sooner than I would be any conceivable
   form of existence.

   I would sooner be a believer in Jesus in the depth of poverty, racked
   with bodily suffering and oppressed with the greatest possible
   persecution, than I would be without faith in Christ! I would rather be
   a believer in Christ Jesus than have the noblest possible position with
   the greatest possible earthly enjoyments--for there is nothing at all
   like the joy inexpressible and full of glory! Sometimes, when it is
   flood-tide with us, our joy is so great that we think we shall die--
   our joy is too strong for our frail body! And even when it is ebb-tide
   with us, yet we have a peace of God which passes all understanding--a
   peace which the world cannot give, and which, thank God--it cannot,
   cannot take away!

   Now, Brethren, many of you know this, and you know also that this joy
   inexpressible and full of glory is not dependent upon circumstances.
   You have had great success--this joy inexpressible and full of glory
   was not increased by that success--you rather trembled lest you should
   sin through being in high places. And you who have had great
   trouble--this joy inexpressible has not been diminished by it. You have
   felt that God was with you and that all things would work together for
   your good! You have wept over your children when they have died--a
   mother's grief has filled the eyes with tears--but still the joy
   inexpressible has cheered the heart.

   You have lost property and been wrongfully despoiled of reputation, but
   the joy inexpressible has been unaffected by all this. You have done
   with your crown jewels what many of the princes on the Continent have
   done with theirs--you have sent them where they are safe--you have put
   your treasure in the better land on the other side of Jordan, in the
   islands of the blessed, in the land of the hereafter where Jesus is.
   The Apostle mentions another blessing received by loving and trusting
   Christ. He says, "receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation
   of your souls."

   Every man who trusts and loves Christ is saved. The common idea is that
   perhaps we shall get saved when we die. I know nothing of such a
   salvation! True salvation saves NOW. The Apostle, when he writes to
   Believers, always speaks to them as persons who are saved, not who
   shall be, but are. When salvation is once done, it is done forever! If
   you are saved, you are saved--you will be never lost. Those who trust
   Jesus and love Him are saved. But it will be said, "How is that a
   matter of fact?"

   Well, it is a matter of fact two ways. First, they are conscious that
   they are saved from the guilt of sin. Of this they are conscious in
   themselves. The guilt of sin, when it is on a man's conscience, is
   unmistakably there, for it weighs him down to such an extent that he
   cannot doubt it. Well do some of us recollect when we could not even
   sleep by night much less have comfort by day because sin was on our
   conscience. We wished sometimes, as John Bunyan says, that we had been
   made frogs or snakes rather than men, for sin on the conscience makes
   manhood odious and life itself undesirable. But when we believed and
   loved Jesus we knew that our guilt was taken off the conscience.

   You say, "How did you know?" We knew just as we knew when it was on. If
   a man has a burden on his back, even though he has no eyes, he can feel
   it. And as soon as it is gone, though he has no eyes he can feel that
   it is removed. So was it with us--when we believed in Jesus, our sin
   was all gone! Our feelings were altogether different from what they
   were--

   "Now, oh joy my sin is pardoned, Now I can and do believe."

   We began to sing for very joy of heart! The removal of guilt is no
   fiction. It will be said it is a mere brain-sick enthusiasm. Have you
   ever tried it? If you have not, you are not fit to judge about it! But
   if you have experienced it you will say of it, "Oh if it is enthusiasm,
   blessed enthusiasm! Let me never be rid of it! If this is a dream it is
   so Divine that it should be true!" When we trusted Jesus, though we
   used no forms and ceremonies, we received the salvation of our souls!
   Here is a point more tangible still--they who trust and love Christ are
   saved from the power of sin--and this is a practical point to be seen
   even by the eye.

   For instance, a man with a horrid temper--almost insane from his
   anger--was led to trust Jesus and to love Him. There may be traces of
   that old temper in the man still, but I will defy you to find a gentler
   or more patient soul than he is now! That same man whose fist was so
   soon doubled and whose eye so rapidly flashed fire will now hear a vast
   amount of teasing and look on and feel, "If I were what I once was I
   would join in this row, but now I pity and forgive." I can picture you
   another. There was a man who spent every night in the beer house or in
   worse places. His house was a Hell-- his wife and family afraid to see
   him--the man a drunkard, a fornicator and everything that was foul. But
   he came to believe and trust Christ.

   Now it is a matter of fact that he is a new man through believing. Ask
   his wife and she says, "Never was there such a change! Our home is
   happy, our children happy! We have happy mornings and evenings for my
   husband prays! That is not all, Sir--my husband is such a
   heavenly-minded man that you could no more believe him to be the same
   man than you could believe that a lamb was once a lion." Ah, the man
   has received the salvation of his soul! How did he receive it? Did we
   baptize a new heart into him? Did we confirm him into morality? Did we
   perfume him, intone him and confess him into holiness? No! No! He
   trusts Jesus and loves Him, and all is done! He received the salvation
   of his soul by these simple means.

   Now every man who has trusted and loved Jesus becomes a living witness
   to this. The vital power of religion is perceived by each man in
   himself. If you have a faith which has left you what you used to be,
   throw your faith to the dogs! If you have a faith in Christ which does
   not make you desire holiness it is a delusion that will drag you to the
   bottomless pit! Only the faith that works by love and purifies the soul
   is genuine. True trust in Jesus and love to Him always does this--it
   makes the man receive the salvation of his soul from the enslavement of
   his baser powers, delivers him from the dominion of Satan and of sin
   and he becomes at once a sinner saved by Divine Grace--and all this by
   the two points of contact you cannot see--trusting and believing.

   III. I must not stop longer, but finish by a few words upon the third
   point. WHAT FOLLOWS, THEN, FROM THE

   WHOLE OF THIS? It follows, in the first place, that a state of joy and
   salvation is the fitting, proper, and expected condition of every
   believer in Christ. If you are a believer in Jesus, and I see you
   sorrowing, what must I say? I do not mean sorrowing as the effect of
   mere Providential arrangements--of course we sorrow as other men--and
   Jesus wept. I mean this--if I see you constantly without joy
   inexpressible--if I mark that all your joy and hope are gone, what must
   I say?

   I begin to doubt whether you can be a Believer. And if I may not raise
   that question, and if it is certain that you have faith and love to
   Christ, I must say to you, my dear Friend, that you have suspended
   their action and therefore you have suspended the enjoyment of their
   result. Go back again to where you were! Go and stand at the foot of
   the Cross and trust Christ and love Him--and your joy will return. I am
   sure it will. I have tried it--I have tried it hundreds of times! I am
   unbelieving by constitution, frequently desponding, very often
   depressed. But I have never been in the depths of despondency without
   almost immediately coming up from them as soon as ever I have thought
   of Him, and my soul has rested upon Him and leaned on Him.

   There is another inference to be drawn from my subject, and that is to
   the seeking soul. If you want comfort this morning, go to Christ. But I
   have here the old answer again--I have heard it scores of times--"Sir,
   you say come to

   Christ. How can I come? If Jesus Christ were at New York I should know
   how to get at Him. I should understand what He meant by 'come.' If
   there were some appointed place in London where every soul might go, I
   could understand it." Yes, that is to say, you could understand the
   mere carnal act of coming. But this coming is a spiritual thing and it
   is just as real as if it were carnal. You come to Christ by thinking of
   Him, trusting Him, and loving Him though you have not seen Him.

   I say, then, come to Christ! Trust Him and love Him! And whatever your
   infirmities and spiritual difficulties, you shall get over them
   all--for if Christ undertakes to get you through them He will do it. He
   is mighty to save! But you say, "I cannot believe, 'Faith is the gift
   of God.' " I know it is, but perhaps you have it already. Dead men
   cannot believe, but the quickened can. The Son of God bleeds for
   sinners! The Son of God, on the tree, offers an Atonement for human
   sin! Can you trust Him? You answer, "I do trust Him." Then you not only
   have the power to do it, but you are doing it!

   If you are convinced that Jesus is able to save you, and are willing to
   trust Him, you certainly can trust Him for inability lies in the will,
   and as your will is now right, all your inability is gone. The power
   which the Holy Spirit gives is spiritual--a power which removes our
   natural opposition to Jesus--and when this is removed the power is
   given! If you do now trust Christ, fall before Him and say, "Savior,
   God, deliver me! By Your life and by Your death. By Your griefs and
   passion. By Your resurrection and Your pleading at Your Father's
   Throne, deliver me! I trust You to deliver me. I cast myself upon You!"

   If you do this you are saved--you are saved now--you have no sin in
   God's book. Every sin is blotted out and therefore being justified by
   faith, you shall have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. But
   you reply, "My sins are very great." Yes, but however great your sin it
   matters not. The same hand which can receipt a little bill can receipt
   a great one--it takes no more when the money is paid. Christ has paid
   all the debts of those that trust Him and He can readily forgive you.
   "Come now and let us reason together, said the Lord. Though your sins
   are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red
   like crimson, they shall be as wool." "Yes, but," says another, "it is
   my propensity to sin that I am afraid of. How shall I ever break the
   neck of my corruptions?"

   You will never do it, but He will! Do you not remember that when they
   pierced His side there flowed blood--that was for pardon. And there
   flowed water--what was that for? That was for cleansing. He will be
   sin's double cure. Is it some sin or some lust that you would conquer,
   or an angry disposition? Take it to Him! Those vipers die at the sight
   of Christ! There is no form of sinfulness to which you are captive
   which Christ cannot remove! You must give them up. Remember there is no
   going to Heaven and keeping your sins--you must give them all up. But
   then you are not to give them up in your own strength. You shall
   receive a strength which shall make you more than a man--you shall be a
   man with God living in you--for the Holy Spirit dwells in us! We are
   temples of God.

   When God dwells in the temple He can purge out a great deal which we
   cannot purge out. He can make us clean though otherwise we must have
   remained impure. "Still," says another, "I have such a need of
   tenderness this morning. I have not thought about these things. I have
   lived a careless giddy life--must I not give some week or month or two
   to the consideration of these things--and then come to Christ? Must I
   not go home and humble myself before God and then believe and love?"

   My dear Hearer, do what you will after trusting, but trusting is the
   immediate remedy this morning! Now is the accepted time! Now is the day
   of salvation! May you and I come to trust and love--and we shall soon
   prove to ourselves, if we cannot prove it to others--that there is a
   power and vitality in faith and love not to be found in all the
   performances of the priests who are laboring to bring our nation back
   to the midnight of Romanism!
     __________________________________________________________________

                   Sin Condemned And Executed By Christ Jesus

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 8, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh,
   God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on
   account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh."

   Romans 8:3.

   ONE of the sweetest and most attractive titles of our Lord Jesus
   Christ, is, "the Friend of sinners." He was in His manners so gentle
   towards offenders, so graciously did He seek out the lost, and so
   tenderly did He invite the erring to pardon and reconciliation that it
   was slanderously said of Him that He was the Friend of sin as well as
   of sinners. This was the old heathen slander of the days of Celsus.
   Philosophy and Phariseeism sneeringly asserted that Jesus treated
   iniquity so lightly, and made it so easy a matter to escape from its
   consequences that He was rather the helper and abettor of sin than its
   destroyer. And they blasphemously declared that His Apostles had
   preached the doctrine of "let us do evil that good may come."

   My Brothers and Sisters, you know that this charge was utterly and
   entirely false and those who uttered the libel knew it to be so, too,
   if they were at all conversant with our Lord's history. In His example
   evil meets with no encouragement, and in His teaching it finds no
   excuse. If they possessed the slightest acquaintance with the objects
   of His life, they must have known that though the Friend of sinners, He
   was emphatically beyond all other public teachers the Enemy of sin. His
   hatred towards sin was not a mere passion--it was a principle. It did
   not flash forth now and then--it was a constant flame. He hated sin, if
   I may say so, implacably--never making a moment's truce with it. He
   pursued it by day in His ministry and by night in His prayers. He lived
   to smite it and he died to destroy it!

   And now in His risen Glory it is upon sin as well as upon Satan that He
   sets His heel. He was manifested that He might destroy the works of the
   devil and He has erected a battering engine which will not leave of
   Satan's strongholds so much as one stone upon another. In the life of
   our Lord His tenderness for sinners was but the natural form in which
   His hatred for sin displayed itselfjust as a physician, from the very
   fact that he is the antagonist of disease, displays a deep interest in
   those afflicted by it.

   Our Lord's keeping company with sinners by no means proved that He was
   the friend of sin any more than the physician's attendance at the
   hospital would at all lead to the suspicion that he was the friend of
   disease. The skillful physician is the friend of the diseased, but to
   the disease itself what enemy shall be found more determined and
   inveterate? Because the whole have no need of a physician, Jesus seeks
   them not. But since the sick need Him, He seeks them--not out of love
   to their sin, but out of love to them--that they may be delivered from
   the cruel bondage under which their sin has held them.

   You will have noticed, too that even when the Savior is most tender
   towards a certain class of sinners, it is that He may display His wrath
   against sin itself--He will not execrate one sin and exonerate
   another--but all sin shall see in Him its deadly foe. It is true He
   said to the woman taken in adultery, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and
   sin no more." By this He, by no means, excused her adultery--but He
   declined to assume the functions of an earthly judge--and more
   especially He refused to pronounce sentence upon one case alone when so
   many were before Him who were not accused but were known to Him to be
   equally guilty.

   His leniency to one could do no mischief when His justice to all was so
   conspicuous. Those who brought the woman desired Him simply to show His
   hatred of her, and to manifest abhorrence of that one offense which had
   happened to be found out. But that flash of His eyes when He said, "He
   that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her," was
   a far more terrible deliverance against sin than if He had said, "Yes,
   take her away and bind her hand and foot, and let her die. But as for
   you, you hypocrites, you who are practicing, perhaps, the same sin in
   private, inasmuch as you have not been discovered by your fellow men, I
   suffer you to escape with impunity."

   If He judged one He must judge all, and therefore He dismissed them all
   to the appointed time for judgment, manifesting, it seems to me, quite
   as much His hatred of sin as His tenderness towards the sinner. So
   everywhere connected with the gentleness of the Savior, in which He
   does not "break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax," there is
   a most determinate wrath--a lion-like fierceness against sin,
   especially in its hypocritical forms--for He who bids the open and
   acknowledged sinner come to Him cries in the same breath, "Woe unto
   you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," and calls them whitewashed
   sepulchers filled with dead men's bones.

   There is not, then, the slightest foundation for the accusation that
   Jesus is in the least degree the Friend of sin, though He is the Friend
   of sinners. On the contrary, we can easily prove the assertion which is
   made in the text that Jesus Christ came into the world to condemn sin,
   and has condemned it and that sin never was condemned before as it was
   in the sacrifice of His Person, and that the Law of Moses itself could
   not, through the weakness of the flesh, condemn sin as Jesus Christ has
   done. For He has not only passed sentence upon it but has executed it,
   carrying the sentence into effect.

   God had condemned sin before but never so efficiently as in the Person
   of His Son. God's very Nature condemns sin. The existence of the thrice
   holy Jehovah is a constant protest against all unholiness. God
   condemned sin in that day when He drove Adam and Eve out of the garden.
   When He suffered the trail of the serpent to ruin Paradise and
   condemned our first parents--all naked and ashamed--to till the ground
   from which they were taken, and in the sweat of their face to eat
   bread.

   God condemned sin, constantly condemned it in the death which became
   common to the entire race. Every funeral is God's repetition of His
   anathema against sin. When our friends are carried to the silent
   sepulcher, the Lord of All does, in fact, say to us, "See what a bitter
   thing sin is! It takes the light from the eyes and the music from the
   ears. It silences the voice of song, and palsies the hands of skill. It
   quenches the fire of love upon the heart's altar and removes the light
   of understanding from the brain's judgment seat. It gives over the
   creature, once so lovely and beloved, to become a putrid mass--a horror
   and a loathing so that affection itself cries out--'Bury my dead out of
   my sight.' " Thus every gravestone and every green hillock in the
   cemetery may be regarded as the still small voice of God solemnly
   condemning sin.

   The Lord of Old judged and condemned sin in that great and terrible
   calamity which swept the whole race away with a mighty deluge when "sea
   monsters whelped and stabled in the palaces of kings." When over the
   mountains' loftiest brow the raging billows prevailed, and not even the
   shriek of a "strong swimmer in his agony" could be heard, for Death
   rode triumphant on the crested billow over a sea without a shore. Then
   it was that God declared sin to be so dreadful that it saddened Him
   that He had made men upon the face of the earth, and He drew up the
   floodgates of His wrath until He had swept the earth clean of the
   rebellious race, except the elect eight who floated in the ark.

   In after years the Lord opened all the batteries of Heaven against sin
   in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Terrible was that hail of
   fire and sleet of brimstone which descended upon the cities of the
   plain because the reeking foulness of their sin had come up into the
   nostrils of the Most High, and He could endure it no longer. But all
   these judgments which I have mentioned were comparatively inoperative
   upon the conscience of man. Man sinned though he was expelled from the
   garden. He did not fall down on his knees and hate the sin which had
   withered Eden. Man grew up to mourn, but his mourning did not heal him
   of sinning--the medicine was very bitter--but it did not cure.

   Notwithstanding that the tradition of Eden and the expulsion must have
   been fresh in the memories of mankind, and they must have known that
   sin, and sin only, was the cause of every mother's pang and the cause
   of every man's toil, when in the sweat of his brow he ate his
   bread--yet man followed sin as though it were his chief good. Even the
   constant occurrence of death has not taught man the evil of the root
   which produced so dire a fruit. Man sins although he stands upon the
   brink of the grave. It is not enough that the halter is about the
   traitor's neck--he commits fresh treasons while standing beneath the
   gallows! He knows that his doom is recorded and that his life is only a
   reprieve, and yet he insults the judge.

   Man knows that it is only a matter of time when his body should return
   to the dust from where it came, and yet dying man is sinful man. And
   though he knows that he shall soon appear before his Maker's bar, how
   slight the worry of this upon any man! In fact, where are a more
   thoughtless race of men than those who have most acquaintance with the
   grave, and where shall you find men who laugh at death more than those
   who are constantly engaged at the tomb? Moreover the great judgments of
   the deluge and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah made but a slight
   impression upon mankind, for man began to build his Babel tower in
   defiance of God almost as soon as the flood was assuaged and men began
   to multiply!

   And as for Sodom and Gomorrah, there were doubtless men who looked on
   at that fearful blaze and saw the smoke blacken the heavens, who then
   returned to their lusts and were still as before given up to their
   idols. All the judgments were weak, because man's flesh is so
   stubbornly set on sin. It is never to be forgotten that the Lord judged
   sin and condemned it upon Sinai. The Law of God of the Ten Commands,
   with the penal sentence attached, was intended to be God's great
   conviction, trial, and judgment of sin. Truly, when we consider that
   Law so high, so broad, so all-encompassing, so reaching to the thoughts
   and intents of the heart--and when we recollect how it was given with
   sound of trumpet, and blaze of lightning with a boundary set around the
   mount--with fearful curses upon the man who should violate its commands
   and with wondrous blessings to those who should keep its precepts--it
   must appear to be a singularly glorious and commanding judgment of sin!

   "The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them. He shined
   forth from mount Paran, and He came with ten thousands of saints: from
   His right hand went a fiery Law for them." "His lightning enlightened
   the world: the earth saw and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the
   Presence of the Lord, at the Presence of the Lord of the whole earth."
   Sinai itself was altogether on a smoke, so that the man, the mediator
   Moses, said, "I exceedingly fear and quake." That Law, given by angels
   in the hand of a mediator was steadfast and terrible, and was a most
   wondrous judging and condemning of sin! Yet you know what little effect
   it had upon those who had first received it.

   Before the forty days were over--before Moses could get down from the
   mount--they were dancing around the golden calf and shouting, "These
   are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of Egypt." From that
   day till now what has God's Law been to the carnal mind? A form printed
   upon tables in their churches, but not written on the tablets of their
   hearts. A rule read in their hearing, but forgotten in their
   lives--admired in theory, but neglected in practice. The scene at Sinai
   was a solemn judgment of sin, just as were the other judgments which I
   have mentioned--but in effect it was inoperative, it was weak--not in
   itself, but through the flesh. Weak, because man is so strong in sin.
   Weak, because for unrenewed man to know God's will is for him to know
   how to fly in the teeth of it.

   Human nature has learned how to rebel rather than how to obey by
   studying the Law--the Commandments which were ordained for life have
   been made our death. The Law has been made by our rebellious wills a
   negative rather than a positive rule. Man has learned by it how to live
   so as to insult his great Benefactor and Friend. Thus it is clear that
   though the Lord oftentimes condemned sin, yet sin still reigned in
   man's heart. Therefore He sent His own Son into the world to do what
   His judgments and His Law had not done, namely, to condemn sin in the
   flesh, that once and for all we might know in our inmost souls that sin
   is a hateful thing--and knowing, might feel it and avoid it.

   This brings me to the text itself. The text may be understood in two
   ways--these two senses shall constitute the two heads. Sin was
   condemned by our Lord's suffering for sin--notice the margin--"By a
   sacrifice for sin" He condemned sin in the flesh. The first head then,
   is, sin was condemned by Christ's sacrifice of Himself. And secondly,
   as some translators give to the word "condemned" the force of
   destroyed, we shall read it thus--sin was executed in the sufferings of
   the Savior. These two points, if God the Holy Spirit shall lead us into
   them, may afford us a good morning's meditation. And then the practical
   conclusions from them will, I hope, be not restricted to this morning,
   but accompany us all our days.

   I. Our first point is this, that albeit all the former condemnations of
   sin which God gave to the world were weak through the flesh, yet THERE
   HAS NOW BEEN GIVEN A MOST EFFECTIVE AND POTENT CONDEMNATION OF SIN IN
   THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS CHRIST. Of course, the potency must be judged by
   its effect upon those who received that sacrifice--and in such persons
   sin is most effectually condemned.

   1. The Savior condemned sin by His sufferings, by allowing it to work
   itself out to its legitimate result. Sin is exceeding sinful but we
   could never have known how sinful sin was if it had not slain Christ. A
   certain preacher, who delighted in a very flowery style, once ventured
   in a very splendid passage of his oration to depict the loveliness of
   virtue. "O virtue, you fair angel," and so on, "if you should come down
   to earth in all your radiance," etc., etc., "all men would love you."

   This wonderful flight of wordiness receives its fall in the history of
   Calvary. We could never have known how detestable sin was if this had
   not been put to the test. Virtue did come down among men, not in its
   severer aspect as a stoical moralist, but it descended in its gentlest
   form in the Person of the most loving and tender man that ever lived,
   even Jesus Christ. But sin so hates and loathes that which is good,
   that instead of receiving this Incarnate Virtue with honor, sin was
   never satisfied till after hunting the Man through life, it at last
   nailed Him to the gallows of a malefactor, and put Him to a death too
   cruel even for the most loathsome and detestable of beings.

   It is with sin according to the parable of our Lord. Sin had entered
   the vineyard of the Lord and robbed Him of the fruit thereof. He sent
   His servants to His vineyard, and they cried unto it, "Thus and thus
   said the Lord." But Sin, being angry, took the servants, one by one,
   knowing them to be the servants of God, and it smote one, and threw
   another into prison, and slew another till the servants of God came
   only to be persecuted and to be slain. At last He said, "I will send My
   Son--they will surely reverence My Son."

   It was surely impossible that if the Son of God should come armed with
   a commission from the Most High, Sin would venture to smite Him! But
   behold the hardihood of Sin! It said, "This is the heir, let us kill
   Him that the inheritance may be ours." And it slew Him and cast Him out
   of the vineyard. Sin was then seen to be the cruel, horrible,
   detestable, traitorous thing which God had declared it to be. And now
   that man knows it to be such, he cannot deny it, for the murdered body
   of the Savior shows the deadly mischief that lurks in Sin.

   It is as though there were a certain poisoned river and a parent had
   often said to his children, "Drink it not, my children, it is sweet at
   first, but soon it will bring on you pains most fearful, and death will
   shortly follow. Do not drink it." But these children were very willful
   and would not believe it. And, albeit that sometimes a dog or an ox
   would drink of it and be sore pained and die, they did not believe in
   all its injurious effects to them. But by-and-by One made like unto
   themselves drank of it, and when they saw Him die in anguish most
   terrible, then they understood how deadly must be the effects of this
   poisoned stream. When the Savior Himself was made sin for us and then
   died in griefs unutterable-- then we saw what sin could do--and the
   exceeding sinfulness of sin was displayed.

   To use another illustration--you have a tame leopard in your house and
   you are often warned that it is a dangerous creature to trifle with.
   But its coat is so sleek and beautiful, and its frolicking is so gentle
   that you let it play with the children as though it were a
   well-domesticated cat. You cannot have it in your heart to put it away.
   You tolerate it, no, you indulge it. Alas, one black and terrible day
   it tastes of blood and rends in pieces your favorite child! Then you
   know its nature and need no further warning. It has condemned itself by
   displaying the full ferocity of its nature.

   So with sin--we thought it such a fair thing we could not be persuaded
   that anything so pleasant, so fair spoken, could really be so deadly an
   enemy as God said it was. But when sin leaped upon our altogether
   lovely Jesus, and like a ravening wolf delighted itself in His
   slaughter, then it condemned itself most effectually. Every Christian
   feels this-- what he could not feel through contemplating the expulsion
   from Eden--what he might not feel through thinking of the curse of the
   Law, he does feel and must feel when he sees sin thus prostrating the
   Lord of Life and Glory and making Him suffer even to the death!

   Christian, you know now what sin would do to you! You now know how it
   would scourge and crucify you, make you cry, "My God, my God, why have
   you forsaken me?" and cast you into a bloody sweat, and destroy you
   utterly! You see now that sin has such a weight in it that only eternal
   God can bear it! And you will, from now on, hate and dread it--you will
   no longer favor it. God has condemned it by allowing it to show itself
   in its true colors! You hear the condemnation and you say amen to it,
   do you not? What the Law could not do, God has done.

   2. But the text wears a fuller meaning when we recollect that Christ
   did not only condemn sin by allowing it to carry itself out to the
   full, but He condemned it by actually bearing its penalty as our
   Substitute. This is the great doctrine of Holy Scripture and it becomes
   us to speak very plainly about it. The punishment which was due to man
   for sin was suffered by our Lord. If not the exact punishment, yet that
   which was equivalent to it was suffered by the Savior on the tree, and
   this constituted the most weighty and effectual condemnation of sin.

   Observe carefully, dear Friends, that the condemnation of sin in the
   sacrifice of Christ derives much of its weight from the dignity of His
   Person. Sin was laid, this time, not on an angel--not on some chosen
   cherub or seraph--sin was laid upon One who is none other than God over
   all, blessed forever! The mighty God Himself wrapped His Glory in a
   veil of our inferior clay and then sin was laid on Him. Now, if sin is
   such a terrible thing. If it deserve the condemnation that is
   pronounced upon it, we shall see what it will do with Him. Will sin
   bring Him down? Will sin make Him smart? Will sin make Him cry?

   He is God's only begotten Son! Sin must be a bitter thing, indeed, if
   it is necessary for God to smite His own Son! Will not the Great Ruler
   of the universe make an exception in this case? Sin may be very gross,
   but can He not, when it is laid upon One so heavenly, so pure, so
   Divine, may not He deal gently with it? He may use His rod, but surely
   He will not unsheathe His sword!

   Listen! "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, against the Man that is
   My Companion, says the Lord." There is no sparing here! Do you see the
   Savior ground between the upper and nether millstone of Divine
   vengeance? Hear His cries and mark His falling tears! Perceive His
   heart surrounded with Divine wrath and filled with sorrow, till, like a
   boiling caldron, it flows over in groans and cries! Look at that
   spectacle of woe till you dare not look any longer, for the grief is
   too amazing for the eye to see or for the soul to think upon!

   Now, Sin, you are condemned, indeed! Hunted out from place to place, at
   last you leap upon the palace of God--you touch that human Tabernacle
   wherein the Second Person of the Divine Trinity rested! And the
   Tabernacle must come down! Death must invade even the body of the
   Christ of God because sin was laid upon Him! This is all the more
   amazing and more remarkable a condemnation of sin because it was not
   His own sin--in Him was no sin--and yet the sins of His people, when
   laid upon the Savior, made Him exceedingly sorrowful even unto death.

   Sin was condemned, again, by the excellence of the motive which led the
   Savior to take sin upon Himself. He took the sins of His enemies upon
   Himself--sins of those who could not reward Him for His pains--but who,
   on the contrary, had up to now despised Him and esteemed Him not. When
   He was found with sin laid upon Him, He was not taken as a thief nor
   seized as a malefactor by our God. Justice knew that Christ was in the
   sinner's place for no motive but one of disinterested love. He had
   nothing to gain, but everything to lose. Those for whom He came, as we
   have already said, but we need to remind you of it again--had no claims
   upon Him--they had no love for Him. And even after He had given Himself
   to die for them they lived in hardness of heart, rejecting Him till His
   own superior Grace overcame them.

   Now one would think that a man having sin upon him from such a motive,
   so heavenly, so Divine, might have been spared. But Jesus was not
   spared--of the cup He drank every drop! Of the lash He felt every blow!
   The penalty which Christ endured was not a mitigated penalty for sin,
   but the whole weight of Jehovah's wrath fell on Him. He was treated as
   a thing accursed, for He was made a curse for us--made sin for us that
   we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. In what a manner was
   sin thus condemned!

   I shall not, however, treat this as a matter of doctrine. I shall come
   to you, Christian, and ask you if it is not so in your inmost heart. Is
   not sin condemned in your heart when you see the Lord of Glory die for
   your iniquities? Do you not hate the sin which brought Him down to such
   a depth? And when you remember that He died--that though He was
   guiltless He died simply out of love for you--do you not vow a full
   revenge against your sin and feel that the thing which once might be
   pleasurable is now detestable? Do you not feel that that which you
   could toy with and think nothing of is now loathsome to the very last
   degree?

   Once again--did the Savior not condemn sin most emphatically in the
   terror of the pains which He endured? The severity of God to sin was
   marked in the Savior's bitter griefs. No, I will not tell you over
   again that old story, that precious story of the passion in the
   garden--of the betrayal by His friend, of the accusations of treason
   and of blasphemy, of the scourging, the crown of thorns, the spit, the
   mocking, the bearing of the Cross, the piercing of His hands and feet,
   the stripping, the scorn, the thirst, the fever, the death--I will only
   just remind you of His desertion by His God, of the soul-griefs that He
   endured!

   Oh that I had power to depict them and that your minds could view them
   aright! We are never duly impressed, I am afraid, with the griefs of
   the Son of God! We weep over some silly story. Or when we hear of the
   little griefs of our friends we mourn with them. But the griefs of our
   best Friend do not affect us, and the sorrows of our best Beloved do
   not move us as they ought! Yet at times, at favored intervals, when you
   and I are permitted to sit and view the flowing of His precious
   blood--when we gaze into His wounds, when we hear his death-cries and
   mark His pangs and sorrows--then we have felt that sin was condemned!
   We never hate sin so much as when we get a realizing thought of the
   griefs of Immanuel.

   Human philosophy cannot make you hate sin. The study of the Law of God
   cannot make you hate it. But if you have ever, with tearful glance,
   beheld the Son of God expiring and groaning out His life for you in
   consequence of your sins-- then God has done in you, despite the
   weakness of your flesh, what the Law could not do and what all other
   things beside could never accomplish. I must press this matter home
   with you, Christians, that you may give your own verdict whether it is
   not so. Have you not felt that you have not half a word to say for sin
   now? That you could not defend it, no, that you could not bear it? It
   is now as if a man should come to you and say, "I have slain a man,
   hide me from justice." You might possibly consider whether you should
   conceal him--but if you discovered that he had assassinated your child
   and that his hands were blood-red with its innocent blood, you would
   say, "Hide you? How can I hide you? It is my own child whom you have
   slain."

   When sin comes to me I know its mischievous effect and I dare not, for
   that reason, tolerate it. But when I hear that it slew my dear
   Redeemer--slew Him who loved me eternally and without change--loved me
   without a motive for loving me, but only because He would love me! When
   I hear that sin slew Him, I cry, "Away with you! Sin, away with you!
   Away with you! It is not fit that you should live. Away with you! Down
   to the depths of Hell descend, and even there there is no darkness so
   dark as you are! No terror so terrible as you are! You Hell of hells,
   you blackness of darkness! You accursed thing! You have slain my Lord."

   This is what the text means when it tells us that the sacrifice of
   Jesus condemns sin.

   II. JESUS EXECUTES AND DESTROYS SIN. When we have a great offender to
   deal with, it is something to get him condemned, but our customs in
   this country do not always necessitate that a person condemned to die
   should die, for there are some cases now fresh in your memory where the
   sentence of death has been pronounced, and probably very justly too,
   and yet mercy (God forbid that I should say a word against it!) has
   come in and the sentence has not been carried out.

   Now our Lord Jesus not only came into the world to pronounce the
   sentence of death upon sin, but He crucified it. He fought with it and
   overthrew it then and there. He was not merely judge, but
   executioner--"He condemned sin in the flesh." At the present moment sin
   is crucified in those souls where Christ reigns. We will show you in
   what way Christ has executed sin. In the first place our Lord has
   destroyed it as to its penal power. There is no power in sin to condemn
   the Believer now.

   "What?" says one, "Does not sin condemn every man at whose door it
   lies?" Certainly it does--sin condemns every man with whom it is found.
   But in the case of the Believer sin is not imputed, not laid at his
   door, for David said, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
   whose sin is covered; blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputes not
   iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile." The sin of the
   Believer was laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ, "for the Lord has laid on
   Him the iniquity of us all." And from that day forward the penalty of
   sin has been discharged and removed by the Redeemer's having endured it
   Himself.

   The black cloud of my sin has no rain in it--it has emptied out its
   rain upon Christ. No, the black cloud itself has ceased to be! The Red
   Sea of my sin cannot drown me--it is dried up by Christ--I have a safe
   passage through it. My sin is, in itself, most deadly and destructive
   as I see it to have been in the Person of my Lord Jesus, but it shall
   neither destroy nor condemn me for it has destroyed and condemned
   Christ. And He has destroyed and condemned it. Good old Christmas Evans
   describes death as a dragon wearing a sting called sin, and being so
   determined to destroy the Savior that it darted its sting right through
   His body into the Cross.

   "And then," he says, "he could never draw it out again." That old
   dragon Death is a dragon still, but it has lost its sting, for it left
   its sting in the Cross of the dead Redeemer. Sin is gone and gone
   forever. "He has finished transgression, and made an end of sin." The
   jaw teeth of sin are broken! It may howl at me and worry me, but it
   cannot rend me or destroy me. As for original sin, Christ has put that
   away. As for actual sin, however great or however numerous actual sins
   may be, Christ has destroyed the penal power of sin in the case of
   every Believer. "Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died." "Who
   shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Once you get into
   Christ, O Believer, you may see your sin laid on the scapegoat's head
   of old and carried right away into the wilderness of oblivion where it
   shall never have an accusation to raise against you any more forever !

   Sin, in the next place, was executed by Christ as to its depressing
   power upon the conscience. When an ungodly man is aroused to see sin,
   it weighs on his heart like a nightmare. "I cannot," he says, "I cannot
   be saved! My sin is so evil. No longer may I hope--it is in vain to
   pray, in vain to trust, in vain to do anything! My sin fills me with
   despair! It makes me drunk with wormwood and breaks my teeth with
   gravel stones." But sin has no such depressing power upon the

   Christian as to drive him to despair. He sees sin, but he beholds an
   Atonement made. He perceives how black a thing sin is, but he sees the
   fountain filled with blood.

   He weeps over his sin, but he does not despair about it. He understands
   that sin by itself would put him into a helpless plight, but he
   comprehends that the eternal love of God, in the Person of the Lord
   Jesus Christ, has made his case not only hopeful but one in which he is
   safe and sure of everlasting life because the penalty for sin has been
   discharged by the Redeemer on his behalf. Sin is dead to the Christian
   in those two senses. I look sin in the face and I say to it, "You foul,
   you loathsome, you detestable thing! You cannot drag me down to Hell--I
   know you cannot--and you cannot even make me fear! I am bold, I can
   sing, I can rejoice, sinner as I am! You cannot stop me of my glory,
   for I am in Christ, absolved in Christ and secure." In these two senses
   sin is put away forever by our Savior's death.

   Moreover, sin is destroyed in the Christian as to its power over his
   heart. No soul that has come to trust in Jesus Christ loves sin. You do
   sin, my Brothers and Sisters, but if you could have your own way you
   would not. If your new nature could follow out its bent and desire what
   would you be? Would you not desire to be perfect even as God is
   perfect? To cease from every sin and run in every Christian duty? I can
   say honestly that if I might now have my choice, it should not be to
   possess wealth, or even health, nor fame, nor any of those things which
   dazzle human eyes--but to be perfectly holy.

   Even if I must be in consequence very poor, and very despised, or even
   die--to be perfectly holy were the climax of one's wishes. This shows
   that sin is destroyed in our heart. As Master Bunyan tells us, Diabolus
   could not enter the citadel any more after the Prince Immanuel had
   driven him out of the town of Mansoul. He did enter the city through
   Ear-Gate and Eye-Gate and his troops swarmed in every street, but he
   could never recapture the castle. The heart is kept for God! The heart
   of the Christian is inviolate and chaste for the soul's true Husband,
   the Lord Jesus. Sin is slain in the heart by Jesus. We cannot love sin
   since Christ has died.

   The Lord Jesus Christ, by His death has also crucified sin in its
   active energy over our lives. Alas, not over the lives of some
   professors, but they are not the true Israel. There are some professors
   of religion who, when the Lord comes, will certainly meet with a very
   fearful end! I mean such of you as profess to be the Lord's people and
   yet can secretly indulge in the sins of the flesh. Those of you who
   trade dishonestly, privately serve the devil, neglect prayer and act as
   sinners do, and yet all the while pretend to be among the living family
   of the living God. It were better for you that you had never been born!
   It were better for you that a millstone were tied round your neck and
   that you were cast into the depth of the sea than to unite yourself
   with a Christian Church and make a profession of being in Christ while
   you are the slave of your detestable lusts.

   Oh, may God undeceive many of you who may be in such a plight! May He
   pull your masks from your faces, wash the paint from your cheeks and
   make you to be in your own sight what you are in His sight! If I must
   be lost I would rather be lost knowing my condition than be lost a
   self-deceived man, and go from the cup of the Lord to drink the cup of
   wrath forever and be chased away from the communion of saints down into
   the pandemonium of Hell!

   However, in the genuine Christian sin has lost its power in his
   life--he cannot do as others do. If he is ever tempted to it, like
   Joseph he says, "How can I do this great wickedness and sin against
   God?" The Believer is in the body and therefore his flesh is weak, but
   his spirit lives. He therefore cannot let the body have dominion over
   him. Those lusts in which some indulge he abhors and he will not even
   mention them, as becomes saints. Those words which glide so glibly from
   other men's lips he hates, and will not utter them--they are foreign
   words to him. The swine rolls in the mire with delight, but the sheep
   abhors it.

   When before his conversion the man was a raven, how he gloated over his
   carrion! But now he is a dove he frequents the rivers of pure water and
   loves clean feeding while his clipping wings often bear him above the
   clouds! Yes, and above the stars, too, into the serene atmosphere where
   the dove-like Spirit dwells. He is a new creature in Christ Jesus and
   sin is destroyed in its energetic influence over his life.

   The day is coming--blessed be God, the day is coming--when sin in its
   very being will be utterly destroyed in every Believer. Sin within us
   lies like a condemned criminal with his neck under the guillotine. Oh
   that the axe would drop! Oh that the knife would take away the life of
   sin forever! Oh blessed hour! Oh sweet discharge to be rid of every
   temptation and propensity to sin! Sentence of death is recorded and the
   culprit is crucified--his hands are nailed fast --he cannot act as he
   would. His feet are nailed fast--he cannot run as he would and he will
   die before long. Oh blessed day when he shall be wholly dead, and the
   soul shall be free from sin, holy even as God is holy, to dwell with
   Him forever!

   Now, Beloved, you clearly see that the Law could not in any of these
   senses destroy sin and that the judgments of God do not make men give
   up the love of sin. They are hardened rather than softened by the
   terrors of God! Instead of sin losing its power over the conscience by
   hearing of the Law of God, it is strangely true that the more he
   understands the hatred of his Maker against sin, man just sets himself
   more determinately against his Maker! But the wounds of Jesus can do
   what nothing else can do. When I am pardoned, I hate sin! When I see
   the love of God in Christ Jesus, sin becomes a condemned and destroyed
   thing!

   I must now close with the lessons to be learned from this. It gave me
   great consolation, when studying this text, to notice that Christ had
   condemned sin in the flesh, for the flesh is sin's stronghold. It is
   sin's box out of which it can scarcely be driven. Our Lord has
   condemned it in the flesh. Then, blessed be God, our very flesh shall
   one day be rid of this condemned, executed thing and my very bones
   shall rejoice! Our very flesh shall one day see Jesus in the day of the
   resurrection and sing because sin has no more dominion over it!
   Christian, this is the lesson I long for you to learn! Hate sin in
   every shape! Christ condemns it, do not you approve it! Christ executes
   it, do not you harbor it! It slew the Savior, slay it! Hate sin!

   Have good heart as to its destruction. Do not think that sin is
   mightier than you are when Christ is with you. Up at your sins and slay
   them! Do not tamely yield to your besetting sin. Let this resolution
   this day be strong, that the victory shall be yours in every part of
   the battle, and that no sin shall remain in dominion over you. This day
   record your thanksgiving to Him who fought the battle for you and won
   it! He has condemned sin on your behalf, and slain it, too! Ascribe
   unto Him glory and honor and this day let your song go up to the place
   where He dwells!

   And to you, Sinner, this lesson--see how sin is punished. If it is
   punished in Christ, it will surely be avenged in you! If Jehovah spared
   not His own Son, He will never spare His enemy. Take heed, Sinner, of
   your sin! It will be your everlasting ruin if you are not rid of it.
   See how you can be delivered. Even you, flesh as you are, and the slave
   of flesh, Christ can save from your sin. Trust your soul with Him! Come
   as you are, all sinful and defiled, and cast yourself at the foot of
   His Cross by a simple act of trust! He will cast out your sin, for He
   has condemned it in the flesh. Oh may He condemn it in your flesh,
   condemn it in you now, and save you from it by destroying it and saving
   you! God grant it may be so with us, and His be the glory. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          Order and Argument in Prayer

   A Sermon

   (No. 700)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, July 15th, 1866, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his
   seat! I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with
   arguments."--Job 23:3,4

   In Job's uttermost extremity he cried after the Lord. The longing
   desire of an afflicted child of God is once more to see his Father's
   face. His first prayer is not, "Oh that I might be healed of the
   disease which now festers in every part of my body!" nor even, "Oh that
   I might see my children restored from the jaws of the grave, and my
   property once more brought from the hand of the spoiler!" but the first
   and uppermost cry is, "Oh that I knew where I might find HIM--who is my
   God! that I might come even to his seat!" God's children run home when
   the storm comes on. It is the heaven-born instinct of a gracious soul
   to seek shelter from all ills beneath the wings of Jehovah. "He that
   hath made his refuge God," might serve as the title of a true believer.
   A hypocrite, when he feels that he has been afflicted by God, resents
   the infliction, and, like a slave, would run from the master who has
   scourged him; but not so the true heir of heaven, he kisses the hand
   which smote him, and seeks shelter from the rod in the bosom of that
   very God who frowned upon him. You will observe that the desire to
   commune with God is intensified by the failure of all other sources of
   consolation. When Job first saw his friends at a distance, he may have
   entertained a hope that their kindly counsel and compassionate
   tenderness would blunt the edge of his grief; but they had not long
   spoken before he cried out in bitterness, "Miserable comforters are ye
   all." They put salt into his wounds, they heaped fuel upon the flame of
   his sorrow, they added the gall of their upbraidings to the wormwood of
   his griefs. In the sunshine of his smile they once had longed to sun
   themselves, and now they dare to cast shadows upon his reputation, most
   ungenerous and undeserved. Alas for a man when his wine-cup mocks him
   with vinegar, and his pillow pricks him with thorns! The patriarch
   turned away from his sorry friends and looked up to the celestial
   throne, just as a traveller turns from his empty skin bottle and
   betakes himself with all speed to the well. He bids farewell to
   earthborn hopes, and cries, "Oh that I knew where I might find my God!"
   My brethren, nothing teaches us so much the preciousness of the Creator
   as when we learn the emptiness of all besides. When you have been
   pierced through and through with the sentence, "Cursed is he that
   trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm," then will you suck
   unutterable sweetness from the divine assurance, "Blessed is he that
   trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is." Turning away with
   bitter scorn from earth's hives, where you found no honey, but many
   sharp stings, you will rejoice in him whose faithful word is sweeter
   than honey or the honeycomb.

   It is further observable that though a good man hastens to God in his
   trouble, and runs with all the more speed because of the unkindness of
   his fellow men, yet sometimes the gracious soul is left without the
   comfortable presence of God. This is the worst of all griefs; the text
   is one of Job's deep groans, far deeper than any which came from him on
   account of the loss of his children and his property: "Oh that I knew
   where I might find HIM!" The worst of all losses is to lose the smile
   of my God. He now had a foretaste of the bitterness of his Redeemer's
   cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" God's presence is
   always with his people in one sense, so far as secretly sustaining them
   is concerned, but his manifest presence they do not always enjoy. Like
   the spouse in the song, they seek their beloved by night upon their
   bed, they seek him but they find him not; and though they wake and roam
   through the city they may not discover him, and the question may be
   sadly asked again and again, "Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?" You may
   be beloved of God, and yet have no consciousness of that love in your
   soul. You may be as dear to his heart as Jesus Christ himself, and yet
   for a small moment he may forsake you, and in a little wrath he may
   hide himself from you. But, dear friends, at such times the desire of
   the believing soul gathers yet greater intensity from the fact of God's
   light being withheld. Instead of saying with proud lip, "Well, if he
   leaveth me I must do without him; if I cannot have his comfortable
   presence I must fight on as best may be," the soul saith, "No, it is my
   very life; I must have my God. I perish, I sink in deep mire where
   there is no standing, and nothing but the arm of God can deliver me."
   The gracious soul addresseth itself with a double zeal to find out God,
   and sends up its groans, its entreaties, its sobs and sighs to heaven
   more frequently and fervently. "Oh that I knew where I might find him!"
   Distance or labour are as nothing; if the soul only knew where to go
   she would soon overleap the distance. She makes no stipulation about
   mountains or rivers, but vows that if she knew where, she would come
   even to his seat. My soul in her hunger would break through stone
   walls, or scale the battlements of heaven to reach her God, and though
   there were seven hells between me and him, yet would I face the flame
   if I might reach him, nothing daunted if I had but the prospect of at
   last standing in his presence and feeling the delight of his love. That
   seems to me to be the state of mind in which Job pronounced the words
   before us.

   But we cannot stop upon this point, for the object of this morning's
   discourse beckons us onward. It appears that Job's end, in desiring the
   presence of God, was that he might pray to him. He had prayed, but he
   wanted to pray as in God's presence. He desired to plead as before one
   whom he knew would hear and help him. He longed to state his own case
   before the seat of the impartial Judge, before the very face of the
   all-wise God; he would appeal from the lower courts, where his friends
   judged unrighteous judgment, to the Court of King's Bench--the High
   Court of heaven--there, saith he, "I would order my cause before him,
   and fill my mouth with arguments."

   In this latter verse Job teaches us how he meant to plead and intercede
   with God. He does, as it were, reveal the secrets of his closet, and
   unveils the art of prayer. We are here admitted into the guild of
   suppliants; we are shown the art and mystery of pleading; we have here
   taught to us the blessed handicraft and science of prayer, and if we
   can be bound apprentice to Job this morning, for the next hour, and can
   have a lesson from Job's Master, we may acquire no little skill in
   interceding with God.

   There are two things here set forth as necessary in prayer--ordering of
   our cause, and filling our mouth with arguments. We shall speak of
   those two things, and then if we have rightly learned the lesson, a
   blessed result will follow.

   I. First, IT IS NEEDFUL THAT OUR SUIT BE ORDERED BEFORE GOD.

   There is a vulgar notion that prayer is a very easy thing, a kind of
   common business that may be done anyhow, without care or effort. Some
   think that you have only to reach a book down and get through a certain
   number of very excellent words, and you have prayed and may put the
   book up again; others suppose that to use a book is superstitious, and
   that you ought rather to repeat extemporaneous sentences, sentences
   which come to your mind with a rush, like a herd of swine or a pack of
   hounds, and that when you have uttered them with some little attention
   to what you have said, you have prayed. Now neither of these modes of
   prayer were adopted by ancient saints. They appear to have thought a
   great deal more seriously of prayer than many do now-a-days. It seems
   to have been a mighty business with them, a long-practised exercise, in
   which some of them attained great eminence, and were thereby singularly
   blest. They reaped great harvests in the field of prayer, and found the
   mercy seat to be a mine of untold treasures.

   The ancient saints were wont, with Job, to order their cause before
   God; that is to say, as a petitioner coming into Court does not come
   there without thought to state his case on the spur of the moment, but
   enters into the audience chamber with his suit well prepared, having
   moreover learned how he ought to behave himself in the presence of the
   great One to whom he is appealing. It is well to approach the seat of
   the King of kings as much as possible with pre-meditation and
   preparation, knowing what we are about, where we are standing, and what
   it is which we desire to obtain. In times of peril and distress we may
   fly to God just as we are, as the dove enters the cleft of the rock,
   even though her plumes are ruffled; but in ordinary times we should not
   come with an unprepared spirit, even as a child comes not to his father
   in the morning till he has washed his face. See yonder priest; he has a
   sacrifice to offer, but he does not rush into the court of the priests
   and hack at the bullock with the first pole-axe upon which he can lay
   his hand, but when he rises he washes his feet at the brazen laver, he
   puts on his garments, and adorns himself with his priestly vestments;
   then he comes to the altar with his victim properly divided according
   to the law, and is careful to do according to the command, even to such
   a simple matter as the placing of the fat, and the liver, and the
   kidneys, and he taketh the blood in a bowl and poureth it in an
   appropriate place at the foot of the altar, not throwing it just as may
   occur to him, and kindles the fire not with common flame, but with the
   sacred fire from off the altar. Now this ritual is all superseded, but
   the truth which it taught remains the same; our spiritual sacrifices
   should be offered with holy carefulness. God forbid that our prayer
   should be a mere leaping out of one's bed and kneeling down, and saying
   anything that comes first to hand; on the contrary, may we wait upon
   the Lord with holy fear and sacred awe. See how David prayed when God
   had blessed him--he went in before the Lord. Understand that; he did
   not stand outside at a distance, but he went in before the Lord and he
   sat down--for sitting is not a bad posture for prayer, let who will
   speak against it--and sitting down quietly and calmly before the Lord
   he then began to pray, but not until first he had thought over the
   divine goodness, and so attained to the spirit of prayer. Then by the
   assistance of the Holy Ghost did he open his mouth. Oh that we oftener
   sought the Lord in this style! Abraham may serve us as a pattern; he
   rose up early--here was his willingness; he went three days
   journey--here was his zeal; he left his servants at the foot of the
   hill--here was his privacy; he carried the wood and the fire with
   him--here was his preparation; and lastly, he built the altar and laid
   the wood in order, and then took the knife--here was the devout
   carefulness of his worship. David puts it, "In the morning will I
   direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up"; which I have frequently
   explained to you to mean that he marshalled his thoughts like men of
   war, or that he aimed his prayers like arrows. He did not take the
   arrow and put it on the bowstring and shoot, and shoot, and shoot
   anywhere; but after he had taken out the chosen shaft, and fitted it to
   the string, he took deliberate aim. He looked--looked well--at the
   white of the target; kept his eye fixed on it, directing his prayer,
   and then drew his bow with all his strength and let the arrow fly; and
   then, when the shaft had left his hand, what does he say? "I will look
   up." He looked up to see where the arrow went, to see what effect it
   had; for he expected an answer to his prayers, and was not as many who
   scarcely think of their prayers after they have uttered them. David
   knew that he had an engagement before him which required all his mental
   powers; he marshalled up his faculties and went about the work in a
   workmanlike manner, as one who believed in it and meant to succeed. We
   should plough carefully and pray carefully. The better the work the
   more attention it deserves. To be anxious in the shop and thoughtless
   in the closet is little less than blasphemy, for it is an insinuation
   that anything will do for God, but the world must have our best.

   If any ask what order should be observed in prayer, I am not about to
   give you a scheme such as many have drawn out, in which adoration,
   confession, petition, intercession, and ascription are arranged in
   succession. I am not persuaded that any such order is of divine
   authority. It is to no mere mechanical order I have been referring, for
   our prayers will be equally acceptable, and possibly equally proper, in
   any form; for there are specimens of prayers, in all shapes, in the Old
   and New Testament. The true spiritual order of prayer seems to me to
   consist in something more than mere arrangement. It is most fitting for
   us first to feel that we are now doing something that is real; that we
   are about to address ourselves to God, whom we cannot see, but who is
   really present; whom we can neither touch nor hear, nor by our senses
   can apprehend, but who, nevertheless, is as truly with us as though we
   were speaking to a friend of flesh and blood like ourselves. Feeling
   the reality of God's presence, our mind will be led by divine grace
   into an humble state; we shall feel like Abraham, when he said, "I have
   taken upon myself to speak unto God, I that am but dust and ashes."
   Consequently we shall not deliver ourselves of our prayer as boys
   repeating their lessons, as a mere matter of rote, much less shall we
   speak as if we were rabbis instructing our pupils, or as I have heard
   some do, with the coarseness of a highwayman stopping a person on the
   road and demanding his purse of him; but we shall be humble yet bold
   petitioners, humbly importuning mercy through the Saviour's blood. We
   shall not have the reserve of a slave but the loving reverence of a
   child, yet not an impudent, impertinent child, but a teachable obedient
   child, honouring his Father, and therefore asking earnestly, but with
   deferential submission to his Father's will. When I feel that I am in
   the presence of God, and take my rightful position in that presence,
   the next thing I shall want to recognize will be that I have no right
   to what I am seeking, and cannot expect to obtain it except as a gift
   of grace, and I must recollect that God limits the channel through
   which he will give me mercy--he will give it to me through his dear
   Son. Let me put myself then under the patronage of the great Redeemer.
   Let me feel that now it is no longer I that speak but Christ that
   speaketh with me, and that while I plead, I plead his wounds, his life,
   his death, his blood, himself. This is truly getting into order.

   The next thing is to consider what I am to ask for? It is most proper
   in prayer, to aim at great distinctness of supplication. There is much
   reason to complain of some public prayers, that those who offer them do
   not really ask God for anything. I must acknowledge I fear to having so
   prayed myself, and certainly to having heard many prayers of the kind,
   in which I did not feel that anything was sought for from God--a great
   deal of very excellent doctrinal and experimental matter uttered, but
   little real petitioning, and that little in a nebulous kind of state,
   chaotic and unformed. But it seems to me that prayer should be
   distinct, the asking for something definitely and distinctly because
   the mind has realized its distinct need of such a thing, and therefore
   must plead for it. It is well not to beat round the bush in prayer, but
   to come directly to the point. I like that prayer of Abraham's, "Oh
   that Ishmael might live before thee!" There is the name and the person
   prayed for, and the blessing desired, all put in a few words,--"Ishmael
   might live before thee!" Many persons would have used a roundabout
   expression of this kind, "Oh that our beloved offspring might be
   regarded with the favour which thou bearest to those who," etc. Say
   "Ishmael," if you mean "Ishmael"; put it in plain words before the
   Lord. Some people cannot even pray for the minister without using such
   circular descriptives that you might think it were the parish beadle,
   or somebody whom it did not do to mention too particularly. Why not be
   distinct, and say what we mean as well as mean what we say? Ordering
   our cause would bring us to greater distinctness of mind. It is not
   necessary, my dear brethren, in the closet to ask for every supposable
   good thing; it is not necessary to rehearse the catalogue of every want
   that you may have, have had, can have, or shall have. Ask for what you
   now need, and, as a rule, keep to present need; ask for your daily
   bread--what you want now--ask for that. Ask for it plainly, as before
   God, who does not regard your fine expressions, and to whom your
   eloquence and oratory will be less than nothing and vanity. Thou art
   before the Lord; let thy words be few, but let thy heart be fervent.

   You have not quite completed the ordering when you have asked for what
   you want through Jesus Christ. There should be a looking round the
   blessing which you desire, to see whether it is assuredly a fitting
   thing to ask; for some prayers would never be offered if men did but
   think. A little reflection would show to us that some things which we
   desire were better let alone. We may, moreover, have a motive at the
   bottom of our desire which is not Christ-like, a selfish motive, which
   forgets God's glory and caters only for our own case and comfort. Now
   although we may ask for things which are for our profit, yet still we
   must never let our profit interfere in any way with the glory of God.
   There must be mingled with acceptable prayer the holy salt of
   submission to the divine will. I like Luther's saying, "Lord, I will
   have my will of thee at this time." "What!" say you, "Like such an
   expression as that?" I do, because of the next clause, which was, "I
   will have my will, for I know that my will is thy will." That is well
   spoken, Luther; but without the last words it would have been wicked
   presumption. When we are sure that what we ask for is for God's glory,
   then, if we have power in prayer, we may say, "I will not let thee go
   except thou bless me": we may come to close dealings with God, and like
   Jacob with the angel we may even put it to the wrestle and seek to give
   the angel the fall sooner than be sent away without the benediction.
   But we must be quite clear, before we come to such terms as those, that
   what we are seeking is really for the Master's honour.

   Put these three things together, the deep spirituality which recognises
   prayer as being real conversation with the invisible God--much
   distinctness which is the reality of prayer, asking for what we know we
   want--and withal much fervency, believing the thing to be necessary,
   and therefore resolving to obtain it if it can be had by prayer, and
   above all these complete submission, leaving it still with the Master's
   will;--commingle all these, and you have a clear idea of what it is to
   order your cause before the Lord.

   Still prayer itself is an art which only the Holy Ghost can teach us.
   He is the giver of all prayer. Pray for prayer--pray till you can pray;
   pray to be helped to pray, and give not up praying because thou canst
   not pray, for it is when thou thinkest thou canst not pray that thou
   art most praying; and sometimes when thou hast no sort of comfort in
   thy supplications, it is then that thy heart all broken and cast down
   is really wrestling and truly prevailing with the Most High.

   II. The second part of prayer is FILLING THE MOUTH WITH ARGUMENTS--not
   filling the mouth with words nor good phrases, nor pretty expressions,
   but filling the mouth with arguments are the knocks of the rapper by
   which the gate is opened.

   Why are arguments to be used at all? is the first enquiry; the reply
   being, Certainly not because God is slow to give, not because we can
   change the divine purpose, not because God needeth to be informed of
   any circumstance with regard to ourselves or of anything in connection
   with the mercy asked: the arguments to be used are for our own benefit,
   not for his. He requires for us to plead with him, and to bring forth
   our strong reasons, as Isaiah saith, because this will show that we
   feel the value of the mercy. When a man searches for arguments for a
   thing it is because he attaches importance to that which he is seeking.
   Again, our use of arguments teaches us the ground upon which we obtain
   the blessing. If a man should come with the argument of his own merit,
   he would never succeed; the successful argument is always founded upon
   grace, and hence the soul so pleading is made to understand intensely
   that it is by grace and by grace alone that a sinner obtaineth anything
   of the Lord. Besides, the use of arguments is intended to stir up our
   fervency. The man who uses one argument with God will get more force in
   using the next, and will use the next with still greater power, and the
   next with more force still. The best prayers I have ever heard in our
   prayer meetings have been those which have been fullest of argument.
   Sometimes my soul has been fairly melted down when I have listened to
   brethren who have come before God feeling the mercy to be really
   needed, and that they must have it, for they first pleaded with God to
   give it for this reason, and then for a second, and then for a third,
   and then for a fourth and a fifth, until they have awakened the
   fervency of the entire assembly. My brethren, there is no need for
   prayer at all as far as God is concerned, but what a need there is for
   it on our own account! If we were not constrained to pray, I question
   whether we could even live as Christians. If God's mercies came to us
   unasked, they would not be half so useful as they now are, when they
   have to be sought for; for now we get a double blessing, a blessing in
   the obtaining, and a blessing in the seeking. The very act of prayer is
   a blessing. To pray is as it were to bathe one's-self in a cool purling
   stream, and so to escape from the heats of earth's summer sun. To pray
   is to mount on eagle's wings above the clouds and get into the clear
   heaven where God dwelleth. To pray is to enter the treasure-house of
   God and to enrich one's-self out of an inexhaustible storehouse. To
   pray is to grasp heaven in one's arms, to embrace the Deity within
   one's soul, and to feel one's body made a temple of the Holy Ghost.
   Apart from the answer prayer is in itself a benediction. To pray, my
   brethren, is to cast off your burdens, it is to tear away your rags, it
   is to shake off your diseases, it is to be filled with spiritual
   vigour, it is to reach the highest point of Christian health. God give
   us to be much in the holy art of arguing with God in prayer.

   The most interesting part of our subject remains; it is a very rapid
   summary and catalogue of a few of the arguments which have been used
   with great success with God. I cannot give you a full list; that would
   require a treatise such as Master John Owen might produce. It is well
   in prayer to plead with Jehovah his attributes. Abraham did so when he
   laid hold upon God's justice. Sodom was to be pleaded for, and Abraham
   begins, "Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt
   thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that
   are therein? that be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the
   righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the
   wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
   right?" Here the wrestling begins. It was a powerful argument by which
   the patriarch grasped the Lord's left hand, and arrested it just when
   the thunderbolt was about to fall. But there came a reply to it. It was
   intimated to him that this would not spare the city, and you notice how
   the good man, when sorely pressed, retreated by inches; and at last,
   when he could no longer lay hold upon justice, grasped God's right hand
   of mercy, and that gave him a wondrous hold when he asked that if there
   were but ten righteous there the city might be spared. So you and I may
   take hold at any time upon the justice, the mercy, the faithfulness,
   the wisdom, the long-suffering, the tenderness of God, and we shall
   find every attribute of the Most High to be, as it were, a great
   battering-ram, with which we may open the gates of heaven.

   Another mighty piece of ordinance in the battle of prayer is God's
   promise. When Jacob was on the other side of the brook Jabbok, and his
   brother Esau was coming with armed men, he pleaded with God not to
   suffer Esau to destroy the mother and the children, and as a master
   reason he pleaded, "And thou saidst, surely I will do thee good." Oh
   the force of that plea! He was holding God to his word: "Thou saidst."
   The attribute is a splendid horn of the altar to lay hold upon; but the
   promise, which has in it the attribute and something more, is yet a
   mightier holdfast. "Thou saidst." Remember how David put it. After
   Nathan had spoken the promise, David said at the close of his prayer,
   "Do as thou hast said." That is a legitimate argument with every honest
   man, and has he said, and shall he not do it? "Let God be true, and
   every man a liar." Shall not he be true? Shall he not keep his word?
   Shall not every word that cometh out of his lips stand fast and be
   fulfilled? Solomon, at the opening of the temple, used this same mighty
   plea. He pleads with God to remember the word which he had spoken to
   his father David, and to bless that place. When a man gives a
   promissory note his honour is engaged. He signs his hand, and he must
   discharge it when the due time comes, or else he loses credit. It shall
   never be said that God dishonours his bills. The credit of the Most
   High never was impeached, and never shall be. He is punctual to the
   moment; he never is before his time, but he never is behind it. You
   shall search this Book through, and you shall compare it with the
   experience of God's people, and the two tally from the first to the
   last; and many a hoary patriarch has said with Joshua in his old age,
   "Not one good thing hath failed of all that the Lord God hath promised:
   all hath come to pass." My brother, if you have a divine promise, you
   need not plead it with an "if" in it; you may plead with a certainty.
   If for the mercy which you are now asking, you have God's solemnly
   pledged word, there will scarce be any room for the caution about
   submission to his will. You know his will: that will is in the promise;
   plead it. Do not give him rest until he fulfil it. He meant to fulfil
   it, or else he would not have given it. God does not give his words
   merely to quiet our noise, and to keep us hopeful for awhile, with the
   intention of putting us off at last; but when he speaks, he speaks
   because he means to act.

   A third argument to be used is that employed by Moses, the great name
   of God. How mightily did he argue with God on one occasion upon this
   ground! "What wilt thou do for thy great name? The Egyptians will say,
   Because the Lord could not bring them into the land, therefore he slew
   them in the wilderness." There are some occasions when the name of God
   is very closely tied up with the history of his people. Sometimes in
   reliance upon a divine promise, a believer will be led to take a
   certain course of action. Now, if the Lord should not be as good as his
   promise, not only is the believer deceived, but the wicked world
   looking on would say, "Aha! aha! Where is your God?" Take the case of
   our respected brother, Mr. Muller, of Bristol. These many years he has
   declared that God hears prayer, and firm in that conviction, he has
   gone on to build house after house for the maintenance of orphans. Now,
   I can very well conceive that, if he were driven to a point of want of
   means for the maintenance of those thousand or two thousand children,
   he might very well use the plea, "What wilt thou do for thy great
   name?" And you, in some severe trouble, when you have fairly received
   the promise, may say, "Lord, thou hast said, In six troubles I will be
   with thee, and in seven I will not forsake thee.' I have told my
   friends and neighbours that I put my trust in thee, and if thou do not
   deliver me now, where is thy name? Arise, O God, and do this thing,
   lest thy honour be cast into the dust." Coupled with this, we may
   employ the further argument of the hard things said by the revilers. It
   was well done of Hezekiah, when he took Rabshakeh's letter and spread
   it before the Lord. Will that help him? It is full of blasphemy, will
   that help him? "Where are the gods of Arphad and Sepharvaim? Where are
   the gods of the cities which I have overthrown? Let not Hezekiah
   deceive you, saying that Jehovah will deliver you." Does that have any
   effect? Oh! yes, it was a blessed thing that Rabshakeh wrote that
   letter, for it provoked the Lord to help his people. Sometimes the
   child of God can rejoice when he sees his enemies get thoroughly out of
   temper and take to reviling. "Now," he says, "they have reviled the
   Lord himself; not me alone have they assailed, but the Most High
   himself. Now it is no longer the poor insignificant Hezekiah with his
   little band of soldiers, but it is Jehovah, the King of angels, who has
   come to fight against Rabshakeh. Now what wilt thou do, O boastful
   soldier of proud Sennacherib? Shalt not thou be utterly destroyed,
   since Jehovah himself has come into the fray? All the progress that is
   made by Popery, all the wrong things said by speculative atheists and
   so on, should be by Christians used as an argument with God, why he
   should help the gospel. Lord; see how they reproach the gospel of
   Jesus! Pluck thy right hand out of thy bosom! O God, they defy thee!
   Anti-christ thrusts itself into the place where thy Son once was
   honoured, and from the very pulpits where the gospel was once preached
   Popery is now declared. Arise, O God, wake up thy zeal, let thy sacred
   passions burn! Thine ancient foe again prevails. Behold the harlot of
   Babylon once more upon her scarlet-coloured beast rides forth in
   triumph! Come, Jehovah, come, Jehovah, and once again show what thy
   bare arm can do! This is a legitimate mode of pleading with God, for
   his great name's sake.

   So also may we plead the sorrows of his people. This is frequently
   done. Jeremiah is the great master of this art. He says, "Her Nazarites
   were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy
   in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire: their visage is
   blacker than a coal." "The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine
   gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands
   of the potter!" He talks of all their griefs and straitnesses in the
   siege. He calls upon the Lord to look upon his suffering Zion; and ere
   long his plaintive cries are heard. Nothing so eloquent with the father
   as his child's cry; yes, there is one thing more mighty still, and that
   is a moan,--when the child is so sick that it is past crying, and lies
   moaning with that kind of moan which indicates extreme suffering and
   intense weakness. Who can resist that moan? Ah! and when God's Israel
   shall be brought very low so that they can scarcely cry but only their
   moans are heard, then comes the Lord's time of deliverance, and he is
   sure to show that he loveth his people. Dear friends, whenever you also
   are brought into the same condition you may plead your moanings, and
   when you see a church brought very low you may use her griefs as an
   argument why God should return and save the remnant of his people.

   Brethren, it is good to plead with God the past. Ah, you experienced
   people of God, you know how to do this. Here is David's specimen of it:
   "Thou hast been my help. Leave me not, neither forsake me." He pleads
   God's mercy to him from his youth up. He speaks of being cast upon his
   God from his very birth, and then he pleads, "Now also, when I am old
   and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not." Moses also, speaking with God,
   says, "Thou didst bring this people up out of Egypt." As if he would
   say, "Do not leave thy work unfinished; thou hast begun to build,
   complete it. Thou hast fought the first battle; Lord, end the campaign!
   Go on till thou gettest a complete victory." How often have we cried in
   our trouble, "Lord, thou didst deliver me in such and such a sharp
   trial, when it seemed as if no help were near; thou hast never forsaken
   me yet. I have set up my Ebenezer in thy name. If thou hadst intended
   to leave me why hast thou showed me such things? Hast thou brought thy
   servant to this place to put him to shame?" Brethren, we have to deal
   with an unchanging God, who will do in the future what he has done in
   the past, because he never turns from his purpose, and cannot be
   thwarted in his design; the past thus becomes a very mighty means of
   winning blessings from him.

   We may even use our own unworthiness as an argument with God. "Out of
   the eater comes forth meat, and out of the strong comes forth
   sweetness." David in one place pleads thus: "Lord, have mercy upon mine
   iniquity, for it is great." That is a very singular mode of reasoning;
   but being interpreted it means, "Lord, why shouldest thou go about
   doing little things? Thou art a great God, and here is a great sinner.
   Here is a fitness in me for the display of thy grace. The greatness of
   my sin makes me a platform for the greatness of thy mercy. Let the
   greatness of thy love be seen in me." Moses seems to have the same on
   his mind when he asks God to show his great power in sparing his sinful
   people. The power with which God restrains himself is great indeed. O
   brothers and sisters, there is such a thing as creeping down at the
   foot of the throne, crouching low and crying, "O God, break me not--I
   am a bruised reed. Oh! tread not on my little life, it is now but as
   the smoking flax. Wilt thou hunt me? Wilt thou come out, as David said,
   "after a dead dog, after a flea?" Wilt thou pursue me as a leaf that is
   blown in the tempest? Wilt thou watch me, as Job saith, as though I
   were a vast sea, or a great whale? Nay, but because I am so little, and
   because the greatness of thy mercy can be shown in one so insignificant
   and yet so vile, therefore, O God, have mercy upon me."

   There was once an occasion when the very Godhead of Jehovah made a
   triumphant plea for the prophet Elijah. On that august occasion, when
   he had bidden his adversaries see whether their god could answer them
   by fire, you can little guess the excitement there must have been that
   day in the prophet's mind. With what stern sarcasm did he say, "Cry
   aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he
   is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened."
   And as they cut themselves with knives, and leaped upon the altar, oh
   the scorn with which that man of God must have looked down upon their
   impotent exertions, and their earnest but useless cries! But think of
   how his heart must have palpitated, if it had not been for the strength
   of his faith, when he repaired the altar of God that was broken down,
   and laid the wood in order, and killed the bullock. Hear him cry, "Pour
   water on it. You shall not suspect me of concealing fire; pour water on
   the victim." When they had done so, he bids them, "Do it a second
   time"; and they did it a second time; and then he says, "Do it a third
   time." And when it was all covered with water, soaked and saturated
   through, then he stands up and cries to God, "O God, let it be known
   that thou only art God." Here everything was put to the test. Jehovah's
   own existence was now put, as it were, at stake, before the eyes of men
   by this bold prophet. But how well the prophet was heard! Down came the
   fire and devoured not only the sacrifice, but even the wood, and the
   stones, and even the very water that was in the trenches, for Jehovah
   God had answered his servant's prayer. We sometimes may do the same,
   and say unto him, "Oh, by thy Deity, by thine existence, if indeed thou
   be God, now show thyself for the help of thy people!"

   Lastly, the grand Christian argument is the sufferings, the death, the
   merit, the intercession of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I am afraid we do
   not understand what it is that we have at our command when we are
   allowed to plead with God for Christ's sake. I met with this thought
   the other day: it was somewhat new to me, but I believe it ought not to
   have been. When we ask God to hear us, pleading Christ's name, we
   usually mean, "O Lord, thy dear Son deserves this of thee; do this unto
   me because of what he merits." But if we knew it we might go in the
   city, "Sir, call at my office, and use my name, and say that they are
   to give you such a thing." I should go in and use your name, and I
   should obtain my request as a matter of right and a matter of
   necessity. This is virtually what Jesus Christ says to us. "If you need
   anything of God, all that the Father has belongs to me; go and use my
   name." Suppose you should give a man your cheque-book signed with your
   own name and left blank, to be filled up as he chose; that would be
   very nearly what Jesus has done in these words, "If ye ask anything in
   my name, I will give it you." If I had a good name at the bottom of the
   cheque, I should be sure that I should get it cashed when I went to the
   banker with it; so when you have got Christ's name, to whom the very
   justice of God hath become a debtor, and whose merits have claims with
   the Most High, when you have Christ's name there is no need to speak
   with fear and trembling and bated breath. Oh, waver not and let not
   faith stagger! When thou pleadest the name of Christ thou pleadest that
   which shakes the gates of hell, and which the hosts of heaven obey, and
   God himself feels the sacred power of that divine plea.

   Brethren, you would do better if you sometimes thought more in your
   prayers of Christ's griefs and groans. Bring before the Lord his
   wounds, tell the Lord of his cries, make the groans of Jesus cry again
   from Gethsemane, and his blood speak again from that frozen Calvary.
   Speak out and tell the Lord that with such griefs, and cries, and
   groans to plead, thou canst not take a denial: such arguments as these
   will speed you.

   III. If the Holy Ghost shall teach us how to order our cause, and how
   to fill our mouth with arguments, the result shall be that WE SHALL
   HAVE OUR MOUTH FILLED WITH PRAISES. The man who has his mouth full of
   arguments in prayer shall soon have his mouth full of benedictions in
   answer to prayer. Dear friend, thou hast thy mouth full this morning,
   has thou? What of? Full of complaining? Pray the Lord to rinse thy
   mouth out of that black stuff, for it will little avail thee, and it
   will be bitter in thy bowels one of these days. Oh, have thy mouth full
   of prayer, full of it, full of arguments so that there is room for
   nothing else. Then come with this blessed mouthful, and you shall soon
   go away with whatsoever you have asked of God. Only delight thou
   thyself in him, and he will give thee the desire of thy heart.

   It is said--I know not how truly--that the explanation of the text,
   "Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it," may be found in a very
   singular Oriental custom. It is said that not many years ago--I
   remember the circumstance being reported--the King of Persia ordered
   the chief of his nobility, who had done something or other which
   greatly gratified him, to open his mouth, and when he had done so he
   began to put into his mouth pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds,
   till he had filled it as full as it could hold, and then he bade him go
   his way. This is said to have been occasionally done in Oriental Courts
   towards great favourites. Now certainly whether that be an explanation
   of the text or not it is an illustration of it. God says, "Open thy
   mouth with arguments," and then he will fill it with mercies priceless,
   gems unspeakably valuable. Would not a man open his mouth wide when he
   had to have it filled in such a style? Surely the most simple-minded
   among you would be wise enough for that. Oh! let us then open wide our
   mouth when we have to plead with God. Our needs are great, let our
   askings be great, and the supply shall be great too. You are not
   straitened in him; you are straitened in your own bowels. The Lord give
   you large mouths in prayer, great potency, not in the use of language,
   but in employing arguments.

   What I have been speaking to the Christian is applicable in great
   measure to the unconverted man. God give thee to see the force of it,
   and to fly in humble prayer to the Lord Jesus Christ and to find
   eternal life in him.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Numbers 14:1-21.
     __________________________________________________________________

                Seeing And Not Seeing--Or, Men As Trees Walking

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 22, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And He came to Bethsaida and they brought a blind man unto Him, and
   besought Him to touch him. And He took the blind man by the hand, and
   led him out of the town. And when He had spit on his eyes, andputHis
   hands upon him, He asked him if he saw anything. And he looked up, and
   said, I see men as trees, walking. After that He put His hands again
   upon his eyes, and made him look up. And he was restored, and saw every
   man clearly." Mark 8:22-25.

   OUR Savior very frequently healed the sick by a touch, for He intended
   to impress upon us the truth that the infirmities of fallen humanity
   can only be removed by contact with His own blessed humanity. He had,
   however, other lessons to teach, and therefore He adopted other methods
   of action in healing the sick. Moreover, it was wise for other reasons
   to manifest variety in His methods. Had our Lord cast all His miracles
   in one mold men would have attached undue importance to the manner by
   which He worked, and would have superstitiously thought more of it than
   of the Divine power by which the miracle was accomplished.

   Accordingly, our Master presents us with great variety in the form of
   the miracles. Though they are always fraught with the same goodness,
   and display the same wisdom and the same power, yet He is careful to
   make each one distinct from its fellow, that we may behold the manifest
   goodness of God and may not imagine that the Divine Savior is so short
   of methods as to need to repeat Himself. It is the besetting sin of our
   carnal natures to stay in what is seen and to forget the unseen--hence
   the Lord Jesus changes the outward modus operandi, or manner of
   working, in order that it may be clear that He is not bound to any
   method of healing--and that the outward operation is nothing in itself.
   He would have us understand that if He chose to heal by the touch, He
   could also heal with a word.

   And if He cured with a word, He could dispense even with the word and
   work by His mere will--that a glance of His eye was as efficacious as a
   touch of His hand--and that even without being visibly present, His
   invisible Presence could work the miracle while yet He was at a
   distance. In the present case our Savior deviated from His accustomed
   practice, not merely in the method of healing but also in the character
   of the cure. In most of the Savior's miracles the person healed was
   restored at once. We read of the deaf and dumb man, that not only was
   his mouth opened, but, what was more remarkable for one who never had
   heard a sound before, he spoke plainly, receiving the gift of language
   as well as the power to make articulate sounds.

   In other cases the fever left the patient at once, the leprosy was
   completely healed on the spot, and the issue of blood was stayed. But
   here, "the Beloved Physician" went more leisurely to work, and only
   bestowed a part of the blessing at first, halting by the way, and
   making His patient consider how much was given, and how much withheld,
   and then by a second operation perfecting the good work. Perhaps our
   Lord's action in this case was directed not only by the desire to make
   each miracle distinct, lest men should think that like a magician He
   had but one mode of operating--but it may have been suggested by the
   particular form of the disease, and the spiritual infirmity of which it
   is a type.

   Jesus would scarcely have healed some sicknesses by degrees. It seemed
   necessary to deal a decisive blow and end them. The casting out of a
   devil, for instance, must be accomplished entirely or else it is not
   accomplished at all. And a leper is a leper still if but a spot
   remains. It is possible, however, to heal blindness by degrees--to give
   some little glimmer at first, and then afterwards to pour upon the
   eyeballs the full light of day. Perhaps it may even be necessary in
   some cases to make the cure gradual, that the optic nerve may grow
   accustomed to the light. As the eye is the emblem of the understanding,
   it is very possible, no, it is usual, to heal the human understanding
   by degrees.

   The will must be changed at once. The affections must be turned
   instantly. Most of the powers of human nature must experience a
   distinct and complete change. But the understanding may be enlightened
   by a long course of illumination. The heart of stone cannot be
   gradually softened, but must instantaneously be made into a heart of
   flesh. But this is not necessary with the understanding. The reasoning
   faculties may be gradually brought into proper balance and order. The
   soul may receive at first but a slight perception of the Truth of God
   and there it may rest with comparative safety. Afterwards it may come
   to apprehend more clearly the mind of the Spirit, and in that degree of
   light it may abide without serious peril, although not without loss.

   It may be described as seeing, but not seeing afar off. And then the
   ultimate restoration of the understanding may be reserved to more
   mature experience. Probably the spiritual sight will never be, in
   absolute perfection, bestowed upon us till we enter into the light for
   which the spiritual state is intended, namely, the glory of that place
   where they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God
   gives them light. The miracle before us portrays the progressive
   healing of a darkened understanding.

   The miracle cannot be used as a picture of the restoration of a willful
   sinner from the error of his ways, or the turning of the debauched and
   depraved from the filthiness of their lives. It is a picture of the
   darkened soul gradually illuminated by the Holy Spirit, and brought by
   Jesus Christ into the clear light of His kingdom. This morning, feeling
   that there are many half-enlightened souls present, I shall, by the
   Holy Spirit's assistance, picture the case. Then we shall notice the
   means of cure. Thirdly, we shall stop awhile and consider the hopeful
   stage, and then conclude by a short notice of the completion of the
   cure.

   I. First, we have TO PICTURE THE CASE. It is one of a wonderfully
   common class nowadays--very common, certainly, among the new additions
   to this congregation--for very many are coming to us who have been for
   the previous part of their lives spiritually blind, having been mere
   formal churchgoers, or stiff outside religionists among Dissenters.

   Observe carefully the case in hand. It is a person with a darkened
   understanding. It is not a man who might be pictured by a person
   possessed with the devil. A man possessed with the devil raves, rages,
   is dangerous to society, must be bound with chains, watched and
   guarded, for he will rend himself and injure others. This blind person
   is perfectly harmless. He has no desire to injure others and is not
   likely to be violent towards himself. He is sober, steady, honest,
   kind, and his spiritual malady may excite our pity but not our fear.

   If these unenlightened persons associate with the Lord's people they do
   not rave and rage against the saints, but respect them and love their
   company. They are not haters of the Cross of Christ--they are, in their
   poor blind way, even lovers of it. They are not persecutors, revilers
   or scoffers. Nor do they run desperately in the way of wickedness. On
   the contrary, although they cannot see the things of God, yet they feel
   their way in the paths of morality in a very admirable manner. So that,
   in some respects, they might even be examples to those who can see!

   Furthermore, the case before us is not one of a person polluted with a
   contagious disease, foul and loathsome like leprosy. The leper must be
   put away. There must be a place reserved for him, for he contaminates
   all those with whom he comes in contact. Not so with this blind man who
   comes to the Savior. He is blind, but he does not make others blind. If
   he is in association with other blind persons, he does not increase
   their blindness--nor, if he is brought into connection with those who
   can see does he injure their sight in any way.

   They, perhaps, might even derive some benefit from association with
   him, for they are led to be thankful for the eyesight which they
   possess when they mark the darkness in which he is so sorrowfully
   enveloped. It is not, therefore, the case of a person of a libidinous
   life or of a foul conversation. It is not at all the case of a man who
   would deprave your children, who would lead your son or your daughter
   into sin. The unenlightened people of whom we speak are beloved in our
   families, and very properly so, for they spread no injurious doctrines,
   and set no ill examples. And even when they talk of spiritual things
   they make us pity them because they know so little, and we are grateful
   to God to think that He has opened our eyes to see the wondrous things
   of His Word.

   They are neither raving haters of God nor yet foul livers, so as to do
   mischief to their race. No, these people are not even incapable in any
   respect except the one organ of the mind's eye--it is the understanding
   which is darkened. But in all other senses, these people whom I am now
   picturing are hopeful, if not healthy. They are not altogether deaf,
   they hear the Gospel with considerable pleasure and earnest heed. It is
   true they do not clearly understand it. It is very much the letter
   which they receive, and but in a very small degree the spirit. Still,
   at the same time, they do hear, and they are in the way of getting a
   greater blessing, for "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word
   of God."

   And moreover, after a certain sort, they are not dumb either, for they
   do pray in a manner. It is true that their prayer is scarcely
   spiritual, but yet it has a kind of earnestness about it not to be
   despised. They have been to a place of worship from their youth up, and
   never neglected the outward forms of religion. Alas for them, they are
   still blind! But they are anxious to hear and to pray, and we trust
   will yet be able to do both. They are, therefore, not absolutely deaf
   or dumb.

   Nor, moreover, do they seem to be incapable in other respects. The hand
   is not withered, as in the case of one whom Christ met within the
   Synagogue. Neither are they bowed down by grievous depression of
   spirit, as that daughter of Abraham who had been bowed down for many
   years. They are both cheerful and diligent in the ways of the Lord. If
   the cause of God wants assistance they are ready to assist it, and
   though by reason of the loss of their spiritual eyes they cannot enter
   into the full enjoyment of Divine things, yet they are among the most
   forward people we know to help on any good cause--not because they
   thoroughly comprehend the spirit of it nor can enter therein, for by
   reason of their natural blindness they are still aliens--but still
   there is worked in them something which is very lovely and very
   hopeful, for they are anxious as much as lies in them to help the cause
   of Christ.

   In connection with all Christian congregations we have a knot of people
   of this kind, and in connection with some Christian churches the most,
   even of the members, are very little better! They have not received
   more than enough instruction to enable them to know their right hand
   from their left in spiritual matters. For lack of doctrinal teaching
   they are left in the dark, and because there is not held up before them
   the form of sound words, they remain in semi-blindness, unable to enjoy
   the fair prospects which cheer the eyes of the enlightened Believer.

   II. We have now to see OUR LORD'S METHOD OF CURE. Every part of the
   miracle is suggestive. The first thing to be observed is a friendly
   intervention--his friends brought the blind man to Jesus. How many
   there are who do not rightly understand the fundamental doctrine of the
   Gospel of Christ and need the help of Believers! They have an affection
   for religion in the abstract, but they do not fully know what they must
   do to be saved.

   The great Truth of Substitution, which is the cardinal point in the
   Gospel, they have not yet apprehended. They scarcely know what it is to
   come to rest wholly upon the Lord Jesus because of the satisfaction
   which He has offered to almighty Justice. They have a sort of faith,
   but they have such slender knowledge that their faith brings them
   little or no benefit. Such people might often be blessed if more
   advanced Christians would try to bring them to a clearer knowledge of
   the Savior. Why can you not bring such souls under the sound of that
   ministry which has been instructive to yourself? Why can you not lay
   that Book in their way which was the means of opening your eyes? Why
   can you not bring before their minds that text of Scripture, that
   passage of God's Word, which first illuminated you?

   Would it not be a most hopeful work for us to engage in, to look for
   those who are not hostile to the Gospel, but simply ignorant of it--who
   have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge--and who, if they
   once could be furnished with light, would then have found the one thing
   necessary? Surely, if we look after the degraded, the debased, and the
   depraved who defile our festering courts and alleys, we ought, with
   equal eagerness, to seek out these hopeful ones who sit under the sound
   of preaching which is not Gospel preaching, or who hear the true Word
   of God, but perceive it not!

   Brothers and Sisters, you would do well if you prayed for these, and
   if, moreover, you sought out the excellent young men and the amiable
   young women, and endeavored to answer the question of their tender
   consciences, "Oh that we knew where we might find Him!" It might be, in
   God's hand, the first step to their receiving spiritual eyesight if you
   would care for these children of mist and of the night. When the blind
   man was brought to the Savior, he first received contact with Jesus,
   for Jesus took him by the hand. It is a happy day for a soul when it
   comes into personal contact with the Lord Jesus! Brethren, when we are
   in our state of unbelief we sit in the House of God, and Christ seems
   to us to be at a distance.

   We hear of Him, but it is as of one who has departed to ivory palaces,
   and who is not now among us. And even if He passes by we feel as if He
   did not come near to us, and so we sit and sigh, and long to feel His
   shadow fall upon us, or to touch, as it were, the hem of His garment.
   But when the soul really begins to close with Jesus--when He becomes
   the object of devout attention--when we feel that there is something to
   be grasped and realized about Him after all. When we realize that He is
   no distant and impalpable shade, but a veritable Existence, and an
   Existence having influence over us--then it is that He takes us by the
   hand.

   I know some of you have felt this. It has frequently happened on the
   Sunday that you felt that you must pray. You felt that the sermon was
   made for you. You thought someone had told the preacher about you, the
   truth came so closely home--the very details of the preacher's speech
   fitted the condition of your mind. That was our blessed Lord, I think,
   taking you by the hand. The service was to you no mere word-talk and
   word-hearing, but a mysterious hand touched you. Your feelings were
   impressed and your heart was conscious of peculiar emotions originating
   from the Presence of the Savior. Of course Jesus does not come into any
   physical contact with us--it is a mental, spiritual contact--the mind
   of the Lord Jesus lays its hand upon the mind of sinners, and by the
   Holy Spirit, gently influences the soul for holiness and truth.

   Mark the next act, for it is peculiar. The Savior led the man to a
   solitary position, for He took him out of the town. I have noticed that
   when persons converted have been spiritually blind rather than
   willfully wicked--who have not been so much hostile as they have been
   ignorant--one of the first signs of their becoming Christians is the
   getting into retirement and feeling their individual responsibility.
   Brethren, I have always hope for the man who begins to think of himself
   as he stands alone before God! There are tens of thousands in England
   who consider themselves to be parts of a nation of Christians and born
   members of a Church, and thus never consider themselves as personally
   responsible to God.

   They say the confession of sin, but it is always with the whole
   congregation. They chant the Te Deum, but it is not personal, but
   choral praise. But when a man is led, even while in the congregation,
   to feel as if he were alone. When he grasps the idea that true religion
   is of the individual and not of the community--and that confession of
   sin is more fitting from his lips than from any other man--then is a
   gracious work commenced! There is hope of the blindest understanding
   when the mind begins to meditate upon its own condition and examines
   its own prospects. It is a sure sign that the Lord is dealing well with
   you if He has taken you out of the town--if you are forgetting all
   others, and thinking just now of yourself.

   Call it not selfishness! It is only such a selfishness as the highest
   law of our nature commands. Every man, when he is drowning, must think
   of himself! And if it is a justifiable selfishness to seek to preserve
   one's own life, much more is it to labor to escape from eternal ruin!
   When your own salvation is accomplished you shall have no more need to
   think of self, but you shall care for the souls of others--but now the
   highest wisdom is to think of yourself in your standing towards God,
   and to look to the Savior that you yourself may have eternal life. "He
   took him by the hand, and led him out of the town."

   The next was a very strange act, too. He brought him under ordained but
   despicable means--He spit on his eyes. The Savior frequently used the
   saliva of His mouth as a means of cure. It has been said because it was
   recommended by ancient physicians. But I cannot think that their
   opinion could have had much weight with our wonder-working Lord. It
   seems to me that the use of spittle connected the opening of the eye
   with the Savior's mouth, that is to say, it connected in type the
   illuminating of the understanding with the Truth of God which Christ
   utters. Of course spiritual eyesight comes by means of spiritual Truth,
   and the eye of the understanding is opened by the doctrine which Christ
   speaks.

   Yet it seems to me that the association which we naturally put with
   spittle is that of disgust, and that this was intentionally employed by
   the Savior for that very end. It was nothing but spittle, though it was
   spittle from the Savior's mouth. And so, mark you, Friend, it is very
   possible that God will bless you by that very truth which you once
   despised, and He might even bless you through that very man against
   whom you spoke the most bitterly! It has often pleased God to award to
   His ministering servants a gracious kind of vengeance--many and many
   times those who were the hottest and most furious against God's own
   servants have received the best blessings from the hands of those men
   whom they most despised.

   You call it, "spittle"--nothing but that shall open your eyes. You say,
   "The Gospel is a very common-place thing." It is by such common places
   that you shall have life. You have sneeringly declared that such a man
   speaks the Truth of God in a coarse and vulgar style--you shall one day
   bless that vulgarity--and be glad enough to receive, even after a
   coarse fashion, the Truth as his Master bids him speak it. I think that
   many of us had to notice this in our conversion, that the Lord
   chastised our pride by saying to us, "Those poor people of whom you
   thought so harshly shall be made a blessing to you, and My servant,
   against whom you were most filled with prejudice, shall be the man to
   bring you into perfect peace."

   It strikes me that more than that, a great deal but all that, is in the
   thought of the Savior's spitting on his eyes. No powders of the
   merchant, no myrrh and frankincense, no costly drugs--just a common
   spittle on the lips. And so if you would see, my Hearer, the deep
   things of God, it shall not be by the philosophers, nor by the profound
   thinkers of the day, but he that said unto you, "Trust Christ and
   live," teaches you better philosophy than the philosophers! And he who
   tells you that in Him, in the Lord Jesus, dwells all the treasures of
   wisdom and of knowledge, tells you in that simple statement more than
   you could learn though Socrates and Plato should rise from the dead,
   and you could sit, a scholar, at their feet. Jesus Christ will open
   your eyes, and it shall be by this ignoble means--the spittle of His
   mouth.

   You will further perceive that when He had spit on his eyes it is added
   He put His hands upon him. Did He do that in the form of heavenly
   benediction? Did He, by the laying on of His hands, bestow upon the man
   His blessing, and bid virtue stream from His own Person into the blind
   man? I think so. So, Brethren, it is not the spittle, it is not the
   leading of the man out of the crowd after all! It is not the ministry!
   It is not the preaching of the Word! It is not the hearer's
   thoughtfulness that shall earn spiritual blessings--it is the
   benediction of Him who died for sinners which confers all upon us!

   This Man is exalted on high to give repentance and remission of sin. He
   who was despised and rejected of men, it is through Him and through
   Him, only, that priceless gift such as sight to the blind shall be
   given to the sons of men. We must use the means, and neither despise
   them nor trust them. We must get alone, for retirement is a great
   blessing--but we must look up, after all, to the Lord and Giver of
   every good gift! Or else the spittle had need to be wiped away in
   disgust, and the being alone shall only make the blind man lose his way
   the more effectually, and wander in the deeper darkness with less of
   sympathy and help.

   This sketch is the photograph of some here. I believe there are persons
   here who from their youth up have attended places of worship without
   the slightest perception of spiritual life, and would have continued to
   do so had not the Lord been pleased to make use of friends, happy
   cheerful Christian friends, who said, "Come now, I think I can tell you
   something which you do not know." These friends, by prayer and
   teaching, brought you into contact with Jesus! Jesus touched you,
   influenced your mind, made you thoughtful, made you see that there was
   more in religion than just the mere external! He made you feel that
   going to church or going to chapel was not everything, no, was not
   anything at all, unless you learned the secret, the real secret of
   everlasting life!

   It has been through all this that you have begun to feel that there is
   power in that Gospel which once you despised. And that which you
   sneered at as Methodism and rant, is now to you the Gospel of your
   salvation! Let us thank God for this, for it is by such means that eyes
   are opened.

   III. We have now come to the third point, and we will pause a moment at
   A HOPEFUL STAGE. The Savior had given the man's eyes the power to see,
   but He had not removed completely the film which kept out the light.
   Hear the man. Jesus says to him, "Can you see anything?" He looks up,
   and the first joyful word is, "I see!" What a blessing! "I see!" Some
   of you, dear Friends, can say that, "Whereas I was once blind, now I
   see."

   "Yes, Lord, it is not total darkness now. I do not see as much as I
   should, nor as much as I hope I shall, but I do see. There are many,
   many things I knew nothing of, which I do know something about now. The
   devil himself cannot make me doubt that I do see. I know I do. I used
   to be quite satisfied with the outward form. If I got through the hymns
   and prayers, and so on, I felt satisfied. But now, though I feel I
   cannot see as I want to see, I can see as much as that. If I cannot see
   light, there is certainly darkness visible. If I cannot see salvation,
   I can see my own ruin. I do see my own needs and necessities--if I see
   nothing more, I do see these."

   Now, if a man can see anything--it matters not what--he certainly has
   sight! Whether it is a beautiful object or an ugly thing that he sees,
   does not matter--the mere seeing of anything is proof positive that
   there is sight in his eyes! So the spiritual perception of anything is
   proof that you have spiritual life, whether that perception makes you
   mourn, or whether it makes you rejoice. Whether it makes you
   broken-hearted, or binds up your heart, if you do see it, you must have
   the power of sight. That is clear enough, is it not?

   But hear the man again. He says, "I see men." That is better still. Of
   course the poor fellow had once been able to see, or else he would not
   have known the shape of a man. "I see men," he says. Yes, and there are
   some here who have enough sight to be able to distinguish between one
   thing and another, so as to know this from that. Though you were as
   blind as bats once, nobody could make you believe that baptismal
   regeneration was the same thing as the regeneration of the Word of God!
   You can see the difference between these two things, at any rate. One
   would think anybody might--but a great many cannot. You can see the
   difference between mere formal and external worship and spiritual
   worship--you can see that.

   You can see enough to know that there is a Savior. That you need a
   Savior. That the way of salvation is by faith in Christ. That the
   salvation which Jesus gives really saves us from sinning, and brings
   those who receive it safe to eternal glory. Thus it is clear that you
   can see something, and you know within a little what that something is.
   Listen, however, to the blind man, for here comes in the word that
   spoils it to a great extent--"I see men as trees, walking." He could
   not tell whether they were men or trees, except that they were walking,
   and he knew that trees did not walk, and therefore they could not be
   trees.

   Objects were a confused blot before his eyes. He knew from their motion
   that they must be men, but he could not tell exactly by sight whether
   they were men or trees. Many precious souls are waiting at this hopeful
   but uncomfortable stage. They can see. Bless God for that! They will
   never be thoroughly blind again. For if they can see the Man Jesus and
   the tree on which He died, they make but one object of them if they
   please, for Christ and His Cross are one. Eyes, which cannot clearly
   see Jesus may yet dimly see Him, and even a dim sight will save the
   soul!

   Observe that this man's sight was very indistinct--a man or a tree--he
   could not tell. So is it with the first sight that is given to many
   spiritually blind persons. They cannot distinguish between doctrine and
   doctrine. The work of the Spirit and the work of the Savior they
   frequently confuse in their minds. They possess justification and they
   possess sanctification, but it is probable they could not tell you
   which was which. They have received imparted righteousness of heart,
   and they have also received the imputed righteousness of Christ, but
   between the imparted righteousness and the imputed righteousness they
   can scarcely distinguish. They have them both, but they do not know
   which is which--at least not so as to be able to write down the
   definitions, or tell them to their fellow men. They can see, but they
   cannot see as they should see. They see men as trees walking.

   Their sight, in addition to being indistinct, is very exaggerating. A
   man is not so big as a tree, but they magnify the human stature into
   the towering timber. And so, half-enlightened people exaggerate
   doctrines. If they receive the doctrine of election they cannot be
   content to go as far as Scripture goes--they make a tree of the man by
   dragging in reprobation. If they get a hold of the precept, Baptism, or
   whatever it may be, they exaggerate its proportions, and make it a sort
   of all-in-all. Some get one crotchet and some get another, and it is
   all through mistaking a man for a tree! It is a great mercy that they
   see doctrine at all and precept at all, but it would be a greater mercy
   if they could see it as it is, and not as it now appears to them.

   This exaggeration generally leads to alarm, for if I see a man walking
   up to me who is as tall as a tree, I am naturally afraid that he will
   fall on me, and so I get out of the way. Many persons are afraid of
   God's doctrines because they think they are as high as trees. They are
   none too high. God has made them of the right stature, but their
   blindness exaggerates them, and makes them more terrible and high than
   they might be. They are afraid to read books upon certain Truths of
   God, and they are shy of all men who preach them only because they
   cannot see those doctrines in the right light but are alarmed with
   their own confused vision of it.

   In connection with this exaggeration and this fear, there is to such
   people an utter loss of the enjoyment which comes from being able to
   perceive beauty and loveliness. The noblest part of a man is, after
   all, his countenance. We like to catch the features of our friend--that
   gentle eye, that tender expression, that winning look, that radiant
   smile, that expressive glow of benevolence upon his face, that towering
   forehead--we like to see all. But this poor man could see none of
   these, for he could scarcely tell a man from a tree, could not discover
   those softer lines of the great master artist which make true beauty.
   He could only say, "It is a man," but whether a black man, black as
   night or fair as the morning, he did not know and could not tell. And
   whether sour and morose, or kind and gentle, he could not distinguish.

   So it is with these persons who have obtained some spiritual sight.
   They cannot see the details of the doctrines. You know, Brothers and
   Sisters, it is the details in which lies the beauty. If I trust Jesus
   as my Savior I shall be saved, but the enjoyment of faith comes from
   knowing Him in His Person, in His offices, in His work, in His present,
   and past, and future. We perceive His true beauty by studying Him, and
   observing Him carefully, and with holy watchfulness. So it is with the
   doctrines--the mere whole of the doctrine in the gross is blessed--but
   it is when we come to take the doctrine to pieces that we gain the
   purest enjoyment.

   "Yes," says the clown, as he looks at a fine painting, such, for
   instance, as Paul Potter's famous Bull at the Hague, "it's a rare
   picture certainly," and then he goes away. But the artist sits down and
   studies its details. There is to him a beauty in every touch and shade
   which he understands and appreciates. Many Believers have light enough
   to know the faith in its bare outline, but they have not observed the
   filling up, and the minutiae wherein the sweetest comfort will always
   be found by the spiritually educated child of God. They can see, but
   they "see men as trees, walking."

   Although I know that the most of you, my Brethren, have traveled far
   beyond this stage, yet I know there are hundreds of God's people who
   are still lingering there, and hence it is, when Satan gets the upper
   hand, that sects, and parties, and theories arise. If a number of
   people with good eyes meet together and look at an object, they will
   very nearly agree in the description of what they see. But if you
   select an equal number of men with eyes so weak that they can scarcely
   tell a man from a tree, they will make no end of confusion, and likely
   enough fall to quarrelling. "It is a man," cries one, "he walks!" "It
   is a tree," cries the second, "it is too tall to be a man!"

   When half-blind men grow willful and despise their teachers, and will
   not learn as the Holy Spirit ordains to teach, they set up their
   ignorance for knowledge and perhaps lead other half-enlightened ones
   into the ditch with them. Even where a holy modesty prevents this
   mischievous result, this half-sight is still to be lamented, for it
   leaves men in sorrow when they might rejoice, and lets them mourn over
   Truth which, if understood, would fill their mouths with song all the
   day long! Many are troubled about election. Now if there is a doctrine
   in this Book which ought to make Believers sing all day, and all night,
   too, it is just the doctrine of electing love and distinguishing Grace
   of God! Some people are frightened over this and some over that,
   whereas if they understood the Truth, instead of flying from it as from
   an enemy, they would run into its arms!

   IV. Having given this sketch of the man in this transition state, we
   close by noting the ULTIMATE COMPLETENESS OF THE CURE. Brethren, be
   grateful for any sort of light. Without the Grace of God we could not
   have a ray of it. One ray of light is more than we deserve. If we were
   shut up in the blackness of darkness forever, how could we complain? Do
   we not deserve, since we shut our eyes against God, to be doomed to
   perpetual darkness? Be thankful, then, for the least gleam of light,
   but do not so prize what you have as not to wish for more!

   That man is still sadly blind who does not care to see more. It is a
   bad sign of unhealthiness when we have no desire to grow. When we are
   satisfied that we know all the Truth of God and cannot be taught any
   more, it is probable that we need to begin at the beginning. One of the
   first lessons in the school of wisdom is to know that we are naturally
   fools, and that man is growing wise who is growing conscious of his own
   deficiency and ignorance. But when the Lord Jesus Christ brings a man
   to see a little, and to desire to see more, He does not leave him till
   He has led him into all Truth.

   We find that the Savior, to complete the cure, touched His patient
   again. A renewal of your contact with the Savior must be the means of
   your perfection, as it was your first means of enlightenment. Pray for
   Divine Grace to be close to Christ, in intimate acquaintance with His
   blessed Person, in sole dependence upon His merit. Study His Character,
   desire to commune with Him for yourself, and to see Him with your own
   eyes by faith and not with the eyes of another--this shall be the means
   of giving you clearer light. The Divine touch does it all.

   I suppose that when the man's eyes were fully opened, the first person
   He saw was Jesus, for he had been taken away from the crowd, and could
   only see men at a distance. Blessed vision, to drink in the sight of
   that face! To perceive the beauties of that matchless lover of our
   souls! Oh the joy! One might be content to be blind forever if He were
   not to be seen--but when Jesus is seen, oh the heavenly delight of
   being rescued from the blindness which concealed Him from our eyes!

   Believer, above all things, pray that you may know Him and understand
   Him. With all your heart, get an understanding of Him. Count doctrine
   precious only because it is a throne on which He sits. Think much of
   the precept, but make it not to be a legal stone to hide Him in the
   sepulcher--think only of it as it is illustrated and set forth in His
   life. And even your own experience--care little for it if it does not
   point, as with a finger, to Christ. Consider that you only grow when
   you grow up in Him. "Grow in Grace," says the Apostle, but he adds,
   "and in the knowledge of our

   Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." "Grow up," he says, but what does he
   add? "Grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ
   Jesus." Ask to see, but put the prayer in this form--"Sir, we would see
   Jesus."

   Pray for sight, but let it be a sight of the King in His beauty that
   you may one day see the land that is very far off. You are nearing
   clearness of vision when you can see only Jesus! You are coming out of
   cloud-land into the brightness of day, when, instead of seeing men as
   trees, you behold the Savior! Then you may let the men and the trees
   take care of themselves.

   We read that our Lord bade His patient, "Look up." If we would see, we
   must not look below us--no light springs from this dusky earth. If we
   would see, we must not look within us--it is a dark, black cavern, full
   of everything that is evil. We must look up. Every good gift and every
   perfect gift comes from above, and we must look up for it. Meditating
   upon Jesus and resting upon Him, we must look up to our God. Our soul
   must consider her Lord's perfection, and not dream of her own. She must
   muse upon His greatness, and not on any fancied greatness of her own.
   We must look up-- not on our fellow servants, or upon the externals of
   worship--but up to God Himself. We must look, and as we look up we
   shall find the light.

   We are told that at last, "the man could see every man clearly." Yes,
   when the great Physician sends the patient home, you may rest assured
   that his cure is fully worked. It was all well with him in the
   superlative degree! He saw, he saw every man--he saw every man clearly.
   May this be the happy lot of many a half-enlightened one here present!
   Be not satisfied, my dear Friends, with being saved! Desire to know how
   you are saved, why you are saved, the method by which you are saved. It
   is a Rock on which you stand, I know, but think upon the questions--how
   you were put on that Rock, by whose love you came there, and why that
   love was set on you.

   I would to God that all the members of this Church were not only in
   Christ Jesus, but understood Him, and knew by the assurance of the
   understanding to where they have attained. Be always ready to give a
   reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Remember
   there are many grave distinctions in Scripture which will save you a
   world of trouble if you will know and remember them. Try to understand
   the difference between the old nature and the new. Never expect the old
   nature to improve into the new, for it never will. The old nature can
   never do anything but sin, and the new nature never can sin. They are
   two distinct principles, never confuse them.

   Do not see men as trees walking. Do not confuse sanctification and
   justification. Remember that the moment you trust in Christ you are
   justified as completely as you will be in Heaven. But sanctification is
   a gradual work which is carried on from day to day by God the Holy
   Spirit. Distinguish between the great Truth of God that salvation is
   all of God, and the great lie that men are not to be blamed if they are
   lost. Be well assured that salvation is of the Lord, but do not lay
   damnation at God's door! Be not ashamed if men call you a Calvinist,
   but hate with all your heart Antinomianism.

   On the other hand, while you believe human responsibility, never run
   into the error of supposing that man ever turns to God of his own free
   will. There is a narrow line between the two errors, and ask for Divine
   Grace to see it. Ask for Grace neither to fall into the whirlpool nor
   to be dashed against the rock--to be neither a slave of this system nor
   that. Never say of one text of Scripture, "Be still, I cannot endure
   you," nor yet of another, "I believe you, and you alone." Seek to love
   the whole Word of God, to get an insight into every Truth revealed.
   Pray to have God's Word given to you not as so many discordant books,
   but as a whole, and seek to grasp the Truth as it is in Jesus in all
   its compactness and unity.

   I would urge you, if you have got sight which enables you to see at
   all, to fall on your knees and cry unto the great Sight-Giver, "O
   Master, still go on! Take every film away! Remove every cataract! And
   if it should be painful to have my prejudices cut away or burnt out of
   my eyes, yet do it, Lord, until I can see in the clear light of the
   Holy Spirit, and shall be worthy to enter into the gates of the holy
   city, where they see You face to face."
     __________________________________________________________________

                              Peter'S Three Calls

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus." John
   1:37.

   "And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon
   called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for
   they were fishermen. Then He said to them, Follow Me, and I will make
   you fishers of men."

   Matthew 4:18,19.

   "And when He had called His twelve disciples... the first, Simon, who
   is called Peter."

   Matthew 10:1, 2.

   PERHAPS YOU are aware that there has always been a certain set of
   persons who have tried to disprove the Gospel narrative by picking out
   what they suppose to be discrepancies, especially in the statements of
   Matthew and Luke. Four independent persons have each given us a
   separate story of the Life of Christ, each story being written with a
   distinct object. Of course, from the fact that each one was written
   with a distinct object, it was natural that one Evangelist should give
   more attention to certain points in the history of Christ than the
   others. And it was natural for his eye to be fixed upon those things
   which most concerned the point which he had in hand, and for his ears
   to be most quick to catch those words which had a relation to the
   object he was driving at throughout the whole of his Gospel.

   Now these divergences and differences have been so many pegs upon which
   quibblers have hung their quibbles and these men have constantly been
   saying, "How do you reconcile Matthew with John in a certain place."
   Or, "how do you reconcile Mark, in such another place, with Luke?" It
   is not always easy to harmonize the testimony of four perfectly honest
   witnesses upon the same subject! I will venture to say that if there
   should be a simple accident upon the railway, and four persons present
   were to give their accounts of it with rigid exactness, yet they would
   each one be likely to mention some point not mentioned by the other,
   and, moreover, differ upon the points which they notice in common!

   Although we might be morally convinced that they all spoke the truth,
   yet it would be difficult to put the story together so as to make a
   harmonious whole of it. Sometimes it is not easy to put the stories of
   the Evangelists together, and many of the "Gospel Harmonies," so
   called, which have been produced by very admirable writers, are not
   quite correct--they show at once the difficulty attaching to that which
   some Brethren have been trying to attempt, and which perhaps will never
   be fully carried out--namely, the making of it into one harmonious
   idyll.

   It so happens, however, that the difficulty in the case before us is no
   difficulty at all! John tells us that Peter was called by Christ
   through the preaching of John the Baptist, who bore witness that Jesus
   was Christ, the Messiah. Matthew, on the other hand, tells us that
   Peter and his brother were fishing, that Christ was walking by the lake
   of Galilee, and that as He passed by He saw these men fishing, called
   them by name, and said, "Follow me." Now, the key to the whole may be
   found in the fact that there was yet a third call, and that afterwards
   Jesus called not Peter and Andrew alone, but the whole twelve of His
   disciples and set them apart to be Apostles.

   And so we gather from this last call that the other two might perhaps
   have been different and distinct from each other. Coming to look at the
   subject we find that the first call was the call at Peter's conversion,
   which called him to be a disciple while still at his daily avocation.
   The second was the call of Peter, not to be a mere disciple, but to be
   an Evangelist. And the third was the call of Peter, not to be an
   Evangelist or a common servant of the Master, but to be a leader, to
   take a yet higher grade, and to become one of the Twelve who should be
   associated with Christ as the founders of the new system of religion,
   and witnesses of the life of Christ Himself.

   I. I want you, then, just for a moment, to bear in mind that we have
   under our consideration THREE CALLS:

   (1) The first is that which Christ gave to Peter when He called him out
   of darkness into marvelous light, blessing to him at first the
   testimony of John, and then by manifesting Himself to him.

   (2) The second is the call by which the servant, already converted,
   already willing, is bid to put himself into closer relationship with
   his Lord--to come out and be no longer a servant whose allegiance is
   true but not manifest--but to show that fealty by following his Master.

   (3) And the third call is that which the Savior gives only to a few
   whom He has picked out and chosen to do some special work--who shall
   have fellowship with Him more closely still, and become captains in the
   ranks of--

   "The sacramental host of God's elect." We shall speak of these three
   calls in the order in which they occur. Very briefly I shall go through
   the subject, speaking at length about the second call which Peter
   received.

   1. Notice the personal call to be a disciple. These three calls are
   given in a certain order. Observe where it begins. Peter was not called
   to be an Evangelist before he was called to be a follower. Christ
   begins by first teaching us our own need of Him, and our own sin, and
   then, revealing Himself to us as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin
   of the world. It is a presumption--what if I say an accursed
   treason--against the Majesty of the great Head of the Church, if any
   man pretends to reverse this order!

   You must first be called, yourselves, into Christ before you may dare
   to even so much as think about being called into the ministry or into
   the service of Christ. You cannot serve Him until first of all you have
   learned to sit at His feet. Before you can serve God you must have a
   new heart and a right spirit. The blind eye is not fit for the service
   of Christ. The eye must be illuminated. The understanding must be
   instructed. That stubborn will of yours cannot bear the yoke of
   Christ--it must be subdued. "You must be born again."

   Should there be some among you here tonight who are teaching in Sunday
   schools, distributing tracts, or in any other way are trying to serve
   God, and yet are not, yourselves, saved, I would very affectionately,
   but with great earnestness, entreat you to consider that you are
   reversing the natural and proper order of things. Your first business
   is at home, in your own soul and your own heart!

   I will not apply to you the words of the Prophet, "Unto the wicked, God
   said, What have you to do to declare My statutes?" But I think there is
   a spirit in those terrible words which might well have an application
   to you. How can you be a guide until you are first able, yourself, to
   see, for "if the blind lead the blind, they shall both fall into the
   ditch." How can you, diseased and leprous, begin to heal others, for it
   shall be said to you, "Physician, heal yourself"? How can you, when the
   beam is in your own eye, go abroad to point out the beams and the
   specks which are in other men's eyes?

   Oh, take care, take care lest this very service to Christ, as you think
   it to be, is an injury to you--for you may serve Christ after a sort
   till you begin to think that you do so much, and do it so well, that
   you must be a Christian! You may spin for yourself a robe which shall
   seem sufficient to cover you, and you may go and dress in this cobweb,
   this mere figment of a fictitious righteousness, and persuade yourself
   that you are wearing the robe of Christ's righteousness, whereas you
   shall be found at the last to he naked, and poor, and miserable!

   Oh, I pray you to understand those words, "Behold the Lamb of God."
   Behold Him for yourselves! See Him for yourselves! Do not talk about
   being a fisher of men--do not speak of being a servant whose loins are
   girt, and whose lamp is trimmed--until first you have become as a
   little child. Unless you so become you cannot enter into the kingdom of
   Heaven.

   2. But, dear Friends, after the first call has been received, it is
   very delightful to observe the Christian receiving the second. He is
   called into active service. Simon Peter became a disciple, but all that
   he meant by that was, "I acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth to be the
   Messiah," and he went away and continued with his good brother in the
   fishing business! It never, perhaps, entered into his head that he was
   to do anything more than to cultivate a quiet peaceful faith, and walk
   in a life consistent with that faith.

   But all of a sudden he sees this famous man of Nazareth walking by the
   seaside, who addresses him by name, and says to him, "Follow Me." And
   in a moment, putting down his net, and leaving his family, he left all
   to follow Christ with his two companions James and John, equally famous
   in the battle-roll of Christian heroes. Now, I may have some here
   tonight who are saved. You are the disciples of Jesus, and I regret to
   say that He has not yet been seen by you as calling you into His
   service.

   You have joined the Church and you have been baptized into the faith of
   Christ, and so far it is good. But as yet it has not struck you that
   you are to be actively engaged for Christ. Now, it is not in my power
   to call you to the service, nor to indicate to you what special form
   that service shall take. But, my dear Friends, I do pray that you may
   have another revelation of the Lord Jesus yet more full and bright, and
   that He may say to you, "Come, Man, you are not your own. You are
   bought with a price. Serve Me. Arise, gird up your loins, and wait upon
   the Lord." I trust that He may lay His hand upon you tonight, and say
   to you as He did to the assembled twelve, "As My Father has sent Me
   into the world, even so send I you."

   And may you have Divine Grace to obey the mandate--and though it may be
   something which has been distasteful to you, some Christian engagement
   in which you have never been occupied before--may you have Grace to
   say, "Here am I, Lord, send me, whatever the business may happen to
   be." Ah, what would a Church be if it consisted altogether of persons
   of this sort? What vigor should we have in the Christian army if every
   soldier felt called to fight! But some of you do not realize your duty
   in this respect. I would that you would take a farther step. I would
   that the spirit of service fell upon you so that you did not merely
   wear the robe of righteousness but the mantle of service, too!

   Oh, Brothers and Sisters, by the love which--

   "Saw you ruined in the Fall, Yet loved you notwithstanding all," by the
   love which gave up its honor and its glory, and took upon itself the
   form of a servant for your sakes--by the love which sweat great drops
   of blood in the garden, by the love which emptied out its heart that
   you might be redeemed from ruin--I pray you, hear Jesus saying to you,
   "Follow Me"! And do follow Him--follow Him in active, industrious,
   persevering consecration.

   And from this day forth, if you have up to now been but a sleeping
   partner in the great Christian firm. If you have been content to ride
   upon the Gospel chariot instead of drawing it or adding an impulse to
   its wheels, may you say, "My Lord, fill me with the zeal which
   possessed You. Kindle in me the same spirit of service which burned so
   brightly in Yourself. And as You did call Peter, and Andrew, and James,
   and John, so call me, and say, "Follow Me."

   You notice, then, that this second call follows the first call, and it
   is a blessed thing when it does thus succeed and is obeyed.

   3. But in the third text which I gave you, you find Peter called to
   another service above that of an ordinary worker, that is to say, he is
   called to be an Apostle. I will venture here to trace an analogy
   between this and the calling of the Christian minister. You will
   observe that this call comes last. The call to the Apostleship does not
   come first. Peter is first the catechumen or disciple, secondly the
   Evangelist and thirdly the Apostle. So, no man is called to be
   specially set apart to the ministry of Christ, or to have a share in
   the Apostleship until he has first of all, himself, known Christ, and
   until, secondly, as an ordinary Christian he has fully exercised
   himself in all the duties which are proper to Christian service.

   Now, some people turn this topsy-turvy. Young men who have never
   preached are set apart to the ministry. Those who have never visited
   the sick, never instructed the ignorant, and are totally devoid of any
   knowledge of Gospel experience except the little of their own, are
   supposed to be dedicated to the Christian ministry. I believe this to
   be a radical and a fatal error. Brothers and Sisters, we have no right
   to thrust a Brother into the ministry until he has first given evidence
   of his own conversion, and has also given proof not only of being a
   good average worker but something more.

   If he cannot labor in the Church, before he pretends to be a minister,
   he is good for nothing. If he cannot, while he is a private member of
   the Church, perform all the duties of that position with zeal and
   energy, and if he is not evidently a consecrated man while he is a
   private Christian, certainly you do not feel the guidance of God's Holy
   Spirit to bid him enter the ministry! No man has a right to aspire to
   come into that office until, like the knights of old, he has first won
   his spurs and has shown that he is really devoted to Christ by having
   served Him as others have done.

   Let me say that it would be a very great mercy for this Christian
   Church if some persons would not take this last place at all, but would
   be content to stop in the second one. There are many men who, when set
   apart to the Christian ministry, are a drag and burden to the churches
   as well as to other people. If they had but given up themselves as
   ordinary members to Christian service they might have been a very great
   blessing and honor to the Church. One of the kindest pieces of advice I
   could give to some of our ministerial friends would be, "Go home,
   Brother. Take off your black coat and your white tie, and put yourself
   into some honest way of getting a living. Just think about whether you
   were not more serviceable to the Church when you were a carpenter or a
   tradesman--when you were earning a considerable sum of money at your
   own ordinary avocation--than you are now, when you are necessarily
   dependent upon the gifts and liberality of God's servants without
   having the ability and the talent which are necessary to make you a
   leader in the Lord's host."

   I pray the day may come when we shall all see this, and never think of
   giving ourselves to the ministry before conversion, and even then
   aspire not after special work until first of all we have proved that we
   can serve the Lord in our ordinary life. Occasionally I have Brothers
   come to me asking to be received into our College, and one singular
   reason which some of them give me why they believe that they are called
   to the ministry is this: "You see, Sir, I could not get on at anything
   else, and therefore I thought Providence must have ordained me to be a
   minister."

   I never say a word about that, but I am very clear that if a man is
   such a fool that he can do nothing else but preach, it is a great pity
   that he should be allowed to do that! And when a Brother tells me that,
   I sometimes venture to ask him if he thinks that God wants only the
   biggest fools to serve Him. I question him as to whether there should
   not be given up to God's service the very pick, and prime, and flower
   of the Christian Church--those men who, if they had addicted themselves
   to commerce, might have taken the lead--or who, if they had given
   themselves to the bar or to the profession of surgery or medicine,
   would have stood in the front rank?

   I believe, Brothers and Sisters, we need strong men to take such a
   position, and that the Lord Jesus Christ has a keen eye, and when He
   does call a man He calls him to something that he is fit for. Take the
   cases of Peter and Paul. Peter was a fisherman, it is true, but a
   fisherman of such a peculiar breed that it would be well if God would
   find us more of the same sort who would become fishers of men! And as
   for Paul, he was one well-skilled and learned in all matters, and just
   fitted and adapted to the work which the Master gave him to do.

   II. I have thus noticed these three calls. And I want now to direct
   your earnest and particular attention to the second call, because of
   the lessons to be learned from the CHARACTER OF THE MEN CHOSEN, AND THE
   NATURE OF THE WORK entrusted to them.

   The second call is recorded in the fourth chapter of Matthew and the
   eighteenth verse, and it deserves our attention because we perceive
   that these Brothers were called to the service of Christ while they
   were engaged in their ordinary avocations. It seems to have been early
   in the morning, for Peter was just starting on his work, and was
   casting his net into the sea. And in the twenty-first verse we find
   that James and John were mending their nets, so that they were all
   industrious in their ordinary calling.

   There is a notion abroad among some persons that they cannot serve God
   unless they neglect their ordinary work. This used to be a complaint
   brought against the Methodists in the olden time. I believe it was a
   great falsehood, but it was stated that they were so earnest in
   listening to sermons that they made bad servants and bad trades people.
   If it were so it was a very grievous fault, but I do not think it ever
   was the case. However, let none of us fall into it. If I were a
   Christian and a fisherman, I should like to catch more fish than
   anybody else. If I were a Christian and a shoe-black, I should desire
   to clean people's boots so that they shone better than any other
   shoe-black could make them shine. If I were a Christian master, I
   should desire to be the best master, and if a Christian servant the
   best servant.

   Our Christianity, I think, shows itself more, at any rate to the world,
   in the pursuits of daily life, than it does in the engagements of the
   House of God. "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as
   the manner of some is." I scarcely need give that exhortation here, but
   when you do assemble yourselves together, come not up to God's House
   having the blood of other duties upon your spirits.

   You are a mother with little children, and it is probably your duty to
   be at home rather than to be at the Prayer Meeting. It may sometimes be
   your business, as a husband, to take turns with your wife and let her
   come out to the House of God, instead of always taking the privilege
   yourself. It may be the case with some of you that your trade may
   absolutely require you to be behind the counter both on lecture and on
   Prayer Meeting night, and though I would have you here if possible, and
   if you do go anywhere, go to the House of God, yet do not let it ever
   be said, or even whispered that you did not attend to your business,
   and that you came to grief because the things of God were cared for,
   and your business, in consequence, neglected!

   I think it never should be so. I like to remember that after Jesus
   Christ had gone away--after He was crucified, died, had been buried and
   had risen again--where did He find Peter? Why, He found him fishing
   again! That is right, Peter. Follow Christ by all manner of means when
   He bids you, but when there is nothing to do in the service of Christ,
   come back to fishing again. Oh, but some people seem to think that hard
   work in attending to ordinary business is not spiritual-minded in a
   Christian. Nonsense! Out with that difficulty, if any of you are
   troubled by it. Just ask the Lord to clear your brains and brush away
   such cobwebs as these, for we shall never have genuine Christianity in
   the world while such nonsense remains--nonsense about giving up the
   world--meaning thereby living in laziness!

   The truest Christian is the working man who so labors for God that he
   does not neglect the common duties of life. The best form of
   Christianity is found in the Christian who is a Christian behind the
   counter, a Christian in the street, a Christian in the marketplace, a
   Christian anywhere--and who, wherever and whenever he may be found, is
   like his Master--"diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the
   Lord."

   I think no man will ever serve Christ aright who does not show some
   energy in other things. I think the Savior chose these two men, not
   only out of Sovereign Grace unto salvation, but also because He saw
   about them a zeal in the pursuit of fishery which seemed to mark them
   out as being the very men to be made useful in His own cause. Notice
   the character of the men who were thus called to work for Christ! They
   were active, diligent men, engaged in their own calling. Notice what
   their occupation was. When Christ called them He said, "You are
   fishers, and you shall be fishers all your lives. But now you are
   fishers of fish, and I want you to be fishers of men."

   He mentions their vocation, and the work He is going to give them. O my
   Brothers and Sisters, if you are saved I pray that Jesus may give you
   that second call, so that you may be earnest "fishers of men"! There is
   a great deal in that sentence, "fishers of men," a very great deal more
   than we can bring out now. A fisherman, you know, must be acquainted
   with the sea. Peter knew the Lake of Galilee. I dare say there was not
   a creek or an inlet in it with which he was not acquainted. He knew the
   deep places where some kinds of fish were to be found, and the shallow
   places where others could be caught.

   And so if you would serve Christ you must know a good deal about men.
   You must study human nature and you must watch your opportunities of
   doing good. You know there are some places where you can meet with more
   sinners than in others, and there is a certain way of dealing with one
   disposition and quite another way of dealing with another. If you are
   to be a "fisher of men," you must take good stock of the neighborhood
   where you live. If you would be a "fisher of men" in the Tabernacle, I
   hope you will know the people near whom you sit, for as you know them,
   and their pursuits in daily life, and their characters and
   dispositions, you will be more likely to be blessed, by the help of
   God's Spirit, in bringing them to a knowledge of the Truth of God.

   A fisherman must be acquainted with the locality where he has to work.
   A fisherman must also know how to allure the fish. I saw on Lake Como,
   when we visited Bellagio, some men fishing. They had torches burning in
   their boats, and the fish were attracted to them by the glare of the
   light. You must know how to get the fish together. You know there is
   such a thing as the bait for the fishes. You must know how to allure
   men. The preacher does this by using images, symbols, and
   illustrations.

   You must know how to catch the fish, throwing out first, perhaps, not a
   remark directly to the point, because that might be unwise, but a side
   remark, which shall lead to another, and yet another. If you are to be
   a "fisher of men" you will need your wits about you. It will not do to
   blunder over men's souls. Fish are not caught by every boy who chooses
   to take a pin and a piece of cotton and make his way to the pond. Fish
   need a fisherman, and there is a sort of congruity between the fish and
   the man who catches them.

   I do not wonder that Isaac Walton could catch fish. He seems to have
   been born and made on purpose for it, and so there are some men who are
   made on purpose for winning souls. They naturally care for their
   fellows, and they have such a way of putting the Truth of God that as
   soon as they speak men say, "Here is a man come who knows all about me,
   and knows how to deal with me," and they at once yield to his
   influence. Oh that I had hundreds of such in this Church! I have a good
   share of them, and I bless God every time I remember them. God has
   called them, and has made them true fishers of men--they know about
   men, and also how to allure them.

   The fisherman must be a man who can wait with patience. Oh the patience
   of a fisherman! "We have toiled all night," said the disciples, "and
   have taken nothing." You cannot be a fisherman unless you are willing
   to sit and watch, especially if you angle. There you may sit for hours
   and hours together, and at last, when the float begins to move, you
   think you have got your fish, but probably it is only a weed or a frog.
   And you may watch, and watch, and watch again, and nothing will come of
   it.

   Ah, but it is harder work, still, to wait in Christ's service, to
   preach twenty times and have no conversions, perhaps to go on teaching
   in a Sunday school and to see no heart-breaking work done, no sinners
   crying "What must I do to be saved?" You have to go to your knees and
   say, "Who has believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord
   revealed?" You will need something within to help you to wait thus--you
   will need the Holy Spirit of Grace Himself dwelling in you to supply
   you with Divine patience, or else you will throw up your work, give
   away your nets, and say, "I will do something that pays me better than
   this!"

   A fisherman, too, is one who must be able to take risks. Especially was
   this so on the Lake of Galilee, for that, like many other lakes, was
   subject to fierce storms. The winds sometimes came rushing down from
   the mountains, and before the fisherman could take in his sail his boat
   would be upset. And truly every worker for Christ must expect squalls
   and stormy weather. Do not think, dear Friends, to serve Jesus Christ
   in those kid gloves and in that nice dainty style of yours! That is not
   the way in which fish are caught out at sea! It is rough work and
   requires a man who can let the wind howl about him without being afraid
   of his fine curls, or of having the perfume taken out of them.

   It needs a man that has a bold face and a brave heart, and who, when
   the storm comes, looks up to the God of Storms and feels that he is on
   his Master's service and may therefore count upon his Master's
   protection. May the Lord call many members of this Church to such work
   as this, and when the Master shall drag home our net full of big
   fishes, we shall have a rich reward for all the toils of Christian
   labor!

   The fisherman, once again, must be one who has learned both how to
   persevere and how to expect. The fisherman goes on, and on, and on, and
   fishes, not sometimes but continually. As Christ's good sower must take
   the precept, "In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening withhold
   not your hand," so also must His fisherman. "We have toiled all night
   and taken nothing, nevertheless, at Your command we will let down the
   net." But I said he must also learn to expect. He must have twinkling
   in his soul, like a bright particular star, the hope that he shall drag
   his net to land full of fishes at the last!

   Beloved, we shall not labor in vain. We shall not spend our strength
   for nothing. We may not live to see the result of the Truth which we
   proclaim, but--

   "The precious seed shall never be lost, For Grace ensures the crop."

   We must learn to believe in the indestructibility of every truthful
   testimony, in the immortality of every good deed, in the resurrection
   of every buried word to live in the sight of God. We must--

   "Learn to labor and to wait."

   There are three words which have been running in my mind for the last
   few days, and have seemed to work themselves into me, and I hope I may
   long keep them. One word is Work, another is Wait, and the other is
   Pray. Work, work, work! Wait, wait, wait! Pray, pray, pray!

   I think that these three words will enable a man to be, under God, a
   true and successful fisher of men. I have thus described the sort of
   men who were called, and the work which Christ gave them to do over and
   above the work in which they were engaged. I now want you to notice the
   prompt obedience of Peter to this call. I wonder how it was that Peter
   came directly. Christ said, "Follow Me." We know that Peter was a
   disciple, and consequently, his heart was ready to receive the word
   which called him to be a servant. It is of no use for me to call some
   of you to follow Christ, and work for him as "fishers of men"--for if
   you were to obey, you could not do it acceptably--because you are not
   the children of God.

   But you who are saved have something in your hearts that will echo to
   the exhortation, "Follow me," so that I think you need only to have a
   good work set fairly before you, and to know what it is that the Master
   requires of you, and you will say at once, "Lord, I will do it," for--

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

   When the heart loves Christ, then the path of duty, which before was
   rough and rugged, becomes straight and smooth, if not flowery, and the
   soul says--

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

   Beloved Friend, very much of the excellence of our service to Christ
   will depend upon the instantaneous way in which we do it when we know
   it to be a duty. I believe that debating with oneself about duty is a
   very dangerous thing. David said, "I made haste, and delayed not to
   keep Your Commandments." Peter did not say, "Lord, let me stop and dry
   these nets, and hang them up, and bring the boat to shore, and then
   cast anchor and leave it right." Nor did James and John say, "Master,
   let us go home and kiss that dear mother of ours, and let us see that
   Zebedee has somebody to take our place." No, immediately they left
   their nets and followed Christ.

   May I urge upon you the habit of falling into the line of duty
   instantly. When soldiers are being drilled I like to see the way in
   which the word of command is obeyed the instant it is given. "Right
   about face!" and the whole line turns right about at once. The thing is
   done, we say, mechanically. It should be so with us. But I know how it
   is--we get a right good thought of something we ought to do, but we
   stop and say--"Now, shall I do it, and when shall I do it?" And for the
   first hour or two we mean to do it, but by the next day we think it
   possible that we will decline it, and perhaps when a week is over we
   give it up altogether.

   I believe that this is so with many, many Christians in the matter of
   Believers' Baptism. To give one instance out of many, they say, "Well,
   I used to think of it when I was young, and I then believed it was my
   duty, and I guess I think it is my duty now if I really came to consult
   the Word of God about it. But I have put it off so long--well, perhaps
   I may see to it one of these days." While there is another and far more
   likely "perhaps," namely, that having procrastinated so long over that
   one duty, they will suffer it to go by default. Do not toy with
   Christian service, Brethren! There would have been more earnest
   Whitfields in the world, more Wesleys, more devoted Brainerds and
   Martyns, if men obeyed the call of God instead of taking counsel of
   flesh and blood and considering this, that, and the other, and then
   resolving not to obey.

   Remember, it is possible for us to have Divine Grace in the heart, and
   yet to be disobedient. We have many such mournful specimens. We cannot
   but hope that they will enter Heaven, for they are washed in the
   precious blood, and clothed in the Savior's righteousness. But they do
   little, if anything, for Christ because they have tampered with His
   calls, they have violated convictions, and have started back from
   duties in the exercise of their unbelief, instead of pressing forward
   in the glory and the majesty of a simple faith in Christ Jesus. If you
   feel that you have anything to do, do it immediately!

   If God calls you to preach before you go home, do it in the street! And
   if there is anything which claims your immediate attention--if there is
   a poor person you ought to relieve, if there is anyone to whom you
   ought to speak before leaving this place--I beseech you do not trifle
   with the conviction! As faithful servants of Jesus Christ, being saved,
   and professing to love Him, I pray you, at once, to do whatever you
   feel you ought to do for Him. I have heard of the question being asked
   in a school, what was the meaning of the text, "Your will be done on
   earth as it is in Heaven." One said, it meant that it should be done
   truthfully. And another, that it should be done unanimously. But a
   third said, it meant that it should be done without asking any
   questions. That answer was a good one, for we who know and love Christ
   should be willing to do His will without asking any questions.

   I must not, however, keep you much longer. I will notice, lastly, that
   when the call came to Peter in the shape of "Follow Me," it must have
   suggested to him many thoughts--for it contained, in addition to mere
   service--privilege as well as duty. There was a book written not many
   years ago by an excellent Divine, to which I cannot quite subscribe. I
   mean Dr. Bushnell's "Higher Life." I cannot subscribe to all that is in
   it, but I believe that there is a period in the life of some Christians
   when they rise to a platform elevated above ordinary Christianity,
   almost as much as ordinary Christianity is elevated above the world.

   I think that in addition to the first call by which we are brought out
   of nature's darkness into God's marvelous light, there does come to the
   Christian, when the Spirit of God works mightily with him, another call
   by which he is brought into greater familiarity with the Lord Jesus,
   taught more of conformity to Him in His sufferings, and made to be more
   fully a partaker of the height, and depth, and breadth, and length of
   that love which passes all understanding. Such a call seems to me to be
   imaged in this call of Peter.

   Have you been living, my dear Sister, at a distance from Christ? Have
   you been obliged to sing the hymn--

   Tis a point I long to know, Oft it causes anxious thought-- Do I love
   the Lord, or no? Am IHis, or am Inot?'"

   I do pray for you, as one of the greatest privileges I could ask God
   for on your behalf, that Christ may come to you afresh now and be
   formed in your heart anew, the Hope of Glory, in such a way that you
   may follow Him into close practical fellowship and earnest,
   unstaggering faith. Believe me, it is life to believe in Christ,
   however little--but it is life in health and vigor to believe in Christ
   with a faith that does not flinch!

   To have Christ and not to see Him is salvation, but to have Him and to
   see Him is salvation rapturously enjoyed! To be saved and not to know
   it is a small privilege, but to be saved and to know it, no, to know
   Him who is the Resurrection and the Life--to sit with Him, and sup with
   Him, and to feel that His shadow yields a great delight, and that His
   fruit is sweet unto one's taste--this is a way of living which angels
   might almost envy the favored men who possess it! May the Master call
   you in that sense now! Pray that prayer which Watts has put into
   rhyme--

   "Draw me away from flesh and sense,
   One sovereign word shall draw me thence;
   I would obey the voice Divine,
   And all inferior joys resign."

   May you get a call from the Master, "Follow Me unto the Mount of
   Transfiguration to see My Glory, and share in it, and abide with Me in
   sacred, rapt, secret fellowship which the world knows nothing of."

   But this was not merely a call to fellowship, but to practical
   fellowship. It seemed to say, "Peter, put down your net, and take up
   the cross. I am to be despised, come and be despised with Me. I am
   going outside the camp, I shall be scorned, and cast out from society.
   Come, Peter, come outside the camp with Me." Oh may Christ give you
   such a call as that! You are saved, but still, to a great extent you
   are in the world. Oh that you might have a separating call--"Come you
   out from among them; be you separate; touch not the unclean thing."

   May you feel now as if you had got a new life over and above the life
   you have already! May you have fresh blood poured into the veins of
   your piety that you might rise to something better! Come out and
   confess your Master! Confess Him by nonconformity to the world in all
   respects.

   To conclude. When Christ said, "Follow Me," did He not mean that Peter
   was to follow Him in everything and in all things? May the Master call
   you and me to follow Him in that consecration to His Father's will
   which made Him say, "My meat and My drink is to do the will of Him that
   sent Me." Oh, there are so many of you professors whose meat and drink
   are found in trade, or the making of money, or the reading of books, or
   the study of this and of that. May He call you to make Himself the
   first thing! To make His honor your grand object, and to make His
   Church your true mistress, the lady of your heart reigning in your
   spirit!

   Oh, to be wholly given up to Christ! To be a sacrifice upon the altar,
   smoking, burning, utterly consumed--a living sacrifice which is your
   most reasonable service. No, you need not shut up your shop! Oh no, but
   you will go and make money for Christ, and give it to His cause. No,
   you need not give up your daily labor, but you will be a priest unto
   God even while you are wearing the garments of your trade. No, you must
   not dare to think of such a thing as withdrawing from your present
   position and your little ones round about you! You must stay where you
   are and glorify Christ there. Feeling now that you have been called to
   the work of God, that service is to be done just where you are--you are
   not to be stargazing and looking aloft for some great thing, but to
   stand and do a day's work in a day in the sphere where Providence has
   called you, and where Divine Grace has blessed you.

   Now, you see, I have put all this on the right footing. I have told
   none of you to serve Christ till you are saved. But when you are saved,
   I hope and pray that you and I may see Christ calling on us to be
   "fishers of men." May the Lord call some who have never been called at
   all. May it come to pass that this very evening some may look to the
   Lamb of God, dying, bleeding, and suffering. Sinner, He is the
   Sin-Bearer. He came to seek and to save that which was lost! That face
   was marred with sorrow, and there must you find your hope. Look to Him!

   That bleeding Man is also the immortal God! Trust Him and you are
   saved! That one act of trust is the means of eternal salvation to
   everyone that exercises it. Then, being saved, may Christ call you,
   fishermen or whatever you may be, to serve Him until He comes to take
   you unto Himself--

   "Teach me, my God and King,
   In all things You to see,
   And what I do in anything,
   To do it as for You!
   All may of You partake--
   Nothing so small can be,
   But draws when acted for Your sake,
   Greatness and worth from You.
   If done beneath Your laws,
   Even servile labors shine!
   Hallowed is toil, if this the cause,
   The meanest work Divine."
     __________________________________________________________________

                         Salvation Altogether By Grace

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 29, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to
   our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given
   to us in Christ Jesus before the world began."

   2 Timothy 19.

   IF we would influence thoughtful persons it must be by solid arguments.
   Shallow minds may be worked upon by mere warmth of emotion and force of
   excitement, but the more valuable part of the community must be dealt
   with in quite another manner. When the Apostle Paul was desirous to
   influence his son in the faith, Timothy, who was a diligent and earnest
   student and a man of gifts as well as of Divine Grace, he did not
   attempt to affect him by mere appeals to his feelings. Paul felt that
   the most effectual way to act upon him was to remind him of solid
   doctrinal Truth of God which he knew Timothy believed.

   This is a lesson for the ministry at large. Certain earnest preachers
   are incessantly exciting the people, but seldom, if ever, instructing
   them. They carry much fire and very little light. God forbid that we
   should say a word against appealing to the feelings--this is most
   necessary in its place--but then there is a due proportion to be
   observed in it. A religion which is based upon, sustained, and
   maintained simply by excitement will necessarily be very flimsy and
   unsubstantial, and will yield very speedily to the crush of opposition
   or to the crumbling hand of time.

   The preacher may touch the feelings by rousing appeals as the harpist
   touches the harp strings, and he will be very foolish if he should
   neglect so ready and admirable an instrument. But still, as he is
   dealing with reasonable creatures, he must not forget to enlighten the
   intellect and instruct the understanding. And how can he appeal to the
   understanding better than by presenting to it the Truth which the Holy
   Spirit teaches? Scriptural doctrine furnishes us with powerful motives
   to urge upon the minds of Christians.

   It seems to me that if we could, by some unreasoning impulse, move you
   to a certain course of action it might be well in its way. But it would
   be unsafe and untrustworthy, for you would be equally open to be moved
   in an opposite direction by other persons more skilled in such
   operations. But if God enables us, by His Spirit, to influence your
   minds by solid Truth and substantial argument, you will then move with
   a constancy of power which nothing can turn aside. The feather flies in
   the wind, but it has no inherent power to move--and consequently when
   the gale is over it falls to the ground--such is the religion of
   excitement. But the eagle has life within itself and its wings bear it
   aloft and onward whether the breeze favors it or not--such is religion
   when sustained by a conviction of the Truth of God! The well-taught man
   in Christ Jesus stands firm where the uninstructed infant would fall or
   be carried away. "Be not carried about with every wind of doctrine,"
   says the Apostle, and those are least likely to be so carried who are
   well established in the Truth as it is in Jesus.

   It is somewhat remarkable--at least it may seem so to persons who are
   not accustomed to think upon the subject-- that the Apostle, in order
   to excite Timothy to boldness--to keep him constant in the
   faith--reminds him of the great doctrine that the Grace of God reigns
   in the salvation of men! He gives in this verse--this parenthetical
   verse as some call it, but which seems to me to be fully in the current
   of the passage--he gives in this verse a brief summary of the Gospel,
   showing the great prominence which it gives to the Grace of God, with
   the design of maintaining Timothy in the boldness of his testimony for
   Christ.

   I do not doubt but that a far greater power for usefulness lies
   concealed within the Doctrines of Grace than some men have ever dreamed
   of. It has been usual to look upon doctrinal Truth as being nothing
   more than unpractical theory, and many have spoken of the precepts of
   God's Word as being more practical and more useful. The day may yet
   come when, in clearer light, we shall perceive that sound doctrine is
   the very root and vital energy of practical holiness, and that to teach
   the people the Truth which God has revealed is the readiest and surest
   way of leading them to obedience and persevering holiness.

   May the Holy Spirit assist us while we shall, first, consider the
   doctrine taught by the Apostle in this text. And secondly, the uses of
   that doctrine.

   I. Very carefully let us CONSIDER THE DOCTRINE TAUGHT BY THE APOSTLE IN
   THIS TEXT. Friends will remember that it is not our object to preach
   the doctrine which is most popular or most palatable. Nor do we desire
   to set forth the views of any one person in the assembly. Our one aim
   is to give what we judge to be the meaning of the text. We shall
   probably deliver doctrine which many of you will not like, and if you
   should not like it we shall not be at all surprised! Or even if you
   should be vexed and angry we shall not be at all alarmed because we
   never understood that we were commissioned to preach what would please
   our hearers, nor were expected by sensible, not to say gracious men, to
   shape our views to suit the notions of our audience.

   We count ourselves amenable to God and to the text. And if we give the
   meaning of the text, we believe we shall give the mind of God and we
   shall be likely to have His favor which will be sufficient for us,
   contradict us who may. However, let every candid mind be willing to
   receive the Truth of God if it is clearly in the inspired Word.

   1. The Apostle, in stating his doctrine in the following words, "Who
   has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our
   works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to
   us in Christ Jesus before the world began," declares God to be the
   Author of salvation--"Who has saved us and called us." The whole tenor
   of the verse is towards a strong affirmation of Jonah's doctrine, "that
   salvation is of the Lord."

   It would require very great twisting--involving more than ingenuity, it
   would need dishonesty--to make out salvation by man out of this text!
   But to find salvation altogether of God in it is to perceive the Truth
   of God which lies upon the very surface. No need for profound enquiry.
   The wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err here--the text says as
   plainly as words can say, "God has saved us, and called us with a holy
   calling."

   The Apostle, then, in order to bring forth the Truth that salvation is
   of Grace, declares that it is of God--that it springs directly and
   entirely from Him and from Him alone. Is not this according to the
   teaching of the Holy Spirit in other places where He affirms over and
   over again that the alpha and omega of our salvation must be found, not
   in ourselves, but in our God? Our Apostle, in saying that God has saved
   us, refers to all the Persons of the Divine Unity. The Father has saved
   us. "God has given to us eternal life" (1 John 5:11). "The Father
   Himself loves you." It was He whose gracious mind first conceived the
   thought of redeeming His chosen from the ruin of the Fall.

   It was His mind which first planned the way of salvation by
   Substitution. It was from His generous heart that the thought first
   sprang that Christ should suffer as the Covenant Head of His people, as
   said the Apostle, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
   Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
   places in Christ. According as He has chosen us in Him before the
   foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame
   before Him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of
   children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of
   His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made
   us accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:3-6).

   From the heart of Divine compassion came the gift of the only begotten
   Son: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
   that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
   life." The Father selected the persons who should receive an interest
   in the redemption of His Son, for these are described as, "called
   according to His purpose" (Rom. 8:28). The plan of salvation in all its
   details sprang from the Father's wisdom and grace. The Apostle did not,
   however, overlook the work of the Son. It is most certainly through the
   Son of God that we are saved, for is not His name Jesus, the Savior?
   Incarnate in the flesh, His holy life is the righteousness in which
   saints are arrayed, while His ignominious and painful death has filled
   the sacred bath of blood in which the sinner must be washed that he may
   be made clean.

   It is through the Redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, that the people
   of God become accepted in the Beloved. With one voice before the
   Eternal Throne they sing, "Unto Him that loved us and washed us from
   our sins in His blood, unto Him be glory." And they chant that hymn
   because He deserves the glory which they ascribe to Him. It is the Son
   of God who is the Savior of men, and men are not the saviors of
   themselves. Nor did the Apostle, I am persuaded, forget that Third
   Person in the blessed Unity--the Holy Spirit.

   Who but the Holy Spirit first gives us power to understand the Gospel?
   "The carnal mind understands not the things that are of God." Does not
   the Holy Spirit influence our will, turning us from the obstinacy of
   our former rebellion to the obedience of the Truth of God? Does not the
   Holy Spirit renew us, creating us in Christ Jesus unto good works? Is
   it not by the Holy Spirit's breath that we live in the spiritual life?
   Is He not to us Instructor, Comforter, Quickener? Is He not everything,
   in fact, through His active operations upon our mind?

   The Father, then, in planning. The Son in redeeming. The Spirit, in
   applying the redemption, must be spoken of as the one God "who has
   saved us." Brothers and Sisters, to say that we save ourselves is to
   utter a manifest absurdity! We are called in Scripture "a temple"--a
   holy temple in the Lord. But shall anyone assert that the stones of the
   edifice were their own architect? Shall it be said that the stones of
   the building in which we are now assembled cut themselves into their
   present shape and then spontaneously came together and piled this
   spacious edifice? Should anyone assert such a foolish thing we should
   be disposed to doubt his sanity! Much more may we suspect the spiritual
   sanity of any man who should venture to affirm that the great temple of
   the Church of God designed and erected itself!

   No! We believe that God the Father was the Architect, sketched the
   plan, supplies the materials, and will complete the work. Shall it also
   be said that those who are redeemed redeemed themselves? That slaves of
   Satan break their own fetters? Then why was a Redeemer needed at all?
   How should there be any need for Jesus to descend into the world to
   redeem those who could redeem themselves? Do you believe that the sheep
   of God, whom He has taken from between the jaws of the lion, could have
   rescued themselves? It were a strange thing if such were the case.

   Our Lord Jesus came not to do a work of supererogation, but if He came
   to save persons who might have saved themselves, He certainly came
   without a necessity for so doing. We cannot believe that Christ came to
   do what the sinners might have done themselves! No, "He has trod the
   winepress alone, and of the people there was none with Him," and the
   redemption of His people shall give glory unto Himself only!

   Shall it be asserted that those who were once dead have spiritually
   quickened themselves? Can the dead make themselves alive? Who shall
   assert that Lazarus, rotting in the grave, came forth to life of
   himself? If it is so said and so believed, then, no, not even then,
   will we believe that the dead in sin have ever quickened themselves!
   Those who are saved by God the Holy Spirit are created anew according
   to Scripture--but whoever dreamed of creation creating itself? God
   spoke the world out of nothing, but nothing did not aid in the creation
   of the universe! Divine energy can do everything, but what can nothing
   do?

   Now if we have a new creation, there must have been a creator, and it
   is clear that not being, then, spiritually created, we could not have
   assisted in our own new creation, unless, indeed, death can assist
   life, and non-existence aid in creation. The carnal mind does not
   assist the Spirit of God in new creating a man, but altogether
   regeneration is the work of God the Holy Spirit, and the work of
   renewal is from His unassisted power. Father, Son and Spirit, we, then,
   adore, and putting these thoughts together, we would humbly prostrate
   ourselves at the foot of the Throne of the august Majesty and
   acknowledge that if saved, He alone has saved us, and unto Him be the
   glory!

   2. We next remark that grace is in this verse rendered conspicuous when
   we see that God pursues a singular method, "Who has saved us and called
   us." The peculiarity of the manner lies in three things--first, in the
   completeness of it. The Apostle uses the perfect tense and says, "who
   has saved us." Believers in Christ Jesus are saved. They are not looked
   upon as persons who are in a hopeful state and may ultimately be saved,
   but they are already saved.

   This is not according to the common talk of professors nowadays, for
   many of them speak of being saved when they come to die. But it is
   according to the usage of Scripture to speak of us who are saved. Be it
   known this morning that every man and woman here is either saved at
   this present moment, or lost--and that salvation is not a blessing to
   be enjoyed upon the dying bed and to be sung of in a future state--but
   a matter to be obtained, received, promised and enjoyed NOW! God has
   saved His saints, mark, not partly saved them, but perfectly saved
   them. The Christian is perfectly saved in God's purpose. God has
   ordained him unto salvation, and that purpose is complete.

   He is saved, also, as to the price which has been paid for him, for
   this is done not in part but in whole. The substitutionary work which
   Christ has offered is not a certain proportion of the work to be done,
   but, "it is finished," was the cry of the Savior before He died. The
   Believer is also perfectly saved in his Covenant Head, for as we were
   utterly lost as soon as ever Adam fell, before we had committed any
   actual sin, so every man in Christ was saved in the second

   Adam when He finished His work. The Savior completed His work and in
   the sense in which Paul uses that expression, "He has saved us."

   This completeness is one peculiarity--we must mark another. I want you
   to notice the order as well as the completeness--"who has saved us and
   called us." What? Saved us before He called us? Yes, so the text says.
   But is a man saved before he is called by Divine Grace? Not in his own
   experience. Not as far as the work of the Holy Spirit goes. But he is
   saved in God's purpose, in Christ's redemption, and in his relationship
   to his covenant Head. And he is saved, moreover, in this respect--that
   the work of his salvation is done, and he has only to receive it as a
   finished work. In the olden times of imprisonment for debt it would
   have been quite correct for you to step into the cell of a debtor and
   say to him, "I have freed you," if you had paid his debts and obtained
   an order for his discharge.

   Well, but he is still in prison! Yes, but you really liberated him as
   soon as you paid his debts. It is true he was still in prison, but he
   was not legally there, and no sooner did he know that the debt was paid
   and that receipt was pleaded before proper authorities, than the man
   obtained his liberty. So the Lord Jesus Christ paid the debts of His
   people before they knew anything about it. Did He not pay them on the
   Cross more than eighteen hundred years ago to the utmost penny? And is
   not this the reason why, as soon as He meets with us in a way of Grace,
   He cries, "I have saved you. Lay hold on eternal life"? We are, then,
   virtually, though not actually, saved before we are called. "He has
   saved us and called us."

   There is yet a third peculiarity, and that is in connection with the
   calling. God has called us with a holy calling. Those whom the Savior
   saved upon the tree are, in due time, effectually called by the power
   of God the Holy Spirit unto holiness. They leave their sins, they
   endeavor to be like Christ, they choose holiness--not out of any
   compulsion--but from the stress of a new nature which leads them to
   rejoice in holiness, just as naturally as before they delighted in sin.
   Whereas their old nature loved everything that was evil, their new
   nature cannot sin because it is born of God, and it loves everything
   that is good.

   Does not the Apostle mention this result of our calling in order to
   meet those who say that God calls His people because He foresees their
   holiness? Not so! He calls them to that holiness--that holiness is not
   a cause but an effect--it is not the motive of His purpose, but the
   result of His purpose. He neither chose them nor called them because
   they were holy, but He called them that they might be holy, and
   holiness is the beauty produced by His workmanship in them. The
   excellences which we see in a Believer are as much the work of God as
   the Atonement itself!

   This second point brings out very sweetly the fullness of the Grace of
   God. First--salvation must be of Grace, because the Lord is the Author
   of it, and what motive but Grace could move Him to save the guilty? In
   the next place, salvation must be of Grace because the Lord works in
   such a manner that our righteousness is forever excluded. Salvation is
   completed by God, and therefore not of man, neither by man. Salvation
   is worked by God in an order which puts our holiness as a consequence
   and not as a cause, and therefore merit is forever disowned.

   3. When a speaker desires to strengthen his point and to make himself
   clear, he generally puts in a negative as to the other side. So the
   Apostle adds a negative-- "Not according to our works." The world's
   great preaching is, "Do as well as you can. Live a moral life and God
   will save you." The Gospel preaching is this--"You are a lost sinner,
   and you can deserve nothing of God but His displeasure. If you are to
   be saved, it must be by an act of Sovereign Grace. God must freely
   extend the silver scepter of His love to you, for you are a guilty
   wretch who deserves to be sent to the lowest Hell. Your best works are
   so full of sin that they can in no degree save you--to the free mercy
   of God you must owe all things."

   "Oh," says one, "are good works of no use?" Good works are of use when
   a man is saved--they are the evidences of his being saved. But good
   works do not save a man, good works do not influence the mind of God to
   save a man, for if so, salvation would be a matter of debt and not of
   Grace. The Lord has declared over and over in His Word, "Not of works,
   lest any man should boast." "By the works of the Law there shall no
   flesh living be justified." The Apostle in the Epistle to the Galatians
   is very strong, indeed, upon this point. Indeed, he thunders it out
   again, and again, and again! He denies that salvation is even so much
   as in part due to our works, for if it is by works, then he declares it
   is not of Grace, otherwise Grace is no more Grace. And if it is of
   Grace, it is not of works, otherwise work is no more work.

   Paul assures us that the two principles of Grace and merit can no more
   mix together than fire and water--that if man is to be saved by the
   mercy of God--it must be by the mercy of God and not by works. But if
   man is to be saved by works, it must be by works entirely and not by
   mercy mixed with it, for mercy and work will not go together. Jesus
   saves, but He does all the work or none. He is Author and Finisher, and
   works must not rob Him of His due. Sinner, you must either receive
   salvation freely from the hand of Divine Bounty, or else you must earn
   it by your own unassisted merits, which is utterly impossible! Oh that
   you would yield to the first!

   My Brethren, this is the Truth of God which still needs to be preached.
   This is the Truth of God which shook all Europe from end to end when
   Luther first proclaimed it. Is not this the old thunderbolt which the
   great Reformer hurled at Rome--"Justified freely by His grace, through
   the redemption which is in Christ Jesus"? But why did God make
   salvation to be by faith? Scripture tells us--"Therefore it is of
   faith, that it might be by grace." If it had been by works it must have
   been by debt--but since it is by faith we can clearly see that there
   can be no merit in faith. It must be therefore by Divine Grace.

   4. My text is even more explicit, yet, for the eternal purpose is
   mentioned. The next thing the Apostle says is this: "Who has saved us,
   and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but
   according to His own purpose." Mark that word--"according to His own
   purpose." Oh how some people wriggle over that word, as if they were
   worms on a fisherman's hook! But there it stands, and cannot be gotten
   rid of. God saves His people "according to His purpose." No, "according
   to His OWN purpose."

   My Brothers and Sisters, do you not see how all the merit and the power
   of the creature are shut out here, when you are saved, not according to
   your purpose or merit, but "according to His own purpose"? I shall not
   dwell on this. It is not exactly the object of this morning's discourse
   to bring out in full the great mystery of electing love, but I will
   not, for a moment, keep back the Truth of God. If any man is saved, it
   is not because he purposed to be saved, but because God purposed to
   save him.

   Have you never read the Holy Spirit's testimony: "It is not of him that
   wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy"? The Savior
   said to His Apostles what He, in effect, says also to us, "You have not
   chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you might
   bring forth fruit." Some hold one and some another view concerning the
   freedom of the will, but our Savior's doctrine is, "You will not come
   unto Me that you might have life." You will not come! Your wills will
   never bring you! If you do come, it is because Divine Grace inclined
   you! "No man can come unto Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw
   Him." "Whoever comes to Me I will in no wise cast out," is a great and
   precious general text, but it is quite consistent with the rest of the
   same verse--"All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me."

   Our text tells us that our salvation is "according to His own purpose."
   It is a strange thing that men should be so angry against the purpose
   of God. We ourselves have a purpose--we permit our fellow creatures to
   have some will of their own, and especially in giving away their own
   goods. But is my God to be bound and fettered by men, and not permitted
   to do as He wills with His own? But be this known unto you, O men that
   reply against God, that He gives no account of His actions, but asks of
   you, "Can I not do as I will with My own?" He rules in Heaven, and in
   the armies of this lower world, and none can stay His hand or say unto
   Him, "What are you doing?"

   5. But then the text, lest we should make any mistake, adds, "according
   to His own purpose and grace." The purpose is not founded on foreseen
   merit, but upon Divine Grace alone. It is Grace, all Grace, nothing but
   Grace from first to last! Man stands shivering outside, a condemned
   criminal, and God, sitting upon His Throne, sends the herald to tell
   him that He is willing to receive sinners and to pardon them. The
   sinner replies, "Well, I am willing to be pardoned if I am permitted to
   do something in order to earn pardon. If I can stand before the King
   and claim that I have done something to win His favor, I am quite
   willing to come."

   But the herald replies, "No, if you are pardoned, you must understand
   it is entirely and wholly as an act of Grace on God's part. He sees
   nothing good in you. He knows that there is nothing good in you. He is
   willing to take you just as you are, filthy, and bad, and wicked, and
   undeserving. He is willing to give you graciously what He would not
   sell to you, and what He knows you cannot earn of Him. Will you take
   it?" And naturally every man says, "No, I will not be saved in that
   style."

   Well, then, Soul, remember that you will never be saved at all, for
   God's way is salvation by Grace! You will have to confess, if ever you
   are saved, my dear Hearer, that you never deserved one single blessing
   from the God of Grace. You will have to give all the glory to His holy
   name if ever you get to Heaven. And mark you, even in the matter of the
   acceptance of this offered mercy, you will never accept it unless He
   makes you willing! He does freely present it to every one of you, and
   He honestly bids you come to Christ and live. But come you never will,
   I know, except the effectual Grace which first provided mercy shall
   make you willing to accept that mercy. So the text tells us it is His
   own purpose and Grace.

   6. Again, in order to shut out everything like boasting, the whole is
   spoken of as a gift. Notice--lest, (for we are such straying sheep in
   this matter), lest we should still slip out of the field--it is added,
   "purpose and grace which He gave us." Not, "which He sold us," "offered
   us," but "which He GAVE us." He must have a word here which shall be a
   death-blow to all merit--"which he gave us"--it was GIVEN. And what can
   be freer than a gift, and what more evidently of Divine Grace?

   7. But the gift is bestowed through a medium, which glorifies Christ.
   It is written, "which was given us in Christ Jesus." We ask to have
   mercy from the wellhead of Divine Grace, and we ask not even to make
   the bucket in which it is to be brought to us! Christ is to be the
   sacred vessel in which the Grace of God is to be presented to our
   thirsty lips. Now where is boasting? Why surely there it sits at the
   foot of the Cross and sings, "God forbid that I should glory save in
   the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." Is it not Grace and Grace alone?

   8. Yet further, a period is mentioned and added--"before the world
   began." Those last words seem to me forever to lay prostrate all idea
   of anything of our own merits in saving ourselves, because it is here
   witnessed that God gave us Divine Grace "before the world began." Where
   were you then? What hand had you in it "before the world began"? Why,
   fly back, if you can, in imagination, to the ancient years when those
   venerable mountains, that elder birth of nature, were not yet formed!
   Fly back when world, and sun, and moon, and stars, were all in embryo
   in God's great mind--when the unnavigated sea of space had never been
   disturbed by wing of seraph, and the awful silence of eternity had
   never been startled by the song of cherubim--when God dwelt alone.

   If you can conceive that time before all time, that vast eternity--it
   was then He gave us Grace in Christ Jesus. What, O Soul, had you to do
   with that? Where were your merits then? Where were you yourself? O you
   small dust of the balance, you insect of a day, where were you? See how
   Jehovah reigned, dispensing mercy as He would, and ordaining unto
   eternal life without taking counsel of man or angel, for neither man or
   angel then had an existence! That it might be all of Grace He gave us
   Grace before the world began!

   I have honestly read out the doctrine of the text, and nothing more. If
   such is not the meaning of the text I do not know the meaning of it,
   and I cannot, therefore, tell you what it is. But I believe that I have
   given the natural and grammatical teaching of the text. If you do not
   like the doctrine, I cannot help it. I did not make the text, and if I
   have to expound it I must expound it honestly as it is in my Master's
   Word. And I pray you receive what He says, whatever you may do with
   what I say.

   II. I shall want your patience while I try to SHOW THE USES OF THIS
   DOCTRINE. The Doctrine of Grace has been put by in the lumber chamber.
   It is acknowledged to be true, for it is confessed in most creeds. It
   is in the Church of England articles. It is in the confessions of all
   sorts of Protestant Christians, except those who are avowedly Arminian,
   but how little is it ever preached! It is put among the relics of the
   past. It is considered to be a respectable sort of retired officer who
   is not expected to see any more active service.

   Now I believe that it is not a superannuated officer in the Master's
   army, but that it is as full of force and vigor as ever. But what is
   the use of it? Why, first, it is clear from the connection that it has
   a tendency to embolden the man who receives it. Paul tells Timothy not
   to be ashamed, and he gives this as a motive--how can a man be ashamed
   when he believes that God has given him Grace in Christ Jesus before
   the world was? Suppose the man to be very poor. "Oh," he says, "what
   does it matter? Though I have but a little oil in the cruse, and a
   little meal in the barrel, yet I have a lot and a portion in
   everlasting things! My name is not in Doomsday Book nor in Burke's
   Peerage--but it is in the book of God's election, and was there before
   the world began!"

   Such a man dares look the proudest of his fellows in the face. This was
   the doctrine on which the brave old Ironsides fed--the men who, when
   they rode to battle with the war cry of, "The Lord of Hosts!" made the
   cavaliers fly before them like chaff before the wind. No doctrine like
   it for putting a backbone into a man, and making him feel that he is
   made for something better than to be trod down like straw for the
   dunghill beneath a despot's heel. Sneer who will, the elect of

   God derive a nobility from the Divine choice which no royal patent can
   outshine! I would that Free Grace were more preached, because it gives
   men something to believe with confidence.

   The great mass of professing Christians know nothing of doctrine. Their
   religion consists in going a certain number of times to a place of
   worship, but they have no care for the Truth of God one way or another.
   I speak without any prejudice in this matter--but I have talked with a
   large number of persons in the course of my very extensive pastorate
   who have been for years members of other churches. And when I have
   asked them a few questions upon doctrinal matters it did not seem to me
   that they thought they were in error--they were perfectly willing to
   believe almost anything that any earnest man might teach them. But they
   did not know anything--they had no minds of their own--and no definite
   opinions.

   Our children, who have learned "The Westminster Assembly's Confession
   of Faith," know more about the Doctrines of Grace and the doctrine of
   the Bible than hundreds of grownups who attend a ministry which very
   eloquently teaches nothing. It was observed by a very excellent critic
   not long ago that if you were to hear thirteen lectures on astronomy or
   geology you might get a pretty good idea of what the science was, and
   the theory of the person who gave the lectures-- but that if you were
   to hear thirteen hundred sermons from some ministers, you would not
   know at all what they were preaching about or what their doctrinal
   sentiments were. It ought not to be so.

   Is not this the reason why Puseyism spreads so, and all sorts of errors
   have such a foothold, because our people, as a whole, do not know what
   they believe? The doctrine of Election, if well received, gives to a
   man something which he knows and which he holds and which will become
   dear to him. Something for which he would be prepared to die if the
   fires of persecution were again kindled! Better still is it that this
   doctrine not only gives the man something to hold but it holds the man!
   Let a man once have burnt into him that salvation is of God and not of
   man, and that God's Grace is to be glorified and not human merit, and
   you will never get that belief out of him!

   It is the rarest thing in all the world to hear of such a man ever
   apostatizing from his faith. Other doctrine is slippery ground, like
   the slope of a mountain composed of loose earth and rolling stones down
   which the traveler may slide long before he can even get a transient
   foothold. But this is like a granite step upon the eternal pyramid of
   Truth--get your feet on this--and there is no fear of slipping so far
   as doctrinal standing is concerned. If we would have our churches in
   England well instructed and holding fast the Truth of God, we must
   bring out the grand old verity of the eternal purpose of God in Christ
   Jesus before the world began!

   Oh may the Holy Spirit write it on our hearts! Moreover, my Brethren,
   this doctrine overwhelms, as with an avalanche, all the claims of
   priest-craft. Let it be told to men that they are saved by God, and
   they say at once, "Then what is the good of the priest?" If they are
   told it is God's Grace, then they ask, "Then you do not want our money
   to buy masses and absolutions?" And down goes the priest at once!
   Beloved, this is the battering ram that God uses with which to shake
   the gates of Hell! How much more forcible than the pretty essays of
   many so-called Divines which have no more power than bulrushes, no more
   light than smoking flax!

   What do you suppose people used to meet in the woods for in persecuting
   times? They met by thousands outside the town of Antwerp, and such-like
   places on the Continent, in jeopardy of their lives! Do you suppose
   they would ever have come together to hear that poor milk-and-water
   theology of this age, or to receive the lukewarm milk and water of our
   modern anti-Calvinists? Not they, my Brethren! They needed stronger
   meat, and a more savory diet to attract them. Do you imagine that when
   it was death to listen to the preacher, that men under the shadows of
   night, and amid the wings of tempest would then listen to philosophical
   essays, or to mere moral precepts, or to diluted, adulterated,
   soulless, theological suppositions?

   No! There is no energy in that kind of thing to draw men together under
   fear of their lives. So what did bring them together in the dead of
   night amidst the glare of lightning, and the roll of thunder? What
   brought them together? Why, the doctrine of the Grace of God! The
   doctrine of Jesus and of His servants Paul, and Augustine, and Luther,
   and Calvin! For there is something in that doctrine which touches the
   heart of the Christian and gives him food such as his soul loves,
   savory meat, suitable to his Heaven-born appetite!

   To hear this, men braved death and defied the sword! And it we are to
   see once again the scarlet hat plucked from the wearer's head, and the
   shaven crowns with all the gaudy trumpery of Rome sent back to the
   place from where they came--and Heaven grant that they may take our
   Puseyite Established Church with them--it must be by declaring all the
   doctrines of the Grace of God! When these are declared and vindicated
   in every place, we shall yet again make these enemies of God and man to
   know that they cannot stand their ground for a moment where men of God
   wield the sword of the Lord and of Gideon by preaching the doctrines of
   the Grace of God.

   Brothers and Sisters, let the man receive these Truths! Let them be
   written in his heart by the Holy Spirit, and they will make him look
   up. He will say, "God has saved me!" and he will walk with a constant
   eye to God. He will not forget to see the hand of God in Nature and in
   Providence. He will, on the contrary, discern the Lord working in all
   places, and will humbly adore Him. He will not give to laws of Nature
   or schemes of State the glory due to the Most High, but will have
   respect unto the unseen Ruler.

   "What the Lord says to me, that will I do," is the Believer's language.
   "What is His will that will I follow. What is His Word, that will I
   believe. What is His promise, on that I will live." It is a blessed
   habit to teach a man to look up, look up to God in all things! At the
   same time, this doctrine of Election makes a man look down upon
   himself. "Ah," he says, "I am nothing! There is nothing in me to merit
   esteem. I have no goodness of my own. If saved, I cannot praise myself.
   I cannot in anyway ascribe to myself honor. God has done it, God has
   done it." Nothing makes the man so humble, but nothing makes him so
   glad! Nothing lays him so low at the Mercy Seat, but nothing makes him
   so brave to look his fellow man in the face. It is a grand Truth of
   God! Would to God you all knew its mighty power!

   Lastly, this precious Truth is full of comfort to the sinner, and that
   is why I love it. As it has been preached by some it has been
   exaggerated and made into a bugbear. Why, there are some who preach the
   doctrine of Election as though it were a line of sharp spikes to keep a
   sinner from coming to Christ! As though it were a sharp, glittering
   sword to be pushed into the breast of a coming sinner to keep him from
   mercy!

   Now it is not so. Sinner, whoever you may be, wherever you may be, your
   greatest comfort should be to know that salvation is by Divine Grace.
   Why Man, if it were by merit, what would become of you? Suppose that
   God saved men on account of their merits? Where would you drunkards be?
   Where would you swearers be? You who have been unclean and unchaste,
   and you whose hearts have cursed God, and who even now do not love
   Him--where would you be?

   But when it is all of Grace, why, then, all your past life, however
   black and filthy it may be, need not keep you from coming to Jesus.
   Christ receives sinners! God has elected sinners! He has elected some
   of the filthiest of sinners--why not you? He receives everyone that
   comes to Him. He will not cast you out. There have been some who have
   hated Him, insulted Him to His face--that have burned His servants
   alive, and have persecuted Him in His members--but as soon as they have
   cried, "God be merciful to me a sinner," He has given them mercy at
   once!

   And He will give it to you if you are led to seek it. If I had to tell
   you that you were to work out your own salvation apart from His Grace
   it were a sad day for you. But when it comes to you
   yourself--filthy--there is washing for you! Dead--there is life for
   you! Naked--there is raiment for you! All undone and ruined--here is a
   complete salvation for you! O Soul, may you have Grace to lay hold of
   it, and then you and I together will sing to the praise of the glory of
   Divine Grace.
     __________________________________________________________________

              Hezekiah And The Ambassadors--Or, Vainglory Rebuked

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 5, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "At that time Berodach-Baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon,
   sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah, for he heard that Hezekiah
   had been sick. And Hezekiah was attentive to them, and showed them all
   the house of his treasures; the silver and gold, and the spices and
   precious ointment, and all his armory; all that was found among his
   treasures. There was nothingin his house or all his dominion that
   Hezekiah did not show them." 2 Kings 20:12,13.

   AND what of that? Was it not the most natural thing in all the world to
   do? Who among us would not have shown the strangers over our house, and
   our garden, and our library, and have pointed out to them any little
   treasures and curiosities which we might happen to possess? And what if
   Hezekiah was somewhat proud of his wealth? Was it not a most natural
   pride that he, who was a monarch of so small a territory, should
   nevertheless be able, by economy and good government, to accumulate so
   large and varied a treasure? Did it not show that he was prudent and
   thrifty? And might he not commend himself as an example to the
   Babylonian ambassadors by showing what these virtues had done for him?

   Exactly so. This is just as man sees. But God sees after another sort:
   "Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart."
   Things are not to God as they seem to us. Actions which apparently, and
   upon the surface, and even so far as human judgment can go, may appear
   to be either indifferent or even laudable, may seem to God to be so
   hateful that His anger may burn against them! We look upon a needle,
   and to our naked eye it is as smooth as glass, but when we put it under
   the microscope it appears at once to be as rough as a raw bar of iron.

   It is much after this manner with our actions. They may seem in our own
   judgments, and in the judgments of our fellow creatures to be as bright
   and smooth as the needle for their excellence. But when they come under
   the inspection of the all-seeing God they are full of all manner of
   roughness of sin. Our lilies may be the Lord's nettles, and our gardens
   nothing better than a wilderness in His sight.

   Yet another reflection which strikes one at the very first blush of
   this affair, namely, that God has a different rule for judging His
   children's doings from that which He applies to the actions of
   strangers. I can believe that if Hezekiah had sent his ambassadors to
   Berodach-Baladan, that heathen monarch might have shown the Jewish
   ambassadors over all his treasures without any sort of sin. God would
   not have been provoked to anger, nor would a Prophet have uttered so
   much as a word of remonstrance or of threat--but Hezekiah is not like
   Berodach-Baladan--he must not do as the Babylonians may do.

   Baladan is but a serf in God's kingdom, and Hezekiah is a prince! The
   one is an alien, and the other is a dear and much-cherished child. We
   have all different modes of dealing with men according to their
   relation to us. If a stranger should speak against you in the street
   you would not feel it--you would scarcely be angry even though the
   statement might be libelous. But if it were the wife of your bosom it
   would sting you to the heart, or if your child should slander you it
   would cut you to the quick. When we admit persons into intimacy and
   reveal our hearts to them, we expect them to act toward us with a
   tenderness and a delicacy which it were utterly unreasonable to expect
   in strangers. And we judge their actions by a peculiar standard--we
   weigh, as it were, the actions of ordinary men in the common rough
   scales which would not turn with an ounce or even a pound--but the
   doings of our friends we weigh in such sensitive balances that even
   though it were but a feather from the wing of a fly the scale would
   turn.

   It is a solemn thing to be a favorite of Heaven, for where another man
   may sin with impunity, the beloved of God will not offend without
   grievous chastisement. If you lie in the bosom of Heaven you must take
   care that your soul is chaste towards God. If you are favored with the
   secret of the Most High you must peculiarly be among them that fear
   Him--for if not, He will say unto you as He said to His favored
   Israel--"You only have I known of all the nations of the earth,
   therefore will I punish you for your iniquities."

   It might be treason in a courtier to speak of the king us a stranger
   might safely do. And he who is admitted into the cabinet must not only
   be beyond fault in his loyalty, but even beyond suspicion. We remark,
   then, that the act of Hezekiah here recorded is not, upon the surface,
   a sinful one, but that the sin is to be found, not so much in the
   action itself as in his motives of which we cannot be judges--but which
   God very accurately judged, and very strictly condemned. And again, we
   remark that this sin of Hezekiah might not have been sin in others at
   all. Even with the same motive, if done by others, it might not have so
   provoked God.

   But seeing that Hezekiah, above even most of the Scriptural saints, was
   favored with singular interpositions of Providence, and distinguished
   honors from God's hand, he should have been more careful. His sin, if
   little in others, became great in him, because of his being so beloved
   of God. A man with a worn and stained garment may walk without spoiling
   his robe where another clothed in white might not venture. A spot might
   not show upon a filthy garment, but the cleaner the robe, the more
   readily is the spot discovered, and from the very fact that Hezekiah
   was so superlatively a holy man, and a man favored of God, his sin
   showed itself, and God visited it at once with chastisement.

   I. In order to bring out what Hezekiah's offense was, it will be best
   for me to begin by describing his CIRCUMSTANCES AND STATE AT THE TIME
   OF THE TRANSACTION. We shall need a rather lengthy description, and, in
   the first place, we may remark that he had received very singular
   favors. Sennacherib had invaded the land with a host reckoned to be
   invincible, and probably it was invincible by all the known means of
   warfare of that age. He had ravaged every State and taken away
   innumerable prisoners, besides despoiling every city to which he laid
   siege.

   But when he came near Jerusalem he was not able even so much as to cast
   a mound against it, or to shoot an arrow at it, for God singularly
   interposed and the host of Sennacherib, struck by the sudden breath of
   pestilence, or by the deadly air of the simoom, fell dead upon the
   plain. This was a memorable deliverance from a foe so gigantic as to be
   compared to leviathan, into whose jaw the Lord thrust a hook, and led
   him back to the place from where he came.

   Beside this, Hezekiah had been restored from a sickness pronounced to
   be mortal. He had been granted a singular escape from the gates of
   death. Where another man must have died, be was enabled, within three
   days, to go up to the house of the Lord. Added to all this, in
   connection with his recovery, God had seen fit to do for him what he
   had only done for Joshua before, namely, to interrupt the order of the
   heavens, and to make the sun go back ten degrees upon the dial of Ahaz
   as a token by which His servant's faith might be comforted.

   This was no mean thing when death from below and Heaven from above were
   both stayed in their courses for the favored child of Heaven! When the
   shades of the grave and the brightness of the sun alike were moved for
   him to prove the loving kindness of the Lord. In addition to all this
   the Lord gave Hezekiah an unusual run of prosperity. Everything
   prospered. If you read the statement given in the Chronicles, and also
   that in Isaiah, you will find that he was enriched both by presents
   from the neighboring kings, who were probably overawed by the fact that
   Sennacherib had been destroyed in the country of Hezekiah. And he was
   probably also enriched by trading as Solomon had done before him.

   Hezekiah, though but a little prince, suddenly found himself a wealthy
   man, having moreover one thing in his treasury which could not have
   been discovered among the riches of any other living man, namely, a
   writ from the Court of Heaven that he should live fifteen years. What
   would not some monarchs have given, if they had been sure that their
   lives would have been preserved from daily jeopardy during that length
   of time? No weight of coral or of pearl would have been considered too
   great a price for such a gift!

   Hezekiah was, in all respects, a prosperous monarch! The man whom the
   King of kings delighted to honor. This great prosperity was a great
   temptation, far more difficult to endure than Rabshakeh's letter, and
   all the ills which invasion brought upon the land. Ah Friend, that is a
   much-needed prayer: "In all times of our wealth, good Lord deliver us."
   Many serpents lurk among the flowers of prosperity. High places are
   dangerous places. It is not easy to carry a full cup with a steady
   hand. A loaded wagon needs a strong axle, and a well-fed steed requires
   a tight rein.

   We must not forget that Hezekiah, at this time, had become singularly
   conspicuous. To be favored as he was might have been endurable if he
   could have lived in retirement, but he was set as upon a pinnacle since
   all the nations round about must have heard of the destruction of
   Sennacherib's host. Sennacherib was the common foe of all the smaller
   potentates, and even the great kings, like the king of Egypt, stood in
   mortal dread of the power of Assyria. It was, therefore, sure to be
   known far and wide that the tyrant's wings had been clipped in the land
   of Judah.

   The going back of the sun must also have struck all nations with
   astonishment. It appears that the Babylonian ambassadors came to
   enquire about this wonder, for they were a people much given to observe
   the heavenly bodies. The world's mouth was full of Hezekiah. Everybody
   heard of him. Everybody spoke of him. His cure, his victory, and his
   wealth were common talk in every place where men met together. What a
   temptation is this! When many eyes are upon one, they may, unless
   Divine Grace prevent, act like the eyes of the fabled Basilisk which
   fascinated their prey. To walk before the Lord in the land of the
   living is happy and safe walking--but to walk before men is full of
   peril.

   To be saluted with applause. To bask in popularity is always dangerous.
   A full sail needs much ballast, or the vessel will be overturned. Much
   Grace was needed in the case before us, but this the king did not seek
   as he should have done. Hezekiah had remarkable opportunities for
   usefulness. How much he might have done to honor the God of Israel! I
   scarcely know of a man, except he were an inspired Prophet, who had so
   noble an opportunity of declaring the greatness and goodness of the
   Lord. For while everybody spoke of him, it was in connection with two
   wonders which God had worked--which should have brought to the Great
   Wonder-Working Jehovah a revenue of praise.

   Why, Hezekiah, had you been in your right senses, and had Divine Grace
   kept your wits about you, what a sermon you might have preached with
   death beneath you and Heaven above you for the text, and the eternal
   power and Godhead for the theme! Brethren, he ought to have made the
   courts of princes ring with the name of Jehovah! He should have placed
   himself in the rear of the picture and have filled the earth with his
   testimony to the glory of his God. How well he might have exclaimed in
   the language of triumphant exultation, "Where are the gods of Hamath,
   and of Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? Which
   of these delivered the nations from Sennacherib? Which of these could
   raise up their votaries from mortal sickness? Which of these could say
   to the sun's shadow, 'Go back upon the dial of Ahaz'? But Jehovah rules
   over all! He is king in Heaven above and in the earth beneath."

   My brethren, it seems to me that if, like Moses, he had composed some
   triumphal ode. If he had made the people sing and bid the women dance
   like Miriam, while the exultant shout went up to Heaven, "Oh, come let
   us sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously!" it had been
   far better work for him than to have been showing these ambassadors his
   treasury, and exalting his own name among men! He, above all men, was
   under obligation to have loved his God, and to have devoted himself
   wholly to Him.

   All life is sacred to the Giver of Life and should be devoted to Him.
   But life supernaturally prolonged should have been in a special manner
   dedicated to God! Why should Hezekiah boast of himself? He whose breath
   has been given back into his nostrils by miracle must not spend it in
   magnifying himself. Unto God be the glory of our life though it is but
   given to us once. But oh, with what emphasis should God have all the
   glory of it if it is given to us twice! But it is written of Hezekiah
   in the Chronicles, that "he rendered not again according to the benefit
   done unto him for his heart was lifted up."

   He enjoyed the blessings, but bowed not before the Giver. He remembered
   the fruit, but he forgot the tree. He drank of the stream, but did not
   enough regard the fountain. His fields were watered with dew, but he
   was not sufficiently grateful to the Heaven from which the dew distils.
   He stole the fuel from the altar of Love and burned it upon the hearth
   of Pride. But, my Brothers and Sisters, we must not too hastily condemn
   Hezekiah! It is for God to condemn--not for us--for I am persuaded had
   we been in Hezekiah's place we should have done the same.

   Observe now where his loftiness would find food. Here he might have
   said to himself, "Within my dominions the greatest of armies has been
   destroyed, and the mightiest of princes has been humbled. He whose name
   was a sound of terror in every land came into my country and he melted
   away like the snow before the sun. Great are you, O Hezekiah! Great is
   your land, for your land has devoured Sennacherib, and put an end to
   the havoc of the destroyer." Remember also that he had this to try him
   above everything else--he had the certainty of living fifteen years. I
   have already given you a hint of the danger of such certainty.

   Mortals as we are, in danger of dying at any moment, yet we grow
   secure! But give us fifteen years certain, and I know not that Heaven
   above would be high enough for our heads, or whether the whole world
   would be large enough to contain the swellings of our pride! We should
   be sure to grow vain-gloriously great if the check of constant
   mortality were removed! The king might, in his self-complacent moments,
   have said to himself, "Not only am I thus immortal for fifteen years,
   but the very heavens have been disturbed for me. See what a favorite of
   Heaven I am!" He did not say with David, "When I consider Your heavens,
   the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars which You have ordained,
   what is man, that You are mindful of him?"

   Hezekiah heard a Satanic whisper in his soul, "How great are you that
   even the sun itself, light of the day, and eye of Heaven, must go back
   to do you pleasure!" Besides, it is not so easy to have life spared and
   yet to feel that we, ourselves, personally are of little consequence.
   What are any of us to God? He could do without us all! The greatest men
   in the world, if they were wiped out of creation, would involve no more
   loss to God than the loss of a fly to the owner of empires. And yet, if
   life is spared, we are very apt to suppose that we are necessary--at
   least to the Church if not to the Divine purposes themselves!

   Then when Hezekiah surveyed his stores, he would see much to puff him
   up, for worldly possessions are to men what gas is to a balloon. Ah, my
   dear Friends, those who know anything about possessions, about broad
   acres, gold and silver, and works of art, and precious things, and so
   on know what a tendency there is to puff up the owners of them!
   Hezekiah must have felt, as he walked through his armory, and his
   granaries, and his treasury, "I am a great man." Then all the
   ambassadors came in from the different countries, and cringing at his
   feet paid him reverence because of his present fortune. It was too much
   for his poor head to stand, and as the heart was getting away from God,
   it is little wonder if vainglory took possession of Hezekiah's mind.

   To complete our description of the circumstances, it appears that at
   this time God left His servant in a measure, to try him. "Howbeit in
   the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent
   unto him to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left
   him, to try him, that He might know all that was in his heart." It
   seems that through his being lifted up, the Grace of God was, for a
   time, in its more active operations withdrawn. Not that God left him in
   such a sense as that he ceased to be a saved soul--but he was left in a
   measure to try him--to let Him see what he was. He was getting so
   great, priding himself so much upon the favor of God, that
   self-righteousness probably had crept in, and he began to say to
   himself, "I am not as other men are. Surely I have walked before the
   Lord with a perfect heart."

   Some degree of self-righteousness is, we think, manifest in his prayer
   when he turned his face to the wall. He was diseased, we fear at that
   time, with two diseases--not merely a swelling boil, but a swelling
   self-conceit--and God left him to let him see that he was a poor silly
   sinner after all. Here, dear Friends, is quite enough to account for
   his folly, for if the Grace of God should leave the best of us, only
   the all-knowing God could foretell what we would do. You who are
   warmest for Christ would become like Laodicea for lukewarmness. You who
   are sound in the faith would become rotten with error. You who now walk
   before the Lord in excellency and integrity would be so weak that the
   first temptation would remove you from your steadfastness. It would be
   said of us as it was said of that once bright, but now fallen star,
   "How are you fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning."

   Bright as we are when Divine Grace shines on us, we are nothing but
   darkness itself when the Lord withdraws Himself. It was said by the old
   makers of metaphors that in the soundest pomegranate there are always
   some rotten seeds, and the whitest swan has a black bill. To which we
   may add that there are worms under the greenest turf, and dead men's
   carcasses at the bottom of the calmest seas. In the best Christian
   there is enough of sin to make him the worst of transgressors if God
   should leave him. One who knew himself but little wrote that he was so
   full of Christ that there was no room for the devil--but I thought I
   saw the cloven foot peeping out even in that boastful speech.

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, I hope we may not need to be taught our own
   emptiness in the same way as Hezekiah learned it. I would willingly
   know doctrinally that in me, that is in my flesh, there dwells no good
   thing! And I would know it, too, by the teaching of God the Holy
   Spirit. But I pray for you and for myself, my Brethren, that we may
   never know our depravity experimentally by being left to see it work
   itself out. Perhaps there may be no way of teaching us so thoroughly
   the baseness of our heart as by leaving us to its devices. Perhaps we
   shall never know our folly unless suffered to play the fool, but oh
   prevent it, Lord! Prevent it by your Grace! Better to be taught by
   suffering than to be taught by sin! Better to be in God's dungeon than
   to revel in the devil's palace!

   You now see the circumstances clearly. Here is a prosperous man in a
   proud state of heart--with Divine Grace at a low ebb in his spirit. He
   is now ready to be the prey of temptation.

   II. We must now turn to consider THE OCCURRENCE ITSELF AND THE SIN
   WHICH AROSE OUT OF IT.

   Babylon, a province of Assyria, had thrown off the Assyrian yoke, and
   Berodach-Baladan was naturally anxious to obtain allies in order that
   his little kingdom might grow strong enough to preserve itself from the
   Assyrians. He had seen with great pleasure that the Assyrian army had
   been destroyed in Hezekiah's country, and very probably, not
   recognizing the miracle, he thought that Hezekiah had defeated the
   host, and so he sent his ambassadors with a view to make a treaty of
   alliance with so great a prince.

   The ambassadors arrived. Now in this case the duty of Hezekiah was very
   clear. He ought to have received the ambassadors with due courtesy as
   becomes their office, and he should have regarded their coming as an
   opportunity to bear testimony to the idolatrous Babylonians of the true
   God of Israel. He should have explained to them that the wonders which
   had been worked were worked by the only living and true God, and then
   he might have said, in answer to Isaiah's question, "What have they
   seen in your house?" "I have told them of the mighty acts of Jehovah. I
   have published abroad His great fame, and I have sent them back to
   their country to tell abroad that the Lord God Omnipotent reigns."

   He should have been very cautious with these men. They were idolaters,
   and therefore not fit company for the worshippers of Jehovah. When they
   came to him he should have felt, "I am in danger here," as we should do
   if we wandered among men stricken with plague. He should, moreover,
   have taken care to make no boast about his own power, since it is clear
   that the wonders which had been worked were not to his honor, but to
   the glory of the Lord alone. He had not slain the host. He had not made
   the sun go back. He had not, by his skill, restored himself from
   sickness. It was unto God and to God alone that he ought to have
   ascribed all the honor.

   He should not have been vain of his riches, for this led him to show
   those thievish gentry where there was ample plunder to reward their
   exertions. His course of action was clear enough. He should have told
   them of Jehovah, should have proclaimed to them the true God, have
   treated them with courtesy, and then dismissed them, thankful to be rid
   of such a temptation.

   We may now perceive wherein his sin was found. I think it lay in five
   particulars. First, it is evident from the passage in Isaiah 39 that he
   was greatly delighted with their company. It is said, "Hezekiah was
   glad of them." In this chapter it is said, "He hearkened unto them." He
   was very pleased to see them. It is an ill sign when a Christian takes
   great solace in the company of the worldling, more especially when that
   worldling is profane. The Babylonians were wicked idolaters-- it was
   not right for the lover of Jehovah to press them to his bosom. He
   should have felt towards them, "As for your gods I loathe them, for I
   worship the God that made Heaven and earth. Neither can I receive you
   into close familiarity, because you are no lovers of the Lord my God."

   Courtesy is due from the Christian to all men, but the unholy intimacy
   which allows a Believer to receive an unregenerate person as his bosom
   friend is a sin. "Be you not unequally yoked together with unbelievers"
   applies not only to marriage, but to all other intimate unions which
   amount to yoking together. I would not, as a Christian, link my name in
   the same firm with an ungodly man, because, whether I choose it or not,
   however high my integrity may be, if my partner chooses to do doubtful
   actions I must be held responsible in a measure for his sins both
   before God and men.

   It is well when those who are yoked together both pull the same
   way--but what communion has Christ with Belial? Here was Hezekiah's
   first sin--just the very same sin that Jehoshaphat fell into when he
   made ships, in connection with the idolatrous king of Israel, to go to
   Tarshish for gold. The ships were wrecked at Eziongeber, and very
   justly so, for when God's servants go into connection with God's
   enemies, what can they expect but a frown from their Master?

   The next sin which he committed was that he evidently leaned to their
   alliance. Now Hezekiah was the king of a little territory, almost as
   insignificant as a German principality, and his true strength would
   have been to have leaned upon his God and to have made no show whatever
   of military power. It was by God that he had been defended--why should
   he not still rest upon the invisible Jehovah? But no, he thinks, "If I
   could associate with the Babylonians, they are a rising people, it will
   be well for me."

   Mark this--God takes it hard of His people when they leave His arm for
   an arm offlesh. O lover of the Lord Jesus, if you leave the arm of your
   Beloved, if you cease to lean on Him and begin to lean upon your own
   craft or policy, or upon your dearest and best friend, you will smart
   for it! "Cursed is the man that trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm,
   and whose heart departs from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath
   in the desert, and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the
   parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.
   Blessed is the man that trusts in the

   Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by
   the waters, and that spreads out her roots by the river, and shall not
   see when heat comes, but her leaf shall be green, and shall not be
   careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding
   fruit."

   It was this getting away from God, this ceasing to walk by faith, this
   wanting to depend in a carnal manner upon the king of Babylon which
   provoked the Lord to anger. Hezekiah's next sin was his unholy silence
   concerning his God. He does not appear to have said a word to them
   about Jehovah. Would it have been polite? Etiquette, nowadays, often
   demands of a Christian that he should not intrude his religion upon
   company. Away with such etiquette! It is the etiquette of Hell! True
   courtesy to my fellow man's soul makes me speak to him if I believe
   that soul to be in danger.

   Someone once complained of Mr. Rowland Hill that he was too earnest,
   and he told them in reply the following story. When walking at
   Wootton-under-Edge he saw part of a chalk pit fall in upon some men.
   "So," he said, "I ran into the village, crying, Help! Help! Help! And
   nobody said, 'Dear me, how excited the old gentleman is, he is much too
   earnest.' Why," he said, "and when I see a soul perishing, am I not to
   cry help, and be in earnest? Surely souls are yet more to be cared for
   than bodies."

   But nowadays, if one cares about fashion, one must be gagged in all
   companies. You must not intrude, nor be positive in your opinions if
   you would have the good word of fashionable people. O Sirs, when
   disease is abroad in the land the physician is never an intruder among
   dying men! And so you that have Christ, the true Medicine, will never
   be intruders in God's eyes, if with prudence, but yet with boldness,
   you speak concerning the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Shame on your dumb
   tongues! Shame on your silent lips if you speak not of Him! Oh, by the
   love which Jesus manifested on the Cross, bear some such love to your
   fellow men--and as He broke through all things, even through the bonds
   of life and death that He might save you--break through some of these
   flimsy ties, if by any means you may save some!

   Meanwhile, mark that Hezekiah sadly made up for his silence about his
   God by loudly boasting about himself. If he had little to say of his
   God, he had much to say about his spices, his armor, and his gold and
   silver. And I dare say he took them to see the conduit and the pool
   which he had made, and the various other wonders of engineering which
   he had carried out. Ah, Brothers and Sisters, etiquette lets us talk of
   men, but about our God we must be silent! God forbid we should defer to
   such a rule! Hezekiah did as good as say, while he was showing them all
   his wealth, "See what a great man I am!" He would not have said it in
   words, but that was the spirit of it--self-glorification--and
   self-glorification, too, before the very people who would take
   advantage of it.

   Surely his sin also lay in his putting himself on a level with these
   Babylonians. Suppose he had gone to see them. What would they have
   shown him? Why, they would have shown him their granaries, their
   armory, their gold and their silver. Now, they come to see him--who is
   a worshipper of the invisible God--and he glories in just the same
   treasures as those in which they also trusted! When a Christian man
   constantly acts like a worldly man, can it be possible that he is
   acting rightly? When the two actions are precisely the same, and you
   discern no difference, is there not grave cause to suspect that there
   is no difference? By the fruit must you know the tree. And if two trees
   bear precisely the same fruit, is there not cause to suspect that they
   are the same sort of trees?

   Dear Friends, may you and I shun this sin of Hezekiah, and not try to
   match ourselves with sinners as to the joys of this present life. If
   they say, "Here are my treasures," let us tell them about the "city
   which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God," and say, "Our
   treasure is above." Let us imitate the noble Roman lady, who, when her
   friend showed her all her trinkets, waited till her two fair boys came
   home from school, and then pointed to them, and said, "These are my
   jewels."

   Do you, when you hear the worldling vaunting his happiness, drop in a
   gentle word, and say, "I, too, have my earthly comforts, for which I am
   grateful. But my best delights are not here, they spring neither from
   corn, nor wine, nor oil, nor could spices, and gold, and music render
   them to me. My heart is in Heaven. My heart is not here. I have set my
   soul upon things above. Jesus is my joy, and His love is my delight.
   You tell me of what you love, permit me to tell you of what I love. I
   have listened patiently to you, now listen to one of the songs of Zion.
   I have walked with you over your estate, now let me take you over mine.
   You have told me of all the good things which you enjoy, do lend me a
   few minutes of your attention while I tell you of still better things
   which make up my portion."

   The Lord takes it hard on the part of His people if they are ashamed of
   the blessings which He gives them, and if they never boast in the Cross
   of Christ they have good cause to be ashamed of themselves. This, then,
   we think to be

   Hezekiah's sin. Putting it altogether it was: 1. A delight in worldly
   company. 2. Beginning to lean to an arm of flesh. 3. Saying little of
   his God. 4. Making much of himself, and 5. Putting himself on a level
   with worldly men by making his boast where they made theirs.

   III. The third matter we will handle very briefly, namely, THE
   PUNISHMENT AND THE PARDON. We may generally find a man's sin written in
   his punishment. We sow the thorns, and then God flogs us with them. If
   Jesus loves you, my dear Brother or Sister--if there is anything in the
   world that keeps you from Him--He will take it away. It may be a
   favorite child, it may be your health, it may be your wealth--God hates
   idols--and He will never suffer anything to stand between our heart's
   love and Himself. It may be a very painful operation, but it will be a
   necessary one for you that God should grind your idol in pieces and
   make you to drink of it with bitterness and sorrow.

   Moreover, mark you, He threatened to make the same persons the means of
   Hezekiah's punishment who had been the means of his sin. "You were so
   pleased while you showed these Babylonians your treasures, these very
   men shall take them away." And so, Brethren, the things in which we
   confide shall be our disappointment! If we take our hearts away from
   God and give them to any earthly things, that earthly thing will be a
   curse to us. Our sins are the mothers of our sorrows. Judgments being
   therefore threatened, Hezekiah and the people humbled themselves. If
   you and I would escape chastisement we must humble ourselves.

   The child that bares his hack to the rod shall not be very harshly
   struck. Submission more easily averts blows from God's hand than
   anything else. Yet although God removed the punishment as far as
   Hezekiah was concerned, He did not remove the consequences. You see,
   the consequences of showing the Babylonians the treasures were just
   these: they would be sure to go back and tell their king, "That little
   prince has a vast store of spice and armor, and all sorts of precious
   things--we must, before long, pick a quarrel with him and despoil his
   rich hive. We must bring these choice treasures to Babylon--they will
   repay us for the toils of war."

   That was the certain result of Hezekiah's folly. And though God did
   forget the sin and promise to remove the punishment from Hezekiah, yet
   He did not avert the consequences from another generation. So with us.
   Many a sin which the Believer has committed God has pardoned, but the
   consequences come all the same. You may have the guilt forgiven but you
   cannot undo the sin--there it remains--and our children and our
   children's children may have to smart for sins which God has forgiven
   us. A spendthrift may be forgiven for his profligacy, but he sends a
   stream of poverty down to the next generation.

   Some sins are peculiarly mischievous in this way. I doubt not but that
   all sin inevitably brings mischief upon the man committing it and upon
   all around him, in a measure, and that God who forgives the sin leaves
   the consequences to work themselves out according to His will. That is
   a very solemn matter, is it not? You let loose the river, it will flow
   on forever. The action of today will affect all time--more or less it
   will affect every coming age--for your actions affect another man, and
   that other man another, and even eternity itself shall hear the echo
   trembling along its halls of your momentary action which you, perhaps,
   without thought, committed against the living God. This should make us
   very careful, surely, in our walk.

   IV. I have now to conclude by asking you thoughtfully TO GATHER UP THE
   LESSONS OF THIS NARRATIVE, for I find I have not time to do so except
   in hints. This narrative is very full of instruction. It needs
   half-a-dozen sermons instead of one. The lessons, however, which come
   uppermost are just these. See, then, what is in every man's heart. This
   was in Hezekiah's heart--he was one of the best of men--the same is in
   your heart. You are humble today, you will be proud as Satan tomorrow
   if left by God's Grace.

   You little know, my dear Brothers and Sisters, even though you are
   renewed creatures--you little know the villainy of your old nature.
   Perhaps it is not possible for any one of us to know our full capacity
   for guilt. Only let the restraining hand of Providence and Grace be
   taken away, and the wisest of us might become a very madman with the
   rage of sin. O God, teach us to know our hearts and help us, while we
   remember how filthy they are, never to be proud!

   In the next place, tremble at anything that is likely to bring out this
   evil of your heart. Above all, be afraid of prosperity. Be thankful,
   but do not be overjoyed. Walk humbly with your God. Let there be a
   double guard set over your heart. A pirate very seldom attacks a ship
   that is going out unloaded--it is the vessel that is well stored that
   the buccaneer will seek to gain, and so with you--when God loads you
   with mercy the devil will try to take you if he can. Set a double
   watch, and keep your ship as far out of his course as may be. And when
   you must be thrust into temptation, and must mix with worldly men, be
   then watchful above all other times lest by any means you be taken in
   the net. Riches and worldly company are the two cankers that eat out
   the very life of godliness. Christian, be aware of them!

   Should we not be taught by this narrative to cry out every day against
   vainglory? Ah, it is not those standing in prominent spheres who are
   alone in danger of it, but all others. I remember firing a shot once
   with much greater success than I knew of. A certain person had
   frequently said to me that I had been the subject of her earnest
   prayers lest I should be exalted above measure, for she could see my
   danger, and after having heard this so many times that I really knew it
   by heart, I just made the remark that I thought it would be my duty to
   pray for her, too, lest she should be exalted above measure.

   I was greatly amused when this answer came, "I have no temptation to be
   proud. My experience is such that I am in no danger whatever of being
   puffed up," not knowing that her little speech was about the proudest
   statement that could have been made, and that everybody else thought
   her to be the most officious and haughty person within ten miles! Why,
   do you not believe there may be as much pride in rags as in an
   alderman's gown? Is it not just as possible for a man to be proud in a
   dust cart, as if he rode in Her Majesty's chariot? A man may be just as
   proud with half a yard of ground as Alexander with all his kingdoms,
   and may be just as lifted up with a few pence as Croesus with all his
   treasure.

   Pray against pride, dear Friends, wherever you may be. Pride will grow
   on a dunghill as well as in the king's garden. Pray against pride and
   vainglory, and God give you Grace to keep it under! And then supposing
   that you should have given way to it, see the sorrow which it will
   bring you, and if you would escape that sorrow imitate Hezekiah and
   humble yourself. Down, Man, down! "God resists the proud"--as long as
   you are up He resists you--"but He gives Grace to the humble." When God
   is wrestling with man's pride, let the man struggle as he will, He will
   throw him. But when the man is down, God lifts him up. None so ready to
   lift up a fallen foe as our God!

   Bow yourself, then, Christian, and if you are not conscious of any
   particular pride, be humble because you are not so conscious, for pride
   is very likely there. It is when we think we are humble we are most
   proud, and perhaps when we bemoan our pride it may be then that we are
   truly humble. Let us go unto God by Jesus Christ and ask Him to search
   out this pride if it is there, and to lay us low at the foot of the
   Cross.

   Lastly, let us cry to God never to leave us. "Lord, take not Your Holy
   Spirit from us! Withdraw not from us Your restraining Grace! Have You
   not said, 'I, the Lord will keep it, I will water it every moment, lest
   any hurt it, I will keep it night and day'? Lord, keep me everywhere!
   Keep me in the valley, that I murmur not of my low estate! Keep me on
   the mountain, that I wax not giddy through pride at my being lifted up
   so high! Keep me in my youth, when my passions are strong! Keep me in
   my old age, when I am conceited of my wisdom, and may therefore be a
   greater fool than even the young! Keep me when I come to die, lest at
   the very last I should deny You! Keep me living, keep me dying, keep me
   laboring, keep me suffering, keep me fighting, keep me resting, keep me
   everywhere, for everywhere I need You, O my God."

   The Lord keep us looking unto Jesus, and resting alone upon His
   finished work. If we have never trusted Christ at all, may the Lord
   bring us to rest upon His dear Son now! O Sinner! There is but one door
   of hope for you, and it is open! Trust Jesus and live!
     __________________________________________________________________

                              The Voice Of Cholera

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 12, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Can two walk together, except they are agreed? Will a lion roar in the
   forest, when he has no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den, if
   he has caught nothing? Will a bird fall in a snare on the earth, where
   there is no trap for it? Will a snare spring up from the earth, if it
   has caught nothing at all? If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not
   the people be afraid? If there is evil in a city, will not the Lord
   have done it." Amos 3:3-6.

   WE have all felt grieved when reading our bills of mortality to observe
   the mysterious spread of cholera in our great city. It is high time
   that it should be made the subject of special prayer, and that the
   nation should seek unto the Lord for its removal. While as yet there
   has been but comparatively little of the evil, we should be humbled
   under it, that we may be spared a greater outbreak. There are different
   ways of looking at this disease. Men viewing it from one point of view
   have frequently despised those who have regarded it under another
   aspect.

   Occasionally Christian men indignantly express themselves concerning
   those who speak of cholera as the product of ascertained and governable
   causes to be checked and even prevented by due attention to the laws of
   health. I have never shared in that indignation. It seems to me that
   this disease is, to a great extent, in our own hands and that if all
   men would take scrupulous care as to cleanliness, and if better
   dwellings were provided for the poor, and if overcrowding were
   effectually prevented, and if the water supply could be larger, and
   other sanitary improvements could be carried out, the disease, most
   probably, would not occur. Or, if it did visit us occasionally, as the
   result of filth in other countries, it would be in a very mitigated
   form.

   I am thankful that there are many men of intelligence and scientific
   information who can speak well upon this point, and I hope they will
   never cease to speak until all men learn that the laws of cleanliness
   and health are as binding upon us as those of morality. So far from a
   Christian man being angry with those who instruct the people in useful
   secular knowledge, he ought rather to be thankful for them and hope
   that their teaching may be powerful with the masses. The Gospel has no
   quarrel with ventilation, and the Doctrines of Grace have no dispute
   with chloride of lime! We preach repentance and faith, but we do not
   denounce whitewash--and as much as we advocate holiness, we always have
   a good word for cleanliness and sobriety.

   We would promote with all our hearts that which may honor God, but we
   cannot neglect that which may bless our neighbors whom we desire to
   love even as ourselves. On the other hand, it is even more common for
   those who look to natural causes alone to sneer at Believers who view
   the disease as a mysterious scourge from the hand of God. It is
   admitted that it would be most foolish to neglect the appointed means
   of averting sickness--but sneer who may, we believe it to be equally an
   act of folly to forget that the hand of the Lord is in all this. The
   singular manner in which this disease seizes frequently upon unlikely
   persons and turns aside from its expected path should show us that
   there is an unseen hand which directs its gloomy circuit.

   Let the wise man work below, but fix his hope above. Let him cleanse
   and purge away the hotbeds of death, but let him look up to the Lord
   and Giver of Life for success in all his doings. It is not my business
   this morning to describe the sanitary aspect of the subject. This is
   not the day nor the place, but I shall claim a full liberty to enter
   into the theological view of it, and if that should happen to excite
   the contempt of the practical man, we shall be more grieved for his
   narrowness of mind than for his contempt of us! We do not despise him,
   but wish him God speed in his reforms, and he should not despise us,
   but recognize in us his true allies.

   We believe that God sends all pestilences, let them come how they
   may--and that He sends them with a purpose, let them be removed in
   whatever way they may. And we conceive that it is our business as
   ministers of God to call the people's attention to God in the disease
   and teach them the lesson which God would have them learn. I am not
   among those, as you know, who believe that every affliction is a
   judgment upon the particular person to whom it occurs. We perceive that
   in this world the best of men often endure the most of suffering and
   that the worst of men frequently escape. And therefore we do not
   believe in judgments to particular persons except in extraordinary
   cases. But we do, nevertheless, very firmly believe that there are
   national judgments, and that national sins provoke national
   chastisements.

   As to individuals, their punishment or reward is reserved for the next
   state--but nations will not exist in the next world--there is no such
   thing as a judgment of nations, as such, at the Last Great Day. That
   will be the judgment of individuals one by one. The trial and
   punishment of nations takes place in this state, and it is here that we
   are to look for the judgment of God upon national sin.

   Upon the present visitation as a national chastisement we shall speak
   this morning. I shall not detain you with further preface but conduct
   you at once to the questions of the text.

   I. THE FIRST QUESTION is a metaphor taken from the traveler: "Can two
   walk together except they are agreed?" which means, being interpreted,
   that it is no wonder if God does not continue to walk with a sinful
   people. It is not to be expected that when a nation falls out with God,
   God should continue to bless it. Two travelers have been walking
   together for some little time, but all of a sudden they fall to angry
   words and after awhile one strikes the other and maltreats him. You
   cannot suppose that the person thus attacked will continue to walk with
   him who maliciously assaults him. They must part company.

   Now, when God walks with a nation, that nation prospers, but if that
   nation falls to words with God, quarrels with Him about His will and
   Law, and rushes perversely into sinful courses--if there are some in it
   who would have no God at all, who do their best to extirpate His very
   name from the earth which He Himself has made--then we cannot expect
   that God should continue to walk with such offenders! Brethren, let me
   ask you soberly, without fanaticism, to consider whether there has not
   been enough in England, and especially in this great city, to make God
   angry with us? Has there not been grievous disagreement between the
   dwellers in this city and God? Has there not been enough to make Him
   say, "I will walk no more with this people. I will chasten them sorely,
   and send heavy judgments upon them"?

   We will not speak of those sins of this city which are common to all
   other places. But let me ask whether the drunkenness of England is not
   enough to provoke God to strike it with all His thunderbolts. If it is
   said that there is as much drunkenness elsewhere, I reply that possibly
   there may be places found which are quite as besotted, where the gin
   palace blazes with glaring lights at every corner, and the gates
   through which drunkards reel to Hell are opened at every turn. It may
   be so, but I must still hold that there is no other country where
   drunkenness is carried on to such an extent under so strong a
   protest--for drunkenness happens to be a sin against which not only the
   pulpit, the press, and the bench are continually exclaiming--but tens
   of thousands of earnest, indefatigable, courageous, self-denying men
   are both, by their example, and their teaching, denouncing this vice.

   We certainly have no deficiency of protests against excess of drink,
   for there are few companies in which the most sweeping censures are not
   frequently heard. There is not a place throughout the world where
   drunkenness is so vehemently and abundantly cried down as in England!
   There is no place where there is established so strong a public
   sentiment against this degrading form of self-indulgence. There has
   been much done, not, I say, only by those who preach the Gospel, which
   lays the axe at the root of all sin, but also by those who dedicate
   their strength to the sawing off of this particular limb from the great
   tree of evil.

   This vice, then, is known by every man to be a vice, and is no longer
   winked at as a venial offense. It wears upon its front the damning
   mark--it is no longer misnamed conviviality, and excused as an amiable
   weakness. The public mind, to a great extent, is enlightened upon the
   subject of strong drink, and consequently this sin of drunkenness is
   more God-provoking in this country than in any other. There may be
   countries where there is just as much drunkenness, but none in which
   the protest is more clear and plain! And we all hold that sin is
   increased by the measure of light against which a man commits it, and
   that when an evil practice is by the common consent of mankind
   denounced and put down, it becomes the more atrocious on the part of
   those who still pursue it.

   Alas, alas! This drunken city may well expect that God should visit it!
   Moreover, we know enough--and we do not wish to know more of the evil
   which the moon sees--of the debauchery with which certain of the
   streets of our city are reeking. We thank God it has never come to such
   a pass in England, that we nationally recognize and systematically
   regulate lasciviousness so that it may be indulged in with comparative
   impunity. But there can be no sort of doubt that among all classes and
   ranks of men there is enough of lewdness to bring down Heaven's wrath
   upon our city! The sins of the flesh are sure to be visited before long
   by that God who loathes iniquity, and in whose nostrils fornication is
   a stench. He will not forever endure this abounding sin, for it is
   committed, be it remembered, in a country famous above all others for
   its love of home and its estimation of the joys which cluster around
   the family hearth.

   We have not the pestilential influence of a licentious court and a
   degraded public opinion, but this sin is carried on in the teeth of a
   general reverence for purity. Shall not God visit London for the sins
   which nightly pollutes her streets, festers in gilded halls, and riots
   amid revelry and music? Like a terrible monster, the social evil drags
   our daughters down to destruction, and our young men to the gates of
   the grave! And while this lasts we need not wonder if God's
   health-giving Providence should refuse to walk with us, for He cannot
   be agreed with a people who choose the way of filthiness.

   Constant neglect of the worship of God is a sin for which London is
   peculiarly and pre-eminently guilty. In some of our country towns and
   villages the accommodation in places of worship is even larger than the
   population! And I know places in England where there is scarcely a soul
   to be found at home at the hour of public worship--certainly not more
   than absolutely necessary to nurse the sick, care for the infants, and
   protect the doors--for the whole population turns out to attend a place
   of worship. But in London the habitual forsakers of public worship are
   probably in a large majority! It must be so, because we know that even
   if they wished to go, the provision of seat room is most lamentably
   short of what they would require, and yet, short as it is, there is not
   half so much need of churches and chapels in London as there is of
   inclination to go to either the one or the other.

   The masses of our people regard not God, care not for the Lord Jesus,
   and have no thought about eternal things! This is a Christian city, we
   sometimes say, but where shall be found more thorough heathens than we
   may find here? In Canton, Calcutta, or even Timbuktu, the people have
   at least a form of worship and a reverence for some idea of a god, but
   here tens of thousands make no pretense of religious worship. I protest
   unto you all that whereas you think Christianity to be well-known in
   our streets and lanes, you only think so because you have not
   penetrated into their depths--for thick darkness covers the people.

   There are discoveries yet to be made in this city that may make the
   hearts of Christendom melt for shame that we should have permitted such
   God-dishonoring ignorance--that in the very blaze of the sun, as we
   think our country to be--there should be black spots where Christian
   light has never penetrated! O London! Do you think that God's Sabbaths
   are forever to be forgotten? That the voice of the Gospel is to sound
   in your ears and forever to be despised? Shall you forever turn your
   foot from God's House and despise the ministrations of His Truth, and
   shall He not visit such a city as this?

   This dreaded cholera is but a gentle blow from His hand, but if it is
   not felt, and its lesson are not learned, there may come, instead of
   this, a pestilence which may reap the multitude as corn is reaped with
   the sickle! Or He may permit us to be ravaged by a pestilence worse
   than the plague--I mean the pestilence of deadly, soul-destroying
   error! He may remove the candle of His Gospel out of its place and may
   take away the bread of life from those who have despised it, and then,
   O great city, your doom is sealed!

   Brothers and Sisters, if there is any one thing which yet provokes God
   above all this, it is the fact that we have once again, as a nation,
   permitted downright Popery to claim to be our national religion! Dark
   is the day and dismal is the hour which sees the ancient superstitions
   defiling the houses which are at least nominally dedicated to the God
   of Heaven. In our Established Church the Gospel is no longer dominant,
   albeit that a little band of good and faithful men still linger in it,
   and are like a handful of salt amid general putrefaction. We have no
   longer any right to speak of our national Protestant Church--it is not
   Protestant--it tolerates bare-faced Popery, and swarms with worshippers
   of the god whom the baker bakes in the oven, and whom they bite with
   their teeth!

   Not many streets from this building in which we are assembled you may
   have your candles, and your incense, and your copes, and your albs with
   all the other pomp and vanities of the detestable idolatry of Rome.
   That Romanism against which Latimer bore testimony at the stake has
   been suffered to hold its mummeries and practice its fantastic tricks
   in the name of this nation until it counts its deluded admirers by tens
   of thousands! That monster which stained Smithfield with gore and made
   it an ash heap for the martyrs of God has come back to you! The old
   wolf that tore your fathers and tore their palpitating hearts out of
   their bosoms you have allowed to come back into your houses--and you
   are cherishing it and feeding it with your children's meat!

   Once again the harlot of Babylon flaunts her finery in our faces almost
   without rebuke. Do not tell me it is not Popery! It is the same
   Antichrist with which your fathers wrestled--and a man with but half
   his wits about him may see it to be so--and yet this land bears it, and
   rejoices in it, and crouches at the foot of a priest once more! Our
   great ones, our delicate women, and dainty lords, are once again the
   willing vassals of priest-craft and superstition. And amid all this, if
   anyone speaks out, he is assailed as uncharitable, and abhorred as a
   troublemaker in Israel! Is it for nothing that God has favored this
   land with the Gospel? Must all her light be turned to darkness? Must
   all the gains of the valiant men of old be lost by the sloth and
   cowardice of this thoughtless generation?

   In days of yore, men like Knox and Welch in Scotland, and Hugh Latimer,
   and John Bradford fought like lions for the Truth of God, and are we to
   yield like cowardly curs? Are the men of oak succeeded by the men of
   willow? The men who cried, "No Popery here!" now sleep within their
   sepulchers, and their descendants wear the yoke which their fathers
   scorned! Shall not God visit us for this? I would that a voice of
   thunder could arouse this slumbering generation! I am for liberty of
   conscience for every man--I would have, by all manner of means, the
   Catholic as free to practice his religion as anyone else!

   I would have religion left to its own native power for its support, and
   would allow no church to offer to God what it had taken from an
   unwilling people by the legalized robbery of a church-rate and tithe!
   But, above all things, if we must be doomed to have an Established
   Church, I pray God it may not forever be a den of superstition and the
   haunt of Papist heresies! If the Church of England does not sweep
   Tractarianism out of her midst, it should be the daily prayer of every
   Christian man that God would sweep her utterly away from this
   nation--for the old leprosy of Rome ought not to be sanctioned and
   supported by a land which has shed so much of her blood to be purged
   from it!

   Can two walk together, then, except they be agreed? And as these things
   cannot be supposed to be agreeable to the mind and will of God, we
   cannot wonder if there should be a plague upon our cattle, and then a
   plague upon men, and if these should come sevenfold as heavy as they
   have ever come as yet!

   II. THE SECOND QUESTION of the Prophet is, "Will a lion roar in the
   forest, when he has no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den, if
   he has caught nothing?" Amos had observed that a lion does not roar
   without reason. By this question he brings forward the second Truth of
   God, that when God speaks it is not without a cause, and especially
   when He speaks with a threatening voice.

   My brethren, our God is too gracious to send us this cholera without a
   motive. And He is, moreover, too wise, for we all know that judgments
   frequently repeated lose their force. It is like the cry of, "Wolf--if
   there is no meaning in it, men disregard it. God therefore never
   multiplies judgments unnecessarily. Besides, He is too great to trifle
   with men's lives. We heard of some twelve hundred or more who died in a
   week in London, but did we estimate the aggregate of personal pain
   couched in that number--the aggregate of sorrow brought to so many
   hundred families? The aggregate, too, of eternal interests which were
   involved in those sudden deaths?

   Time and eternity, both of them big with tremendous importance, were
   wrapped up, just so many times in those hundreds who fell beneath the
   Mower's scythe. Do you think the Lord does this for nothing? The great
   Lion of Vengeance has not roared unless sin has provoked Him. Since I
   have already indicated our great public sins, I should like to ask
   Christians present how far they have been concerned in them. You who
   profess to be people of God, and who recognize God's hand in this
   visitation, I ask you how far has justice found provocation in jou?

   What have you had to do, professing Christians, with the drunkenness of
   this city? Are you sure that you are quite clear of it? Have you, by
   your teaching and by your example, shown men that the religion of Jesus
   is not consistent with drunkenness? Have you tried to put down this
   vice, or are you in some degree a fellow criminal--an accomplice before
   or after the fact? Oh if you have been guilty, I pray you seek to be
   purged of this sin! You cannot wipe out all the national iniquity, but
   if each man reformed himself of this vice, by God's Grace, this great
   evil would cease. Let each Christian look at home. How far, you
   professors of religion--how far are you clear in the matter of sins of
   the flesh? Has there never been any lightness of speech about these
   sins?

   When merriment has become uproarious upon impurity, have you ever
   joined in such laughter? And what about your course of conversation?
   Have you always been free--I will not say from the grosser acts of
   sin--I scarcely like to ask you such a question, but have you been
   clear from everything that verged upon it? Have you heard ringing in
   your ears the precept, "Be you holy, for I am holy"? Has the Holy
   Spirit by His mighty Grace kept you from indulging in unclean words and
   thoughts? Have you in any way fallen into lightness of talk and
   thought, and so helped to increase the flood of this evil? Oh, my
   Brothers, who among us must not confess to some guilt when we remember
   the Savior's words, "He that looks upon a woman to lust after her has
   committed adultery with her already in his heart"?

   Let us bow our heads in penitence, and seek to the God of all Grace
   that He would not roar over this, His prey, but be pleased to purge us
   from it that we may be clean in His Presence! And so with the other
   sins which we have indicated. Have we all borne our earnest, fervent
   protest against them? Have we been negligent of the House of God, or
   has our continual meeting for public worship cleared us of this? I
   think most of us are clear here, but I know there are some professors
   who neglect the assembling of themselves together, who spend their
   Sunday occasionally, at any rate, where it ought not to be spent, and
   who thus by their lax example increase the general forgetfulness of
   God.

   And as to this Anglican Popery--have we spoken out about that? Or do we
   lend it our direct or even indirect support? God grant that if we have
   not repudiated it we may do so, and holding the Truth of God in the
   love and power of it may we come out of Babylon, lest we be partakers
   of her plagues in the day when God shall visit her in His wrath.

   Such, I think, was what Amos indicated by his second question.

   III. THE THIRD QUESTION is this: "Will a bird fall in a snare on the
   earth, where there is no trap for him?" The first question was taken
   from travelers, the second from wild beasts, and the third from
   fowlers. You see the bird aloft in the sky. All of a sudden it flies to
   the ground and is taken in the net. Now Amos says it would not be taken
   in the net unless a net had been designedly laid to catch it. It is
   taken because the snare was meant to take it--and Amos means to remind
   us that men do not die without a design on God's part.

   It is the same thought as before, but it is held up in another light.
   The bird is not taken in the net without the design of the fowler--and
   men do not fall into the net of death without an intent on God's part.
   Death, with all which it involves on earth and in eternity, is not sent
   by God without a reason. Forever banished from the Christian's
   conversation is the word "chance." "It repents me greatly," says
   Augustine, "that I ever used that heathenish word, fortuna," for
   fortune or chance is a base heathenish invention. God rules and
   overrules all things, and He does nothing without a motive.

   Brothers and Sisters, the falling of a sparrow to the earth is in the
   Divine purpose and answers an end. Every grain of dust that is whirled
   from the threshing floor is steered with as unerring a wisdom as the
   stars in their courses, and there is not a leaf that trembles in the
   autumn from the tree but is piloted by the plan and purpose of the
   Lord. Surely, then, in so great an event as death, involving, as we
   have already said, so much of pain to the person falling, so much of
   bereavement and sorrow to the families of those who are struck, we
   cannot believe but what God has a purpose.

   The insatiable archer is not permitted to shoot his bolts at
   random--every arrow that flies bears this inscription, "I have a
   message from God for you." When God permits disease to walk through the
   streets at night, to stretch out his mighty but invisible hand and take
   away here a child, and there an adult, and consign to the grave those
   who might have otherwise long survived, you will not believe that the
   Lord commissioned so dread a messenger without intending to answer some
   end by his errand. Let us conclude most surely that a purpose,
   consistent with the love and justice of God, lies hidden in the present
   harvest of death.

   IV. Now follows a FOURTH QUESTION: "Will a snare spring up from the
   earth, if it has caught nothing at all? By which he means that the
   fowler does not remove the net until he has caught his bird, so that
   this fourth question implies that inasmuch as God had a purpose in
   sending tribulation, we may expect that He will not remove it until
   that design is answered.

   Whatever God has to say to London, if it is heard at once He need not
   speak again, but if it is not heard the first time, there shall come a
   second voice, and yet another. The fowler takes not away his net unless
   some bird is caught, and God takes not away the trouble which He sends
   unless He has answered His design by it. If you ask me what I think to
   be the design, I believe it to be this--to waken up our indifferent
   population--to make them remember that there is a God! To render them
   susceptible to the influences of the Gospel, to drive them to the House
   of Prayer. To influence their minds to receive the Word, and moreover
   to startle Christians into energy and earnestness that they may work
   while it is called today.

   My reason for selecting this subject at all was that I might be helpful
   in the hands of God the Holy Spirit to aid this great design, that you,
   dear Friends, might hear at once God's voice, that for you, at any
   rate, it might not be necessary that there should be a repetition of
   the judgment. Brothers and Sisters, you are acquainted with history,
   and you have reason to bless God, I am sure, in turning over its pages
   that we have, during the last half century, been spared many of those
   dreadful calamities which in former days occurred in this and other
   lands.

   Who can read the story of the plague of London without a shudder? And
   who can close the book without thankfulness that such a black death is
   unknown among us? Who has read of famines in this land without
   gratitude for the abundance of bread? Who can turn to the descriptions
   of the sack and pillage of cities under such armies as those conducted
   by Tilly and other savage commanders, without thankfulness that we live
   in better days? Who can even read the story of the last campaign in
   Austria without thanking God that our country is an island, and that so
   we are preserved from the horrors of war?

   But it is much to be feared that a constant run of prosperity,
   perpetual peace and freedom from disease may breed in our minds just
   what it has done in all human minds before, namely, security and pride,
   heathenism and forgetfulness of God. It is a most solemn fact that
   human nature can scarcely bear a long continuance of peace and health.
   It is almost necessary that we should be, every now and then, salted
   with affliction lest we putrefy with sin. God grant we may have neither
   famine, nor sword--but as we have pestilence in a very slight degree it
   becomes us to ask the Lord to bless it to the people that a tenderness
   of conscience may be apparent throughout the multitude--and they may
   recognize the hand of God.

   Already I have been told by Christian Brethren laboring in the east of
   London that there is a greater willingness to listen to Gospel Truth,
   and that if there IS a religions service it is more acceptable to the
   people now than it was--for which I thank God as an indication that
   affliction is answering its purpose. There was, perhaps, no part of
   London more destitute of the means of Divine Grace, and of the desire
   to use the means, than that particular district where the plague has
   fallen. And if the Lord shall but make those teeming thousands anxious
   to hear the Gospel of Jesus, and teach them to trust in Him, then the
   design will be answered! And without a doubt the great Fowler will
   gather up His net. May it be so, O Lord, for Your Son Jesus Christ's
   sake.

   V. The questions have all worked to one point. We have seen that it is
   no wonder if disease should come. We have learned that it does not come
   without a cause. We have seen that when it does come there is a design,
   and that it will not be removed unless that design is answered. And now
   we are prepared to take the further step, raised by THE FIFTH QUESTION,
   namely, that an awakening should be the result. "If a trumpet is blown
   in a city, will not the people be afraid?"

   In times of war in olden times there were men stationed upon watch
   towers, and when they saw the enemy coming the cornet was sounded, and
   the people rushed to arms. The sound of a trumpet was the warning of
   war. This cholera is like the sound of a trumpet. The voice of the
   Christian ministry is not heard. Those who go to listen to it do not
   all hear it, for they hear as though they heard not, while the great
   masses know nothing and care less about the preacher's message. The
   ministry of London is not altogether powerless to those who attend it,
   but it is utterly without point or force to the dense masses who lie
   outside the House of God.

   Disease, however, is a trumpet which must be heard! Its echoes reach
   the miserable attics where the poor are crowded together and have never
   heard nor cared for the name of Christ--they hear the sound--and as one
   after another dies, they tremble. In the darkest cellar in the most
   crowded haunt of vice--yes, and in the palaces of kings, in the halls
   of the rich and great--the sound finds an entrance and the cry is
   raised, "The death plague is come! The cholera is among us!" All men
   are compelled to hear the trumpet! Would to God they heard it to better
   purpose! Would to God all of us were aroused to a searching of heart,
   and, above all, led to fly to Christ Jesus, the great Sacrifice for
   sin, and to find in Him a rescue from the greater plague--the wrath to
   come!

   VI. The great end and design of God, then, it seems, is to arouse the
   city, and that arousing should follow from the fact declared in THE
   LAST QUESTION: "If there is evil in a city, will not the Lord have done
   it?" Here is not intended moral evil--that rests with man--but physical
   evil, the evil of pestilence or famine! Shall there be cholera in the
   city, and God has not done it? My soul cowered down under the majesty
   of that question as I read it. It seemed to stretch its black wings
   over my head, and had I not known them to be the wings of God, I should
   have been afraid!

   The text talked with me in this fashion--It is not the cholera which
   has slain these hundreds. The cholera was but the sword. The hand which
   scattered death is the hand of a greater than mere disease. God Himself
   is traversing London! God, with silent footstep, walks the hospitals,
   enters the chamber, strikes the wayfarer in the street, and chills the
   heart of the suppliant kneeling by his bed. God, the great Judge of
   all, at whose belt swing the keys of Death and Hell, the mysterious One
   whose voice bids the pillars of Heaven's starry roof to tremble, who
   made the stars, and can quench them at His will--it was none other than
   He who walked down our crowded courts, and entering our lanes and
   alleys called one after another the souls of men to their last account!
   God is abroad!

   There are times when God comes especially near to men. He is
   everywhere, and yet He is frequently described in Scripture as saying,
   "Let Us go down, that We may see whether it is altogether according to
   the report." God has come down, and is going through this city! Tread
   solemnly when you go to your business tomorrow morning--you walk the
   streets where God has walked--you who will go to the cemetery with your
   dead ones, I had almost said. Take off your shoes from your feet, for
   the place where you stand is holy ground, for God is there! The last
   time this disease was here I had a pervading sense of the Presence of
   God wherever I went. It seemed to me as if the veil between time and
   eternity were more transparent than usual.

   If anything ought to compel our attention to God's voice, it should be
   the remembrance that it is attended with God's Presence, and if
   anything ought to make us feel His rod, it is the fact that it is not
   the rod that smites, but God Himself that uses the rod!

   Leaving the text itself, I want to gather up my thoughts, as God shall
   help me, in a few earnest words. My dear Hearers, I would speak as
   God's mouth to you as His Holy Spirit shall enable me. Is not the Lord
   speaking to all of us, both saints and sinners, and warning us to be
   agreed with Him? O you who are His blood-bought people, Believers in
   Jesus--is there any sin that has parted you from communion with Christ?
   Have you fallen into anything which has provoked the Spirit, so that
   His comforts are withdrawn? If so, by deep humility and earnest prayer,
   standing at the foot of the Cross of the Lord Jesus, pray--

   "Return, You heavenly Dove, return Sweet messenger of rest! I hate the
   sins that made You mourn, And drove You from my breast."

   At all times it is well for the Christian to acquaint himself with God
   and be at peace, but especially just now. How can you help others if
   you yourself have lost the sense of the love of God shed abroad in your
   heart? I know you are His and He will never cast you away, but if you
   do not enjoy His Presence you will be as weak as water. And oh, those
   of you who are not His people! Can you bear to be at disagreement with
   God? How can He walk with you? You ask His protection, but how can you
   expect it if you are not agreed with Him?

   Now, if two men walk together, there must be a place where they meet
   each other. Do you know where that is? It is at the Cross! Sinner, if
   you trust in Jesus, God will meet you there! That is the place where
   true at-one-ment is made between God and sinners. If you go repenting
   to Jesus, saying, "Have mercy upon my iniquity. Wash me in Your blood,"
   you shall be agreed with God, and then you may look forward to living
   or dying with equal delight! For if we Live we shall walk with God on
   earth, and if we die we shall walk with God above!

   Brethren, while the lion roars, should we not remove any evil which may
   have caused his anger to burn? Christian, search yourself now and purge
   out the old leaven! The head of the Jewish household, when the feast of
   unleavened bread draws near, not only puts away the loaves of bread
   ordinarily used in the household, but takes a candle and searches every
   part of the house lest there should be even a crumb of leaven anywhere.
   He cleans it all out, that he may keep the feast not with leavened
   bread.

   Now, Christian, as this is God's visitation, ask for the candle of the
   Holy Spirit to discover any little sin. Let any little self-indulgence
   into which we have fallen be conscientiously given up, and for the sake
   of that dear Savior who denied Himself every comfort for us, let us
   take up our cross and follow Him, determined that if the lion shall
   roar, it shall not be because of any prey in us.

   And oh, Sinner, against whom God has been roaring, do you not remember
   His own words, "Beware, you that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces,
   and there be none to deliver"? Who can remove the iniquity which
   provokes the Lord to jealousy except the dying Savior, the Lord Jesus?
   He has put away sin by bearing it in His own body, and if you trust Him
   there shall he no sin in you to provoke God. But it shall be said of
   you as of Israel, "In those days, and in that time, said the Lord, the
   iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none. And
   the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them
   whom I reserve."

   Moreover, the Lord our God speaks to us by His Providence, and says,
   "Submit yourselves, this day, to God's design." The great Fowler has
   spread the net--He will not take away that net till He has caught the
   bird. Be caught in it! Saint, fly not from your God! If He puts out
   even an angry hand, fly into it--there is no shelter from an angry God
   but in the pierced hand of His dear Son! When vengeance would strike a
   heavy blow, the closer you can get to it, the less will it wound you.
   Get close to God in Christ! Cling to Him, and He will not destroy you.
   Fly to Jesus! Sinner, fly! Be taken in God's net! Say to God, "What
   would You have me to do? Would you have me to be Yours? Here I am,
   Lord! Before you take me in the net of death, take me in the net of
   Grace. Before the snares of Hell prevent me, let the blessed snare of
   Your eternal love sweetly entangle me. I am, I would be, Yours."

   Be awake, Christian, and be aware of God's design, for the trumpet is
   sounding, and when the trumpet sounds the Christian must not slumber.
   Let the Presence of God infuse into you a more than ordinary courage
   and zeal. My Brothers and Sisters, I wish I could speak to you this
   morning as I had hoped to have done, for then I would thrown my whole
   soul into every word! I charge you, as you love Jesus, as you know the
   value of your own soul--now, if never before--be in earnest for the
   salvation of the sons ofmen!

   Men are always dying! Time, like a mighty rushing stream is always
   bearing them away--but now they are hurried down the torrent in
   increasing numbers! If you and I do not exert ourselves to teach them
   the Gospel, upon our heads must be their blood. It is God's work, we
   know, to save, but then He works by instruments, and we have His own
   solemn word for it--"If the watchman warns them not, they shall perish,
   but their blood will I require at the watchman's hands." Are there no
   houses round your dwelling where Jesus is unknown? Is there no court,
   no lane, no alley near to where you reside without God and without
   Christ?

   Have you no friends unconverted? Have you no acquaintance unsaved? May
   there not be even sitting in the pew with you some unpardoned person?
   May there not be, Sunday after Sunday, sitting in the next seat someone
   who knows not Christ-- who was never warned of his danger or pointed to
   the Remedy? It is a great mercy, when the bell tolls, if we can say of
   those who die, "I did all I could to save them from ruin." I thought
   when I read Whitfield's words to his congregation, I wish I could
   always say as much. He said, "Ah, Souls, if you are lost, it is not for
   lack of praying for! It is not for lack of weeping over! It is not for
   lack of faithful Gospel preaching."

   I can say the last, but I cannot say the first as I could wish. And yet
   I know that there are some of you here, who, if you are lost, are not
   lost for lack of warning, nor for lack of teaching, nor for lack of
   invitation. We have set before you life and death! We have threatened
   you in God's name, and we have invited you by the precious blood of
   Jesus! Years ago there seemed to be some hope about you, but it was
   like the morning cloud and the early dew, for you are still unsaved.
   When I heard the other day that Mrs. So-and-So was dead, and that she
   died of cholera, I could not lament, for she was one who had long
   feared God! When they told me that a worthy young man had fallen, I was
   sorrowful to have lost so good a student from the College, but I was
   thankful that one who had served his God so well in his youth had gone
   to his rest.

   But if I heard of the death of some of you, it would cause me unmingled
   grief and fear! Some of you have been sitting here for years who will,
   I fear, go out of this Tabernacle to destruction--you know you will
   unless you are changed! If you die as you now are you have nothing to
   expect but a fearful looking for ofjudgment and of fiery indignation!
   Some of you know well the result of sin and yet you choose it--your
   consciences prick you often--and yet you run against them! You have
   been alarmed and so awakened that it seems impossible that you can
   continue as you are! But alas, you will not turn and your end is
   coming.

   My Hearer, I can hardly face the thought of your fate! I feel like
   Elijah when he looked into the face of Hazael and trembled as he
   foresaw his history. It is terrible to think of your doom! He who has
   warned you and prayed for you will meet you in another world, and when
   he meets you, you shall not have to say he did not speak plainly and
   pointedly to you. You will be speechless because the trumpet was
   sounded and you did not take the warning! God was in the city and you
   would not hear Him! Death spoke as well as the minister, but you
   stopped both your ears because you were resolved to die! And your heart
   was set on mischief!

   You scorn eternal life and choose destruction for the sake of a few
   paltry pleasures, or a deceitful darling lust which will treacherously
   stab you through your heart! You let Jesus go, and Heaven go, and all
   this for a moment's pleasure! Ah, my Hearer, you shall have much to
   answer for. I speak to you as a dying man and pray you not to venture
   into eternal wrath. Give these words some consideration, I pray you,
   and as you consider them, may God the Holy Spirit fasten them as nails
   in a sure place, and may you seek the Lord while He may be found, and
   call upon Him while He is near, for this is His word to you-- "As I
   live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,
   but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn you, turn you from
   your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?"

   And Jesus adds His loving words, "Come unto Me all you that labor and
   are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And, "The Spirit and the
   bride say, Come. And let him that hears say, Come. And let him that is
   athirst come. And whoever will, let him take the water of life freely."
     __________________________________________________________________

                            Fields White For Harvest

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING, JULY 29, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE
   METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Do you notsay, 'There are yet four months, and then comes the
   harvest'? Behold, Isay to you, Lift up your eyes and look at the fields
   for they are already white for harvest."

   John 4:35.

   MANY unbelieving Christians have a very large stock of reasons for not
   expecting to see many conversions. They suppose that any present
   manifestation of the Divine power in connection with the Truth of God
   is not to be expected. They read the history of past ages and they
   wonder, and sometimes, when their eyes are sufficiently clear, they
   look forward with some sort of hope to the repetition of these scenes
   in future years, that is to say, when they, themselves, are dead and
   buried, and a new age shall have come upon the world.

   But as to God working any wonders in the world now--as to the
   conversion of thousands now--they do not expect it. And if it were to
   happen they would be surprised, and beyond all measure astonished. They
   are forever dwelling in the past, or seeking to roost in the
   future--but as for now, now seeing God's arm made bare, now setting to
   work for the conversion of men, now expecting that God will win hearts
   unto Himself--they are not brought up to this mark yet. Their common
   reason for expecting nothing now is this--that there are yet four
   months, and then comes the harvest. They say, "This is not the time. We
   must have patience. We must wait. This is not the man. This is not the
   hour. This is not the place. We must wait till, under other
   circumstances, other men being given, we look for grander results. But
   we must not expect them now--there are yet four months, and then comes
   the harvest."

   You know that this is the general feeling at present in the Christian
   Church--not to expect any great things now, but to be waiting and
   watching for something or other which may one of these days, in the
   order of Providence, "turn up." Meanwhile, it is true that death does
   not cease to slay! Meanwhile, it is a fact that our cemeteries and
   graveyards are being crowded, and that multitudes are perishing for
   lack of knowledge. Meanwhile, it is most true that error stalks like a
   pestilence through the land. It is true that, as yet, Christ does not
   see of the travail of His soul and that few are the travelers who go
   through the strait gate.

   But these good people seem indifferent to the perishing millions, and
   only say, "There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest." I
   have noticed that this kind of feeling has crept into the smaller
   agencies--to the individual workers, too. In the Sunday school, how
   many a teacher does not expect to see the children of his class
   converted, but fondly hopes that perhaps, when they are grown up, the
   benefit of the instruction which he imparts to them may be apparent?
   "There are yet four months," they say, "and then comes the harvest."
   The most of those who teach our young people have become hopeful that
   perhaps before those young persons shall actually die, or before they
   come to be gray-headed, some Truth that has been dropped into their
   hearts may perhaps germinate, and bud, and come to perfection-- but
   they do not expect a present blessing. "There are yet four months, and
   then comes the harvest."

   Take the most of our ministers, and what are they looking for? They
   hope that God may visit their congregations. But as to holding
   enquirers' meetings every week, and expecting to find people crying,
   "Sir, what must I do to be saved?" after their sermons--all this is not
   according to their notions. "There are yet four months, and then comes
   the harvest." One of these bright sunny days, one of these
   long-expected months of which the Prophets have talked so long, perhaps
   in the Millennium year, which some say is drawing so near, they are
   expecting wonderful things, for "there are yet four months, and then
   comes the harvest."

   Truly, my Brethren, one's ears have been dinned and dunned with it till
   one has got sick of hearing that "there are yet four months, and then
   comes the harvest." Patience is a virtue, but sometimes decision is a
   greater one! To wait long is well, but not when the harvest is ripe and
   ready--for then it will lie upon the ground and rot! To wait may be
   well, but not when men are dying--no, when Hell is filling! Not when
   immortal souls are in jeopardy! Not when the plague is raging, and we
   have, today, to stand between the living and the dead, and wave the
   censer of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that the plague may be stopped!

   Four months, indeed. Four months! Have there not been months enough
   already? We have waited long! We have waited till our patience may well
   have exhausted itself. It was to be four months in the days of our
   grandfathers. It was to be four months in the days of our fathers! And
   now it is to be four months still! Oh that we would learn the Savior's
   words, and say no longer that "there are four months, and then comes
   the harvest"! But let us do as He says, "Lift up your eyes and look at
   the fields for they are already white for harvest." Expect a present
   blessing! Believe that you will have it! Go to work to get it, and do
   not be satisfied unless you do have it!

   Let me dream dreams of the future and put you off from looking for a
   blessing only in the future--for though it may be true that your words
   will be blessed after you are dead--yet do not be content with that
   hope, but want them to be blessed NOW. Though, possibly, a sermon may
   bring a soul to God twenty years after it is preached, yet do not think
   of that! Think of those who are present while it is preached, and be
   not satisfied unless now, on the spot, you reap some of that wheat
   which is already white for harvest!

   We shall now come directly to our subject, and may we have strength
   given by God's Grace to stir up Christian laborers to great and
   instantaneous diligence. We shall take our text in three ways--signs of
   harvest, needs of harvest, and fears of harvest.

   I. SIGNS OF HARVEST. "Do you not say, 'There are yet four months, and
   then comes harvest'? Behold, I say to you, Lift up your eyes and look
   at the fields for they are already white for harvest." What signs were
   there, when the Savior uttered these words, from which the disciples
   might effect an immediate gathering of souls? I answer, first, that
   there was this sign--that the Savior had preached a sermon and that the
   whole of His congregation had been converted!

   You will remind me that He had but one hearer. Yes, but that is the
   first point to which I want to come. The conversion of one soul by the
   Gospel should be to you a hopeful sign that God intends to convert
   others! For look--the cholera is raging in certain towns, say, on the
   Continent--and a physician has been studying the disease. He has
   administered a variety of drugs but in every case without success. He
   has prescribed different methods of treatment, but in no case has he
   succeeded in effecting a cure.

   At last he has hit upon the right drug, and, administering it, he sees
   his patient rallying. Strength evidently given by the medicine, the
   struggle ends favorably, and the patient rises to life and health.
   "Now," says the physician, "I know that I shall have a harvest of men
   who will be preserved from this disease because the same medicine which
   heals one will heal two, will heal twenty, will heal a thousand, or
   even twenty thousand! It only has to be administered--that one person
   has been healed by this compound, and it is clear that as many more may
   be healed as are willing to receive it."

   Brethren, we do not lack this sign with regard to the Gospel! We have
   had it! We have it still! It is clear to you that the Gospel has been
   blessed to the conversion of some. We, as a Church, can show every week
   some whom God converts by His Divine Grace. We have not been left
   without our witnesses at any time. During the last twelve years God's
   hand has continually been stretched out. Now we ought to take this as
   an omen of good! If some have found the Savior, why not more? Christian
   Soldier, you have a sword in your hand that has won one battle--why
   should it not win another, and another, and another? You have the
   Omnipotence of God with you which has already broken one hard
   heart--why should it not break other hard hearts?

   Already one stronghold of the enemy has been captured by the sounding
   of the silver trumpet! Why should not the rest fall, too, when, with
   the confidence of faith we sound the silver trumpet yet again? When
   Napoleon landed on his return from Elba, and one man came and presented
   himself as willing to serve the Emperor, "Here," said Napoleon, "is at
   least one recruit." So may we say when we have converts--"Here is one
   recruit, and thank God for one! For the same attractive influence which
   draws one will draw multitudes more." We have got the right medicine!
   We have got the right power! Therefore let us hope that there is a
   harvest to be reaped now!

   But, again, there was another hopeful sign, namely, that this one
   convert was at that very moment diligently engaged in making more
   converts. "The woman then left her water pot and went her way into the
   city, and said to the men, Come, see a man which told me all things
   that ever I did." We hear a great deal of strategy. It was our Savior's
   strategy to bless the men of Samaria through this woman. He said to
   her, "Go call your husband, and come here." This is the blessing about
   the Gospel--that if it gets into one person's heart it is sure to run
   from that one to all those who live in the neighborhood and who are the
   surroundings of that saved one!

   Just strike the match and let the spark drop in the prairie, and what a
   roaring ocean of flame shall soon come from it! Let God's Grace fall
   into one soul and who knows what the end shall be? When this country of
   ours was all asleep and religion was at the lowest possible ebb, six
   young men at Oxford felt the inspiration of God and they met together
   to pray. They were expelled by the college for the horrid crime of
   meeting together to pray, but what was the result of it? Soon, from the
   Land's End to John o'Groat's House that same inspiration which had
   fallen upon those young men had descended upon the multitudes, till
   from peers of the realm down to the black-faced colliers, men of all
   ranks and grades confessed the power of the God of Israel!

   One of those young men, as you remember, wrote the hymn we sang just
   now--

   "Saw you not the cloud arise, Little as a human hand?"

   It only needs a beginning! Get one soul saved and you have got a
   preacher of Christ at once! There is not a plant that grows by the
   hedge-side but takes care, as it dies, to scatter all down the bank the
   seeds of succeeding generations of plants. And you cannot get the Grace
   of God into a soul but it is sure to try to disseminate the spiritual
   life, and to bring others to know the holy joy which it itself
   experiences.

   Here, then, were two signs of harvest--there was one saved, and that
   one was trying to bring others to be saved. But there was a third sign
   that was better still, namely, that the others were coming to hear.
   There they came, a whole troop of them from that little town, all
   anxious to listen to the Savior! Oh, it is a blessed sign in these
   times of ours that men are willing to listen to the preaching of
   Christ! We can scarcely find places large enough now in which to
   accommodate the multitude. It is true they will not go to hear some
   ministers--who would? Who cares to go to hear where the preaching is
   dull?

   Some charity boy being asked why the eunuch "went on his way
   rejoicing," replied that, "It was because Philip had done preaching to
   him," and I do not doubt that there are some now who from the same
   cause go on their way rejoicing when the sermon is over. But simple
   speech, plain talk about Christ, does win the ear still, and if it is
   but tried, and it really is the Gospel that is preached, there will
   never be a lack of hearers! See how Sunday night after Sunday night the
   theatres have been filled when our Brethren have gone there to preach
   to the working classes the Gospel of Jesus Christ! It is false that the
   working men of London do not care to hear the Gospel--they do care to
   hear it. Only preach it so that it can be understood--take the velvet
   from your mouths and speak plainly--and they will be sure to come to
   listen.

   This is always a good sign, and we may fairly expect a harvest when
   once we get the people to hear. When the fish get round the net, surely
   some of them will be taken. And when the furrows lie open, surely he
   who scatters good seed may have hope that he shall see it spring up.
   Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I am persuaded there never was a time
   when people were more willing to listen to the Gospel of Christ than
   now! They will hear it if you only preach it so that it can be
   understood! Do not, of course, expect them to listen to you if you are
   not earnest about what you have to say. But if you have something to
   tell them that is worth their hearing, never fear but what they will
   give you the hearing. This was another sign of harvest.

   But there was yet a better one. Our Savior knew that a harvest was
   approaching because the persons who were coming to hear were the very
   people who seemed the least likely to listen to His Word. They were
   Samaritans who were coming. "Oh!" said the Jew, "a Samaritan!" If he
   merely heard the word, "Samaritan," he turned on his heels and went his
   way very much in the same style as some of our gentlemen do if they
   merely hear the word, "rough," which is supposed to be the
   conglomeration of everything that is horrible! And yet the person who
   happens to be called a "rough" may be rough in nothing but his
   garments, and may have as gentle a heart as ever beat beneath
   broadcloth. But so it is. Sometimes the very people come to hearken to
   the Gospel whom you would least expect to see listening to it, and this
   is a good sign.

   When the Samaritans will hear, when the giddy multitude are willing to
   stand crowded together to listen to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, when
   the working man is not ashamed to come to the House of God to hear
   Christ preached, and will even stand at a corner of the street and
   listen to it--it is a good sign, and it is a sign that we see now. The
   publican and the harlot are willing to receive the Gospel of Jesus, and
   God blesses them, and they enter into the kingdom of

   Heaven! All these are good signs of a coming harvest! It is, moreover,
   an omen for good when we remember the men who have labored before us.
   How much of labor has been spent upon this city! How many earnest men
   have wept and toiled among our teeming masses, and have gone back to
   their Master with, "Who has believed our report, and to whom has the
   arm of the Lord been revealed?"

   Here for three centuries, I may say, since the days of old Hugh
   Latimer, right on from the time of the preaching at Paul's Cross, there
   has never been a lack of ministrations of God's Truth in this city of
   London and in the surrounding parts of the metropolis. Some of you can
   almost look back to the days when John Newton was at St. Mary Woolnoth,
   and can almost remember Romaine at St. Ann's, Blackfriars--when we had
   among Dissenters such men as Dr. Gill, and afterwards Dr. Rippon, and
   Abraham Booth, and others who labored and toiled for Christ, and yet,
   after all met with but little comparative success.

   There must be some good come from all this! Has all this labor been
   spent for nothing? Has the ground been watered by the sweat of these
   men, and have they plowed it and sown it, and is there never to come a
   harvest? Our Savior seems to say, "Those Samaritans over yonder, they
   have the Word of God. They have heard something about it--even the Jews
   could not keep the light of prophecy away from them--other men have
   prepared them to receive our teachings." And, doubtless, the days that
   are past have been preparing the population of England to receive the
   Gospel. And we may hope that when it does come to them it will come
   with a mighty power, for when the Holy Spirit is pleased to work
   mightily we shall see something done, the like of which England has
   never seen before, and which shall be the result of the accumulated
   labors of many years gone by.

   We have a right to expect a harvest when we remember what has been done
   already. And Brethren, I think it is a sign of some good for the Church
   of Christ when there is a stir among the people. The worst thing,
   perhaps, for true religion is the stagnation of the human mind. When
   people are not thoughtful about other things, it is very seldom that
   you can get them to be thoughtful about religion. It is generally
   supposed that our country friends, some of whom seem to vegetate rather
   than to live, and who are not so pressed with business from morning
   till night as we are in London, must have a great deal of time to give
   to religion, and that they must, therefore, be the most hopeful of
   congregations.

   My country Brethren do not confirm the supposition, and for myself--for
   I preach more in the country than I do in the town--and often spend
   three or four days a week in addressing country audiences--for myself I
   must say that glad as I am to address the assembled crowds in a field
   or anywhere else, I do not find that the supposition that their having
   less to do makes them think more of Divine things is at all correct. I
   believe that where the intellect is most exerted, above other things,
   there is, on the whole, the most hope of sending home some thought
   about Divine things. It is true that thorns may be a hindrance, and
   are, but at any rate they prove that the soil will grow something, and
   I think if I were going to take a farm, I would sooner take one that
   was overgrown with thistles than one which grew nothing at all.

   It is better to lay hold of a man who really does think about something
   than of one who thinks about nothing at all, and has nothing at all to
   think about. It is said--I do not know how truly--that a singular
   apathy had seized the public mind, and that there was nothing that
   could stir it up. Continually it was said that was an age in which
   nobody cared for anything, and I think it is pretty nearly the fact.
   Nobody cared what anyone did or did not do. As long as people could be
   tolerably easy, they seemed to be pretty well satisfied. If you did not
   put on the income-tax too heavily, nothing else would much concern the
   people.

   But now it is not so. I think I see the beginning of a stir in the
   public mind. Even the political stir of the last few days, with all
   about it which one would deplore, shows that the public mind is
   stirring, for there generally comes a waking up about every twenty
   years or so. People go to sleep for a long time, but all of a sudden
   they begin to rub their eyes, and to enquire about this, and about
   that, and about something else. Well, now is the time when the spirit
   is thus aroused to preach the Gospel to that awakened mind! It seems to
   me that no nobler opportunity could present itself than now. Now is the
   time when the corners of the streets should ring with ministers'
   voices! When the Word of God should be distributed in every house! When
   you should give away tracts, not such poor tracts as are mostly given
   away, but tracts with something solid in them, and these should be
   given away by millions, for just now men are thoughtful, and let them
   have the grand revealed reality to think about!

   I believe on this account, let others think what they will, that there
   are the signs of a coming harvest. And, to conclude on this point, it
   is quite certain that at the present period the old priest-crafts do
   not hinder men from hearing the Gospel. Time was, I dare say, in Sychar
   and Samaria, when the people dared not have come out to hear Christ.
   They had to ask some Samaritan Rabbi whether it was proper for them to
   go to hear the new Prophet. You know in half the country towns in
   England this is the case. The people there no more dare to think for
   themselves in religion than they dared to think of old in the days of
   serfdom and slavery.

   Squire-craft and priest-craft still tread the people in the country
   down. But it is not so in London. Nobody here thinks of asking the
   parish priest where he shall go. We can get at the people! We can bring
   the Gospel to their doors! There is no dominant priest-craft to keep us
   back, and I say, Brethren, if Martin Luther could have lived in such an
   age as this, how he would have rejoiced to see it! And if John Bunyan,
   after lying twelve years in Bedford Jail--if Richard Baxter, and
   Alleine, and men of that stamp could have lived in days where there is
   such perfect liberty that every man may hear the Gospel if he cares to
   hear it--they would have been almost ready to say, "Lord, let Your
   servants depart in peace, for our eyes have seen Your salvation."

   This is the hour of the flowing of the tide which taken at its flood
   leads on to fortune. If the Christian Church does not avail herself of
   the present crisis, she deserves to have an age of infidelity to make
   her mourn over her laxity and her indolence! If now the Christian
   Church dares not bestir herself, now when the minds of men are ready,
   when their ears are open, when there is nothing to stand between us and
   the multitude--then I fear she will have cause to repent and mourn in
   days of darkness and bitterness which will inevitably follow.

   Up, then, Believers! If the Bible is worthy of your belief proclaim it
   to others, and proclaim it especially just now. Now is the day and now
   is the hour, for the fields are already white for the harvest.

   II. Supposing all this to be true, we shall now speak of HARVEST NEEDS.
   The needs of harvest are, first, many laborers. If many souls are to be
   converted, there must be many to preach to them. If we are to expect a
   great ingathering, as I think we ought, there must be much energy used
   and much effort put forth. "Pray you, therefore, the Lord of the
   harvest that He would send forth laborers into His harvest," and ask
   Him to be pleased to stir up Christian zeal throughout the whole of
   Christendom that advantage may be taken of this auspicious hour.

   You cannot reap without laborers. I saw a reaping machine the other day
   doing the work very well and very fast, but somehow or other one liked
   the old-fashioned look of the field when the laborers were in it at
   work. Certainly there is no machine that can do this work of
   soul-reaping. It must be done by men--chosen men, who, filled with the
   Spirit of God, shall go forth to ingather souls. The first need, then,
   is more laborers. Who is there among you who will consecrate himself to
   God? I do not ask for young men for the College just now. We have
   enough. But I do ask for young men, old men, and all sorts of men, and
   women, too, to be laborers in the great work of ingathering souls. Many
   sinners perish, and many saints do nothing. Oh, you who know Christ, be
   indifferent no longer!

   The next thing that is needed is sharp sickles as well as more
   laborers. A laborer is no good unless he has got a sickle, and if he
   can keep his sickle sharp, so much the better. You must get a hold,
   dear Friends, of God's Truth. You will do nothing without that Truth of
   God, and you must have that Truth well understood. You must grind your
   sickles--you must go to work with such cutting Truths as justification
   by faith, as the total ruin of mankind--the hope that is laid up in the
   Cross, the energy of the Holy Spirit.

   And when you know these Truths, and know how to use them, you shall
   then be made great reapers in the Master's harvest! It is idle to say,
   "I will go," and then go with no tool in your hands. Get the Truth. Get
   hold of it well, get it sharp and in good order, and who knows, under
   the blessing of God the Holy Spirit, what you may do! The next need of
   harvest is some close binders. When the wheat is cut down you must tie
   it up with sheaves. We want some of you who cannot preach, who cannot
   use the sickle, to go and gather up the wheat which falls under the
   sickle when it is used by others.

   Invite them to come into Church fellowship. Talk to them, get them into
   union with the people of God. And oh, if you happen to be in the Church
   yourselves, try to keep the Church knit together in love. Bind the
   sheaves together! We cannot have good harvest work without loving hands
   to bind the people of God in one. Then we need beside these some to
   take the sheaves home. The Church of God is the barn, it is the
   Master's garner here--He has another garner yonder on the hilltop in
   Heaven--but here we want you to assist in bringing them into the Church
   of Christ. When God has served them, try, if you can, to get them to
   practice the ordinances of God, and to be joined with His people.

   And we need some of you, if you cannot do anything yourselves either in
   reaping, or binding, or bringing the sheaves home, at least by kind
   words and loving speeches to bring refreshments to the reapers. You can
   sometimes remind them of the success you know they have had in certain
   places. You can cheer them when they begin to grow uneasy. You can go
   to those who are working hard and say, "Be not discouraged! God has
   blessed you to my soul. God has owned your work in such-and-such cases.
   Persevere, and God is with you!"

   As I look round this congregation I cannot help thinking what a mass of
   strength there must be here for the Lord's cause if it could but be
   brought out! You, young man, who are full of ability, who would take
   the lead in any society into which you choose to enter--oh, young man,
   how I long for you as a recruit for my Master and to enlist you in His
   service! If you were a Christian, or if being a Christian, you were all
   on fire with love to Christ, what might you not accomplish! I would
   desire have that matron yonder, with her family about her, to enlist
   for the Savior. Oh, what a position of usefulness she has!

   And that great employer of labor there, how influential he is! How a
   good word from him might be blessed to hundreds of people! And even you
   who are servants in families, nurses and so on, you may not have so
   wide a sphere of labor, but you have still your place of influence. Oh,
   if every talent we possess were but consecrated to Christ! London, you
   need not be in the dark if all God's lamps which are in you were but
   lit! O you mighty city! You need not be ignorant of the Gospel if the
   tongue of every child of God would but tell it out. If we were all
   enlisted, all made soldiers for Christ, might not this country yet feel
   the power of Christ? And what are we? A slender few, a handful compared
   with the masses of our fellow Christians! Would God that they were all
   baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and then we might see such
   a harvest as would make Heaven itself ring as we shouted our harvest
   home!

   I charge you who love the Lord--I charge you by the nearness of death,
   by the shortness of the time in which you can serve your Master--do not
   one of you be idle! Oh, my dear Hearers, I would almost say if you are
   members of my Church here, and are doing nothing, get out! Of what
   service can you be? You are drags on the wheels! You are an impediment
   to the Church's course! You are like the heavy baggage which impedes
   the armies of Israel! Do something! In God's name I charge you, do
   something, or else be ashamed of yourselves!

   Hasn't Christ done much for you? Do you profess to have been bought
   with His blood? Have you dared to sing--

   "I love my God with zeal so great That I could give Him all" and are
   you doing nothing? Some of you drink in the Doctrines of Grace, but if
   they are, indeed, true to you, show the Grace of the doctrines by
   spending and being spent in the Master's cause! These, then, are the
   needs of harvest.

   III. And now, lastly, THE FEARS OF HARVEST. The farmer sometimes fears
   that through lack of laborers he may be obliged to leave the wheat out
   in the field till it is considerably damaged. After a certain time the
   wheat spears out and there is a loss sustained. Birds, also, will feast
   upon it, and the farmer's gains are going. My dear friends and fellow
   reapers, this great city is the field that is white for the harvest!
   And every hour in which men are not saved there are capabilities of
   usefulness that are falling out and Satan is running away with
   opportunities for good!

   Supposing those souls to be saved in a few years, yet there are all the
   years between now and then lost for God. I am jealous, not only to have
   souls saved, but to have them saved while young. Why should Satan have
   so much of their time? Why should so many years of their influence be
   thrown into the wrong scale? The wheat, even if you do not get it in
   before it perishes, is losing part of its value every hour. Oh, should
   we not be moved by this to take the sickle and go at once to the work?

   But there is a worse fear than this, namely, that some other wheat may
   remain unharvested and so be destroyed. It may rot in the place where
   it grows! And instead of gladdening the farmer, it may be there to
   become a mere mass of rottenness--the very thing which might have been
   so useful! Ah, how much of London may be destroyed for want of laborers
   to go and take in the harvest! Ah, the millions that never enter a
   place of worship! I speak within bounds, for even if they all wished to
   enter there is hardly room for one million out of three, and a great
   mass never come at all--but how few of us there are who go after them!
   They perish, my Brothers and Sisters, they perish! They perish with an
   overwhelming destruction!

   You know how they perish! You know how you were once on the brink of
   perishing, and how mercy snatched you from it. You have read in that
   old Book of everlasting destruction which is the portion of the men who
   die unwashed in the blood, and unforgiven. I charge you, if you would
   not see souls lost, rise, and with the sickle get to the harvest, for
   meanwhile do you not know that there are other reapers at work? If the
   Christian does not work, there are others who will labor. If the Truth
   of God does not now spread among the masses, error is spreading! You
   cannot silence the tongue of infidelity if you shut your own mouth. You
   cannot stop the voice of priest-craft if you are quiet yourselves. You
   know that the messengers of Satan are busy.

   As Hugh Latimer said, "The busiest bishop in England is the devil. He
   is always traveling up and down his diocese. He neither neglects town
   nor village, nor hamlet, nor so much as one of those who live in his
   see. He is seeking both by night and by day the ruin of souls." Other
   hands--they are gathering the harvest. But it belongs to your Master,
   and will you endure it, will you endure it? You servants of Christ,
   will you allow it? Shall the harvest be taken away? No! By the love you
   bear your Master take the prey from the mighty.

   And now, lastly, perhaps the most solemn reflection is that whether we
   gather in the harvest or not, there is a reaper who is silently
   gathering it every hour. Just now it is whispered that he is sharpening
   his sickle. That reaper is DEATH! You may look upon this great city as
   the harvest field, and every week the bills of mortality tell us how
   steadily and how surely the scythe of Death moves to and fro, and how a
   lane is made through our population. Those who were once living men are
   taken like sheaves to the garner--taken to the graveyard and laid
   aside. You cannot stop their dying, but oh, that God might help you to
   stop their being damned! You cannot stop the breath from going out of
   their bodies, but oh, if the Gospel could but stop their souls from
   going down to destruction!

   It can do it, and nothing else can take its place. Just now this
   cholera has come. There can be little doubt, I suppose, about it being
   here already in some considerable force, and probably it may be worse.
   The Christian cannot dread it--he has nothing to lose--and everything
   to gain. Still, for the sake of others he may well pray that God would
   avert His hand and not let His anger burn. But since it is coming, I
   think it ought to be a motive for active exertion. If there ever was a
   time when the mind is sensitive it is when death is abroad.

   I remember when first I came to London how anxiously people listened to
   the Gospel, for the cholera was raging terribly. There was little
   scoffing then. All day and sometimes all night long I went about from
   house to house and saw men and women dying. And oh, how glad they were
   to see one's face, and when many were afraid to enter their houses for
   fear of disease, we who had no fear about such things found ourselves
   most gladly listened to when we spoke of Christ and of Divine things.

   And now, again, is the minister's time! Now is the time for all of you
   that love souls! You may see men more alarmed than now, I hope they may
   not be--I pray to God that they may not be--but if they should, avail
   yourselves of it. You have the balm of Gilead--when their wounds smart,
   pour it in! You know of Him who died to save, tell them of Him. Lift
   high the Cross before their eyes. Tell them that God became Man that
   man might be lifted up to God. Tell them of Calvary, and its groans,
   and cries, and sweat of blood. Tell them of Jesus hanging on the Cross
   to save sinners. Tell them that there is life for a look at the
   Crucified One!

   Tell them that He is able to save to the uttermost, all them that come
   unto God by Him. Tell them that He is able to save at the eleventh
   hour, and to say to the dying thief, "Today shall you be with Me in
   Paradise." Oh, dear Hearers, while I am exhorting you who are
   Christians to look after strangers, I may well ask you to look over
   those who are sitting in the pews with you! For there are some of you
   who, if you were to die tonight--if, instead of going down yonder steps
   beneath the columns you were to die in your seats--where would your
   souls go? If you reached your home and staggered into your bed, and
   found it your tomb, what would be your eternal fate? Will not
   conscience tell you that you could not plead a Savior's blood? You have
   never trusted it!

   You cannot expect a living Savior to meet you in a dying moment, for
   you have never loved Him! Oh, may God's Grace make you love Him now,
   tonight! Sinner, look to Jesus, and you shall be saved! Trust Christ
   now! Trust Him only! Trust Him wholly! Trust Him earnestly and you
   shall rejoice, even tonight, and you shall be a part of that wheat
   which is white already unto harvest! Oh, my Hearers, I am concerned for
   your souls! I would gladly reap, myself, and bind up some sheaves to be
   carried into our earthly sheltering place in prospect of our heavenly
   home. I cannot bear the thought that any of you should ever be bound in
   bundles to be burned!

   What? Will any of you be lost, and be borne into the flame which never
   can be quenched? It must not be! Turn! Turn! Why will you die? Are
   there any reasons you can urge for your choice when you select
   companionship with sinners here and devils hereafter, and despise the
   Gospel of salvation, and reject the overtures of Grace? There are none!
   You know you are wrong! You are persuaded that your present position is
   false and you are not without some dread of the result at last. Are
   there not at times fears which sting like serpents and poison your
   peace of mind so that you would gladly be free from them if you could?

   Well, listen to me, or rather hearken to God's Word as spoken by
   me--"Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will
   give you rest." I speak of no untried remedy! I have myself tasted it!
   I am a witness of the efficacy and power of the blood of Christ to
   cleanse from all sin. I am surrounded by thousands who are all so many
   proofs of its value and unchanging might--

   "Venture on Him, venture wholly,
   Let no other trust intrude.
   None but Jesus
   Can do helpless sinners good."

   He is waiting to be gracious, near at hand, and not afar off. There
   are, in some parts of the Continent where I have traveled, places so
   sparsely inhabited and the people so poor, that no medical man resides
   in the district. And in such cases, if anyone falls sick he must write
   to the nearest wayside inn to have a notice put up that if any doctor
   or medical man is passing by, they would be glad if he would in
   kindness stay and pay them a visit, so as to give them a chance of
   being healed, if human help can avail in their case. Should no
   physician pass that way, then the man must die--there is no help for
   him. The ignorance of his friends and their poverty cannot help him--he
   must go to his grave.

   But here, my dear Hearers, is the difference in your case. The
   Physician knocks at your door and tells you of your disease. He
   proffers to you the remedy, assures you of a complete and of an
   immediate cure. And you--oh madness and folly unspeakable!--you
   hesitate to welcome Him! And you reject, it may be, all His offered
   care. Then you must perish! For your ignorance and poverty are such
   that no help of man can avail. You cannot effect your own cure and
   therefore you will go down to the pit with your blood upon your own
   head.

   May this folly soon cease, and you be inclined to listen to Him whose
   touch gives health, yes, life from the dead! In His name I proclaim
   salvation! Look, then, to Him! Believe, and life everlasting shall be
   yours. May God Almighty bless you, and may we meet in Heaven. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               Heavenly Geometry

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 19, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be
   strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may
   dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in
   love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth,
   and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ,
   which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness
   of God." Ephesians 3:16-19.

   THIS Divine measurement is an art of the most desirable kind, as
   appears from its being the object of most earnest Apostolic prayers.
   Paul was not content to travail in birth for souls and to become their
   spiritual parent--but he afterwards exercised the functions of a
   nursing father, tenderly caring for the souls to whom he had been
   blessed--and desiring to see them growing up in the faith to the
   ripeness of spiritual maturity. He was parent, nurse, and tutor--in
   fact he became all things, as far as lay within his power--to his
   spiritual children.

   Paul's wise tenderness leads us to an assured confidence that the
   blessing to pray for, which he suspended his writing of so important an
   Epistle, must have been of the very highest value. "For this cause I
   bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He felt that it
   was desirable to the very last degree that the saints should not only
   know themselves to be the objects of Divine favor, but should be well
   acquainted with its sublime qualities and perfections which he here
   compares to a fourfold measurement.

   In this measurement may you and I be skilled. If we know nothing of
   mathematics, may we be well-tutored scholars in this spiritual geometry
   and be able to comprehend the breadths and lengths of Jesus' precious
   love. It may be well at the outset to call your attention to the
   previous education which the Apostle desires for the saints as a
   preliminary to their measurement of Divine love. Then the measurement
   itself which he desires them to practice. And lastly, the practical
   results which would be sure to follow from their being able to
   comprehend the love of Christ Jesus our Lord.

   I. Like a wise and enlightened teacher, Paul desires for the saints
   that they should receive THAT PREVIOUS EDUCATION WHICH IS NECESSARY
   BEFORE THEY WILL BE ABLE TO ENTER UPON SUCH A SCIENCE AS THE
   MEASUREMENT OF CHRIST'S LOVE. When lads go to school they are not at
   first put to study algebra, nor are they sent out to make a
   trigonometrical survey of a county. The schoolmaster knows that they
   must have a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic, or else to teach them
   algebra would be a waste of time, and that they must have some
   acquaintance with common geometry, or it would be absurd to instruct
   them in surveying.

   He therefore begins with the elementary information, and when they have
   learned simpler matters they are ready for the more difficult studies.
   They climb the steps of the door of science and then they are
   introduced to her temple. The Apostle Paul does not propose that the
   new convert should at once be able to measure the breadth and length
   and depth and height of the love of Christ! He knows that this is not
   within the range of his infant mind, for the new-born spirit has a time
   of growth to go through before it can enter into the deep things of
   God. We must learn our alphabet at the dame's school of repentance and
   faith, and study the syntax of Christian holiness at the grammar school
   of experience before we can enter the university of full assurance and
   obtain a fellowship among those who comprehend the science of Christ
   Crucified in its highest degree.

   It is not for the mere babe to compute distances or to fathom
   depths--this is work for men! The child will think as a child and
   understand as a child until instruction and years have developed his
   powers and fitted him for more sublime and manly thought. If you will
   kindly refer to the text you will see what this previous education is
   which the Apostle desired for the saints. It is very fully described in
   three parts. First, He desired that their spiritual faculties might be
   strengthened, for he prays that they might be "strengthened with might
   by the Spirit in the inner man." He does not so much intend that they
   may be strengthened in their mental faculties as in their spiritual
   capacities, to which he refers by the term, "inner man."

   The schoolmaster knows that the boy's mind must be strengthened, that
   his understanding must be exercised, his discernment must be developed,
   and his memory must be rendered capacious before he may enter upon
   superior studies. And the Apostle knows that our spiritual faculties
   must undergo the same kind of development. Our faith, for instance,
   must be unwavering. Our love must become fervent. Our hope must be
   bright. Our joy must be increased, and then, but not till then, we
   shall be able to comprehend the length and breadth of Divine love. We
   are to be strengthened in the inner man by the Spirit of God--and who
   can strengthen as He strengthens? When the Divine Omnipotence pours its
   renewing energy into our poor fainting weakness, then we grow strong,
   indeed!

   When the Divine Intelligence enlightens our pitiful ignorance, then we
   grow truly wise. When the Divine Infinity enlarges and expands our
   narrow capacities to receive the Truth of God, then are we blessedly
   elevated to otherwise unattainable points of blissful knowledge. Oh the
   blessedness of being strengthened of the Holy Spirit! How spiritually
   strong do we become when He infuses His might into us! But the Spirit
   of God works by means, and therefore we may expect to have our
   spiritual faculties strengthened by the study of the Word, by communion
   with Christ, by listening to the earnest exhortations of our Brethren,
   by experience, by prayer, and by all other hallowed exertions which
   Divine Grace has ordained to be the channels of communication between
   the heirs of the kingdom and the Comforter who abides with them
   forever.

   Our strength to learn with must come from God the Holy Spirit. I
   suppose the expression, "strengthened with might," is meant to refer to
   an eminent measure of strength. The Christian man will get to Heaven
   should he have only strength as a grain of mustard seed. Through many
   difficulties the work of faith, though almost water-logged, will be
   tugged into the harbor, for Christ is on board and secures her safety!
   But it is not desirable that we should thus struggle into eternal life.
   It is far more to be hoped that our young faculties may come to healthy
   and vigorous manhood so that, to return to our former metaphor, our
   vessel--staunch and in good trim, with her sails well filled, and her
   flags flying right gallantly, having overcome every storm--may have an
   abundant entrance into the desired haven.

   Brethren, I trust you are not among those who think it quite enough to
   be barely alive unto God. I trust that you wish to be not only babes in
   the family, but young men and fathers in the household, and that you
   aspire to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit with might that you may
   become powerful men--men able to enter into the soul and marrow of
   Divine things, and to discern between things that differ. I would have
   you not mere milk-fed infants, but men able to crack the nuts of the
   Gospel and to digest the strong meat, because by reason of years you
   have had all your senses exercised.

   Why should we forever be obliged to lay again the foundations? Why not
   press onward and upward in heavenly attainments as men do in human
   learning? Why must our heads always wear the dunce's cap and our backs
   smart with the fool's rod? The Holy Spirit works in us to this very end
   that we may be no more mere children, but well-taught men of God! Oh
   grieve Him not, but be willing to be taught! This was the object of the
   Apostle's prayers and of our loving anxieties. Remember, Beloved, that
   none of you will be able to comprehend the measurement of the love of
   Christ unless first of all the Holy Spirit, our Instructor, shall have
   baptized your spiritual powers with His sacred influences. Then you
   will be strengthened with might in that refined and newly created part
   of your being which is called the inner man, because it is your truest,
   most precious, most secret, most vital, most essential self.

   A second part of this preliminary education is mentioned by our Apostle
   in the next sentence--"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith."
   He desires that the Object of study may be evermore before them. A good
   tutor not only wishes his scholar may have a disciplined mind able to
   grapple with the subject, but he endeavors to keep the subject always
   before him. In order to attain to any proficiency in a science, the
   mind must be abstracted from all other thoughts and continually
   exercised with the chosen theme. You will never find a man preeminent
   in astronomy unless astronomy has become the lord of his mind and holds
   a sway over his mind even in his dreams. The anatomist must be bound to
   nerves, and bones, and blood vessels--as the galley slave is bound to
   the oar--or he will never master his subject.

   The botanist must be enamored of every flower, and wedded to every
   plant, or the fields will utterly baffle him. "Through desire, a man
   having separated himself, seeks and intermeddles with all wisdom."
   Solomon knew what he wrote when he said, "separated himself," for
   without separation or abstraction there can be no progress. Now, the
   Apostle desires that we who are Believers, our faculties being
   strengthened, may have the Person of Jesus constantly before us to
   inflame our love, and so increase our knowledge. See how near he would
   have Jesus be! "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." You
   cannot get a subject closer to you than to have it on the inner side of
   the eyes--that is to say, in the heart itself.

   The astronomer cannot always see the stars because they are far away,
   and outside of him. But our Star shines in the Heaven of our hearts
   ever more. The botanist must find his flowers in their seasons, but our
   Plant of renown blooms in our souls all the year round! We carry the
   instruments of our saintly art, and the Object of our devout
   contemplation within ourselves! As a scholar carries in his pocket a
   small edition of his favorite classic, so do we carry Christ in our
   hearts. What if I say we bear about with us a heart edition of the
   Libra Crucis, the Book of the Cross? Renewed hearts need no other
   library than themselves, for Jesus, in our inmost spirits, is library
   enough! If we knew more fully by experience the meaning of, "Christ in
   you the hope of glory," our Heaven-taught affections, which are the
   best part of our inner man, might be continually exercised upon the
   Person, the work, and the love of our dear Redeemer. "That Christ may
   dwell in your hearts."

   Brothers and Sisters, it will be to small profit that we shall talk to
   you about the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love of
   Christ unless there is in your soul a devout longing ambition to set
   the Lord Jesus always before you, as the frequent, if not the constant
   Subject of your meditation! No progress to any extent is to be made in
   the school of the Cross unless you separate yourself and give yourself
   wholly to this. It must be the one great business of your life, to know
   Him and the power of His Resurrection. I would to God that we were all
   entered as diligent scholars in Jesus' college--students of Corpus
   Christi, or the Body of Christ--resolved to attain unto a good degree
   in the learning of the Cross, a learning which angels desire to
   understand!

   But to do this the heart must be full of Jesus, welling up with His
   love, flaming with it, overrunning with it! And therefore the Apostle
   prays, "that Christ may dwell in your hearts." Observe the words, "that
   He may dwell"--not that He may call upon you sometimes, as a casual
   visitor enters into a house and tarries for a night--but that He may
   dwell. That Christ may take up His abode in your hearts. That the Lord
   Jesus may become the Lord and tenant of your inmost being, never more
   to go out, but to dwell there, world without end. Observe, too, the
   words that He may dwell in your hearts--that best room of the house of
   manhood--not in your thoughts alone, but in your affections! Not merely
   have Him in your minds, but have Him in your loves.

   Paul wants you to have a love to Christ of a most abiding character.
   Not a love that flames up under an earnest sermon and then dies out
   into the darkness of a few embers, but a constant flame--the abiding of
   Jesus' love in your hearts, both day and night--like the flame upon the
   altar which never went out. This cannot be accomplished except by
   faith. Faith must be strong, or love will not be fervent. The root of
   the flower must be healthy or we cannot expect the bloom to be sweet.
   Faith is the lily's root, and love is the lily's bloom. Now Jesus
   cannot be in your heart's love except you have a firm hold of Him by
   your heart's faith. Therefore Paul prays that you may always trust
   Christ, that you may always love Him. Thus, Brethren, the Lord Jesus,
   being constantly brought under your heart's attention, you are likely
   to be able to comprehend the measurement of His love which would
   otherwise be impossible for you to do.

   The Apostle prays further that they may have practical exercise in the
   art of holy love--"that you, being rooted and grounded in love." Every
   experienced tutor knows that it is greatly helpful to the student to
   exercise him in his chosen pursuit upon some lower and inferior branch
   of it, so as to lead him gradually to the higher points of it. If, for
   instance, he means him to understand the surveying of estates, he bids
   him measure a field containing an acre or two. If he means him to map
   out a country, he sets him first to make a plan of a neighboring field
   or a farm.

   The Apostle acts upon the same method. "That you, being rooted and
   grounded in love, may be able to comprehend the breadth and length of
   the love of Christ." Having the love of Jesus in you--possessed with
   love to Christ--you will be practiced in the exercise of love and so
   will understand the love which filled the Savior. You will learn to do
   business upon the greater waters of the Redeemer's infinite love to His
   people as you sail upon the stream of your love to Him. Two expressions
   are used--"rooted," like a living tree which lays hold upon the soil
   twists itself round the rocks, and cannot be upturned. "Grounded," like
   a building which has been settled, as a whole, and will never show any
   cracks or flaws in the future through failures in the foundation.

   The Apostle wishes us to be rooted and grounded in love, a vital union
   being established between our souls and Jesus, so that we love Him
   because He first loved us. And also a fiducial union, or a union of
   trust by which we rest upon Jesus as the stones of a wall are settled
   upon the foundation. He would have us, by love and by faith, to be knit
   to Christ, and to be firm, and fast, and fixed, and immovable in our
   loving attachment to Him. My dear Brothers and Sisters, you cannot know
   Christ's love to you, to any great extent, except you thus love Him.
   You must love, or you cannot comprehend love. A man who has never felt
   benevolence towards his fellow creatures--and there are some such
   monsters--sneers and laughs at those who can give their money to the
   poor or to the sick. He thinks such persons fools at least, if not
   absolutely mad.

   "Ah," said one, "I know how to make money," and then he added
   significantly, clenching his fist, "and I know what some people do not
   know--I know how to take care of it, too." There are some benevolent
   people who do not know how to take care of it in that sense, but they
   know how to do good with it! And such people will never be comprehended
   by the mean money-grubbing wretch who pollutes the earth he lives upon.
   As though he were a very Solomon, and benevolent men were idiots, he
   mutters conceitedly, "Well, I cannot understand it. It is stupidity to
   give away your hard-earned money." Of course it is to him! He cannot
   comprehend it, and so the love of Jesus Christ cannot be comprehended
   by a man who does not love.

   If you have no love to souls, you will not understand why Jesus wept
   over Jerusalem. It will puzzle you mightily! You will look to Matthew
   Henry, and Scott, and Gill, and be more puzzled still. But if you love
   the souls of men you will find no difficulty in the passage at all, for
   you will weep over sinners, too. If you do not love the saints, you
   will wonder how Jesus can love them. But when you have once felt an
   unselfish Christ-like love to your fellow men, the riddle will be
   answered. He who circumnavigated the world began by sailing upon brooks
   and mill ponds. And he who would measure the breadths and lengths of
   Jesus' love must feel his own soul filled with affection for his Lord.

   Paul would have us, then, with developed faculties--with the Subject in
   our hearts, and with an exercise of love on our part--prepared to enter
   upon the science. My Brethren, when I consider what a science it
   is--the science of the love of Christ--the most masterly of all
   knowledge, too deep for the archangel's intellect, the wonder of all
   the hosts of Heaven! When I consider that the greatest human minds have
   confessed themselves to be altogether lost in the contemplation, and
   have had to say, "Oh the depths! Oh the depths!" I do not wonder at all
   that the Apostle, instead of praying for us that we might immediately
   enter upon the study of it, first prays that we may be gratified to
   learn it. As some sciences, if taught to an illiterate man would be
   only taught in their letter, and could not be learned in their spirit
   for want of capacity to receive them, so the love of Jesus Christ in
   its length, and breadth, and depth, and height--if it could be taught
   in the letter of it to an untrained Believer--would be, in a great
   measure, lost upon him.

   He would not be deriving true knowledge from it. He would observe the
   letter, but the inward spirit he would not be able to understand.
   Beloved, if you are to win the precious attainment of the knowledge of
   Christ's love in its depth and breadth, you must pray that God would
   strengthen your spiritual powers. You must plead that Jesus may abide
   in your souls and that your love to Him may become vigorous and
   all-absorbing! For only then can you drink deeply into the unutterable
   and infinite love of Jesus!

   II. We now come to consider more closely the SCIENCE OF HEAVENLY
   MEASUREMENT ITSELF. According to the text we have a solid body to deal
   with, for we are to measure its breadth and length, and depth, and
   height. This cubical measurement--for it lies foursquare, like the new
   Jerusalem--proves the reality of the body to be measured.

   Alas, to a great many religious people the love of Jesus is not a solid
   substantial thing at all--it is a beautiful fiction, a sentimental
   belief, a formal theory--but to Paul it was a real, substantial,
   measurable fact. He had considered it this way, and that way, and the
   other way. And it was evidently real to him, whatever it might be to
   others. No one knows the love of Christ at all if he does not know it
   to be real, and no one has felt it in his soul at all unless it becomes
   so real as to constrain him and move him into actual activity.

   We have a word which we sometimes use in a sense which I believe is not
   correct according to the dictionary. I mean the word "realize." That
   word has been forced into the language of Christian experience, and can
   never be forced out again. We must realize, or make real to our hearts
   the love of Christ. That is just what I think the Apostle did--he made
   real to himself the love of his Master and Lord. It was not to him a
   surface theory, which might have breadth, but could not have depth--or
   a mere narrow statement with length, but no breadth! It was a thing as
   firm and solid as anything in the world.

   It is true the love of Jesus is not material and earthly so as to be
   seen and handled, but it is even more substantial than if it were a
   thing to be seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, and the
   things which are not seen are eternal. To the carnal man the visible is
   real, and the invisible a mere dream. But to the spiritual man things
   are reversed--the visible is the shadow and the invisible the
   substance! May you be such men, dear Friends, all of you! The Apostle
   desires that when the love of Christ becomes to us a solid reality we
   may have close communion with it. You may measure the breadth and
   length of a thing at a great distance, but you cannot very well measure
   its depth without drawing near to it.

   What a holy familiarity with Jesus do the words imply when we come to
   measurements of all kinds! What condescension is this which allows the
   sacred heart to be fathomed like a sea, and to be measured as a field!
   Shall the Infinite thus bow itself to man? Shall man refuse to commune
   with such condescending love? Should it not be our deep desire to
   obtain and to retain the most intimate acquaintance with the
   thrice-blessed love of Jesus, so as not only to measure it in one form,
   but in all forms? That in every way in which the love of Christ may be
   regarded, from above or from below, we may be well acquainted with it.

   We should know the inmost secrets of the Redeemer's love! Its doings
   and sacrifices which are the apparent part of it--its breadth, its
   counsels and its plans. Its depth--the secret part of it. Its
   length--its endurance and patience. Its height--its triumphs and
   glories. We would know all that is knowable, for when we know all that
   has been learned by mortals, there is still something that is beyond
   our view, and hence the Apostle adds, "to know the love of Christ,
   which passes knowledge."

   Let me come to the very words of our text, and point out to you their
   order. The first object of the Christian's knowledge should be the
   breadth of the Savior's love. I know a certain school of Christians who
   have need to study this point, for they have a very narrow idea of the
   Lord's loving kindness. They cannot be brought by any means to conceive
   of it as being broad--to them it is no wider than a razor's edge. They
   conceive of Divine love as a very narrow stream. They have never seen
   it to be a mighty, flowing, abounding, and rejoicing river such as it
   really is. The breadth of Christ's love, dear Friends, we are told in
   Scripture, is such that it extends to all ranks and races of
   mankind--not to the Jew only, but also to the Gentile.

   The love of Jesus Christ does not surround our favored island alone,
   but like the ocean, it washes every shore. The love of Jesus Christ has
   been extended to kings upon their thrones, but with equal and more
   frequent bounty to the slaves in their dungeons. In some respects the
   love of Jesus comes to every man, for there is not a man or woman born
   who does not owe something to the benevolence of God through the love
   of Jesus. The respite which keeps the sinner out of Hell is no doubt
   the result of that love which said, "Spare it yet a little longer, till
   I dig about it and fertilize it, and if it brings forth fruit, well."

   Beloved, the benevolent love of Jesus is more extended than the lines
   of His electing love, for we hear Him saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
   which kills the Prophets, and stones them that are sent unto you; how
   often would I have gathered your children together as a hen does gather
   her brood under her wings, and you would not." That is not the love
   which beams resplendently upon His chosen, but it is true love for all
   that--pitying and benevolent love which revealed itself in honest tears
   of grief. I would not have you omit this view of the subject when you
   are measuring its breadth, although we still feel that in its utmost
   depth and fullness that love flows only to His people.

   Beloved, consider the breadth of special love. We are very apt to
   conceive the number of God's elect to be but few. Who told us that?
   When the Savior was asked, "Lord, are there few that shall be saved?"
   He never answered that question, but He said, "Strive to enter into the
   strait gate," as though He had said, "Whether there are many or not,
   you strive to the utmost to enter in." I hope that the multitude of the
   chosen will far exceed the number of the lost. It has always seemed to
   me that if in all things Christ will have the pre-eminence, He will not
   suffer the powers of darkness to drag away the major part of the human
   race.

   On the contrary, a multitude that no man can number--so many as the
   stars in Heaven for multitude, and like the sands upon the seashore are
   innumerable--shall be the fruit of His suffering which shall make Him
   to see of the travail of His soul and to be satisfied. It is well to
   have as broad ideas of the love of Christ as Scripture will permit us,
   and there I trust we shall be content to stay. But, Brethren, we get
   the best idea of the breadth of Christ's love when we behold it flowing
   to our lost and guilty selves! I never thought it so broad a stream
   till I found that it reached to me, even to me! I feared that I was far
   away from its blessed margin, but the river swelled and overflowed its
   banks until at last it washed me, even me!

   How broad it must have been to have reached to some here present who
   had wandered into the plains of sin, and had followed after their own
   wanton devices, and yet the breadth of the river embraced even them.
   You may measure the breadth of it by the sins which it covers. When a
   river is overflowing, you tell how broad it must be by the little
   hillocks and the treetops, which you can see in it. You may see how
   broad is the love of Christ, that it reaches to such offenses as
   these--it reaches to theft, to drunkenness, to blasphemy, to
   fornication, to adultery, to murder. The Savior's measurement of it is
   this, "All manner of sin and of blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men."

   There is a boundry. It stops at one sin which is unto death, but of
   that we know nothing and I trust we never may! With that one exception,
   broad as sin is, so broad is this mighty love of Christ which covers it
   all. Do you not think, however, that we, most of us, fail to see the
   breadth of Christ's love in matters of Providence? You know what is
   meant by the breadth of a man's mind, the breadth of his thoughts when
   he can consider a great many subjects at once--when he has the ability
   to accomplish many designs and many purposes with one stroke. Now, the
   breadth of the Savior's love is just this--there is no part of His
   people's interests which He does not consider. And there is nothing
   which concerns their welfare which is not important to Him.

   Not merely does He think of you, Believer, as an immortal being, but as
   a mortal being, too. Do not deny it or doubt it--the very hairs of your
   head are all numbered! There is nothing that concerns His elect that is
   unimportant to our Lord. "The steps of a good man are ordered by the
   Lord, and He delights in his way." It were a sad thing for us if this
   river of love did not cover all our concerns, for what mischief might
   be worked for us in that part of our business which did not come under
   our gracious Lord's inspection. Oh, Believer, rest assured that the
   heart of Jesus concerns itself about your meaner affairs! Your buying
   and selling He cares for. Your counter and counting-house, your ships
   and your carts and your horses, and your barley, and your wheat, and
   your hay, and your straw--your children, your little ones, and
   everything which concerns you concerns Him, also.

   The breadth of His tender love is such that you may go to Him in all
   matters--for in all your afflictions He is afflicted--and like as a
   father pities his children, so does He pity you. This invites us to
   look at the breadth of the Savior's love under a still greater aspect.
   All the concerns of all His saints that have ever lived or ever shall
   live, are all borne upon the broad bosom of the Son of God! Oh what a
   heart His is, that does not merely comprehend the persons of His
   people, but comprehends the diverge and innumerable concerns of all
   those persons! Alexander, it is said, knew the names of his soldiers,
   but Alexander could not think of every soldier in every tent, and of
   all the business of every soldier. But this the love of Christ does--He
   thinks of all the cares and all the troubles and all the joys present
   and to come of every blood-bought one.

   Now see, dear Friend, if you can measure the breadth of the love of
   Christ! You have a task before you which you will not yet accomplish,
   and if you could, there would still remain another breadth, namely,
   that breadth measured by the gifts which He brings. Think of what He
   has brought you! He has brought you justification! Yes, adoption,
   sanctification, eternal life! The riches of His goodness are
   unsearchable. You shall never be able to tell them out or even conceive
   them. Oh the breadth of the love of Christ! And yet you see this is
   merely a beginning because the breadth and measurement is but surface
   work. This is for you youngsters to think about, but yet I wish some of
   the elder Christians would, too.

   Some of them seem to be so taken up with the height and length that
   they deny the breadth, and you would think from hearing them preach
   that Christ came into the world to save half-a-dozen, and that they
   were five of them--at least that nobody else could go to Heaven except
   such as they were who swore by their Shibboleth and agreed in every jot
   and tittle with their creed. Away with their narrowness! There will be
   more in Heaven than we expect to see there by a long way--and there
   will be some there with whom we had very little comfortable fellowship
   on earth--who had fellowship with Christ, and who are therefore taken
   to dwell with Him forever.

   The next object of study is the length of Christ's love. It has been
   well observed that if Christ had thought upon His people for ten
   minutes it would have been a wonderful condescension. In fact it would
   have been a thing to sing of in Heaven that Christ Jesus did once think
   upon us, because we are not worthy of a minute of God's thoughts. Now
   just try, if you can, to grasp the thought. He has thought upon His
   people as long as He has existed! Is it not eternal love, and what is
   longer than that? "I have loved you with an everlasting love." As long,
   then, with Deity itself is the love of Deity towards its chosen ones!

   God did love us in His Son long before the world began. If an angel
   were to start from today with the design of finding out when God's love
   began, he would doubtless fly on till he lingered at the Cross. "Here,"
   he would say, "here is the fountain, here is the source of it all." But
   he would be reminded that, "God so loved the world that He gave His
   only begotten Son." Then there was a love before the giving of His Son.
   He would fly onward till he paused at Isaiah's day and heard of God's
   love in the prophecy that the Son of man should bear the iniquity of
   His people. He would say, "Surely it begins here!" But saints would
   remind him of yet older words of comfort, and he would fly on till he
   stopped outside of the garden of Eden and heard the Lord say, "The Seed
   of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."

   "Surely," he would say, "it began here." But divinely instructed he
   would go back yet further, even to the eternal councils where first of
   all salvation was planned and contrived in the cabinets of Wisdom
   before the world was. He would have to go back, back, back, till
   creation had vanished--till there remained not a shred of existence
   except the absolute self-existent Deity--and then in the Eternal Mind
   he would see thoughts of love toward a people to be formed for Himself.
   This knowledge of the length of love does not always come to Christians
   early in their history. Some of my dear Brethren know the breadth of
   Christ's love right well, but they seem as if they never would learn
   its length.

   Some of our Arminian friends know a great deal about the breadth of it,
   and can preach very sweetly upon it, too. And I thank God they can, for
   they are the means of bringing in many converts who might not be
   brought in if it were not for their broad preaching. Yes, dear Brothers
   and Sisters, it may be as broad as you like, but it must be long, too.
   You must not preach a love that begins when you begin, but a love which
   is before you--a causeless love which is the cause and not the effect
   of your love--a love which knows no beginning, but is ancient as the
   throne of Deity.

   This love is not only without beginning but it is without pause. There
   is never a moment when Jesus ceases to love His people. The love of
   Jesus knows nothing of suspended animation. There are some rivers in
   Australia which lose themselves, and for miles along their bed you find
   nothing but dry stones at certain seasons of the year. It is never so
   with the love of Christ--it is long, and without a break from beginning
   to end--it is a chain without a single broken or feeble link. The love
   of Jesus possesses an eternal existence in which there is not a single
   intermission, nor even a sign of failure or hint of an end. Here let us
   rejoice without trembling. "Having loved His own which were in the
   world, He loved them to the end."

   We lean our heads upon this pillow and we sleep right sweetly
   there--"He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the
   day of Jesus Christ." "For the gifts and calling of God are without
   repentance." "He said, I am God, I change not, therefore you sons of
   Jacob are not consumed." "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and
   forever." "For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be
   conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born
   among many brethren. Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also
   called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He
   justified, them He also glorified." There are no ifs and buts in this
   circle of Divine Grace! All is as certain as the Throne of God. Our
   conquering Captain shall bring many sons to Glory, and His shall be the
   praise.

   Dear Friends, we studiously consider the length of this love of Christ,
   but I am persuaded, study it as we may, we shall never completely grasp
   it. It is so long that your old age cannot wear it out. So long that
   your continual tribulations cannot exhaust it. Your successive
   temptations shall not drain it dry--like eternity itself it knows no
   bounds.

   My time has fled and I am only in the middle of my subject! Therefore
   the rest of the discourse must be in brief hints and hurried sentences.
   The depth of the love of Jesus! Consider it as stooping to look upon
   such an insignificant creature as man! View the depth of that love in
   receiving such sinful creatures into His embrace! What a depth is seen
   when the Lord Jesus Christ selects some guilty wretch who has openly
   broken the laws of his country and subjected himself to punishment from
   his fellowmen, and yet the Lord Jesus freely pardons him when he
   repents of sin, and receives Him into his heart's love!

   The depth of this river of love is best seen, however, in the fact that
   Jesus became a Man. Deity became Incarnate! The Lord of angels slept
   upon a woman's breast! Nor is this all. Being a Man, He bears our
   sorrows, goes through the world weary, and poor, and patient. A Man of
   Sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Nor is this all--He bears our sins.
   The iniquities of His people, like a huge load, are laid upon His
   shoulders, and He stands as their Substitute. Even yet it is not
   enough, for He bears our punishment, and on the bloody tree He bows His
   head, and is obedient even unto death. Hell's waves rolled over Him.
   The eternal wrath of God spent itself upon His blessed head! He was
   made lower than the angels, but He stooped lower still, till He called
   himself a worm and no man!

   Oh the depth of the agony of Jesus smarting for sin! O Sinner! You
   cannot have gone too deep for Christ's love to reach you. O Backslider!
   You cannot have sinned too foully for forgiveness! You who have gone
   beyond conception in sin--you who have practiced the foulest and most
   devilish of sins--the depth of Christ's love is still deeper, and He is
   able to save even to the uttermost!

   Think next of the height of the Master's love. You see it is put last,
   as the highest point of learning. There are some who have advanced as
   far as to understand somewhat of the depths who do not know the full
   dignity and glory of an heir of Heaven, and have felt but little of the
   power of His ascension. Why, the love of Jesus, even in this present
   life, is a height unspeakable, for has it not lifted us up to become
   sons of God? "And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint
   heirs with Christ." It has given us an earnest of the inheritance! It
   has made us anticipate the hour when we shall dwell with the angels of
   light! It tells us that our conversation is in Heaven, and that our
   life is hid with Christ in God!

   Yet, Brethren, the height of this love will be best seen in a future
   state. You shall be borne up to dwell with Christ in the clouds when
   the world is in a blaze, and when the judgment is passed you shall be
   carried by angels' wings up to the seventh Heaven where God dwells! Oh
   the breadth, the length, the depth, the height! To sum up what we have
   said in four words--for breadth the love of Jesus is immensity, for
   length it is eternity, for depth it is immeasurability--and for height
   it is infinity. O Christian, may the Holy Spirit instruct you in these
   great things!

   III. Lastly, two or three words. If it shall be our privilege to study
   this science and to master it, it will still be over and above us, for
   it passes all knowledge. But there will flow the following PRACTICAL
   RESULTS. We shall be filled with all the fullness of God. Brethren, do
   try and get hold of this marvelous expression when you are alone in
   meditation. Set it before you as a great mystery to be dived into.
   "Filled with all the fullness of God." What can it mean?

   Is it to have God within you? God dwelling in your inmost spirit? It is
   this, but more! "Filled with God"--to hold as much of God as your
   nature can hold--what a thought! "Filled with God," even this is not
   all. "Filled with the fullness of God." The fullness of His love and
   Grace, and power, and holiness can come to dwell in you! But this,
   even, is not all that the verse speaks of! It is written, "filled with
   all the fullness of God." What a transcendent expression! Here we have
   not only an indwelling God, but that God in the utmost fullness of His
   Godhead filling and overflowing the whole soul with His fullness!

   I cannot help borrowing an illustration from a friend who took up a
   bottle by the seashore, filled it full of seawater, corked it down, and
   then threw it into the sea. "Now," he said, "there it is, there is the
   sea in the bottle, and there is the bottle in the sea." It is full to
   fullness, and then, in a still greater fullness. There is my soul with
   God in it, and my soul in God! The fullness of God in me as much as I
   can hold, and then myself in the fullness of God. The illustration
   gives one as much of the text as one knows how to convey--ourselves
   swallowed up in the all-absorbing abyss of the love of God-- and that
   same love of God flowing into all the parts and powers of our soul till
   we are as full of God as man can hold! Then shall we show that love in
   our lives, in our prayers, in our preaching, in everything that we do.
   We shall manifest not only that we have been with Jesus, but that we
   have Jesus dwelling in us, filling us right full with His loving,
   sanctifying, elevating Presence.

   Beloved, if we shall reach the point indicated in the text, we shall
   then begin to imitate the love of God in its four aspects. I am sure if
   we shall ever learn the breadth of Christ's love our love will grow
   broad--we shall no longer confine our love to our own church--but shall
   care for all the churches of God. We shall feel an affection not only
   for Christians of our own name, but to Christians of all names. Then
   our love will gain length also. We shall love Christ so that we cannot
   leave off loving Him. We shall persevere in love, we shall abide in His
   love as He abides in it. We shall constantly have the flame of our love
   going up to Heaven.

   And then our love will acquire depth. We shall be humbled on account of
   our own sinfulness. We shall sink lower and lower in our own esteem,
   and our love will become deeper and more grounded as it descends more
   fully into the core of our nature. And then love will climb the
   heights. We shall forget the world and the cares of it. We shall become

   Christians who lie no longer among the pots, but who have received the
   wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.
   We shall attain to such a height in our love, that we shall scale the
   mountaintops of the promises, and with our foreheads bathed in the
   sunlight shall look down upon the world that still lies in darkness,
   and rejoice that we are made heirs of light!

   Our love mounting to Heaven shall there be in its height as we appear
   before the Great White Throne and cast our crowns with many a song
   before Him who loved us with a breadth, and length, and depth, and
   height of love that even in Heaven shall surpass all measurement. God
   bless you, dear Friends, with this love, for Christ's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                    The Blood Of Abel And The Blood Of Jesus

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 2, 1866.

   "And He said, 'Whathave you done? The voice of your brother's blood
   cries unto Me from the ground.'"

   Genesis 4:10.

   "And to Jesus the Mediator of the Ne w Covenant, and to the blood of
   sprinkling, that speaks better things than that of Abel." Hebrews
   12:24.

   The first shedding of human blood was a very terrible experiment.
   Whether Cain's murderous blow was premeditated or not, the sight of a
   bleeding human corpse must have been a terrible novelty to him. He had
   not been hardened by reading details of warfare, or listening to tales
   of murder. Killing and slaying were new terrors to mankind, and he who
   was the ringleader in such violence must have been filled with mingled
   astonishment at the result of his blow, and apprehension as to its
   consequences.

   I think I see him standing there by the corpse, for a moment stiff with
   fear, awe-struck at the sight of blood. Will the skies dart malignant
   fires upon him? Will the earth produce speedy avengers from her
   astonished soil? What questions must have flashed through the
   murderer's mind! And lo, the warm lifeblood flows in a crimson stream
   upon the earth, and some ghastly comfort arises to the mind of the
   guilty wretch as he observes the earth soak in the blood. It stands not
   in a pool, but the earth opens her mouth to receive and to conceal his
   brother's blood. Sad memorials bespatter the herbage and crimson the
   soil, but still the dreadful flood is drying up, and the murderer feels
   a momentary joy.

   Perhaps Cain went his way dreaming that the terrible matter was all
   over. He had done the deed and it could not be undone. He had struck
   the blow, rid himself of the presence of one who was obnoxious to him.
   But the blood had been swallowed up by the earth and that was the end
   to the business which need cause no further thought. There was no
   machinery in those days of police, and law, and judges, and
   gallows--and therefore Cain had little or nothing to fear. Strong and
   hale man, with no one to punish him and nobody to accuse or upbraid him
   except his father and his mother, and those, possibly, too bowed with
   grief and too mindful of their own offense to show much resentment
   toward their first-born.

   He may, therefore, have imagined that the deed was speechless and
   silent, and that now oblivion would cover his crime so that he might go
   his way as though the deed were never done. It was not so, however, for
   though that blood was silent in the seared conscience of Cain, it had a
   voice elsewhere! A mysterious voice went up beyond the skies--it
   reached the ear of the Invisible, and moved the heart of Eternal
   Justice, so that breaking through the veil which conceals the Infinite
   from man, God revealed Himself and spoke to Cain: "What have you done?
   The voice of your brother's blood cries unto Me from the ground."

   Then Cain knew that blood could not be idly spilt--that murder would be
   avenged--for there was a tongue in every drop of the vital essence
   which flowed from murdered manhood which prevailed with God. So God
   would interpose and hold a solemn inquest. Brethren, that was a more
   terrible experiment, still, which was tried at Calvary when not the
   first man was slaughtered but the Son of God Himself! He who was Man
   but yet was more than man. God manifest in the flesh. It was a dread
   experiment when, having dragged Him before the judgment seat and
   falsely condemned Him, having shouted, "Away with Him, away with Him,"
   they actually dared to take the nails and fasten the Son of God to the
   accursed tree! Terrible, indeed, to lift up His body between earth and
   Heaven, and there to watch its griefs till they ended in His death,
   when they pierced His side, and from it flowed blood and water!

   No doubt Pilate, who had washed his hands in water, thought that no
   mischief would come of it. The Scribes and Pharisees went their way,
   and said, "We have silenced the accusing voice. There will no more be
   heard in our streets of Him who said, 'Woe unto you, Scribes and
   Pharisees, hypocrites.' We shall no longer be disturbed in our
   hypocrisy and formality by the Presence of a pure and holy Being, whose
   simple honesty shall be a stern rebuke to us. We have murdered Him. We
   have put Him to death without just reason, but that is the end of it.
   There will be no voice to that blood."

   Little did they know that up to Heaven the cry of Jerusalem had already
   gone, "His blood be on us, and on our children," was registered in the
   tablets of Justice, and before long Jerusalem became the treasure house
   of woe and a den of misery, so that the like of her destruction has not
   been, neither ever shall be, upon the face of the earth. Far more
   delightful is the fact that another and more melodious cry went up to
   Heaven from the Cross of Calvary. "Father, forgive them," resounded
   from the wounds of Immanuel.

   The blood of Abel was not voiceless, and the blood of Jesus was not
   dumb--it cried so as to be heard amid the thrones of Heaven, and
   blessed be God--it spoke for us and not against us! It spoke not worse
   things, as it might well have done, but better things than that of
   Abel. It did not demand fiercer vengeance than that which fell upon
   Cain. It did not ask that we might be driven vagabonds and fugitives
   upon the face of the earth, and to be at last banished from God into
   Hell forever, but it cried, "Father, forgive them"! And it prevailed,
   and the curse was taken away! And a blessing came to the sons of men.

   This morning we propose to keep our discourse to the subject of the
   voice of the blood of Abel and the voice of the blood of Jesus, as
   standing in comparison the one with the other. They both spoke. That is
   evident. Abel being dead yet speaks, said the Apostle, and we know, to
   our abiding comfort, that the blood of Jesus pleads before the Eternal
   Throne. All blood has a voice, for God is jealous of its preservation.
   The blood of excellent and just men has a more heavenly speech, still,
   but the voice of the blood of Jesus far surpasses all, and among ten
   thousand voices it bears the palm.

   I. In the first place, Jesus' blood speaks better things in general.
   What did the blood of Abel say? Was it not the blood of testimony? When
   Abel fell to the ground beneath his brother's club he bore witness to
   spiritual religion. Cain was the lover of a merely outward worship in
   which faith had no place. He loved a worship of show and pomp--he
   garnished the altar with fruits and decked it with flowers--his was a
   religion of taste and elegance, a religion of his own devising.

   And it was devoid of a humble, believing, spiritual reference to the
   promised Deliverer. Abel stood there the professor of an ungarnished
   religion of faith in the promised Sacrifice. On the altar was a lamb,
   bleeding from its death wound, and laid in order for burning--a ghastly
   spectacle not to be delighted in by taste--a thing from which the
   lovers of the beautiful would turn away. Abel had chosen such an
   offering because God had chosen it, and because it was the fit means
   for leading his faith to its true object--the Lord Jesus Christ. He
   saw, by faith, in the bleeding lamb the memorial of the Lord's great
   propitiation for sin, which could not be seen in Cain's offering of the
   fruits of the earth, however tasteful that offering might be.

   Abel stands forth before us as the first in a cloud of witnesses,
   bearing brave testimony, and prepared to seal it with their lives. He
   died a martyr for the truth, the grandly God-like truth that God
   accepts men according to their faith. All honor to the martyr's blood
   which speaks so effectually for precious truth! Our Lord Jesus Christ,
   being also a testifier and witness for the faith of God, spoke better
   things than Abel because He had more to speak, and spoke from more
   intimate acquaintance with God. He was a fuller witness of Divine Truth
   than Abel could be, for He brought life and immortality to light and
   told His people clearly of the Father.

   Our Lord Jesus Christ had been in the bosom of the Father, and knew the
   Divine secret. This secret He revealed to the sons of men in His
   ministry, and then He sealed it by His blood. It is not to be forgotten
   that though the death of Christ was in chief an atonement for sin, yet
   it was also a testimony to the Truth of God, for He is said to be a
   witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people, and as a
   dying, bleeding martyr, it will be clear to you that this blood
   testifies to fuller, brighter, and more glorious Truth than did the
   blood of Abel.

   Moreover, the blood of Abel spoke good things in that it was the proof
   of faithfulness. This dear servant of the Great Master was faithful
   under his brother's opposition--yes, faithful unto death. It could not
   be said of him as the Apostle said of certain others, "You have not yet
   resisted unto blood, striving against sin." He resisted sin even unto
   blood! He was faithful in all his house as a servant. He turned not
   from his integrity and counted not his life dear unto him. His blood,
   as it fell to the ground, spoke this good thing--it said, "Great God,
   Abel is faithful to you." But the blood of Jesus Christ testifies to
   yet greater faithfulness, still, for it was the sequel of a spotlessly
   perfect life, which no act of sin had ever defiled--whereas Abel's
   death furnished, it is true, a life of faith--but not a life of
   perfection.

   The faithfulness of Jesus was complete from the day of His birth to the
   hour of His death, and inasmuch as He needed not to die, His voluntary
   yielding up of life was all the more an act of obedience, and the
   better proof of His fidelity to His trust. Moreover, we must never
   forget that all that Abel's blood could say as it fell to the ground
   was but the shadow of that more glorious substance to which Jesus'
   death assures us. Jesus did not typify Atonement, but offered it! He
   was not the representative of sacrifice--He was the great Sacrifice
   itself! And inasmuch as the substance must ever excel the shadow, the
   blood of Jesus Christ speaks better things than that of Abel.

   It is well to add that our Lord's Person was infinitely more worthy and
   glorious than that of Abel, and consequently His death must yield to us
   a more golden-mouthed discourse than the death of a mere man like Abel.
   He who dies at the hand of Cain is but one of our race, testifying to
   truth and righteousness, testifying by faith to a sacrifice to come.
   But He who died at the hand of Herod and of Pilate was Divine and came
   upon no common errand, with no ordinary message to deliver. When the
   glorious Son of God bowed His head and gave up the ghost, the voice
   that arose from His blood must necessarily have been louder, sweeter,
   more full, and more God-like than the voice of the martyred Abel's
   gore.

   We understand, then, before coming to details, that on general
   principles we may be pretty clear that the blood of Jesus would speak
   better things than that of Abel.

   II. Now we will enter the very heart of our text, while we remember
   that the blood of Jesus speaks better things to God than the blood of
   Abel did. The blood of Abel cried in the ears of the Lord, for thus He
   said to Cain, "The voice of your brother's blood cries unto Me from the
   ground." That cry did not go round to seek a mediator, but went
   directly to the judgment seat of God and laid an accusation against the
   murderer.

   Now what did Abel's blood say to God? Standing by the spot where Abel
   fell, and marking the ground all crimson with clotted gore, what would
   the blood seem to you to say? What would be your own reflection? What
   would you conceive that the blood said to God? It said just this, "O
   God, one of Your own creatures, the product of your matchless skill,
   has been dashed in pieces and barbarously destroyed. A living,
   sensitive body formed by art and skill, such as only You could show,
   has been wantonly broken. The potter will not bear that the vessel
   which has been fashioned upon the wheel with much cost and labor should
   be wantonly broken, but here is a body far more costly, far more
   wonderful than anything which human art could create, and this has been
   destroyed. Great God, the Creator of all things, will You look on this
   with patience, will You bear to see the work of Your own hands most
   cruelly destroyed?"

   Was there not much in this cry? Then that blood would plead still
   further, "O God, Your creature has been destroyed without cause. No
   just reason of provocation has been given. No offense has been
   committed which could deserve so terrible a stroke. One of Your feeble
   creatures who has a claim upon Your kind protection has been wantonly
   and needlessly slain--his blood appeals to You! Judge of all the earth,
   will You let the weak be trod down by the strong, and will You suffer
   the innocent to be struck by the fierce hand of the wicked?"

   You see the cry gathers force. At first it is, "O God, Your creature
   has been destroyed." Next it is, "O God, Your subject has been
   maltreated by one of his fellow subjects, by one who has become Your
   enemy--will You not interfere?" Yet the blood of Abel said more than
   this. It said, "O God, the blood shed here was shed for You." It seemed
   to say, "If it were not for love of You this blood had not been shed!
   If these drops had not been consecrated by devotion, if this blood had
   not flowed in the veins of a man who loved God with all his heart it
   had not been poured out upon the ground! O God," cries every drop, "I
   fell upon the ground for You--will You endure this? Shall a creature
   that You have made yield up its life with pain and anguish for You, and
   will You be like a cold, motionless, unmoved, immovable statue and look
   on without emotion? Will You not bestir Yourself, O God? Shall blood be
   shed on Your behalf, shed unjustly, too, the blood of Your own loving,
   righteous creature, and will You not interfere?"

   What force there is in such a voice! Yet the blood added to this, "O
   God, I have been shed in defiance of You," for the stroke which came
   from Cain's hand was not aimed merely at Abel--it was in spirit aimed
   at God, for if Cain could have done the same to God as he did to his
   brother, Abel, he doubtless would have done it. He was of that Wicked
   One, and therefore slew his brother, and the wickedness which was in
   him was Deicidal--he would have slain God Himself if it had been in his
   power--and so the blood cried, "O God, here is the gauntlet of defiance
   thrown down to You! Cain defies You. He has struck the first blow at
   You--he has struck down the vanguard of the army of Your elect. Will
   You look on quietly? Will You take no vengeance? Will You have no
   regard? Shall there be silence in Heaven when there are groans and
   cries on earth? Shall Heaven's heart be cold when the heart of the
   enemy is hot with rage and fierce with rebellion? O God, will You not
   interpose?"

   Surely this is a Heaven-piercing cry, but this is not all. The blood of
   the proto-martyr added to all this such an appeal as the following: "O
   God, this is the first of human blood that has been murderously shed,
   and shed by an unnatural brother's hand. Will You pass this by? Then
   how can You be just? Did not this blood challenge the very existence of
   justice in God? O God, if You do not punish this first barbarous
   man-slayer, who kills his brother, than all down the ages men will riot
   in blood and wanton in murder, and they will say, 'How does God know?
   He that sits in the heavens regards not, He will not so much as speak!'
   " It were as though God should issue a license for man to shed each
   other's blood and give permission for red-handed murder to lord it over
   the whole creation if the first murder should pass unnoticed by the
   great Judge of all.

   Do you hear, my Brothers and Sisters, what a cry the blood of Abel must
   have had, and with what power it arose to Heaven? But we are not left
   to conjecture as to the power of that cry, for we are told that God
   heard, and when He heard it He came to reckoning with Cain, and He
   said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries to
   Me from the ground." Then came the withering sentence of it. The ground
   which had drank in the blood became accursed to Cain so that dig it as
   he might it could not yield him a bounteous harvest. Plow it as he
   would, with all his skill and craft, it never could yield its strength
   to him. The original curse of the thorn and the thistle, which had
   fallen upon it when Adam survived, was now doubled to Cain so that he
   reaped but handfuls and gathered scanty sheaves.

   This would be a constant bitter mingled with his daily bread, while
   over and above that he received unto his heart a curse which made him
   the slave of his own dreads. He served Fear and Trembling as his gods,
   and went about the earth with darkness within him and darkness round
   about him, never more rejoicing, but wearing the mark of reprobation
   fixed upon his brow. He life was doubtless Hell upon earth and at last
   he was driven forever from the Presence of the Most High God. Blood has
   a voice in it, and when it is heard against a man it brings upon him a
   curse untold.

   Well now, Brethren, it is a very sweet task to ask you to turn your
   minds away from the blood of Abel to the blood of Jesus. I feel
   persuaded that you did just now recognize the voice of Abel's blood and
   I want your minds to hear with equal distinctness the voice of Jesus
   Christ's blood, for there are the same reasons for its loudness, but
   they are all far more emphatic. Can you stand at Calvary and view the
   flowing of the Savior's blood from hands, and feet, and side? What are
   your own reflections as to what that blood says to God? Think, now, at
   the foot of the Cross. That blood cries with a loud voice to God, and
   what does it say?

   Does it not say this? "O God, this time it is not merely a creature
   which bleeds, but though the body that hangs upon the Cross is the
   creature of Your Holy Spirit, it is Your own Son who now pours out His
   soul unto death! O God, it is Your only-begotten One, dear to You,
   essentially One with You, One in whom You are well-pleased, whose
   obedience is perfect, whose love to You has been unwavering--it is He
   who dies! O God, will You despise the cries and the tears, the groans,
   the moans, the blood of Your own Son? Most tender Father, in whose
   bosom Jesus lay from the foundations of the earth, He dies! And will
   You not regard Him? Shall His blood fall to the ground in vain?"

   Then, moreover, the voice would plead, "It is not only Your Son, but
   Your perfectly innocent Son, in whom was no necessity for dying because
   He had no original sin which would have brought corruption on Him--who
   had, moreover, no actual sin--who throughout life had done nothing
   worthy of death or of bonds. O God, it is Your only Begotten, who,
   without a fault, is led as a lamb to the slaughter and stands like a
   sheep before her shearers. Can You see it, God of all? Can You see the
   infinitely holy and just Son of Your heart led here to die? Can You see
   it and not feel the force of the blood as it cries to You?"

   Was there not added to this fact that our Lord died to vindicate the
   honor of His Father? "For You, O God, for You He dies! He who hangs on
   Calvary hangs there in deference to Your own decree, in fulfillment of
   Your own purpose, in vindication of the honor of Your Law, that You may
   Yourself be glorified! That Your justice may have full scope, and Your
   mercy may have illimitable sway. O God, the Sufferer, pale in death,
   whose wounds are torn open with the cruel nails, and whose soul is
   racked with pain unutterable, dies for You! If there had been no God He
   need not die. If there were no Law to vindicate, no Truth to defend, no
   honor, and majesty, and justice to which to pay homage, it need not
   that He died. If You were content to stain Your honor or to restrain
   Your mercy, there were no need that He should give

   Himself. But it is for You! For You with each pang, for You with each
   groan, for You each drop of blood, and will You not be moved by it
   all?"

   Brethren, is there not power in this voice? Yet over and above this the
   blood must have pleaded thus with God: "O God, the blood which is now
   being shed, thus honorable and glorious in itself, is being poured out
   with a motive which is divinely gracious. He who dies on this Cross
   dies for His enemy, groans for those who make Him groan, suffers for
   those who thrust the dart into His soul, and then mock at the agony
   which they themselves have caused! O God, it is a chain for God in
   Heaven which binds the victim to the horns of the altar, a chain of
   everlasting love, of illimitable goodness."

   Now, dear Friends, you and I could not see a man suffer out of pure
   benevolence without being moved by his sufferings, and shall God be
   unmoved? The perfectly holy and gracious God--shall He be indifferent
   where you and I are stirred to deep emotion? The sight of blood makes
   some of us shudder. The sight of blood shed from an innocent
   person--shed by the hand of violence--would make our very souls chill
   within us! But the thought of that blood being shed with a motive so
   marvelous, because of a disinterested affection towards undeserving
   criminals--this would move us, indeed! And do you dream that it did not
   move the heart of God?

   Blessed be His name, we are not left to conjecture here! It so moved
   our heavenly Father that to this day God has come to man, and speaking
   to us through that blood He has said, "What have you done? Whatever you
   have done, however black and filthy your sin may have been, the voice
   of My Son's blood cries unto Me from the ground, and now from this day
   forth I have taken off the curse from the earth for His sake, neither
   will I curse it any more. You shall be blessed in your basket and in
   your store, in your going out and in your coming in. I have forgiven
   you your iniquities. I have set a mark upon you and no man shall hurt
   you. Neither shall justice smite you, for in the Person of my dear Son
   I have received and accepted you, guilty as you are. Go your way and
   live happily and peaceably, for I have taken away your iniquities and
   cast your sins behind My back. And the day has come in that if your
   sins are searched for, they shall not be found, yes, if they are sought
   out they shall not be found, says the Lord, for I have pardoned them
   whom I have reserved."

   Abel's blood had mighty prevalence to curse, but Jesus' blood has
   prevalence to bless the sons of men! I want you to dwell a little over
   this thought to digest it. I wish I had the power to send it home! Only
   the Holy Spirit, however, can do that. I want you, however, just to
   dwell on it, that you may get into the soul of it. Observe that the
   blood of Abel spoke to God long before Cain spoke. Cain was deaf to the
   voice of his brother's blood, but God heard it. Sinner, long before you
   hear the blood of Jesus, God hears it and spares your guilty soul! Long
   before that blood comes into your soul to melt you to repentance, it
   pleads for you with God! It was not the voice of Cain that brought down
   vengeance, but the voice of Abel's blood--and it is not the cry of the
   sinner seeking mercy that is the cause of mercy--it is the cry of that
   blood of Jesus!

   I know you will tell me you cannot pray. Oh what a mercy it is that the
   blood can! And when you cannot plead so as to prevail, the blood
   pleads. If you are to win mercy from God and get forgiveness, it will
   not be by the efficacy of your prayers and tears, but through the
   efficacy of that blood of God's dear Son! Cain did not ask for
   vengeance, but it came unsought through the blood. And you, though you
   feel as if you hardly dare look for mercy, yet shall find it if you can
   trust the blood of Jesus which speaks for you. The blood does not need
   your voice to increase its power with God--He will hear your voice--but
   it is because He hears the blood of Jesus first of all. It is a mercy
   for us that the blood of Abel spoke against the guilty--Jesus' blood
   pleads not for the innocent, if such there are--they need no plea from
   an atoning sacrifice.

   Jesus pleads for the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell among
   them--for you that have broken His laws, and despised His love, and
   fought against His power--the blood of Jesus pleads for such as you for
   He came into the world to save sinners. "The Son of Man is come to seek
   and to save that which was lost," the precious Book speaks constantly.
   Did you notice that word in the text? "That speaks." Not, "that did
   speak," but, "that speaks." The blood of Jesus pleaded for the thief
   upon the cross, but it--

   "Shall never lose its power,
   Till all the ransomed Church of God
   Is saved to sin no more."

   Brothers and Sisters, when prevailing sin oppresses the conscience it
   is a thousand mercies to know that we have even now a prevailing
   Savior! Years ago some of us came to Christ and we found pardon. But
   our faith occasionally faints, and our doubts grow strong. Come, let us
   go afresh to the Fountain, let us look anew to the Cross, for the blood
   still speaks! Still in effect our Lord Jesus bleeds today as much as He
   did 1800 years ago, for the blood is just as certain in its power with
   God at the present moment as when the thief said, "Lord, remember me."
   Let us think of this and rejoice in this.

   My Soul, when you cannot plead with God, when you dare not, when your
   tongue is silent and despair gags your mouth, even then Jesus pleads!
   Now lay hold upon the Intercessor! Come and cast yourself upon Him!
   Rest wholly in Him! He must prevail though you cannot! He must succeed
   though you have no power whatever! Come then, and link yourself with
   the infallible prevalent plea of the precious blood, and it is all well
   with you, all safe with you, and safe forever! God grant us Grace to do
   this, each one of us, and His be the praise!

   III. Furthermore, Jesus' blood speaks better things to us in our own
   hearts than did the blood of Abel. I suppose most of you read the
   account written by the newspaper correspondents who have passed over
   the battlefields of Koniggratz or Sadowa. How it sickens one to read of
   ditches filled with blood and of the smell from putrid corpses being so
   intolerable that travelers had to leave the battlefield in haste. I
   would not like to be Bismarck, nor the Crown Prince of Prussia, nor the
   King, nor anyone who had a hand in a war so unjustifiable!

   I suppose that wholesale assassins grow used to such things. I suppose
   that they can read of thousands mangled by shot and shell without
   emotion, and even see the heaps of corpses without a shudder--but I am
   certain of this--that it would drive me mad. Ah, to have the blood of
   one person knowingly laid at my door would be enough to dash all
   comfort from my life. But to have the blood of tens of thousands poured
   out to gratify my ambition! I think that must make Reason reel at once.
   It must be an absence of conscience which makes Reason to keep her
   throne when men have been wading through their fellows' blood for mere
   purposes of selfish gain.

   Seeing that there had been no wars in Cain's day, and that the human
   heart had not been brutalized as it now is so as to speak of war as we
   now do in such gentle terms, surely if he had had any conscience at
   all, it must have been a horrible thought to him that he had killed his
   brother! "I have killed a man, I have shed his blood." Surely it made
   him start in his sleep! How could he be quiet upon his lonely couch?
   That red-handed man! Guilt, a grim chamberlain, with fingers bloody red
   would surely draw the curtains of his bed.

   Would not the spectacle all come up before his mind? The talk in the
   field, the sudden impulse, the blow, the blood, the look of his victim
   as he cried for pity as one cruel stroke succeeded another? And then
   the sight of the ghastly body and the streaming blood, and the crimson
   marks on the earth! Oh, it must have been a recollection clinging like
   a viper around the murderer wherever he might be! He might well build a
   city, as we are told he did, in order to quench these fiery
   remembrances.

   Then would the thought come upon him, "You slew him though he was your
   brother." "Am I my brother's keeper?" he said, but men can talk
   sometimes more braggingly than their heart talks in secret. The horror
   of brother-killing must have haunted Cain: "I slew my brother. I, the
   first that was born of woman slew the second born." And then it would
   be suggested, "And why did I slay him? What evil had he done me? What
   if he did offer a different sacrifice from mine, and what if God did
   accept him and not me, yet what hurt had he done me?" The innocence of
   his victim, if Cain had any conscience, must have increased his
   uneasiness for he would remember how inoffensively he had kept those
   sheep of his, and had been like one among them, so lamblike, that
   shepherd-man himself, a true sheep of God's pasture.

   "Yet," Cain would say, "I slew him because I hated God, the God before
   whose bar I am soon to stand, the God who set this mark on me." Can you
   picture the man who had thus to be daily schooled and upbraided by his
   brother's blood? It needs a poet's mind to teach him. Think how you
   would feel if you had killed your own brother! How the guilt would hang
   over you like a black cloud and drop horror into your very soul.

   Now, Brethren, there is more than equal force in the cry of the blood
   of Jesus, only it acts differently, and it speaks better things. Let it
   be remembered, however, that it speaks those better things with the
   same force. Comforts arise from the blood of Jesus as powerful as the
   horrors which arose from the blood of Abel. When the sinner looks to
   Jesus slain, he may well say, "If I did not know that all this blood
   was shed for me as well as by me, my fears would multiply a thousand
   fold. But when I think that that precious blood is blood shed instead
   of mine--that it is blood which God planned and ordained should be shed
   for me from before the foundation of the world--when I think that that
   is the blood of God's own dear Son whom He has struck instead of
   striking me, making Him bear the whole of His wrath that I might not
   bear it, O my God, what comforts come streaming from this blessed
   fountain!"

   Just in proportion as thought of murder would make Cain wretched, in
   the same proportion ought faith to make you happy as you think upon
   Jesus Christ slain! For the blood of Christ, as I said at the beginning
   of the sermon, cannot have a less powerful voice. It must have a more
   powerful voice than that of Abel, and it cries, therefore, more
   powerfully for you than the blood of Abel cried against his brother
   Cain. Oh, then, my clamoring Sins, I can hear you, but I am not afraid
   of you, for the blood of Jesus speaks louder than you all! Oh, then,
   Conscience, I can hear your accusation, but I am not alarmed, for my
   Savior died. I come before God with perfect confidence, because I am
   sprinkled with the blood of my Substitute.

   If the horror of Cain with an awakened conscience might be unendurable,
   so the peace which comes to me through the precious blood of Jesus is
   indescribable and unutterable, a peace like a river, a righteousness
   like the waves of the sea. Sweet peace have all they who hear the blood
   speaking in their souls, telling them that sin is forgiven, that God is
   reconciled, that we are accepted in the Beloved, and that now we are
   preserved in Christ Jesus, and shall never perish, neither shall any
   pluck us out of His hand! I trust you know. I know many of you do, the
   sweet power of this peace-speaking blood! Such innocent blood, ordained
   on purpose to give peace, is precious beyond all price. O my Soul!
   Never look for peace elsewhere, and never be afraid of finding peace
   here.

   If today, O Christian, you have lost your confidence. If today you are
   conscious of having been false to your Lord, and of having done despite
   to His Spirit. If today you feel ashamed of the very name of a
   Christian because you have dishonored it. If today despair is ready to
   strangle your hope and you are tempted to give it all up--yet come now,
   even now--to this precious blood of Jesus Christ! Do not think that my
   Savior can save merely the little sinners! He is a great Savior--mighty
   to save. I know your sins speak very loudly--ah, well they may--and I
   hope you will hear their voices and hate them in the future. But they
   cannot speak so loudly as the blood of Jesus does! It says, "Father,
   Father, shall I die in vain? Father, I paid My blood for sinners, shall
   not sinners be saved? I was struck for the guilty, shall the guilty be
   struck, too?"

   The blood says, "O God, I have vindicated Your Law, what more do You
   demand? I have honored Your Justice, why should You cast the sinner
   into Hell? O Divine Benignity! Can You take two exactions for one
   offense, and punish those for whom Jesus suffered? O Justice! Will you
   here revenge? O Mercy! When the way is cleared, will you not run to
   guilty sinners? O Love Divine, when the pathway is opened for You, will
   You not show Yourself to the rebellious and the vile?" The blood shall
   not plead in vain! Sinners shall be saved, and you and I, I hope, among
   them to the praise and glory of His Grace.

   IV. Two or three words to close with. Jesus' blood, even in my text,
   speaks better things than that of Abel. It speaks the same things but
   in a better sense. Did you notice the first text? God said unto Cain,
   "What have you done?" Now that is what Christ's blood says to you:
   "What have you done?" My dear Hearer, do you not know that your sins
   slew the Savior? If we have been playing with sin, and fancied it to be
   a very little thing, a trifle to play with and laugh at, let us correct
   the mistake!

   Our Savior hangs on the Cross, and was nailed there by those sins of
   ours--shall we think little of them? Looking from the Cross, Jesus says
   to us, "What have you done?" O my Hearer, what have you done? You have
   slain your best Friend and ruined yourself! Let me come home personally
   to everyone. Make an inventory now of your sins. Go over the black list
   from your childhood till now. What have you done? Ah Lord, done enough
   to make me weep forever if it were not that You have wept for me! Drops
   of grief can never repay the debt which is due to Your blood. Alas, I
   have done evil, Lord, but You have done good to me. What have you done?
   "What have you done?" was a dreadful accusation to Cain, it might have
   gone through him like a dart. But to you and to me it is the soft
   inquiring voice of a Father's love bringing us to repentance. May it
   bring us now!

   What I want mainly to indicate is this. If you notice in the second
   text, this blood is called "the blood of sprinkling." Whether Abel's
   blood sprinkled Cain or not I cannot say, but if it did it must have
   added to his horror to have had the blood actually upon him. But this
   adds to the joy in our case, for the blood of Jesus is of little value
   to us until it is sprinkled upon us. Faith dips the hyssop in the
   atoning blood and sprinkles it upon the soul, and the soul is clean!
   The application of the blood of Jesus is the true ground of joy and the
   sure source of Christian comfort. The application of the blood of Abel
   must have been horror, but the application of the blood of Jesus is the
   root and ground of all delight.

   There is another matter in the text with which I conclude. The Apostle
   says, "We are come to the blood of sprinkling." He mentions that among
   other things to which we are come. Now, from the blood of Abel every
   reasonable man would flee away. He that has murdered his fellow desires
   to put a wide distance between himself and the accusing corpse. But we
   come to the blood of Jesus! It is a topic in which we delight as our
   contemplations bring us nearer and nearer to it. I ask you, dear
   Christian Friends, to come nearer to it this morning than you have ever
   been. Think over the great truth of Substitution. Portray to yourselves
   the sufferings of the Savior.

   Dwell in His sight, sit at the foot of Calvary, abide in the presence
   of His Cross, and never turn away from that great spectacle of mercy
   and of misery. Come to it! Be not afraid! Ho, Sinners, who have never
   trusted Jesus, look here and live! May you come to Him now!--

   "Come, guilty souls, and flee away, Like doves to Jesus' wounds."

   No, do not run away from the wounds which you have made, but find
   shelter in them! Don't forget the sufferings of Christ, but rest in
   them! Your only hope lies in trusting in Jesus, resting wholly upon
   Him. Think much of the griefs of your Lord! And if I might suggest to
   some of you who will not be going out this afternoon, perhaps if you
   could spend an hour or two between services in considering the
   sufferings of the Savior, those considerations might be the means of
   bringing faith to you.

   Faith comes by hearing, but it is a thoughtful hearing. And hearing
   comes by the Word of God, but the Word must be thought over. Open the
   Word, read the story of the Cross. Ask the Master to bless it to you,
   and who knows but through the Divine Spirit some of you may yet hear
   the voice of that blood which speaks better things than that of Abel!
   The Lord bless every one of you for His name's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                           Kicking Against The Pricks

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 9, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT
   THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "It is hard for you to kick against the pricks." Acts 9:5.

   THIS expression is highly characteristic of the Savior from its
   figurative form. While He was on earth He spoke to the people in
   parables, and speaking out of Heaven, in this instance, He still adopts
   the parabolic style, as He did in Patmos, when He revealed Himself to
   John as walking among the golden candlesticks. Here is a parable
   wrapped up in a few words--the parable of the ox that was willful, and
   being stricken with the ox-goad, kicked against it and drove the
   ox-goad still deeper into its flesh--a very instructive simile, very
   natural and unstrained like the rest of the Savior's parables, and very
   full of meaning. It is plain, direct, appropriate, simple, and
   self-explaining, like the other parables of our Lord.

   I recognize in the Speaker, who addressed Saul of Tarsus, the Man to
   whom the common people listened gladly, because of the interesting
   manner in which He delivered His teachings. The great Master of simple
   metaphor, who here addresses the rebellions Saul, clings to His chosen
   style and continues to clothe truth in allegory. He does not say to
   Saul, "It is injurious to you to resist My appeals." That would be mere
   abstract fact--He puts it more pictorially--"It is hard for you to kick
   against the pricks."

   Another feature of our Lord's Character is very manifest in this
   sentence. Observe the tenderness of the rebuke. It is not, "Oh, Saul,
   it is wicked, ungenerous, and mischievous of you to resist Me." There
   is no rebuke of that kind, unless it may be implied in the expression,
   "Why do you persecute Me?" But the Savior leaves Saul's conscience to
   say that and does not utter it Himself. Nor did Jesus say, "Saul, Saul,
   it is very hard for My people to bear your cruelties." Nor does He add,
   "It is very provoking to Me, and I shall before long strike you in My
   wrath." No, it is not, "It is hard for Me," but, "It is hard for you,"
   as if the thoughts of the Savior were so set upon His poor, erring, but
   ignorant child that He felt, "As to what you do to My cause I will say
   nothing--but see what you are doing to yourself--you are losing joy and
   comfort. You are injuring your own soul. You are sowing for yourself
   the seeds of future sorrow. It is hard for you."

   Who but the Savior could have spoken after this fashion? I do not
   believe that the most tender-hearted of the Savior's ministers have
   been accustomed to look upon persecutors in that light! If we hear of
   tyrants breathing out threats and slaughter against God's people, we
   very readily say, "What a wicked thing! What a cruel and unrighteous
   thing!" How seldom do we exclaim, "What a sad thing it is for the
   persecutor!" We add, perhaps, with a little sober vindictiveness, "What
   a terrible fate will be that man's!" But we feel but little deep pity
   for one whose terrible case it is to be an enemy to the sinner's
   Friend.

   Alas, what a bitter portion the poor, ignorant, offending persecutor
   has chosen! May we be Christ-like enough to have pity upon him! The
   Savior looks at sin through the glass of compassion--we often look upon
   it through the lens of Pharisaic pride! Jesus, in the words before us,
   shines forth as the very same Savior who said to the woman taken in
   adultery, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more!" It was a
   gentle voice which said, "It is hard for you to kick against the
   pricks."

   We shall ask you to commence this discourse by praying that He who
   said, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?" may be pleased to speak to
   some in this great assembly. And may He who turned the enemy into a
   friend do the like wonder with some men and women here! People of God,
   breathe that prayer! There is no need for you to speak it--the Searcher
   of all hearts knows your desire! Why should not gracious wonders be
   worked while we have such a God to deal with?

   There are many reasons why it should be our desire and our prayer. The
   more grievous the offender may have been the greater will be the
   triumph of Divine Grace in his conversion, and the richer the
   consolation that shall come to the

   Church, as it will be to us a greater proof of the power of the Grace
   of God in these latter days. Pray, then, that the proud sinner may be
   brought upon his knees today! We have in the text five things--an ox,
   an ox-goad, kicks against it, painful results, and a wise counsel.

   I. We have in the parable of the text an ox. That ox is here employed
   as the picture of persecuting Saul and of all who are like he. No other
   beast besides the ox is driven by an ox-goad, and therefore it must be
   the ox which is here meant as kicking against the pricks or goads when
   he is urged onward by the driver. Alas, how low is man fallen that he
   can fitly be compared to a brute beast! "Oh," said the proud heart,
   "does God compare me to a beast?" Ah, my Friend, and it is the beast
   which has cause to complain rather than you--for what beast is that who
   has rebelled against God? I never heard of such!

   The beast acknowledges God and bows its neck to man, whom God appoints
   to be its ruler. The beast fulfils its Maker's purpose. It lives and it
   dies, and both in life and death it answers the end for which God sent
   it into the world. But as for you, you want only to run against God,
   and when you know His will you do the contrary. And though He has
   addressed you with words of love and tenderness as He does some of you
   every Sunday, yet you will not hear, but reject what He says, and go on
   in your rebellious ways! Do not be angry if God should compare you to a
   beast, for if you knew yourself you would compare yourself to one, too.
   Even holy David once said, "So foolish was I and ignorant, I was as a
   beast before You."

   Penitent sinners have frequently wished that they had been beasts
   rather than men, for they have felt as if sin had degraded their nature
   below the degradation of the meanest reptile that creeps upon its
   belly. Oh, Soul, if you know yourself you will not be angry for being
   thus compared, but smiting upon your breast like the publican, you will
   confess yourself unworthy to lift so much as your eyes to Heaven. But
   courage! Though God compares the unregenerate and rebellious sinner to
   a beast, yet it is to a valuable animal--it is to a creature which is
   an object of property and possesses value.

   The text does not liken a man to a wild beast without an owner, but to
   an ox for which its master cares, and for which he has paid a price.
   The ox is bought with money--it is often dearly purchased. When God
   compared Saul to an ox, he did as good as say to him, "You are acting
   like a wild bull, running against Me and goring My people. But still
   you are precious in My sight, and are purchased with a price." "I,"
   says Jesus, "I whom you persecute, I redeemed you, not with corruptible
   things, as with silver and gold, but with My own precious blood. You
   are Mine, and I will not let you go. You are Mine, and I will break you
   in--I will curb that stubborn will of yours.

   "Why do you kick against Me, for I mean to subdue you to do My work. It
   is vain for you to strive and struggle, for I have bought you and I
   will have you. I have paid for you too dearly to let you be lost. I
   have looked upon you as Mine too long to let you go astray from Me any
   more. I will have you, and therefore bow at once, for your will shall
   not long stand out against Mine."

   There are some in this house whose conduct might make them comparable
   to beasts, but I hope they are the objects of God's eternal love and of
   the purchase of the Savior's Atonement and they are, therefore, not
   likened to the wild beasts of the forest that go to their dens uncared
   for--but to an ox which is written down among the wealth of its
   possessor. Our Lord Jesus also compared Saul here to the ox because the
   ox is an animal that is dependent upon its master for the supply of its
   needs. Here you will remember the Prophet Isaiah said, "The ox knows
   its owner, and the ass its master's crib." The ox receives its fodder
   from its master's hand, and knows the hand that feeds it.

   You who are an enemy to God this morning, do you not know that you are
   His creature and that you are the object of His daily Providence? The
   breath which is in your nostrils and in mine comes from the Most High.
   He formed us of clay, and His Omnipotence keeps together the particles
   of dust that make our frame. But for His preservation we should at once
   go back to Mother Earth, and the place that knows us would know us no
   more forever. Dear Hearer, have we not been worse than oxen? We have
   not known the hand that feeds us! Have we not kicked against the God
   from whom all our mercies have been flowing? Oh, then, we must be worse
   than beasts if we do not feel a pang of conscience at the thought of
   God's kindness and our ingratitude!

   To be indebted to God for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy
   years of mercy and yet never to be grateful to Him! To have received
   life, breath, and strength from Him, and today to receive the Gospel
   from His hands and yet to go our way indifferent and careless! This is
   a crime to be detested and abominated! An ox is a creature of which
   service is rightly demanded. As every man who keeps an ox expects it to
   serve him, so also does God expect of those creatures whose needs He
   supplies that they should do His bidding. Why should God keep them, and
   they do Him no service? Would you yourself fodder an ox that would not
   plow if you use it for such work? Or would you feed a horse that would
   never be a beast of draft to you? Would you keep even a dog if it did
   not follow at your heels and flatter you? If the cur snapped at you and
   howled at you as you do, O Sinner, against your Maker, you would soon
   have done with feeding him!

   Take heed lest God have done with feeding you--for if He gets no
   service out of you He will not forever spare you. We are like the
   ox--we must either serve or die--we must either plow or bleed. The
   bullock which is not good for its master in the furrows shall soon be
   good for the butcher in the shop. And the man who will not serve God in
   life shall before long have to acknowledge His justice in the pangs of
   death and to show to wondering worlds what the judgments of God are in
   the terrors of eternity.

   The ox was also selected as a picture of Saul because of its
   perverseness. The bullock is not easily made accustomed to the yoke. It
   is not easy to train an ox to do one's bidding. Therefore a very rough
   and cruel instrument was used by the Eastern farmer--a long stick with
   a sharp prong at the end which he drove into the stubborn ox to compel
   it to move. The ox was sometimes very perverse, and when it set its
   neck to go its own way it was not easy for the farmer to make it move
   in another, and therefore the strokes of the ox-goad were sharp and
   many. Ah, how perverse are our wills! They are more stubborn, surely,
   than the ox. We will not go in the right way. We choose the wrong
   naturally. We go to the fire of sin and we put our finger in it--and we
   burn it--but we do not learn better. We then thrust our hands into it,
   and though we suffer for it, we return and plunge our arm into the
   flame.

   There are some who are suffering at this very day for their sins. The
   sins of their youth are in their bones, and yet they stagger to their
   lusts again. Like the moth that flies to the candle and having singed
   its wings drops down in pain and agony, and only gets strength enough
   to fly up to the candle again, so do some men with their sins. But
   while we are swift to sin, how slow we are to righteousness! Parents
   sometimes complain that they cannot teach their children, they are so
   willful. Ah, if they were as willful as we are towards God, we should
   have cause enough to complain. The teacher says, "I have taught this
   child nineteen times, and he will not learn." But God has taught us
   nineteen thousand times-- "Line upon line, and precept upon precept,
   here a little and there a little"!

   Every day has had its word and every night its sentence--and yet we are
   like the deaf adder which will not hear the voice of the charmer,
   though he charms ever so wisely. This is humbling, but it is true. God
   makes us feel it to be true and puts us in a proper frame of mind on
   account of it. Yet remember there is this thing about the ox--though
   thus a perverse animal--it is a creature which can be of great service
   to its master. When the ox becomes docile and puts its neck to the yoke
   and plows in patient earnestness, it is one of the most valuable
   possessions of the Oriental farmer. What would he do without it?

   The patient ox in the East is very largely used in draft as well as in
   tillage. It is one of the most precious things that a poor man has in
   the East--to possess that admirably laborious and patient animal. When
   man once gives his heart to his Master--when once this brutish heart is
   conquered by Divine Grace and becomes a servant of God--of what use he
   is! Do you see the labor and zeal of Paul? Why, he never grew weary! He
   was an ox that never fretted under the yoke. He went to the end of many
   a long furrow and back again, and to the end again. No stripes hindered
   him. No prisons stopped him. He was not afraid of death itself! He
   crossed the boisterous sea--no mean feat in those days of unskilled
   navigation. He traversed the equally dangerous land, suffering perils
   from robbers, from rivers, from wild beasts, and from false brethren.

   Like a strong ox he plowed a heavy soil from morning to evening without
   complaint. He left no work undone, but he could say at the close of his
   career, "I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have
   kept the faith!" Oh, what a vast amount of good might be done by some
   of those who are now doing so much mischief! When a sinner is really
   convicted of sin he cannot think that God Himself can ever make
   anything of him--but you do not know. Look at that swearing fellow on
   Elstow Green--the gypsy tinker--who would think that his mischievous
   hand would ever write of the Celestial City, of the land Beulah, and of
   the blessed progress of the Pilgrim?

   Just look at that poor fellow sold as a slave, a prey to everything
   that is evil! It is John Newton--who would expect to hear him in the
   pulpit of St. Mary Woolnoth, telling of the mighty Grace of God? Ah,
   but the Lord can thus get a double victory over Satan, not merely by
   capturing Satan's best men, but by transforming them into captains in
   the army of the Cross. May God grant that some here, who have been like
   the ox for perverseness and stubbornness, and whose final doom would be
   to be felled by the pole-axe of death, may be subdued by the great lion
   tamer, who can surely tame the ox!

   May Jesus come and put His yoke upon your necks, for "His yoke is easy
   and His burden is light." And from this day forth may you serve in the
   kingdom of King Jesus, to the praise of the glory of His Divine Grace.

   II. In the second place, in this little parable which is so full of
   teaching, we have THE OX-GOAD. No doubt it is a cruel instrument, but
   it is one which was thought by the Oriental farmer to be necessary for
   the stubborn nature of the ox. When he wanted to make his ox go he just
   drove the goad into it from behind--not walking by the side of it, as
   we would probably do here--but keeping to the handle of the plow and
   then pricking the ox from behind.

   Our God has many ways of goading us, but He does not use the goad with
   us where gentler means will avail. I should think that a kind farmer
   would speak to his ox, and might get it into such a condition that it
   would know what it was to do and be obedient to his word. Now God
   brings His people into such a state as that. He says, "I will guide you
   with My eyes." And He says, "Be not as the horse, or as the mule, which
   have no understanding--whose mouth must be held with bit and bridle,
   lest they come near unto you." He might also have said, "Be you not as
   the ox, which has need to feel the ox-goad or else it will not stir."

   God does not come to blows with men till He has first tried words with
   them. It is a word and a blow with man--but there is often a long space
   between the word and the blow with God. It is, "Turn! Turn! Why will
   you die?" before He comes with the executioner's axe. Before the tree
   is cut down there is a time of sparing in which it is dug about, in
   hopes it may bring forth fruit. But when words are of no avail, then
   the Lord, in tender mercy, if He means to save the soul, adopts sharper
   means, and comes from words, to blows, and then wounds. Some of you
   know how God will wound us when He means to save us. The Psalmist
   describes it as being broken in pieces. He groans over "the bones which
   You have broken." For God does give such cuffs by the hand of
   Providence, and such blows by the law upon the conscience that He
   appears as if He were cruel and would utterly slay us!

   And, indeed, He will kill us in order that He may save us! He will
   break us in pieces that He may bind us up! And He will wound us that He
   may come, in all His power, to heal. Let us for a minute or two think
   about this ox-goad, and how you and I have felt it, and how some are
   feeling it today and yet kicking against it. Some of us felt the
   ox-goad when we were children. Under the government of our parents and
   friends we were often very restive, and felt it hard to sin. We wanted
   to go after our own devices, but our parents loved us, and they would
   not permit it. Perhaps they were stern. It may be that they chastened
   us after their own pleasure, as we thought, though if we were wise we
   might have perceived that it was for our profit.

   And how some of us kicked and struggled against a mother's tears! And
   how irksome was a father's good advice! Many men showed, in their
   childhood, what they were made of by their early rebellions against the
   holy admonitions of loving and anxious parents. Oh, young offenders,
   yours is no small responsibility! Oh how the young heart can rebel! I
   speak experimentally when I say I believe a young child's heart is
   capable of as thorough and deep-seated rebellion against God and right
   as the heart of the oldest man. And though the child may not be able
   either by word or deed to express what he feels, there are evil moments
   with some children when passion seems as if it would choke them, and
   their ravings or sullenness prove that a child's nature is inclined to
   evil and is most undoubtedly fallen from its birth. In looking back we
   see that the goad was used upon us even as children.

   Since that time some of you have felt the irksome goad in the good
   advice of friends with whom you have been situated. You do not like to
   be talked to about religion, some of you. You have half a mind to shift
   your lodgings to get away from godly people who pester you. You would
   gladly get another situation, for you work at a bench close by the side
   of a Christian man and he makes sinning uncomfortable to you. He speaks
   to you very tenderly and plainly, and you jest at him, and put it off,
   but still he does make it an uneasy thing for you to be what you are.
   Oh, how grateful you ought to be for this, and yet I should not wonder
   but what you are kicking at it.

   These are all goads which God uses. He is saying to you, "You stubborn
   ox-like man, you shall not go to perdition." He has sent these warnings
   to you first by one, and then by another, with a view to your good.
   Every doctrine, and every part of the teachings of God's Word acts like
   a goad to unconverted men. I have known people come in here--curiosity
   has brought them to hear the preacher--and his sermon has made them
   feel so angry that they could almost have knocked him down, but yet
   they could not help coming again. Why did they come? They could not
   tell you why, but they could not stop! And yet they hated the Truth of
   God they heard.

   Many of you know, before you were converted, that anger was just your
   first state of feeling when you heard the Gospel. I feel rather glad
   when I hear that I have made some people angry. I think within myself,
   "Well, they were not asleep at any rate, and they gave the sermon some
   sort of thought." When a man thinks enough about the Truth of God to
   begin to fight against it, I am in hope that the Truth will give him a
   shaking and never let him go till it has fairly beaten him into better
   things. Angry feeling is better than no feeling, and enmity to the
   Truth may be looked upon with more hope than indifference!

   Now what a goad to some men is the doctrine of the Cross! They cannot
   hear of the wounds of Jesus and sin pleasantly. To some the doctrine of
   the punishment of sin is like the file to the viper--they are always
   breaking their teeth by gnawing at it. There is no part of Scripture
   which, rightly understood, is not a goad to the sinner, saying to him
   unmistakably, "Sinner, turn, turn from your wicked ways, for why will
   you die?" At times the Lord will goad us in another way, namely, by
   personal afflictions. Perhaps he sends a sickness and lays the strong
   man moaning upon his bed. Possibly it is a failure in business, a loss
   of property, a disappointment in marriage, the death of friends, or a
   gradual decay of the constitution, or the loss of a limb or an eye.
   Loud voices these, if men had ears to hear.

   God does not come to lopping His trees until a stern remedy is needed.
   Some of you have had so many afflictions that the Lord might well
   enquire, "Why should you be stricken any more? You will revolt more and
   more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint," and you are
   full of wounds and putrefying sores. Oh the mischief that sin has done
   in some glaring cases! I know a man at the present moment, a man I
   said, but alas, poor wretched mortal, he looks hardly like a man! I saw
   him in rags, shivering in the drenching rain but yesterday. He came of
   reputable parents. I knew his relatives well. He had some four hundred
   pounds or more left him a few years ago. As soon as ever he could get
   hold of it he came to London and in about a month he spent it--all in a
   hideous whirlwind of evil.

   He went back a beggar and in rags, full of horrible sickness, loathsome
   and an outcast. Since that time he has been so often aided by his
   friends that they have entirely given him up, and now this poor wretch
   with scarcely enough rags to hide his nakedness, has no eyes left to
   pity him and no hands to help him. He has been helped again, and again,
   and again. But to help him appears to be useless, for at the very first
   opportunity he returns to his old sins. The workhouse, the hospital,
   the grave are his portion--for he seems unable to rise to the dignity
   of labor, and no one will harbor him. I could fairly cry at the sight
   of him, but what can be done for him if he will destroy himself by his
   sins? If you say to him, "Why do your friends not notice you?" he will
   tell you, "They cannot notice me."

   He has brought his mother to the grave. He has worn out everybody who
   has pitied him, for his life has been so thoroughly bad that it excites
   no pity--and disgusts his own relatives. For the love of the Lord Jesus
   I will help this unhappy man again, and intend tomorrow to see him
   washed, clothed and fed, and put in a way of livelihood. But I have
   very slender hope of being of any lasting service to him, for he has
   been tried so often. Yet I never saw a wretch in such misery. He is
   emaciated, ragged, and has known hunger and cold and nakedness month
   after month. Unless he mends his ways this will be his lot till he
   dies. We have more than enough of such cases who cross our path, but
   this one outdoes them all.

   Now I know that some of these forlorn persons sometimes steal into the
   Tabernacle, and if such are here let me ask you, What is to be done
   with you? You put even the best and most tender of persons out of
   patience with you. Trouble has no power to break you, and kindness no
   influence to melt you. Oh, while there is a remedy, may God apply it to
   you, poor guilty souls! There are some who have felt these goadings to
   the most fearful extent till they have lost all, and yet they cling to
   their sins! I would to God that saints would cling to Christ half as
   earnestly as sinners cling to the devil! If we were as willing to
   suffer for God as some are to suffer for their lusts, what perseverance
   and zeal would be seen on all sides!

   The goad is used yet farther. When God has goaded a man with
   afflictions, and pains, and all the doctrines of the Gospel, sometimes
   He stirs him with the common operations of the Holy Spirit in his
   conscience. Saul was being goaded at that very moment when Christ
   spoke, and said, "Why do you persecute Me?" Ah, and take care you do
   not resist these goadings. "See that you refuse not Him that speaks.
   For if they escaped not who refused Him that spoke on earth, much more
   shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaks from Heaven."
   I believe that the Holy Spirit often, by what we call the common
   operations which He exercises upon the hearts of men, deals with men's
   consciences so far as to arouse and warn them, but they quench the
   Spirit. They, as Stephen says, resist the Spirit as did their fathers.

   It is a sin which may be committed, and where it is committed often,
   and long, at last the Holy Dove departs never to return--and such a
   soul is given up. It may be that some man or woman here is the subject
   of these inward strivings-- may they end in effectual calling and not
   lead to increased damnation, as they must do except the soul be brought
   to saving repentance.

   III. In the third place--and here let conscience be awake--we have to
   speak about THE KICKS. "It is hard for you to kick against the pricks."
   The ox, when wounded, is so very foolish as to dash its foot against
   the goad, and consequently drives it deeper into himself and hurts
   himself even more. This is the natural manner of men till God makes
   something more than beasts of them. Man is sure, like the ox, to kick
   against the pricks. How can we do this? Even when we were children we
   rebelled against our teachers.

   When we were but little and were being instructed in the things of God,
   it is possible that we did not like religion. Prayer was distasteful,
   Sunday was dull, and the House of God wearisome. Therefore we kicked
   against them. As some of you grew up who are now present, you took to
   sneering at those who kindly advised you. Many young men, the moment
   they get a word of counsel from any person, treat that person at once
   as an enemy and vow that they will take no further notice of such a
   "cant," as they will call him. That is a common way of kicking against
   the pricks. Many sinners, when the Word of God is too hot for them,
   take to caviling at it.

   When a sermon comes home, what is the easiest way of getting rid of the
   impression? Why, begin disputing over it! If any of you have felt any
   power in the sermon at any time, and you do not want to get a blessing,
   begin to raise an objection to some point of doctrine or expression of
   the minister. Do not dwell on that part which you felt was good and was
   meant for you, but give your thoughts to that which you can quarrel
   over and the sermon will be of no use to you. Satan will be glad if you
   begin to blame the preacher when you ought to have blamed yourself! If
   you cavil at Gospel doctrines, if you quibble about the high points and
   the low points, and say, "Well, I do not see how predestination and
   free will can agree," all that will be a snare to you--to prevent your
   coming to Christ.

   Satan does not care whether he drags you down to Hell as a Calvinist or
   as an Arminian, so long as he can get you there! He does not care
   whether you are orthodox or heterodox as long as he can make sure of
   you. A man who is reproved by a sermon will perhaps feel that if it is
   true he must give up his drunkenness. "But," says he, "I will not give
   up my drunkenness. I do not want to do that, and therefore I do not
   believe that the sermon is true." Or another says, "If this is correct,
   I must shut up my shop on Sunday and so lose my Sunday's profits. I
   cannot afford to lose money and therefore I will abuse the preacher."

   The guilty conscience cries, "I will pick a hole in the minister's coat
   because he has found one in mine. If what he says is true, I must mend
   my ways. But I do not intend to do that, therefore I will try and find
   some fault with the Truth which is taught, or with the man who teaches
   it." There are many individuals who are so angry at God through their
   sin that they have come to persecute God's people. They cannot burn
   them, they cannot shut them up in prison--but they vex them with cruel
   mocking. They twist their innocent actions into something wrong, and
   then they throw it in their teeth. They even sit down and wantonly
   invent falsehoods against the innocent, and utter libelous things
   against the people of God, because they have a conviction that the
   saints are better than themselves. It seems to be the natural
   suggestion of our fallen nature that when goodness rebukes us we
   straightway try to prove that it is not goodness in order that our
   conscience may be quieted.

   Certain profane men have gone so far as to kick at God Himself. They do
   not hesitate in their malice--they proclaim it in plain plump
   oaths--and dare their Maker to do most terrible things to them! Mind
   that He does not answer you, Blasphemer! He is a hearer of prayer, and
   when you pray to Him to damn you, He may, one of these days, do it,
   Sinner! Do not ask Him again lest He should do it at once. He has a way
   of doing what men ask Him to do! Do not trifle with Him. It is His
   mighty mercy that has prevented Him from destroying you long ago!

   This is your way of kicking against the pricks, but I hope that since
   God has brought you here He means to stop your rebellions today. I pray
   He may, and that no longer you may kick against Him, but turn to Him
   and say, "Lord, what will you have me to do?"

   IV. Time fails us, and we must therefore speak briefly upon THE RESULT
   OF KICKING AGAINST THE PRICKS. Christ says, "It is hard for you."
   Friend, let me hold you by the buttonhole and talk to you. It has been
   very hard for your mother that you should have gone on as you have
   done. For her sake, think! With some of you it has been very hard for
   your families. Drunkenness clothes a man's children in rags as well as
   himself. It has been hard in some cases with even your neighbors and
   your employers--they had a deal to put up with--but that is not the
   matter of consideration this morning. It is hard for you.

   Oh, young man, you know that sin does not make you happy. You have had
   your swing of it and you are miserable this morning. Oh no, there is no
   bliss to be found in evil. At last the Truth of God is beginning to
   dawn upon your mind. Instead of happiness you have found unrest and
   dissatisfaction. You are afraid of cholera--afraid to die. You would
   run almost anywhere to escape an infectious disease because you know
   where your portion will be when you enter into another world. This is
   the effect of your kicking against the pricks. You have brought
   yourself into an unhappy and uneasy state of mind till you sometimes
   wish that you had never been born.

   Do you know what will very likely be your history if you run into sin
   and persist in it? You will make your present afflictions grow worse
   and cause your present losses to accumulate upon you. You are kicking
   against the pricks, and are making the wounds already received ten
   times worse! And it will always be so long as you keep on kicking. It
   is possible that you may get into such a state of mind that you will,
   by-and-by be ready to die by suicide because of remorse. It is hard for
   you, young man, to be such a sinner as you are now, but how hard it
   will be! I could weep when I think of how hard your sins will be for
   you if you are ever converted. He that is converted to God finds it
   hard to have been a sinner so long. His repentance is bitter in
   proportion to the greatness of his sin. "Alas," he says, "that I should
   ever have so revolted against the God that loved me with such a love!"

   Those who are saved late in life feel that their sins will be their
   plague till they die. A man does not go and plunge into the ditch of
   sin without bearing the stench of its vileness in his memory all his
   life. An old song that you used to sing in your carnal days will come
   up and defile your closet prayers and perhaps the recollection of some
   unholy scene in which you had a part in your younger days will trouble
   you even when you are at the sacramental table! The Apostle Paul always
   bore the memory of his sin, for he says, "I was the least of the
   Apostles because I persecuted the Church of God."

   He always felt that. And who knows but that the stripes and
   imprisonment that he had to bear himself must often have brought the
   tears into his eyes when he endured them as he thought, "I persecuted
   them in their synagogue, and I compelled them to blaspheme, and now I
   am called to suffer the same things myself." The past life of a
   regenerate man will always be his grief. "God forgives me," said one,
   "but I can never forgive myself." It is blotted out of God's book, I
   know, but it can never be blotted out of mine. I shall remember to my
   dying day what a sinner I have been.

   But ah, Friends, if tears might come into my eyes at the recollection
   of how you will feel if you are converted, I would gladly weep tears of
   blood as I think of what you will feel if you die unconverted! All
   these kicks against the pricks will be among your sharpest stings when
   you feel the judgment of God in another world. "Remember," says
   Conscience, "you were warned--you did not sin without knowing it was
   sin--you did not choose the downward path without understanding it to
   be the path that led to ruin. You felt the pricks of warning, but you
   kicked against them and now you receive your portion in the lake that
   burns with fire and brimstone! You suffer with this aggravation above
   all others--that you knew your duty but you did it not."

   That great Italian poet, whose marvelous mind so singularly pictured
   the lost in their everlasting dwelling place, writes over the portals
   of Hell, "All hope abandon you who enter here!" Ah, it is the Hell of
   Hell that there is no hope there! But while there is no hope of the
   future, there are unutterable regrets for the past. My Hearers, I often
   feel it a very solemn thing to preach to you. And the more earnestly I
   am able to preach, the more solemn it becomes, because if this Gospel
   is not "a savor of life unto life" to you, it will be "a savor of death
   unto death" to your souls. You may make it a holiday to visit the
   Tabernacle and hear me preach. You may come up from the country and
   hasten here to see this place as one of the sights of London--but it is
   no holiday to me to preach to your souls--and no child's play to have
   this responsibility upon my shoulders, to deal faithfully with your
   hearts and consciences!

   I have been a goad, I hope, to many of you, and you have tried hard to
   continue what you are while a loving heart has tried to bring you into
   a better mind. But by-and-by the goad will become a sword! The very
   Gospel which warns will be the Gospel that smites. "God shall judge the
   world"--how?--"according to my Gospel," says the Apostle Paul. It is
   according to the Gospel that you shall be judged at the last if you
   reject it and perish in your sins. This is the result of kicking
   against the pricks.

   V. Then the last thing is THE GOOD COUNSEL. It is just this--since it
   is hard for you to kick against the pricks, and there is nothing to be
   got by it, cease, oh cease from your evil way! Why should you do it? If
   it made you happy to be sinners, I could almost pardon you. If it were
   a profitable thing, I might almost excuse you! But it is such an
   unsatisfactory thing, and the happiness is so transient--such mere scum
   upon the pot--that I cannot excuse you if you will follow it. Your
   grapes are gall, your wine is wormwood, your music is discord, your
   mirth is misery--why then follow after them?

   O sensible, thoughtful man, kick against the pricks no more! If you do
   not become a Christian, do not be a persecutor. There is no need to
   make your eternal portion worse. Suppose you think that the Gospel is
   not true? At any rate do not fight against it, for if it is of God you
   cannot prevail against it. And if it is not, it will go down without
   you. Do not, however, think that we ask you to cease from wrath because
   we are afraid of you. The Gospel is like an anvil-- you may hammer it
   and it will break your hammer, but itself remain unbroken! You may
   stumble against this stone and you will be broken, but you cannot break
   or remove the stone.

   Woe unto you if that stone falls upon you, for on whomever this stone
   shall fall it will grind him to powder! Stop and think. If we can get
   men to think we may have good hope of them. At any rate, religion is
   worth a thought. If you must and will go to Hell, go there with your
   eyes open, and do not be deceived. Eternity must be such a weighty
   thing that it is surely worth a thought. If the devil is worthy to be
   your master, consider his claims and serve him thoughtfully. If sin,
   and drunkenness, and money getting, and Sabbath-breaking are the best
   things for you, think them over and give a reason for the hope that is
   in you.

   There are some of us who think you foolish. Justify your conduct, then,
   and get an answer ready. Oh, if you would but think, you would soon
   say, "No, no, no, I know there is a God. I know I have sinned, I know
   that He must punish me. There is mercy in Jesus, I will find it." Let
   me say to you, Sinner, yield your heart to the goadings of Divine love,
   for, "it is hard for you to kick against the pricks." Oh, think not
   that the Savior's blood will be unable to cleanse you! Not your
   worthiness, but your unworthiness attracts His attention! Not your
   strength, but your weakness! Not your riches, but your poverty! He came
   to save just such as you are. Lost one, but loved one, trust in Him!
   Cast yourself now upon Him, having nothing of your own. Come and rest
   in Him. He will not cast you away.

   He has never cast any soul away, however filthy its previous life may
   have been, and He will not begin today to reject sinners. He that comes
   unto Him He will in no wise cast out. "Ho, everyone that thirsts, come
   to the waters, and he that has no money, come, buy, and eat! Yes, come,
   buy wine and milk without money and without price." Why do you kick
   against the pricks? "Why do you spend money for that which is not
   bread, and your labor for that which satisfies not? Hearken diligently
   unto Me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself
   in fatness." "Whoever believe that Jesus is the Christ is born of God."

   Trust Jesus with your whole heart! Trust in Jesus, and your sins, which
   are many, are forgiven you! This is the Gospel that we are bid to
   preach, "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved." May God the
   Holy Spirit give you Divine Grace to be obedient, and unto Him shall be
   glory. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                             The Great White Throne

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING, AUGUST 12, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose
   face the earth and the Heaven fled away. And there was found no place
   for them." Revelation 20:11.

   MANY of the visions which John saw are very obscure, and although a man
   who is assured of his own salvation may possibly be justified in
   spending his days in endeavoring to interpret them, yet I am sure of
   this--it will not be a profitable task for unconverted persons. They
   have no time to spare for speculations, for they have not yet made sure
   of positive certainties. They need not dive into difficulties, for they
   have not yet laid a foundation of simplicities by faith in Christ
   Jesus. Better far to meditate upon the Atonement than to be guessing at
   the little horn. Better far to know the Lord Jesus in His power to
   save, than to fabricate an ingenious theory upon the number of the
   beast.

   But this particular vision is so instructive, so unattended by serious
   difficulties, that I may invite all here present to consider it, and
   the more so because it has to do with matters which concern our own
   eternal prospects. It may be, if God the Holy Spirit shall illuminate
   the eyes of our faith to look and see that "great white throne and Him
   that sat upon it," that we may reap so much benefit from the sight as
   forever to make the arches of Heaven ring with gratitude that we were
   brought in this world to look at the "great white throne." By so doing
   we shall not be afraid to look upon it in the day when the Judge shall
   sit, and the quick and dead shall stand before Him.

   I shall, first, endeavor to explain what John saw. And then, in the
   second place, I shall try to set forth the effect which I think would
   be produced by this sight if the eyes of our faith should now be fixed
   on it.

   I. First, then, I have to call your very earnest attention to WHAT JOHN
   SAW. It was a scene of the Last Day--that wondrous day whose coming
   none can tell--

   "For, as a thief unheard, unseen, it steals Through night's dark
   shade."

   When the eagle-eyed seer of Patmos, being in the Spirit, looked aloft
   into the heavens, he saw a throne from which I gather that there is a
   throne of moral government over the sons of men, and that He who sits
   upon it presides over all the inhabitants of this world. There is a
   throne whose dominion reaches from Adam in Paradise down to "the last
   man," whoever he may be.

   We are not without a Governor, Lawgiver, and Judge. This world is not
   left so that men may do in it as they will, without a legislator,
   without an avenger, without One to give reward or to inflict
   punishment. The sinner, in his blindness looks, but he sees no throne,
   and therefore he cries, "I will live as I like, for there is none to
   call me to account." But John, with illuminated eye, distinctly saw a
   throne, and a personal Ruler upon it who sat there to call His subjects
   to account. When our faith looks through the glass of Revelation it
   sees a throne, too. It were well for us if we felt more fully the
   influence of that ever-present throne. That "the Lord reigns" is true,
   Believer--tonight--and at all times.

   There is a throne where sits the King eternal, immortal, invisible! The
   world is governed by laws made and kept in force by an intelligent
   Lawgiver. There is a moral Governor. Men are accountable, and will be
   brought to account at the Last Great Day, when they shall all be either
   rewarded or punished. "I saw a great white throne." How this invests
   the actions of men with solemnity! If we were left to do exactly as we
   willed without being called to account for it, it were wise, even then,
   to be virtuous, for rest assured it is best for ourselves that we
   should be good--and it is in itself malady enough to be evil.

   But we are not so left. There is a Law laid down which involves a
   penalty to break. There is a Lawgiver who looks down and spies every
   action of man, and who does not suffer one single word or deed to be
   omitted from His notebook. That Governor is armed with power. He is
   soon coming to hold His assize, and every responsible agent upon the
   face of the earth must appear at His bar and receive, as we are told,
   "according to the deeds done in the body, whether they are good or
   whether they are evil." Let it, then, be gathered from the text that
   there is in very deed a personal and real moral Governor of the world,
   an efficient and suitable Ruler--not a mere name, not a myth, not an
   empty office--but a Person who sits on the throne, who judges right,
   and who will carry out that judgment before long.

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, we know that this moral Governor is God
   Himself who has an undisputed right to reign and rule. Some thrones
   have no right to be, and to revolt from them is patriotism. But the
   best lover of his race delights the most in the monarchy of Heaven.
   Doubtless there are dynasties which are tyrannies, and governors who
   are despots. But none may dispute the right of God to sit upon His
   throne, or wish that another hand held the scepter. He created all, and
   shall He not judge all? He had a right, as Creator, to lay down His
   laws, and, as those laws are the very pattern of everything that is
   good and true, He has, therefore, because of this, an eternal right to
   govern, in addition to the right which belonged to Him as Creator.

   He is the Judge of all, who must do right from a necessity of His
   Nature. Who else, then, should sit upon the throne, and who shall dare
   to claim to do so? He may cast down the gauntlet to all His creatures
   and say, "I am God, and beside Me there is none else." If He reveals
   the thunder of His power, His creatures must silently admit that He is
   Lord alone. None can venture to say that this throne is not founded
   upon right. Moreover, there are some thrones on which kings, however
   right, are deficient in might--but this is not the case with the King
   of kings. We constantly see little princes whose crowns fit their heads
   so ill that they cannot keep them on their brows. But our God has might
   invincible as well as right infallible!

   Who shall meet Him in battle? Shall the stubble defy the fire, or shall
   the wax make war with the flame? Jehovah can easily swallow up His
   enemies when they set themselves in battle array against Him. "Behold,
   He touches the hills and they smoke! He looks upon the mountains and
   they tremble! He breaks Leviathan in pieces in the depths of the sea.
   The winds are His chariots, and the tempests are His messengers. At His
   bidding there is day, and at His will night covers the earth. Who shall
   stay His hand, or say unto Him, "What are You doing?" His throne is
   founded in right and supported by might. You have Justice and Truth to
   settle it, but you have Omnipotence and Wisdom to be its guards, so
   that it cannot be moved.

   In addition to this, His throne is one from the power of which none can
   escape. The sapphire throne of God, at this moment, is revealed in
   Heaven where adoring angels cast their crowns before it. And its power
   is felt on earth, where the works of creation praise the Lord. Even
   those who do not acknowledge the Divine government are compelled to
   feel it, for He does as He wills, not only among the angels in Heaven,
   but among the inhabitants of this lower world. Hell feels the terror of
   that throne. Those chains of fire, those pangs unutterable, are the
   awful shadow of the throne of Deity. As God looks down upon the lost,
   the torment that flashes through their souls darts from His holiness
   which cannot endure their sins.

   The influence of that throne, then, is found in every world where
   spirits dwell, and in the realms of inanimate nature it bears rule.
   Every leaf that fades in the trackless forest trembles at the
   Almighty's bidding, and every coral insect that dwells in the
   unfathomable depths of the sea feels and acknowledges the Presence of
   the all-present King. So, then, my Brethren, if such is the throne
   which John saw, see how impossible it will be for you to escape from
   its judgment when the great day of assize shall be proclaimed, and the
   Judge shall issue His summons bidding you appear. To where can the
   enemies of God flee? If up to Heaven their high-flown impudence could
   carry them, His right hand of holiness would hurl them from there, or,
   if under Hell's most profound wave they dive to seek a sheltering
   grave, His left hand would pluck them out of the fire to expose them to
   the fiercer light of His countenance!

   Nowhere is there a refuge from the Most High. The morning beams cannot
   convey the fugitive so swiftly as the almighty Pursuer could follow
   him. Neither can the mysterious lightning flash, which annihilates time
   and space, journey so rapidly as to escape His far-reaching hand. "If I
   mount up to Heaven, You are there. If I make my bed in Hell, You are
   there." It was said of the Roman empire under the Caesars that the
   whole world was only one great prison for Caesar, for if any man
   offended the emperor it was impossible for him to escape. If he crossed
   the Alps, could not Caesar find him out in Gaul?

   If he sought to hide himself in the Indies, even the swarthy monarchs
   there knew the power of the Roman armies, so that they would give no
   shelter to a man who had incurred imperial vengeance. And yet, perhaps,
   a fugitive from Rome might have prolonged his miserable life by hiding
   in the dens and caves of the earth. But oh, Sinner, there is no hiding
   from God! The mountains cannot cover you from Him! Even if they would,
   neither can the rocks conceal you. See, then, at the very outset, how
   this throne should awe our minds with terror. Founded in right,
   sustained by might, and universal in its dominion, look and see the
   throne which John of old beheld!

   This, however, is but the beginning of the vision. The text tells us
   that it was a "white throne," and I would call your attention to that.
   "I saw a great white throne." Why white? Does not this indicate its
   immaculate purity? There is no other white throne, I fear, to be found.
   The throne of our own happy land, I believe, is as white and as pure as
   any throne might well be on earth. But there have been years, even in
   the annals of that throne, when it was stained with blood and not many
   reigns back it was black with debauchery. Not always was it the throne
   of excellence and purity, and even now, though our throne possesses a
   lustrous purity, rare enough among earthly thrones, yet in the sight of
   God there must be in everything that is earthly something that is
   impure, and therefore the throne is not white to Him.

   As for many other thrones that are still existing, we know that with
   them all is not white. This is neither the day nor the hour for us to
   call the princes to the bar of God, but there are some of them who will
   have much to answer for, because in their schemes of aggrandizement
   they took no account of the blood which would be shed or of the rights
   which would be violated. Principle seldom moves the royal mind. The
   knavish law of policy is the basis of king-craft--a policy worthy of
   highwaymen and burglars. And some kings are little. On the continent of
   Europe there are not a few thrones which I might describe as either
   black, or crimson, as I think of the turpitude of the conduct of the
   monarch, or of the blood through which he has waded his way to
   dominion.

   But this is a great white throne, a throne of hallowed monarchy that is
   not stained with blood nor defiled with injustice. Why, then, is it
   white for purity? Is it not because the King who sits on it is pure?
   Hark to the thrice sacred hymn of the cherubic band and the seraphic
   choir, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth." Creatures who are
   perfectly spotless, themselves, unceasingly reverence and adore the yet
   superior holiness of the great King. He is too great to need to be
   unjust, and He is too good to be unkind. This King has done no wrong,
   and can do no wrong--and He is the only King of whom this can be said
   without fiction. He who sits on this white throne is Himself the
   Essence of holiness, justice, truth, and love. O fairest of all
   Thrones! Who would not be a willing subject of your peerless
   government?

   Moreover, the throne is pure because the law the Judge dispenses is
   perfect. There is no fault in the statute Book of God. When the Lord
   shall come to judge the earth, there will be found no decree that bears
   too harshly upon any of His creatures. "The statutes of the Lord are
   right." They are true and righteous altogether. That Book of the Ten
   Commands in which you find a summary of the Divine will, who can
   improve it? Who can find anything in excess in it, or point out
   anything that is wanting? "The Law of the Lord is perfect, converting
   the soul," and well may that be a white throne from which there
   emanates such a Law!

   But you know that with a good law and a good lawgiver, yet sometimes
   the throne may make mistakes, and it may be stained by ignorance, if
   not by willful injustice. But the sentence which shall go forth from
   this great white throne shall be so consistent with justice that even
   the condemned culprit himself must give his unwilling assent to it.
   "They stood speechless," it is said--speechless because they could
   neither bear the sentence nor in any way impugn it. It is a white
   throne since never was a verdict delivered from it of which the culprit
   had a right to complain. Perhaps there are some here who view this as a
   matter of hope, but to ungodly persons it will be the very reverse.

   Oh Sinner, if you had to be judged before an impure tribunal, you
   might, perhaps, escape. If the King were not holy, unholiness might,
   perhaps, go unpunished. If the law were not perfect, offenses might be
   condoned. Or if the sentence were not just, you might, through
   partiality, escape. But where everything is so pure and white--

   "Careless sinner, What will become of you?"

   I have thought, too, that perhaps this throne is said to be a white
   throne to indicate that it will be eminently conspicuous. You will have
   noticed that a white object can be seen from a very great distance. You
   may have observed, perhaps, on the Welsh mountains, a white cottage far
   away, standing out conspicuously. The Welsh like to make their cottages
   intensely white, so that though you would not have perceived it, had it
   been left of a stone color, you see it at once, for the bright
   whitewashed walls catch your eye. I suppose that a marksman would
   prefer a white object to aim at before almost any other color.

   And this great white throne will be so conspicuous that all the
   millions who were dead, but who shall rise at the sound of the last
   trumpet, shall all see it--nor shall it be possible for a single eye to
   close itself against the sight! We must see it--it shall be so striking
   a sight that none of us will be able to prevent its coming before us.
   "Every eye shall see Him." Possibly it is called a white throne because
   of its being such a convincing contrast to all the colors of this
   sinful human life. There stand the crowd, and there is the great white
   throne. What can make them see their blackness more thoroughly than to
   stand there in contrast with the perfections of the Law and the Judge
   before whom they are standing? Perhaps that throne, all glistening,
   will reflect each man's character. As each unforgiven man shall look at
   that white throne, its dazzling whiteness will overcome him and cover
   him with confusion and with terror when he sees his own defilement in
   contrast with it.

   "O God!" he says, "how can I bear to be judged by such a One as You
   are? I could face the judgment seat of my fellows, for I could see
   imperfections in my judges, but I cannot face You, You dread Supreme,
   for the awful whiteness of Your throne, and the terrible splendor of
   Your holiness utterly overcome me! Who am I, sinner as I am, that I
   should dare to stand before that great white throne!"

   The next word that is used by way of adjective is "great." It was a
   "great white throne." You scarcely need me to tell you that it is
   called a great white throne because of the greatness of Him who sits
   upon it. Speak of the greatness of Solomon? He was but a petty prince.
   Speak of the throne of the Mogul or his Celestial Majesty of China, or
   of the thrones of Rome and Greece before which multitudes of beings
   assembled? They are nothing--mere representatives of associations of
   the grasshoppers of the world--who are as nothing in the sight of the
   Lord Jehovah! A throne filled by a mortal is but a shadow of dominion.
   This will be a great throne because on it will sit the great God of
   earth, and Heaven, and Hell--the King eternal, immortal, invisible--who
   shall judge the world in righteousness, and His people with equity.

   Brethren, you will see that this will be a "great white throne" when we
   remember the culprits who will be brought before it. Not a handful of
   criminals, but millions upon millions, "multitudes, multitudes, in the
   Valley of Decision." And these not all of the lesser sort--not serfs
   and slaves alone whose miserable bodies rested from their oppressors in
   the silent grave--but the great ones of the earth shall be there. Not
   alone the down-trod serf who toiled for nothing, and felt it sweet to
   die, but his tyrant master who fattened on his unrewarded toils shall
   be there!

   Not alone the multitudes who marched to battle at their master's
   bidding, and who fell beneath the shot and the shell, but the emperors
   and kings who planned the conflict shall be there! Crowned heads no
   greater than heads uncrowned. Men who were demigods among their fellows
   shall mix with their slaves, and be made as vile as they! What a
   marvelous procession! With what awe the imagination of it strikes the
   heart! What a pompous appearing! Ah! Ah! You downtrodden multitudes,
   the great Leveler has put you all upon a footing now! Death laid you in
   one equal grave, and now Judgment finds you standing at one equal bar
   to receive the sentence of One who fears no king, and dreads no
   tyrant--who has no respect of persons--but who deals justice alike to
   all!

   Can you picture the sight? Land and sea are covered with the living who
   once were dead! Hell is empty, and the grave has lost its victims! What
   a sight will that be! Xerxes on his throne with a million marching
   before him must have beheld a grand spectacle, but what will this be?
   No flaunting banner, but the ensigns of eternal majesty! No gaudy
   courtiers, but assembled angels! No sound of drum nor roar of cannon,
   but the blast of the archangel's trumpet and the harps of ten thousand
   times ten thousand holy ones! There will be unrivalled splendor, it is
   true, but not that of heraldry and war! Mere tinsel and gewgaw shall
   have all departed, and in their place there shall be the splendor of
   the flashing lightning and the deep bass of the thunder. Jesus, the Man
   of Sorrows, with all His angels with Him shall descend--the pomp of
   Heaven being revealed among the sons of men!

   It will be a great white throne because of the matters that will be
   tried there. It will be no mere quarrel about a suit in Chancery, or an
   estate in jeopardy. Our souls will have to be tried there! Our future,
   not for an age, not for one single century, but forever and forever!
   Upon those balances shall hang Heaven and Hell--to the right shall be
   distributed triumph without end. To the left destruction and confusion
   without a pause--and the destiny of every man and woman shall be
   positively declared from that tremendous throne! Can you perceive the
   greatness of it? You must measure Heaven! You must fathom Hell! You
   must compass eternity--and until you can do this you cannot know the
   greatness of this great white throne!

   Great, last of all, because throughout eternity there shall always be a
   looking back to the transactions of that day. That day shall be unto
   you, you Saints, "the beginning of days," when He shall say, "Come, you
   blessed of My Father." And that day shall be to you who perish, the
   beginning of days, too. Just as that famous night of old in Egypt, when
   the first-born were spared in every house where the lamb had shed its
   blood was the first of days to Israel--but to Egypt the night when the
   first-born felt the avenging angel's sword was a dread beginning of
   nights forever. Many a mother reckoned from that night when the
   Destroyer came, and so shall you reckon throughout a dread eternity
   from the day when you see this great white throne!

   Turn not away your eyes from the magnificent spectacle till you have
   seen the glorious Person mentioned in the words, "And Him that sat on
   it." I wonder whether anything I have said has made you solemnly think
   of the great day. I am afraid I cannot speak so as to get at your
   hearts, and if not, I had better be silent. But do now, for a moment,
   think upon Him who sat upon the great white throne. The most fitting
   One in all the world will sit upon that throne! It will be God, but
   hearken, it will also be Man. "He shall judge the world by this Man,
   Christ Jesus, according to my Gospel," says the Apostle. The Judge has
   to be God. Who but God were fit to judge so many, and to judge so
   exactly? The throne is too great for any but for Him of whom it is
   written, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of
   righteousness is Your scepter."

   Christ Jesus, the Son of God, will judge, and He will judge as Man as
   well as God. And how fitting it is that it should be so! As Man He
   knows our infirmities. He understands our hearts, and we cannot object
   to this, that our Judge should be, Himself, like we are. Who better
   could judge righteous judgment than One who is "bone of our bone and
   flesh of our flesh"? And then, there is this fitness about it. He is
   not only God and Man, but He is the Man, the Man of men! Of all men the
   most manly, the type and pattern of manhood. He will be the test in His
   own Person, for if a man is like Christ, that man is right. But if a
   man is otherwise than Christ-like, that man deserves to be condemned.
   That wondrous Judge needs only look upon His own Character to read the
   Law and to review His own actions to discern whether other men's
   actions are right or wrong.

   The thoughts of many hearts were revealed by Christ on earth, and that
   same Christ shall make an open exhibition of men at the Last Great Day.
   He shall judge them. He shall discern their spirits. He shall find out
   the joints and the marrow of their being--the thoughts and intents of
   the heart He shall lay bare. Even you, Believer, will pass the test
   before Him! Let no man deceive you with the delusion that you will not
   be judged--the sheep appeared before the great dividing Shepherd as
   well as the goats--those who used their talents were called to account
   as well as he who buried his pound, and the disciples themselves were
   warned that their idle words would bring them into judgment.

   Nor need you fear a public trial. Innocence courts the light. You are
   not saved by being allowed to be smuggled into Heaven untested and
   unproved, but you will, in the righteousness of Jesus, pass the solemn
   test with joy! It may not be at the same moment as the wicked that the
   righteous shall be judged (I shall not contend for particulars), but I
   am clear that they will be judged, and that the blood and righteousness
   of Jesus are provided for this very cause--that they may find mercy of
   the Lord in that day.

   Sinner! It is far otherwise with you! Your ruin is sure when the
   testing time comes! There will be no witnesses needed to convict you,
   for the Judge knows all. The Christ whom you despised will judge you!
   The Savior whose mercy you trampled on--in the fountain of whose blood
   you would not wash, the despised and rejected of men--it is He who
   shall judge righteous judgment to you, and what will He say but this,
   "As for these, My enemies, who would not that I should reign over them,
   cut them in pieces before my eyes!"

   II. I need a few minutes--and I have but too few left--to DRAW THE
   INFERENCES WHICH FLOW FROM

   SUCH A SIGHT AS THIS--and so turn the vision to practical account.
   Believer in Christ, a word in your ear. Can you see the great white
   throne, and Him that sits upon it? I think I see it now. Then let me
   search myself. Whatever profession I may make, I shall have to face
   that great white throne. I have passed the elders. I have been approved
   by the pastor. I stand accepted by the Church. But that great white
   throne is not passed yet.

   1 have borne a reputable character among my fellow Christians. I have
   been asked to pray in public and my prayers have been much admired, but
   I have not yet been weighed in the last balances--and what if I should
   be found wanting! Brother Christian, what about your private prayers?
   Can you live in neglect of the closet and yet remember that your
   prayers will be tried before the great white throne? Is your Bible left
   unread in private? Is your religion nothing but a public show and sham?
   Remember the great white throne, for mere pretense will not pass there!

   Brother Christian, what about your heart and your treasure? Are you a
   mere money-hunter? Do you live as others live? Is your delight in the
   fleeting present? Do you have dealings with the throne of Heaven? Have
   you a stony heart towards Divine things? Have you little love to
   Christ? Do you make an empty profession, and nothing more? Oh, think of
   that great white throne, that great white throne! Why, there are some
   of you, who, when I preach a stirring sermon, feel afraid to come again
   to hear me! Ah, but if you are afraid of my voice, how will you bear
   His voice who shall speak in tones of thunder?

   Do searching sermons seem to go through you like a blast of the north
   wind, chilling your very marrow and curdling your blood? Oh, but what
   must it be to stand before that dread tribunal? Are you doubting now?
   What will you do then? Can you not bear a little self-examination? How
   will you bear that God-examination? If the scales of earth tell you
   that you are lacking, what message will the scales of Heaven give you?
   I do warn you, fellow professors, speaking to you as I desire to speak
   now to my own heart, "Examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith.
   Prove your own selves. Know you not your own selves how that Jesus
   Christ is in you, except you be reprobates?"

   Having spoken a word to the Christian, I should like to say to every
   one of you, in remembrance of this great white throne, shun hypocrisy!
   Are you tempted to be baptized though you are not a Believer, in order
   to please parents and friends? Beware of that great white throne, and
   think how your insult to God will look at that Last Great Day! Are you
   persuaded to put on the cloak of religion because it will help your
   business, or make you seem respectable? Beware, you hypocrite! Beware
   of that great white throne, for of all the terrors that shall come
   forth from it, there shall be none more severe than those which shall
   scathe the mere professor who made a profession of religion for gain!

   If you must be damned, be damned any way than as a hypocrite--for they
   deserve the deepest Hell who for gain make a profession of godliness.
   The ruin of By-Ends and Hypocrisy will be just, indeed. O you
   high-flying professors, whose wings are fastened on with wax, beware of
   the sun which will surely pour its heat upon you, for fearful will be
   your fall from so great a height! But there are some of you who say, "I
   do not make any profession of religion." Still my text has a word to
   you. Still I want you to judge your actions by that Last Great Day.

   O Sir, how about that night of sin? "No," you say, "never mind it.
   Bring it not to my mind." It shall be brought to your remembrance, and
   that deed of sin shall be published far wider than upon the housetops,
   proclaimed to all the multitudes who have ever lived since the first
   man, and your infamy shall become a byword and a proverb among all
   created beings! What do you think of this, you secret sinners? You
   lovers of wantonness and chambering? Ah, young man, you have commenced
   by filching, but you will go on to be a downright thief. It is known,
   Sir, and, "be sure your sin will find you out." Young woman, you have
   begun to dally with sin, and you think none has seen you, but the most
   Mighty One has seen your acts and heard your words--there is no curtain
   between Him and your sin!

   He sees you clearly, and what will you do with these sins of yours that
   you think have been concealed? "It was many years ago," you tell me.
   Yes, but though buried these many years to you, they are all alive to
   Him, for everything is present to the all-seeing God--and your
   forgotten deeds shall one day stand out present to you, also. My
   Hearers, I implore you, do nothing which you would not do if you
   thought God saw you, for He does see you! Oh, look at your actions in
   the light of the judgment. Oh, that secret tippling of yours--how will
   that look when God reveals it? That private lust of yours which nobody
   knows of--how would you dare to do it if you remembered that God knows
   it?

   Young man, it is a secret, a fearful secret, and you would not whisper
   it in anyone's ear--but it shall be whispered-- no, it shall be
   thundered out before the world! I pray you, Friend, think of this!
   There is an Observer who takes notes of all that we do and will publish
   all to an assembled universe. And as for us all, are we ready to meet
   that Last Great Day? I had many things to say to you, but I cannot keep
   you to say them now, lest you grow weary. But if tonight the trumpet
   should be sounded, what would be your state of mind? Suppose that now
   every ear in this place should be startled with a blast most loud and
   dread, and a voice were heard--

   "Come to judgment, Come to judgment, come away"?
   Supposing some of you could hide in the vaults and in the foundations,
   would not many of you rush to the concealment? How few of us might go
   down these aisles walking steadily into the open air and saying, "I am
   not afraid of judgment, for 'there is therefore now no condemnation to
   them that are in Christ Jesus.' "

   Brothers and Sisters, I hope there are some of us who could go gladly
   to that judgment seat, even if we had to traverse the jaws of death to
   reach it. I hope there are some of us who can sing in our hearts--

   "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 blame."

   It might put many of us much about to say that. It is easy to speak of
   full assurance, but, believe me, it is not quite so easy to have it in
   earnest in trying times. If some of you get the finger-ache your
   confidence oozes out at your joints, and if you have but a little
   sickness you think, "Ah, it may be cholera, what shall I do?" If you
   cannot bear to die, how, then, will you bear to live forever?

   Could you not look Death in the face without a shudder--then how will
   you endure the Judgment? Could you gaze upon Death, and feel that he is
   your friend and not your foe? Could you put a skull upon your dressing
   table, and commune with it as your memento moni? Oh, it may well take
   the bravest of you to do this, and the only sure way is to come as we
   are to Jesus, with no righteousness of our own to trust to, but finding
   all in Him! When William Carey was about to die, he ordered to have put
   upon his tombstone this verse--

   "A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, On Christ's kind arms I fall. He is
   my strength, my righteousness, My Jesus, and my All."

   I would like to wake up in eternity with such a verse as that in my
   mind, as I wish to go to sleep in this world with such a hope as that
   in my heart--

   "Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to the Cross I cling."

   Ah, I am talking about what some of us will know more of, perhaps,
   before this week is over! I am speaking now upon themes which you think
   are a long way off, but a moment may bring them near. A thousand years
   is a long time, but how soon it flies! One almost seems, in reading
   English history, to go back and shake hands with William the
   Conqueror--a few lives soon bring us even to the flood. You who are
   getting on to be forty years old, and especially you who are sixty or
   seventy, must feel how fast time flies. I only seem to preach a sermon
   one Sunday in time to get ready for the next.

   Time flies with such a whirl that no express train can overtake it, and
   even the lightning flash seems to lag behind it. We shall soon be at
   the great white throne! We shall soon be at the judgment bar of God.
   Oh, let us be making ready for it! Let us not live so much in this
   present, which is but a dream--an empty show--but let us live in the
   real, substantial future. Oh that I could reach some heart here
   tonight! I have a notion that I am speaking to someone here who will
   not have another warning. I am sure that with such throngs as crowd
   here Sunday after Sunday, I never preach to the same congregation
   twice. There are always some here who are dead between one Sunday and
   another. Out of such masses as these it must be so according to the
   ordinary computation.

   Who among you will it be who will die this week? Oh, ponder the
   question well! Who among you will dwell with the devouring flames? Who
   among you will abide with everlasting burnings? If I knew you I would
   gladly bedew you with tears! If I knew you who are to die this week, I
   would gladly come and kneel down at your side and implore you to think
   of eternal things. But I do not know you, and therefore, by the living
   God I do implore you all to fly to Jesus by faith! These are no
   trifles, Sirs, are they? If they are, I am but a sorry trifler, and you
   may go your ways and laugh at me! But if they are true and real, it
   becomes me to be in earnest, and much more does it become you to be in
   earnest.

   "Prepare to meet your God!" He comes! Prepare now! "Now is the accepted
   time. Now is the day of salvation!" The gates of mercy are not closed!
   Your sin is not unpardonable! You may yet find mercy! Christ invites
   you. His blood drops cry to you--

   "Come and welcome,
   Come and welcome, Sinner, come."

   Oh, may the Holy Spirit put life into these poor words of mine, and may
   the Lord help you to come now! The way to come, you know, is just to
   trust in Christ. It is all done when you trust in Christ! Throw
   yourselves right on Him, having nothing else to trust to. See now, my
   whole weight leans on the front of this platform. Should this rail give
   way, I fall. Lean on Christ just in that way--

   "Venture on Him, venture wholly, Let no other trust intrude."

   If you can get a grip of the Cross, and stand there beneath the crimson
   canopy of the Atonement, God Himself cannot smite you, and the Last
   Great Day shall dawn upon you with splendor and delight, and not with
   gloom and terror. I must send you away, but not until all Believers
   present have given you an invitation to return to the Lord Jesus. To do
   this we will sing the following verses--

   "Return, O wanderer, to your home.
   Your Father calls for you!
   No longer now an exile roam
   In guilt and misery,
   Return, return!
   Return, O wanderer, to your home, 'Tis Jesus calls for you! The Spirit
   and the bride say, Come!
   Oh now for refuge flee; Return, return.
   Return, O wanderer, to your home,
   'Tis madness to delay!
   There are no pardons in the tomb, And brief is mercy's day. Return!
   Return!"
     __________________________________________________________________

                               A Feast For Faith

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 16, 1866 BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT
   THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "This also comes forth from the Lord of Hosts, Who is wonderful in
   counsel and excellent in working." Isaiah 28:29.

   ISAIAH admired the farmer's skill in his calling. He mentions with
   admiration the various methods adopted by the farmer in the rotation of
   crops, in the choice of different soils for certain seeds, in the
   methods of binding up and stowing away his produce. And he enlarges
   especially upon the different methods of threshing which were used by
   the Orientals, some tender grain being threshed out by a staff in a
   man's hand, and others being dragged out of the husk by coarser means,
   such as by being trampled upon by the feet of oxen, pressed by the
   turning of a cart wheel upon them, or by the dragging them through a
   sharp threshing instrument having teeth. He considered, I suppose, that
   the art of agriculture was in a high state of perfection.

   I wonder what he would say if he could observe it now, and see the
   wonderful machines which no sooner go into a field or a brickyard than
   they accomplish with ease in a few hours that which was once the labor
   of days or even weeks! Certainly he would exclaim with even greater
   emphasis than he did concerning the agriculture of his own day--"This
   also comes forth from the Lord of hosts." The sentiment of the text on
   its surface is that the art, and science, and skill of man, are the
   gifts of God. The Prophet instances only agriculture, but the same
   principle applies to all the arts and manufacturing, and in a higher
   degree, still, to those more sublime sciences which elevate the human
   mind and make us acquainted with the majestic and mysterious powers of
   Nature.

   We are bound to trace human wisdom up to Divine wisdom, even in those
   things which have no relation to the eternal interests of men, but
   which have a beneficial influence upon their present state. We read of
   Bezalel, the son of Uri, that the Lord said, "I have filled him with
   the spirit of God in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge,
   and in all manner of workmanship. To devise cunning works, to work in
   gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones, to set
   them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship."
   Then it is added, "and in the hearts of all that are wise-hearted I
   have put wisdom."

   We are to ascribe the thoughtful, inventive mind, and the dexterous,
   clever hand, to Him who is the great Instructor of man. We trace
   directly to God the marvelous philosophy of Newton, and the skill of
   Watt and Stevenson, because the very slightest consideration shows us
   that there was originally a peculiarity in the constitution and
   formation of such minds as theirs. The most of us could have done
   nothing of the kind if we had tried all our days. There may be men of
   inventive genius here, but I suppose that nine out of ten of us can
   make no pretense to the possession of anything of the sort, and
   therefore we are led to ask, "Where did the faculty come from?"

   Surely the fertile brain of invention must be the Creator's gift! And
   Providence has also a hand in the business, for many men whose minds
   would naturally have gone in the direction of invention are turned into
   quite another course by the force of circumstances--

   "Chill penury repressed their noble rage, And chilled the genial
   current of their soul."

   It was surely God's Providence, which in other cases found a channel
   for the natural passion, and allowed the soul to flow as it willed. And
   how often, too, some of the greatest inventions have been due to the
   simplest incidents! The puffing of steam from a kettle, or the falling
   of an apple from a tree have led thoughtful minds to discover great and
   important truths--and who shall attribute these circumstances to any
   but to Him, who "works all things according to the counsel of His
   will"--and who gives wisdom to the wisest of the sons ofmen?

   Let us adore the Mighty God, not only as we read our Bibles, but as we
   traverse the halls of art and science, and visit the exhibitions which
   in these days of ours are being reared on every side. Let us make man's
   skill speak to us of God's Glory, and as we look upon them, instead of
   saying, "Great are you, O man! And great are the marvels of your
   genius," let us say, "Great are You, O God, in thus instructing man,
   and guiding him to those principles and properties of matter, by the
   knowledge of which his mortal existence is cheered and brightened." The
   drift of the writer of the text is this--if God thus instructs man in
   wisdom--how wise must He be Himself! If the mere rays which come from
   Him convey to us so much light that we are perfectly astonished at what
   man can do, what must be the infinite wisdom in counsel, and the
   excellence of works which are to be discovered in God Himself!

   If the human mind at last has linked two far-divided continents
   together, and annihilated space and time, and even made the old ocean
   to be the preserver rather than the destroyer of the slender line along
   which the fluid lightning flashes at man's bidding. If man has bridged
   the mightiest rivers, and has forced his roads through pathless forests
   and rocky mountains--being taught to do so by God--then what cannot God
   do? If the pupil, the poor puny pupil, can accomplish these marvels,
   what cannot the Master perform? Must He not be wonderful in His
   counsel? Must He not be excellent in His works?

   Thus the Prophet conducts our mind from man to God. I wish that all
   teachers did the same! But how many there are whose main business
   appears to be to divert the mind from God, and to ignore His Existence!
   There are two things which shall occupy our attention this morning. The
   first is the vision of God which the text presents to us, and the
   second is the lesson which such a vision is calculated to teach us.

   I. First, let us behold THE VISION OF GOD WHICH IS PRESENTED TO US IN
   THE TEXT. The Lord of hosts is seen by the enlightened eye, first of
   all, in His council-chamber, and then in His great workshop. And in
   both He is the subject of prophetic admiration. He is "wonderful in
   counsel." He is "excellent in working." Let us remark at the outset
   that it is clear from the text that God does not work without a plan.
   God has not left the world to chance.

   There are some men who are always kicking against the doctrine of an
   eternal purpose, and who grow angry if you assert that God has settled
   what shall occur. It is by the consent of all agreed that man is
   foolish if he works without a plan, and yet they cry out when we insist
   that God also, in all His working, is fulfilling a well-arranged
   design! Depend upon it, however--let men rebel against this Truth of
   God as they will--that God has determined the end from the beginning.
   He has left no screw loose in the machine! He has left nothing to
   chance or accident. Nothing with God is the subject of an "if or a
   "perhaps," but even the agency of man, free as it is--as untouched and
   undisturbed as if there were no God--even this is guided by His
   mysterious power, and works out thoroughly His own purpose in every jot
   and tittle!

   He wings the thunderbolt and shall He not guide the most passionate
   spirit? He puts a bit into the mouth of the whirlwind and shall He not
   control the most ambitious will? He takes care that even the sea shall
   come no farther than He bids it and shall not the heart of man be
   equally subject to the Divine purpose? Yielding to man his free agency,
   giving to him his responsibility, leaving him as free as if there were
   no purpose and no decree, yet the eternal Jehovah works out His plans,
   and achieves His purpose to the praise of His Glory!

   The great principle of the text is that God has a plan--and that this
   plan is wonderful in itself, and is found to be excellent when it is
   carried out. This may be illustrated in many ways, and let us remark at
   once that it is illustrated in Nature. All creation is full of traces
   of design. It is true that the Lord took no counsel with His angels,
   nor sought direction from any beings. "With whom took He counsel, and
   who instructed Him?" He alone meted out the heavens with a span, and
   weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance. But they
   were weighed and measured, and nothing was made without the most
   accurate calculation!

   Even that which appears to us to be irregular in the Divine work is
   only undiscovered order. The stars seem cast about upon the floor of
   Heaven as men might fling gold dust from their hands! Yet there is not
   a single star whose place might be altered without mischief to the
   whole arrangement. Who has studied astronomy that does not know that
   the size of every planet--its place in the solar system, the density of
   its matter, the length of its year, and everything connected with
   it--is arranged upon a scale so accurate that they can be calculated by
   the mathematician with the utmost nicety? Such is the wisdom manifested
   in the arrangement of those ponderous orbs of Heaven! And here on earth
   is it not one of the clearest arguments for Godhead that design is
   visible everywhere?

   Take the meanest animal, or the most minute insect, and you will find
   in it the most admirable contrivances to suit the habits of the
   creature and to make it happy in its condition. No, these creatures not
   only show design, but supply proof that the design is excellent in its
   working, for every fish that passes through the paths of the sea
   declares in its easy and graceful motion that the plan of its formation
   works admirably, and so with every bird and beast. No creature has to
   go to its Creator and complain, "There is a defect in my structure. I
   cannot carry out the end for which I was designed." Our own bodies,
   too, so curiously worked, full of nerves and muscles, the matchless
   needlework of God's patient fingers, have about them, if we did but
   observe them, ten thousand proofs of the surpassing foresight and
   masterly art of the great Maker.

   Oh that being so wondrously made by God we might feel bound to show
   forth His praise! Beloved Friends, a second illustration of this Truth
   of God may very easily be drawn from Providence. The great Providential
   operations of God are all the result of His fore-determined purpose and
   decree. From the first moment when Hiddekel and Euphrates, with their
   silvery flood, rolled joyously through the midst of Paradise rippling
   over sands of gold, down to the Last Great Day when the mighty angel
   shall stand upon the sea and upon the earth, and swear by Him that
   lives forever and ever that time shall be no longer--everything that
   has moved or shall move in Heaven, and, earth, and Hell, has been, is,
   and shall be according to the counsel and foreknowledge of
   God--fulfilling a purpose holy, just, wise, and unalterable!

   The whole poem of Providence, when it shall be read in the light of
   eternity, shall be found worthy of the Infinite Mind. Even that part of
   human history which has been already written, though it may appear
   unintelligible at first sight, when it comes to be thoroughly studied,
   has an explanation very near at hand. Did not God, age by age, prepare
   the world for the coming of the Lord Jesus in the flesh? And is He not
   now preparing it for His second coming in His Glory? All the way up
   till now every lover of the Lord will see that the awful wheels of
   Providence have worked with excellent regularity. Empires have fallen,
   but the Truth of God has risen! Dynasties have perished, but immortal
   principles have conquered!

   Slaughter has sown her seed in crimson furrows, but Liberty has
   ultimately reaped the golden harvest. Famine and Pestilence have made
   the earth to quake beneath their terrible footsteps when they came as
   messengers of the avenging God, but flowers of goodness have sprung up
   in their awful tracks. The most fearful calamities have hidden us
   beneath their wings from calamities yet greater. The mischief of a day
   has begotten for us blessings which have endured for ages! God has
   shown in Providence, even until now, that He is wonderful in design and
   excellent in working.

   But, Believer, perhaps you will be more interested if I say that your
   own personal experience of that Providence goes to prove this with
   equal clearness. Oh, how wondrous in design has God been in His
   dealings with you! You have felt many trials, and you are not able to
   understand the reason of it all. You have been sitting down by the side
   of the vast sea of Providence and you have been asking, Why this? And,
   Why that? And trying to fathom the mystery with the shallow line of
   your own judgment. But depend upon it that the need for all that you
   have suffered has been most accurately determined by God! You must have
   seen that He overrules all things for your good.

   Have you not to thank God today, you gray-headed saints, for the
   afflictions of your youth? And as to the trials of your riper years,
   can you not say of them, "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now
   have I kept Your Word"? You lost a friend once, but you never knew how
   much you gained by that loss, nor how much misery that trial spared
   you. Some of you might never have been saved at all were it not that,
   like Manasseh, you were taken among the thorns. You had determined to
   live and die a worldling, and if the house in which you lived so
   comfortably had not been consumed with fire you would have dwelt there
   still!

   But now you are a stranger and a sojourner, and are looking for "a city
   which has foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God." Happily for
   you, you did not see the plan of your life when you commenced it--but
   equally happy for you is it that there was such a plan--that your life
   has been arranged on the best possible principles so that if you had
   been gifted with unerring wisdom, you must have arranged a life for
   yourselves exactly similar to the one through which you have passed! I
   know you will say, "Well, to begin with, I would not have been born a
   child of poverty if I could have helped it. I would have prospered in
   business if I could have had my own way. I would have been in quite
   another locality from that in which I now reside if I could have had my
   own choosing."

   Yet, be persuaded that in every deviation from your past lot, you would
   have been rushing into peril! And the happy results of which you will
   have to sing in Heaven might have been prevented had there been an
   alteration in any degree in

   God's dealings with you. Many of you will be more pleased with another
   illustration. The wondrous planning of the excellent Worker is plainly
   seen in the great economy of Redemption. Well may angels desire to look
   into the scheme by which God ordained that fallen man should rise by
   his Fall, and should rise by a means similar to that by which he fell!
   While God should be glorified even more than if sin had never entered,
   Redemption is the most Divine of God's thoughts.

   It is marvelous that He should give His own Son to be Incarnate for the
   sake of His creatures! That God the mighty Maker should appear in human
   flesh and become a Man, so that fallen, sinful, and miserable man might
   be lifted up, and become the son of God! What a dream was that of Jacob
   when he saw the ladder, the foot of which rested upon the earth, and
   the top reached up to the seventh Heaven! That dream is more than
   realized when I see the foot of the ladder in the humanity of Christ,
   fixed in Bethlehem's manger, or if you will, at Calvary's Cross. And
   then behold the top of that ladder reaching up to the Eternal Throne,
   where He reigns as "God over all, blessed forever," who was also "the
   Son of Man."

   When I look at each of the rungs of that ladder, and see the proofs of
   Divine love in the Savior's sighs and tears, and bloody sweat, and
   passion, and death, I am lost in wonder! Truly it is a matchless scheme
   by which Justice has its due, and Mercy has its sway--by which
   Vengeance is satisfied, Holiness is gratified, and yet Love and Mercy,
   uncontrolled and unlimited--sway their silver scepter among the sons of
   men! When I see this great sight, those words of Isaiah's ring with a
   bell--like music in my ears, "He is wonderful in counsel."

   But, Beloved, when you see Redemption worked out, and when you think
   that God really gave His only Son and that this Son actually did come
   to Bethlehem--really lived among the sons of men, bowed His neck to the
   yoke of obedience, and gave His hands to the nails, and His side to the
   spear--you see His death was no fiction, but a grand reality! When you
   see that Redemption completed by the resurrection of the Master and
   hear the angelic shouts as He ascends on high, leading captivity
   captive, and see Heaven lit up with a supernal splendor as He mounts to
   His well-earned throne, you then find that He is as wonderful in the
   carrying out of Redemption as He is in the proposing of it! You see,
   then, He is wonderful in counsel, and that He is also excellent in
   working.

   Then, Brethren, turning from Redemption itself, look at the Gospel, and
   see how wonderful in counsel God was in that matter. If we were to hold
   a parliament of the wise men of England to settle the Gospel, I will
   undertake to declare now what the Gospel would be. I am sure as to the
   result--the majority of the members would decide that the Gospel to be
   preached should be this--That men should be exhorted to do their best
   to "live righteously, honestly, and soberly in this present evil
   world." And then, through the merits of Christ, God would accept their
   lives, and they would be saved. Now, that happens NOT to be the Gospel,
   but the Law--or rather it is neither Law nor Gospel, but a mixture of
   both, which God despises! It is neither hot nor cold, and He spits it
   out of His mouth as an abhorred thing.

   The Apostle Paul peremptorily, over and over again, tells us that
   salvation is not by works. No, he tells us that it is not by works and
   Divine Grace put together, either! He testifies that the two principles
   neutralize and kill each other, and that a man must either be saved
   wholly as the result of God's favor, or else he must be saved
   altogether as the result of his own merit--for the two principles
   cannot in any way be combined. The Gospel which we have to preach is
   just the reverse of what human wisdom would advise. It is not, "do and
   live," but "believe and live."

   Now I will show you in a moment that the Gospel, which the world would
   propose, would be a most absurd Gospel, because it would be of no
   service to the very persons who need it the most. Those who walk
   righteously, honestly, and soberly, may be put down as those who "have
   no need of a physician." Why, then, prescribe a medicine for them?
   Where would the Gospel be for the sick? As for the men who feel their
   guilt before God, and their inability to conquer sin, what am I to say
   to them if the world's Gospel is the true one? I can say nothing at all
   to them upon this supposition, but must leave them to their
   destruction!

   If I find them lying upon the bed dying, or if I meet with them in the
   hour of extremity, I can have no word of comfort to whisper in their
   ear at all, but can only remind them that if they had lived
   righteously, honestly, and soberly, things would have been different
   with them--which is not good news but a rebuke! But now I can come to
   all men, whoever they may be, sunken in degradation and steeped in
   vice, and say to them, "In the name of God trust Christ, and you shall
   be saved! The past shall be forgiven you, and as you trust Christ there
   shall come flashing into your soul a new life which shall make you hate
   the sins which have been your ruin, and make you love the ways of truth
   and righteousness! You shall be saved as the result of God's free
   favor, and the proof of it shall be that you shall be saved from the
   power of sin and purified from your iniquities."

   This Gospel seems to me to be wonderful in its counsel because it is
   suited to the most abject and the most depraved. And I am a witness,
   among ten thousand others, that it is excellent in its working. The
   other system I spoke of would be bad in its working. Many preachers
   have had to confess the uselessness of mere moral preaching. One of
   them said he preached up honesty till his parish swarmed with thieves.
   There is no instance, I believe, on record where the mere preaching of
   the Law made a man love God, or where the heart ever was, or ever could
   be, renewed by inculcating good works. As well hope to make a
   blackamoor white by pelting him with snowballs.

   And if it were right to do so, we could point out cases in this house
   this morning by scores, where the preaching of the Savior's love and
   the testimony of a free salvation for the undeserving has melted the
   heart, has changed the morals, has, in fact, produced such an effect
   that the drunkard loves sobriety, that the harlot has become chaste,
   and that the most abandoned are saved. The Gospel plan is excellent in
   its working. The other plan, which looks as if it would repress vice,
   pulls up the very floodgates of it, for what you command a man not to
   do, that he will do! But when you come to him, not with a command, but
   with a sweet invitation of love, and with wooing words of comfort,
   bidding him look to Jesus and live, then the command which was irksome
   and impossible before becomes an easy yoke.

   I must hardly tarry longer to illustrate this great principle, or
   otherwise I might have spoken upon God's plan and God's work in inward
   experience. The experience of every Christian is, in some respects,
   different from the experience of every other, but it is still the
   result of God's plan. Your being led through a certain state of deep
   depression and of severe mental exercise is down in the book--and as
   for my Brother yonder--his being led through a state of exultation and
   rapturous delight is down in the plan, too. And it is right, that in
   one case you should have defeat, and that in the other case you should
   enjoy triumph.

   My Brother shall be made a perfect man in Christ Jesus by his
   joys--some excellencies will be in him which nothing but joy could have
   fostered. You also shall be brought to spiritual development by your
   sorrows, and some powers shall be in you which nothing but sorrow ever
   could have educated in your case. The experiences of God's servants are
   very like the wanderings of the children of Israel in the
   wilderness--they were led here, and there, and round about--and yet
   their road was the best way to Canaan. Sometimes a straight line is not
   the shortest distance between two places. It is in mathematics, but it
   is not in experience, for there may be something between through which
   a straight line could not be drawn. There may be something in you which
   renders it necessary that God should not lead you in a straight line,
   and it may be best for you to avoid insuperable obstacles by going
   round about.

   Another illustration will be found in the use of instrumentality. It is
   a wonderful design of God to use one man to be the means of the
   conversion of another, because the man who does the work is as much
   benefited as the man upon whom the work is done. It is a great means of
   Divine Grace to the minister to be allowed to preach, as well as a
   great means of Grace to the hearers to be able to hear. The Sunday
   school teacher is as much benefited as are his scholars, and all of you
   who are watering others shall be watered yourselves. It is a wise thing
   on the part of God to use the Christian for the good of others because
   it tends to edification.

   And then how excellent it is in working! I am sure there is nothing
   more excellent than when a Church is all at work. Then you see the
   excellencies of instrumentality--no quarrellings, no bickering, no
   jealousies--all are active. But let the same Christians have nothing to
   do and straightway they meet with that black master who is said always
   to find work for idle people! They begin snarling. They become
   cantankerous and full of bitterness. They find fault, first with all
   the world in general, and then with their Brethren in particular, and
   lastly with themselves! No man is so near to the utmost extremity of
   misery as that man who has nothing to do. "How died so and so?" said
   one. "He died of having nothing to do," was the answer. "Ah," said the
   other, "that is enough to kill any of us!" And so it is. Let us escape
   from such a calamity.

   It is wise in God's counsel to use instrumentality, and it is excellent
   in working when it comes to be carried out. I must not, however, weary
   you with these illustrations. I will only say that the best
   illustration of all will be when, at the last, God's counsels shall be
   perfectly fulfilled! The end is coming. Although the ages may appear to
   drag their weary length along, yet he who looks upon them after God's
   fashion considers them to be but as a watch in the night. In a few more
   days the whole of God's purposes, with regard to the race of men here
   below, will be fulfilled. The last messenger of

   Mercy will have delivered his message, and the last elect soul will
   have received it. The time shall come when the last vessel of mercy
   shall be taken out from among the ruins of the Fall, and set in its
   place where Jesus dwells.

   Then comes the end, and when that end comes, we shall read, as far as
   may be, the whole of God's purpose as one grand poem! And there will
   not be one verse in it that has a syllable too much, or a word too
   little. There will not be one stanza or canto redundant, much less one
   that is erased--but from beginning to end we shall see the master pen
   and the mastermind drawing forth the glorious array of majestic
   thoughts! And with angels, seraphs, principalities, and powers, we
   shall burst forth into one mighty song, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
   Hallelujah! The Lord God Omnipotent reigns!"

   We shall see how, from the first even to the last, the King has been
   sitting upon the floods and ruling all things according to His own
   will. "From seeming evil still educing good, and better still, and
   better still in infinite progression," to the praise of His own Glory
   forever and ever.

   II. This being the doctrine of the text, I now want, as God shall help
   me, to give you SOME OF THE LESSONS FROM IT. Believe me, I have not
   laid down this doctrine in order that it may be a bed for you to
   stretch yourselves upon, nor even that it may be a coverlet for you to
   wrap yourselves in it--but I have done it with a practical purpose in
   view!

   First, I have a word to say to those unconverted persons who have some
   desire after salvation. Dear Hearers, I would to God that, seeing His
   counsel is so wondrous, you would agree to it. It is in His counsel
   that sinners shall be saved by Grace through believing in Christ. You
   have been setting up your own notion. You say that sinners should be
   saved by getting themselves into a state of gloominess. That sinners
   should be saved by humbling their minds. At least that is what I
   suppose you are saying, for you say you cannot be saved because you do
   not feel enough--that is to say, your plan is that you should be saved
   as sinners, prepared to be saved--and God's plan is that you should be
   saved just as you are.

   He wills to deal with you just where you now are, in your spiritual
   blindness, ignorance, hardness of heart, or whatever else may be the
   form of your spiritual malady. His plan is that you should look to
   Jesus as you are, and that looking, you should live! You will find this
   plan of God's not only wise in counsel, but also excellent in working.
   I have tried it and therefore I can speak experimentally. It is a
   blessed way of salvation, that way of, "Look and live." But the
   blessedness of it must be felt to be understood. I looked to Him and
   was lightened, and many, many, many around me have done the same and
   could rise up now and sing the hymn--

   "I came to Jesus as I was, Weary, and worn, and sad. I found in Him a
   resting place, And He has made me glad."

   You gave your mental assent to the principle which I laid down, that
   God is wonderful in His design, and excellent in working out His
   design. Oh that you might give your heart's consent to this Truth of
   God, and say, "Yes, Lord, it is a good way of salvation. I yield myself
   to it. Lord, work salvation in me. I will from now on have nothing to
   do with my own merit and strength. I will be dead, Lord, that You may
   live in me. I will be nothing, that You may be my All in All." Oh, I am
   happy, I am thrice happy, if a soul is now agreeing to that! O Heart!
   You shall see His face, for when you accept Him it is a clear proof
   that He has long ago loved you! And when you are agreed with Him it is
   because He determined that you should be a sheep of His pasture.

   Another word, and this is not to the sinner, but to you, the people of
   God. You believe that God is wise in His counsel, and excellent in His
   working, and you did not kick against the Truth as I laid it down, did
   you? Now I want you to agree to this in your own particular case. I
   know there are some of you here who, when it comes to the point,
   believe it as a doctrine, but you do not believe it in your own case.
   You say, "I cannot understand God's dealings with me." As if it were
   expected that you should! But you also add, "I cannot believe that God
   has good designs in it." My dear Friend, you must believe it, or
   else--what? Shall I dare to say it? Yes, I will say it--John said that
   if a man did not believe God, he made God a liar, and so you who do not
   believe in God's wisdom make Him a fool!

   Do you not shrink from that? I know you must! You do in effect, when
   you doubt the wisdom of Providence--make God out to be a blunderer--or
   else to be unkind! Would you do either? No, your heart is shocked at
   the idea! It is all right, then, my Sister. It is all right, my
   Brother. There cannot be a doubt of it, can there? If our business is
   in His hands, it will all come right. You cannot get the rudder
   round--the vessel will go on the wrong tack. But He can do it. He knows
   how to get to the point that you are aiming at, and that He is aiming
   at, and He will get you there even as sailors get their vessels to
   where they want to go by tacking about.

   So will it be with you. Your course is all mapped out by your Lord.
   Nothing will take Him by surprise. There will be no novelties to Him.
   There will be no occurrences which He did not ordain, and for which,
   therefore, He has not provided. He has arranged all, and you have but
   to patiently wait and you shall sing a song of deliverance. But these
   are not the lessons I wanted to teach. They are both valuable, but I
   now desire to speak to those of my Brothers and Sisters who are my
   fellow workers. The workers and the sufferers are the cream of the
   Church. Workers, here is a lesson for you. I will try to learn it
   myself. It is this--when we are going to work for God do not let us be
   in such a mighty hurry. I know our slow-going friends will like that
   advice, but I do not mean what they think I do!

   Do not let us seem to encourage them in their laziness by making
   blunders through being hasty, for they will be sure to say, "Ah, you
   should have been as slow as we are, and you would not have fallen into
   these errors." Just so, but it is better to do good and blunder than to
   lie and rot in idleness. Brother workers, let us have a well-formed
   plan, and let it be God's plan. Very frequently I am afraid that we
   sketch out our plan ourselves, and if we do that without waiting upon
   God we are not walking in the path of faith--we are not bringing in Him
   who is "wonderful in counsel" to our help. And we must not, therefore,
   expect to have Him who is "excellent in working" for our assistance. We
   must do God's work in His own way.

   Sitting with Mary at the Master's feet is the very best preparation for
   doing the work which Martha did without being "cumbered" by it. Oh,
   when I know that I am following and not leading--that I am not running
   before God's cloud, and like a fool, hunting out my own way in the
   wilderness--but I see that I have His footsteps before me--it is happy
   and safe walking! Friends may say, "Ah, rash young man, you are risking
   so much," and Unbelief may cry, "Let me see the pounds, shillings, and
   pence and we can go on!" But Faith cries, "If it is God's way. I know I
   am no fool! I know I am safe."--

   " 'Tis safer, Lord, to trust in You, And on Your care depend, Than
   trust in men of high degree, Or even ha ve kings our friend."

   God never fails the man who, in simple, child-like faith, rests
   entirely upon Him. Have you never noticed that when you are content to
   wait for God's plan it opens up to you very wonderfully? You could not
   have opened it up. You did not understand it, but He cleared the way.
   Instead of laying awake all night, how much better to go to sleep and
   wake up in the morning and find that God has done all for you. Faith
   goes forward in the name of God, and the gates of iron open to her
   through Divine strength. Let not your wisdom misguide you--your folly
   will not if your wisdom does not. Let not your strength make you weak,
   and then your weakness will be no hindrance. Do not imagine, when you
   have learned God's plan, that you will comprehend it--for it was not
   meant for you to comprehend.

   I do not suppose that the most of the bricklayers who are employed by
   our great builders understand at all what the house which they are
   building is to be like. Very likely nine out of ten of those who go up
   the ladder with the troughs of mortar, or stand on the scaffolding with
   their trowels at work have no idea as to whether the building is to
   come out Gothic or Grecian. They have nothing to do with that! They
   have merely to carry their mortar and to lay the bricks and do their
   day's work.

   This is just what you and I have to do. Whether the Lord may leave me
   to carry out the work, or whether He may take me off and put others to
   accomplish His design should be the same to me. I have but to do my
   daily work, and to trust the great Architect who is, "wonderful in
   counsel and excellent in working," that though I may not know it, He
   will most certainly bring out the best results from the accumulated
   labors of all His servants. Again, when we do know God's plan, we must
   remember to carry it out, for that same God who is "wonderful in
   counsel" is also "excellent in working."

   Do not sit down and be so pleased with the plan that you never try it!
   I must confess that I like to see a well-thumbed Bible better than more
   dainty copies because I see that it has been used. When you see a plan
   in an architect's office that is very new and very pretty to look at,
   you say, "Ah, nothing has been done with it." But when you see a plan
   that is smudgy, and torn, and almost broken through where it has been
   folded, you know that the man has done something with it. Now, do not
   fall in love with the plan, and think it is very pretty but never carry
   it out! When Dr. Guthrie wanted his Ragged-schools founded, he called
   on a certain minister, who said, "Well you know, Mr. Guthrie, there is
   nothing very new in your scheme. I and Mr. So-and-So have been thinking
   over a plan similar to yours for the last twenty years." "Oh, yes,"
   said Dr. Guthrie, "I dare say. But you have never carried it out." So
   some people are always thinking over some very fine plan of their
   own--but while the grass grows the steed starves.

   Now the God who plans also works. Let us believe this. Christian, God
   has planned to divide the Red Sea, and He says, "Go forward!" Are you
   going to sit still till the sea is divided for you? No, in God's name,
   Man, go forward, and the sea will be divided when you need it to be
   divided, but not before. What use would there be in having the Red Sea
   out of its normal condition, and its bed laid dry for hours before the
   hosts are to walk through it? You shall have God's help when you need
   it, and you are not to expect that God will minister to the cravings of
   your unbelief. No! Trust in Him and you shall see wonders!

   I may not often quote my own life as an example except to you who are
   my friends and fellow workers, and to whom my life is but your own
   brought out in public. You know how we, as a Church, have been led to
   see mysteriously the hand of God. I remember one night, when we
   resolved to build this House of Prayer, we knew that we were poor, much
   too poor ever to be able to raise so large a sum as this house would
   cost--especially when the vow was registered that it should never be
   built with borrowed money--but should either be paid for or else not
   built at all.

   I remember preaching that evening from the text, "And the iron did
   swim," and saying that the building of this house seemed as likely a
   thing to happen as if the iron should swim. But I said I was glad it
   was twenty-five thousand pounds which we wanted, for if it had been
   only five thousand pounds, or ten thousand pounds, we might feel able
   to raise it. But twenty-five thousand pounds was impossible--only I
   believed that God could do impossibilities! It was one of the most
   singular things that ever occurred, when a friend at a distance whom I
   never saw but once in my life--and who had no connection with us--put
   down five thousand pounds himself toward it!

   We were encouraged. We went to work, and the thing was done and as it
   went on, more and more singular helps were sent! When the College of
   which I am president had been commenced, for a year or so, all my means
   were spent. My purse was dried up and I had no other means of carrying
   it on. I was in this very House of Prayer one Sunday evening after I
   had spent all I had for the support of my young men for the ministry.
   There is a dear friend now sitting behind me who knows the truth of
   what I am saying. I said to him, "There is nothing left whatever." He
   said, "You have a good Banker, Sir." "Yes," I said, "and I should like
   to draw upon Him now, for I have nothing." "Well," he said, "how do you
   know? Have you prayed about it?" "Yes, I have." "Well, then, leave it
   with Him. Have you opened your letters?" "No, I do not open my letters
   on Sundays."

   "Well," he said, "open them for once." I did so, and in the first one I
   opened there was a banker's letter to this effect--"Dear Sir, We beg to
   inform you that a lady, totally unknown to us, has left with us two
   hundred pounds for you to use in the education of young men." Such a
   sum has never come since, and it never came before! And I have no more
   idea than the dead in their graves how it came then, nor who it came
   from! But to me it seemed that it came directly from God.

   We have gone on successfully ever since with that work, and are
   resolved to launch out into others. And I believe that we only need as
   a Church, and your pastor only needs as your pastor, to have faith in
   God, and we shall find Him "wonderful in counsel and excellent in
   working."

   Wherever there is the hand of a true man there is the wing of an angel!
   Wherever there is the working of the sword of Joshua and the prayer of
   Moses, the almighty arm of the God of Israel is present! You have but
   to believe, and to go forward, leaning upon Him who made Heaven and
   earth, and all will be well.

   Let us pluck up courage, and from this very morning let us feel that we
   are not to be guided by the dogmas of carnal prudence but by the
   dictates of FAITH IN THE INVISIBELE GOD. Let us no longer measure
   means, and calculate possibilities, but let us go to Him who cannot be
   measured or limited. Let us trust Him where we cannot trace Him. Let us
   serve Him with might and main, and, to use the words of Gerhardt--

   "Let us in life and death His steadfast Truths declare, And publish
   with our latest breath, His love and guardian care!"
     __________________________________________________________________

                                War With Amalek

   DELIVERED SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 23, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim." Exodus 17:8.

   THERE were two great trials which the children of Israel had to endure
   in passing onward to the promised rest-- their needs and their enemies.
   But I must add a third, which sprang out of these two by reason of the
   unbelief of their hearts. That third evil, far worse than the other
   two, was their sins. Probably, my Brothers and Sisters, you have found
   out by now that you could contentedly endure your needs, and could
   courageously contend with your foes if you were not weakened and
   hampered by your sins. A man's worst foes are those of his own
   household.

   As for Israel's needs, I think Israel may be congratulated in having
   known them. For suppose they could have brought with them enough
   provision from Goshen, or could have been supplied by trading
   purveyors? They would never have been honored to feed upon the manna
   which dropped from Heaven! And suppose a canal had been dug for them to
   flow at the edge of the whole road of their march? Or that they could
   have found a succession of wells hard by the spots where they pitched
   their tents? Then they never would have drank of that marvelous Rock
   whose flints gushed with water, of which the Apostle tells us that it
   was Christ, or an eminent type of Christ.

   They were gentlemen-commoners upon the bounty of Heaven--courtiers fed
   from the table of the King of kings! They were lifted up to eat angels'
   food--they were satisfied with royal dainties. In this light, they are
   to be congratulated for their needs, for, if they had not known hunger,
   nor thirst, neither had they eaten manna, nor had they drank the water
   from the Rock. And you, Beloved, are much in the same case. The day
   will come when in clearer light than this you will thank God for your
   needs, and be of the same mind as the Apostle, who said, "Most gladly
   therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of
   Christ may rest upon me." And again, "For when I am weak, then am I
   strong."

   You will thank God that your needs were the platform for His Providence
   to display its care upon. That the very wilderness was a gift to you
   because He prepared a table for you in the midst of it, and might have
   left you to prepare one for yourself if it had not been a desert place.
   As for the enemies which beset the children of Israel, I was about to
   say they might almost be congratulated on account of them--for, fierce
   as they were--they could never have had victories if they had not known
   battles! The enemies of Israel were but so many sheaves for Israel's
   victorious sword to reap--as the wild beasts of the wood yield food to
   the hunter--so were the haters of Israel as a prey unto their valiant
   men.

   Over every enemy of His people the right hand of the Lord was
   gloriously exalted. You, too, Brethren, you, too, will have reason to
   thank God for all your enemies! If your life were one of perpetual
   peace it is clear there could be no triumphs. If there were not
   campaigns of warfare, there would be no shouts of them that triumph, no
   trophies to hang up in the halls of memory. Oh, if we can be kept from
   sins! If we can be preserved from their power we may be thankful for
   needs and even thankful for foes when we look at them in the light of
   the fiery pillar of God's promised Presence. But our sins! Our sins!
   Our sins! What shall we do with them? If it were not for the victorious
   blood by which we conquer, we might lie down in despair--for who among
   us is, alone and unaided, a match for his sins?

   This morning we thought of considering the war with Amalek as a typical
   representation of the experience of God's people. Our prayer is that we
   may speak so that those who are greatly troubled and afflicted may
   derive some comfort from the Truth of God advanced--and that lagging
   saints may be stimulated to fight the battles of their Master, lest the
   curse go out against them--"because they came not up to the help of the
   Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty."

   We shall use the text three ways. First, as a picture of the experience
   of each individual Christian. Secondly, as a representation of the
   history of each separate Church. And thirdly, as a very excellent
   description of the history of the entire Church of the living God, from
   its first day even till its close.

   I. First, then, we have here THE EXPERIENCE OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL
   CHRISTIAN. Observe the children of Israel were emancipated from
   bondage, and had left Egypt behind even as you and I have been rescued
   from our natural estate and are no longer the servants of sin. They had
   been redeemed by blood sprinkled upon the door posts and upon the
   lintel, and we, too, have had redemption applied to our souls, and have
   seen that God has looked upon the blood and has passed over us.

   They had feasted upon the paschal lamb as we have done, for Jesus has
   become to us our meat and our drink, and our soul is satisfied with
   Him. They had been pursued by their enemies, even as we were pursued by
   our old sins, and they had seen these furious foes all drowned in the
   Red Sea, which they had passed through dry-shod. And we, too, have seen
   our past sins forever buried in the Red Sea of atoning blood. Our
   iniquities, which threatened to drive us back into the Egypt of
   despair, are gone forever! They sank like lead in the mighty waters,
   the depths have covered them--there is not one of them left.

   Israel sung a new song upon the other side of the sea, and we, too,
   have rejoiced in God. Like Miriam we have sounded the loud timbrel of
   exultation and have danced with holy joy while our lips have chanted
   the hymn of victory-- "Sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed
   gloriously." Many of us are now free from the yoke of sin and Satan,
   and as the Lord's freemen we glorify His name. Oh that all of us were
   in such a happy state! The children of Israel were probably
   anticipating ease, forgetting that the promised land was yet many days'
   journey beyond them. Inexperience and childishness made them expect a
   continuance of uninterrupted song and feasting, and there was a time
   when we indulged the same foolish hopes.

   We said to ourselves, "Let us be at peace, for the warfare is over. Now
   may we take our ease. Pharaoh is drowned, the horses and the chariots
   have sunk like lead in the mighty waters. No whips of the taskmaster,
   now, no bricks to make without straw. No more shall we be trod down by
   a cruel people and worn out with the labors of the brick kiln. With a
   high hand and a mighty arm have we been brought forth! Let us rejoice
   and be merry. Let us be glad all our days, and dance the desert
   through." That was the voice of our inexperience and folly. How soon
   were our budding hopes nipped by an unexpected frost! For, like Israel,
   we soon experienced tribulations.

   Suddenly there came upon us the thirst and the hunger which only
   Heaven's love could supply! And when we least dreamed of it, the fierce
   Amalek of temptation came down like a wolf on the fold. Young
   Christian, do not dream that as soon as you are converted your struggle
   is over, but conclude that your conflict has but just begun! Some
   persons look upon regeneration as being the change of the old nature
   into a new. Experience teaches us that this is a very false description
   of the new birth. Conversion and regeneration do not change the old
   nature--that remains still the same-- but we have at our new birth
   infused into us a new nature, a new principle.

   And this new principle at once begins a contest with the old
   principle--therefore the Apostle tells us of the old man and of the new
   man--he speaks of the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit
   striving against the flesh. I do not care what the doctrinal statement
   of any man may be upon the subject--I am sure that the experience of
   the most of us will prove to a demonstration that there are two natures
   within us--that only a complex description can describe us at all. We
   find a company of two armies within us, and the fight goes on, and, if
   anything, waxes hotter every day. We do trust that the right principle
   grows stronger, and we hope that through Divine Grace the evil
   principle is weakened and mortified. But, at present, it is with most
   of us a very sharp contest, and were it not for Divine strength we
   might throw down our weapons in hopelessness.

   Young Christian, you have begun a life of warfare, rest assured of
   that! You would never be told to endure hardness as a good soldier of
   Jesus Christ if it were not so. You must not put that sword up into its
   scabbard, but rather grind it sharp and hold it always ready in your
   hand. Watch constantly, and pray without ceasing, for, till you get
   your foot upon the golden pavement of the New Jerusalem, you must wear
   a warrior's harness and bear a warrior's toils. Indeed, dear Friends,
   there was that in the camp of the children of Israel which ought to
   have taught them to expect trouble, for was there not a voice heard
   among the murmuring host, "Is the Lord among us or not?"

   That croaking voice of unbelief foreboded ill. How could they expect to
   know peace when they doubted the God of peace? "There is no peace, says
   my God, to the wicked." And in proportion as the righteous are at all
   like the wicked, in that proportion they lose peace. The cry of
   unbelief in your beam and mine, when it says, "Is the Lord among us or
   not?" ought to warn us that we are not yet in the land of rest, but
   shall have to fight with many an enemy before the banner may be furled.
   Besides, Israel ought to have remembered that there was an ancient feud
   between the children of Esau and the children of Jacob, for had not
   Esau been supplanted by his brother?

   Amalek, Duke Amalek as he was called, was a descendant of Esau and
   treasured up all his father's hatred and enmity towards the house of
   Israel. Did Israel expect to journey near to Edom and not be attacked?
   And do you expect, Christian, that sin shall be round about you and not
   assault you?--

   "Is this vain world a friend to Divine Grace, To help you on to God?"

   If you look for friendship from a sinful world you are grievously
   mistaken! There is a deadly hereditary feud between the Christian and
   the powers of darkness. It sprang up in the Garden, in the day when God
   said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed
   and her Seed," and it continues still. You must fight if you would win
   the crown, and your pathway to the other side of Jordan must be the
   pathway of an armed crusader who has to contend for every inch of the
   way if he is to win it.

   In proceeding with the narrative we notice that they found opposition
   from an unexpected quarter. Ignorance may have made them reckon upon
   the friendliness of Amalek, for they evidently journeyed at their ease
   without proper precaution, presuming upon the relationship and
   peaceableness of the dwellers in the land. It is just where we feel
   most safe that we should be most cautious. "A man's foes are they of
   his own household." I do not think the Christian has so much to fear
   from open and avowed enemies as from those deceitful foes who claim to
   be his friends. Sin is never so much a Jezebel as when it paints its
   face with daubs of respectability and patches of innocence.

   Things dubious are more dangerous than things distinctly evil. The
   border land between right and wrong is thronged with thieves and
   robbers. Beware of cutthroats, you who journey there! Even right things
   may easily become wrong when they carry away our hearts, and therefore
   we must guard against their attractions. Many people need not be much
   afraid of being led into drunkenness and blasphemy, for we are not
   likely to give way to these grosser evils--but we have far more reason
   to watch against worldliness and pride--for these are enemies which
   select the godly as their special object of attack. Take heed to your
   virtues, Christian, for these, when exaggerated, become your vices!
   Take care of the good things in which you boast, for they may furnish
   heat for the hatching of the vipers' eggs of pride and
   self-satisfaction.

   Israel was assailed in a quarter which was unguarded because unlikely
   to be attacked. In the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifteenth chapter and
   the seventeenth and eighteenth verses, we find that Amalek fell upon
   the rear of the host. The hindmost must have seemed, to themselves, to
   be the most secure, for Pharaoh's host had been destroyed, and what
   further was there to fear? The weak and feeble came slowly on, at
   perfect ease, never so much as suspecting the existence of a foe. The
   van, I have no doubt, was kept well protected, for they knew not what
   hands might interrupt their onward march. But the rear, they thought,
   might be left exposed--and there it was the foe attacked them.

   Christian, wherever you diminish your caution there will the foe be
   upon you! When you say to yourself, "My mountain stands firm, I shall
   never be moved," concerning such-and-such a thing, it is there that you
   are most likely to fall. We are strongest usually when we fancy
   ourselves weakest because we take the matter to God--and weakest where
   we dream that we are strongest because we refrain from prayer. It will
   be observed, I think, in most Christians' experience, that God has left
   them to see their weakness where they themselves reckoned that no
   weakness could have been perceptible. Let us, then, set a watch all
   around and ask the Lord to be a wall of fire around us, and a glory in
   the midst.

   This attack of Amalek was rendered the more dangerous because it was
   all of a sudden. It seems that Amalek caught them in ambush and fell
   upon them without notice. There was no regular proclamation of war, no
   pitching of the battle, no sending out of skirmishers and scouts. The
   enemy fell upon them all of a sudden like a gang of bandits. Just so
   will sin do with you and me. If the devil would send me a notice when
   he means to tempt me, I might readily contend with him and defeat
   him--but this he will never do. He will not tell you whether or not
   tomorrow he will tempt you in your business--this is not his way of
   hunting for his game: "Surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of
   any bird."

   He will, if possible, take you unawares, and before you can put on your
   armor his arrows will sorely wound you. We are not ignorant of his
   devices. Well did the Master say, "What I say unto you I say unto all,
   Watch!" And oh, with what vigilance, what holy diligence must you and I
   watch against the winding and twisting of the old serpent, who will, if
   possible, bite our heels or insinuate his venom into our hearts! I
   think I must not omit to say that this attack of Amalek, though
   designed for the greatest mischief, did not occur without Divine
   arrangement and overruling. We may be thankful that though Satan
   selected the most suitable season for himself, yet the Lord made his
   devices of no effect.

   Amalek fell upon them when they were faint and weary, but the manna and
   the flowing Rock soon changed the face of affairs, and the novelty of
   this gracious supply inspired the host with unusual courage. Fresh from
   the feast, they had good stomach for the fray and found congenial
   occupation for their renewed vigor in hewing down their assailants!
   Satan may beset us at our weakest point--but God has a way of making us
   all of a sudden strong--so that in the end the attack comes at a time
   when we are most fitted to repel it.

   Have you not observed this? If your present trial had come at another
   time you could not have borne it. If your present temptation had
   presented itself but a day before, you would have fallen a victim to
   it. But it came just after you had enjoyed such communion with Christ
   that sin had no influence over you--the charms of Jesus made you blind
   to all other beauties. You had had your mouth so filled with manna that
   you were made strong in the strength of God to put to rout the host of
   your foes! Brothers and Sisters, be cautious always, but be confident
   in God! Watch against the foe, but be thankful that there is another
   Watcher who foresees all the devices of the devil and who will not
   deliver you into his hands nor suffer you to perish.

   When the assault was made, the people were commanded to exert
   themselves. The message was given, "Go, choose out men, and fight with
   Amalek." Israel never fought with Egypt. God fought for them, and they
   held their peace. When we are in our natural state under the bondage of
   sin, it is of very little use for us to fight against it--the only way
   of escape from the reigning power of sin is through the precious blood
   and the working of Divine Grace. But this was a different case. The
   children of Israel were not under the power of Amalek--they were free
   men--and so are we no longer under the power of sin! The yoke of sin
   has been broken, by God's Grace, from off our necks, and now we have to
   fight, not as slaves against a master, but as free men against a foe.

   Moses never said to the children of Israel while they were in Egypt,
   "Go, fight with Pharaoh." Not at all--it is God's work to bring us out
   of Egypt and make us His people. But when we are delivered from
   bondage, although it is God's work to help us, we must be active in our
   cause. Now that we are alive from the dead we must wrestle with
   principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness if we are to
   overcome. "Go fight," is the command. Do not many Christians act as if
   the sin would be driven out of them through their sleeping soundly? Let
   them be sure that a slumbering spirit is the best friend that sin can
   find!

   If your lusts are to be destroyed, they must be cut up root and branch
   by sheer force of personal exertion through Divine Grace--they are not
   to be blown away by languid wishes and sleepy desires. God will not
   relieve us of our sins as sometimes persons have diseased limbs removed
   while under the influence of chloroform. We shall see our sins die
   while our minds are thoroughly active against them and resolutely bent
   upon their destruction. "Go, fight with Amalek." Greatly to be deplored
   is the way in which some Christians say, "Ah, well, it is my besetting
   sin," or, "It is my natural temperament," or, "It is my constitution."
   Shame on you, Christian! What if it is so? Do you mean to say to your
   Father's face that you have so great a love for the sin which He hates
   that you will harbor it and invent hiding places for it?

   Why, when a sin does so easily beset you, you must muster your whole
   force and cry to Heaven for strength that the dangerous foe may be
   overcome! One sin harbored in the soul will ruin you! One sin really
   loved and indulged will become damning evidence against you and prove
   that you really do not love the Savior--for if you did you would hate
   every false way. We must fight if we would overcome our sins! Spiritual
   fighting must be conducted on most earnest and prudent principles.

   They were to choose out men. So we must choose out our ways of
   contending with sin. The best part of a man should be engaged in
   warfare with his sins. Certain sins can only be fought by the
   understanding. We ought, then, to sit down and deliberately look at the
   evil, and learn its wickedness by deliberately judging and considering
   its motives and its consequences. Perhaps when we clearly see what the
   sin is, Mr. Understanding, as Bunyan calls it, may be able to knock the
   brains out of it! One peculiar order of sins is only to be overcome by
   a speedy flight like that of the chaste Joseph. Sins of the flesh are
   never to be reasoned or parleyed with. There is no more reasoning with
   them than with the winds-- understanding is nonplussed--for lust, like
   a hurricane of sand, blinds the eyes. We must flee! It is true valor in
   such a case to turn the back. "Resist the devil," says Paul. But he
   does not say resist lust! He puts it thus--"Flee youthful lusts."

   When warring with the legions of unrighteousness we shall need all the
   best powers of our renewed nature for the conflict will be stern. Oh,
   Believer, you will need to bring your veterans, your pick and choice
   thoughts into the fight with Amalek! The faith which has endured the
   storm must face the foe! The love which endures all things must march
   to the war! It is no child's-play to fight with sin! It needed all a
   Savior's strength to tread it in the winepress when He was here on
   earth, and it will need all your might and more to overcome it--you
   will only overcome it, indeed, through the blood of the Lamb.

   This makes me notice that though the men of Israel were to fight, and
   the chosen men were to be selected, yet they were to fight under the
   command of Joshua, that is, Jesus, the Savior. There is no fighting sin
   except under the leadership of Christ. We must fight sin with His
   weapons. We must see its sinfulness by the light of His sufferings--see
   its mischief in the sorrows of His death--see its destruction in the
   triumphs of His Resurrection. We must flee to the strong for strength,
   and seek help where God has laid it, namely, on Him that is mighty!
   When Jesus leads we need not be afraid. Promptly to follow Jesus is to
   secure a victory! His very name puts His enemies to rout! Who can
   withstand the terrors of His arm?

   The narrative points out to us that effort, alone, is not enough. Three
   men are seen wending their way up the steep sides of the hill, solemnly
   walking along as if they had most weighty business on hand. They are
   seeking a point of advantage from which to gall the foe with the
   artillery of prayer. So mighty was the prayer of Moses that all
   depended upon it! The petitions of Moses defeated the enemy more than
   the fighting of Joshua. The edge of Moses' prayer was more powerful
   than the edge of Joshua's sword. It matters not how loudly Joshua
   shouts to his men unless Moses fervently cries to his God! The young
   soldier would as soon have left the field if the old commander had left
   the closet. Force and fervor, decision and devotion, valor and
   vehemence must join their forces--and all will be well.

   You must wrestle with your sin, but the major part of the wrestling
   must be done alone in private with God. Prayer, like Moses, holds up
   the token of the Covenant before the Lord. The rod was the emblem of
   God's working with Moses, the symbol of God's government in Israel.
   Learn, O pleading Saint, to hold up the promise and the oath of God
   before Him! He cannot deny His own declarations. Hold up the rod of
   promise, and have what you will. Moses grew weary, and then his friends
   assisted him. When at any time your prayer flags, let faith support one
   hand, and let holy hope uplift the other. And prayer, seating itself
   upon the stone of Israel, the Rock of our salvation, will continue and
   prevail!

   Beware of faintness in devotion! If Moses felt it who can escape? It is
   far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in
   private. It is remarked that Joshua never grew weary in the fighting,
   but Moses did grow weary in the praying. The more spiritual an
   exercise, the more difficult it is for flesh and blood to maintain it.
   Let us cry, then, for special strength, and may the Spirit of God who
   helps our infirmities, as He allowed help to Moses, enable us like he
   to continue with our hands steady till the going down of the sun.

   It is not praying today nor yet tomorrow that will win life's
   battle--it is praying till the going down of the sun! It is not
   pleading for a month, and then ceasing supplication, Christian--it is,
   "till the going down of the sun," till the evening of life is over!
   Until you shall come to the rising of a better sun, or to the land
   where they need no sun, you must continue to pray--

   "Long as they live should Christians pray, For only while they pray
   they live." Let us learn, then, that there is to be action, but there
   must be supplication. We cannot expect to conquer Amalek without a
   combination of the two.

   I will not detain you much longer over this point, only remark that
   where holy activity is joined with earnest supplication, the result as
   to our sins is absolutely sure--the enemy must be defeated. We shall
   put our feet upon the necks of all our sins. There is no fear of their
   overcoming us if we do but lay hold on Divine strength. And, if ever we
   overcome sin once, it should be the signal for proclaiming a general
   war against all sin. The fight and victory over Amalek brought from
   God's mouth the solemn declaration that there should be war with Amalek
   forever and ever. So must it be with you. Have you mastered one sin?
   Slay the next, and the next, and the next! Can you curb your temper
   now? Now smite your pride! Is your pride humbled? Now drive an arrow
   through the very liver of your sloth! And is your sloth overcome? Now
   seek, by Divine Grace, to strike through the neck of the next
   temptation.

   Onward to the total destruction of every Amalekite must the child of
   Israel go! But notice that in the whole business the glory was given to
   God. No pillar was erected on that field of Israel's warfare in
   commemoration of Joshua, but an altar as a memorial to Jehovah. That
   day Israel did not lift on high the banner of Joshua, and sing of him
   as of the victorious Maccabaeus--

   "See, the conquering hero comes! Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!"
   but that day it was said, "Jehovah Nissi," the Lord is our banner, for
   they ascribed the glory and honor unto Him whose right hand alone had
   gotten to Him the victory! So must we do in all our successes, for if
   we overcome a sin and then boast of ourselves, we are overcome by sin.
   If looking back upon the past we say with congratulation, "God, I thank
   You that I am not as other men are. I thank You for this and that," but
   all the while are thinking that we have much more reason to thank
   ourselves, we show that we are still with the fetters upon our wrists
   dragged in captivity.

   I leave the point hoping that some young Christian may have received a
   lesson in experience. And yet I fear that we must all learn experience
   for ourselves, and that what is told us by others is but an idle tale.
   I pray that you who are beginning a new generation may not be as your
   father's were, a stiff-necked people, but that you may walk before the
   Lord with greater holiness and smite Amalek with sterner determination
   than your fathers have done, that so the victory may be unto God
   through you.

   II. In the second place, the whole narrative may be interpreted AS THE
   HISTORY OF ANY ONE CHRISTIAN

   CHURCH. I draw a distinction between the general Church and any one
   particular Church. In the olden times the Churches of our Lord Jesus
   Christ, though acknowledging one another and recognizing their unity,
   were distinct organizations managing their own affairs.

   And here I will digress so far as to say that the only Christian unity
   which you and I may ever expect to see and to seek after is not the
   amalgamation of all Churches into one colossal scheme of government,
   but the spiritual union of all the Churches in working for the
   Lord--each Church exercising its discipline within its own bounds, and
   carrying out Christ's commands within its own walls--but at the same
   time recognizing all other truly Christian Churches as being parts of
   the one body of Christ.

   Instead of attempting to destroy all these separate Churches in order
   to create unity, we should build up the walls of each house so that the
   whole city may be compact together. Even the names which describe the
   varieties of our conscientious convictions are useful, and are only
   caviled at by a party who under the cloak of being unsectarian are more
   sectarian than the worst of us could even slanderously be said to be.
   Suppose that all the livery companies in London should give up their
   distinctive names, so that there should be no Goldsmiths' Company, nor
   Cloth Workers, nor Merchant Tailors, nor Fishmongers, but that all
   should be called citizens? It would be a wonderful piece of policy and
   would singularly unite the citizens of London, would it not?

   We believe that the reverse would be the case! The existence of the
   separate corporations, each with its peculiar interests to maintain,
   but all bound up with the prosperity of the city, help to create unity.
   And so the unity of the Savior's body is preserved rather than
   destroyed by each Believer carrying out his convictions of the Lord's
   will, and not refusing to identify himself with those who think with
   him, nor refusing to wear the name which describes them. Certain
   sectaries cry out, "We are called Christians." "Yes, I say, and are we
   not?" Are they Brethren? So are we. Are they Christians? So are we. Do
   they seek to be followers of Christ? So do we.

   There is the less need for some to parade the name of Christians when
   they know that they are Christians. Let us try to live out our
   Christianity rather than blazon it upon our doorposts! I am not making
   an unscriptural distinction when I say, first of all, I am going to
   regard the narrative as a picture of a Church, and then afterwards as a
   picture of the whole Church. In any one Church there will be--there
   must be, if it is a Church of God--earnest contention for the Truth of

   God and against error. We, as a Church have, I trust, been brought up
   out of Egypt and are bound together by a common deliverance. We have to
   fight with Amalek.

   For the defense of those doctrines which we have learned and which we
   believe to be the Truth as it is in Jesus, we are called to fight. We
   are not merely to hold them as the unfaithful servant wrapped his
   talent in a napkin, but we are to publish what we believe to be true,
   and, if any contravene, we are to hold our own, or rather, hold the
   Master's Truth with a firm hand, and not be afraid to contend for it at
   all hazards! Our chief war must always be with sin--with sin in
   ourselves, with sin in others--with sin everywhere! This is the great
   point in the Christian's contention, and from this war the Believer
   must never cease. Attack sin in every place, and for this reason, if
   for no other, sin and error will always attack us!

   In this particular Church I know there are many errors that are always
   falling upon us, and smiting some of the hindmost, the weakest and the
   feeblest. One opens one's eyes with astonishment, sometimes, to see
   what strange errors people are falling into who should know better. But
   when you come to remember how hindmost they were, and how much the
   weakest they were, it is not quite so great a marvel that they should
   be struck by the foe. The fact is that in such an age as this if we do
   not attack error, error will eat us up! And it comes to this--we must
   either fight sin, or sin as a fretting moth and a devouring canker will
   utterly devour us!

   If there is not an earnest contention for the Truth of God amidst all
   the Church members, there will soon be defalcations on this side and
   defalcations on the other side. Each Church should teach its own
   distinctive principles with a vigorous, earnest, Scriptural dogmatism.
   If we do, indeed, hold the very Truth as it is in Jesus, we must fight
   for it valiantly, for if we do not fight Amalek, Amalek will certainly
   fight us and the hindmost will always be suffering and the weakest go
   to the wall. It is on behalf of the weaker Brethren, who are easily
   perverted, that we must watch and fight perpetually. To all Christian
   effort in every Church must be added unceasing intercession. The
   Christian pastor is, in some respects, comparable to Moses, for he is
   set apart as a leader in the band of Brethren--and as such, his
   business is not only to teach the people but to plead for them with
   God.

   I wish that some of our pastors were sustained as they should be by
   their Aarons and their Hurs. Alas, I know many a fainting Brother whose
   hands are hanging down, who finds an Aaron to pull them lower still,
   and a Hur to depress his spirits yet more! I would take up a mourning,
   a lamentation, for my Brothers who toil in honorable but obscure
   spheres where cold neglect and chill indifference are their portion.
   Alas for others, in the midst of Churches torn apart with schism and
   polluted with heresy, whose life is one perpetual burden unto them! I
   would God it were far otherwise with them! I have to thank God, and
   under God to thank you, that so many of you act the part of Aaron and
   of Hur, and are willing to hold up the pastor's hands and the hands of
   all my other fellow laborers--the workers for Christ Jesus.

   But some of you do not do it. Some of you neglect prayer in the closet
   for the Church's work. I hope you are not neglecting prayer on your own
   account--but you do not pray as you should for the Lord to advance the
   interests of Truth in the world. You neglect Prayer Meetings, and
   absent yourselves from the week-day means of Divine Grace! Brothers and
   Sisters, these things ought not to be! If you cannot be Moses you may
   be Aaron. If you cannot fight and assist Joshua, you may climb the hill
   and succor Moses. If you can neither teach in the classes or in the
   Sunday school, nor preach in the streets and so fight, you can at least
   be much in the closet and much in prayer!

   Oh the untold benefits that come to a Christian Church from the quiet
   prayerful members--least known on earth but best known in Heaven! Let
   us have both at work. May the Lord Jesus help us to advance from
   strength to strength in earnest effort of every kind, and may He at the
   same time be our strength upon the mountain while we draw near to God's
   Throne in prayer.

   III. But lastly, THE HISTORY OF THE WHOLE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IS HERE
   BEFORE US AS IN A

   PICTURE. The sacramental host of God's elect is warring, still, on
   earth--Jesus Christ being the Captain of their salvation. He has said,
   "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world." Though this
   is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, yet is it not incorrect to say
   that the Lord Jesus Christ is still at the head of His people? Hark to
   the shouts of war! Onward come the bands of priest-craft, hooded monks,
   and shaven priests with an allied host of England's silly clergy
   arrayed in gaudy vestments and tricked out with childish ornaments!

   A fierce effort is making to restore the Romish Antichrist to his
   ancient seat. Now let the people of God stand fast in their ranks and
   let no man's heart fail him. It is true that just now in England the
   battle is turned against us, and unless the Lord Jesus and the eternal
   Joshua shall lift His sword, I know not what may become of the Church
   of God in this land. But let us be of good courage, and play the man!

   There never was a day when Protestantism seemed to tremble more in the
   scales than now. The way to Rome and so the way to Hell, is paved (I
   suppose with good intentions) by those Anglican clergy whose vocation
   it seems to be to show the long-suffering patience of a Protestant
   country. Here we have a national Church which has become the jackal for
   the lion of Rome, and we greatly need a bold voice and a strong hand to
   preach and publish the Old Gospel for which martyrs bled and confessors
   died. The Savior is, by His Spirit, still on earth! Let this cheer us!
   He is ever in the midst of the fight, and therefore the battle is not
   doubtful.

   Meanwhile, what a sweet satisfaction it is to see our Lord Jesus, like
   a greater Moses upon the hill yonder, prevalently pleading for His
   people! He is better than Moses, for His hands never grow feeble. And
   if the prophetic hand of Jesus should grow weak, there is His priestly
   office, like Aaron, to bear up one hand, and His princely office, like
   Hur, a Prince, to bear up the other! And so the three together,
   Prophet, Priest, and King! He bears aloft the wonder-working
   rod--Israel wins the day, and Amalek is struck. O anxious Gazer! Look
   not at the battle so much below, for there you shall be enshrouded in
   smoke and amazed with garments rolled in blood. But lift your eyes up
   yonder where your Savior lives and pleads--for while He intercedes the
   cause of God is safe.

   Let us fight as if it all depended upon us, but let us look up and know
   that all depends upon Him. Now by the lilies of Christian purity and by
   the roses of the Savior's Atonement--by the roes and by the hinds of
   the field--we charge you who are lovers of Jesus to do valiantly in the
   Holy War! For truth and righteousness, for the kingdom and crown jewels
   of your Master--against the harlot of Rome and the many-headed beast on
   which she rides--charge with dauntless courage! Those who gave your
   fathers to the flames and cast your grandfathers to rot in prisons--let
   them know that the spirit of your grandfathers still lives in you!

   Let them see that there is a seed still upon earth in whose breast the
   Truth of God still finds a tabernacle--men who can suffer for the Truth
   of God--and can boldly declare it in the midst of foes! Never become
   cowardly and mean! Never despair! How can you? Christ at your head like
   Joshua, and Christ in Heaven like Moses--Christ here with the holy
   Gospel in His hand like a two-edged sword--and Christ there with His
   atoning merits like a wonder-working rod! Be strong and very
   courageous, and by His help, Who does valiantly, you shall yet send up
   the shout Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! For the Lord God
   Omnipotent reigns. The Lord bless you all for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          Soul Murder--Who Is Guilty?

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 30, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, The God of my
   salvation, And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness." Psalm
   51:14.

   DAVID had been grossly guilty towards his faithful and veteran friend
   Uriah. He had given instructions that Uriah should be led into the
   hottest part of the fight and then suddenly deserted so that he might
   be struck by the sword of the Syrians, and might appear to have died in
   the natural order of battle. Whereas, of course, his death was a
   cowardly murder, planned and devised by the very man who ought to have
   been his protector.

   It is pleasing to observe in David's penitence that he plainly names
   his sin. He does not call it manslaughter. He does not speak of it as
   an imprudence by which an unfortunate accident occurred to a worthy
   man, but he calls it by its true name, bloodshed. It is true he did not
   actually slay the husband of Bathsheba--it was by another hand that
   Uriah died. But still it was planned in David's heart that Uriah should
   be slain, and he was before the Lord the murderer of Uriah. He calls a
   spade a spade, and names his crime as bloodshed.

   Let us learn in our confessions to be honest with God. Do not give fair
   names to foul sins. Call them what you will, they will smell no
   sweeter. What God sees them to be, that you must labor to feel them to
   be, and with all openness of heart acknowledge their true character.
   Observe, too, that David not only gives it the right name, but is
   evidently oppressed with a sense of the heinousness of his sin. It is
   easy to use words, but it is difficult to feel their meaning. He prays
   like one who is consciously guilty. The blood of Uriah was now not on
   his hands, alone, but on his conscience. The bloody hand was before him
   continually and the impossibility to purge away the stain, except by
   the sacrificial hyssop, made David's heart lay low in the dust.

   The fifty-first Psalm is the photograph of a contrite spirit. Oh, let
   us seek after the like brokenness of heart, for however excellent our
   words may be, yet if the heart is not conscious of the blackness and
   Hell-deservingness of sin, we cannot expect to find mercy with the
   Judge of all the earth! Possibly, my Brethren, you will think that I
   ought not to use such a text as this in addressing you, for there are
   no murderers here. "A sermon from this text to someone who had
   strangled another, or fired the deadly shot through his enemy's heart
   might be well enough, but are there any here," says one, "that are
   guilty of bloodshed?"

   Yes, Friend. The preacher is guilty, at any rate, if no one else is!
   And he believes that there is not a person here who will be able to go
   out of this house unconvicted of sin in this respect, if God the Holy
   Spirit is but here, first, to enable the preacher to lay the charge
   clearly, and secondly, to enable your conscience honestly to take that
   home which really belongs to you. There are other ways of being guilty
   of bloodshed besides stabbing with a knife, or poisoning with a deadly
   drug. There is another kind of murder far less detested, but equally
   black in God's sight--not the destruction of the body--but the
   destruction of the soul! Not the destruction of the mere shell, the
   outward man, but the murder of the real man, the inward self, the inner
   spirit, the soul murder which cries for vengeance before high Heaven,
   concerning which we have need to offer the prayer of David, "Deliver me
   from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, The God of my salvation."

   Before I proceed to the heavy work of this morning, which is to bring
   home sin to our consciences, I would like to put in a word by way of
   caution. I shall have to speak of some who "destroy with their meat
   those for whom Christ died," and of others who, "crucify the Lord
   afresh, and put Him to an open shame." And when I do so, there will be
   some who will not dare to take exception to the Scriptural phraseology,
   because everyone yields to that, but they will fight hard against the
   supposed meaning of the very expressions which they are forced to put
   up with. They will say to me, "It is impossible that any should be
   destroyed for whom Christ died."

   And I may add it is equally impossible that Christ should be crucified
   afresh. I shall quite agree with them in this, but if they, therefore,
   gather that it is impossible for anyone to be guilty of the two sins
   mentioned, I shall not agree with them, because such offenses would not
   have been mentioned in Scripture as having been committed if they could
   not be committed.

   Do you not know, dear Friends, that a man may be guilty of a sin which
   he never could actually commit, but which he committed in his heart?
   For instance, in very deed and act, I can never destroy a man for whom
   Christ died. It is not in my power nor in the power of even devils to
   destroy such souls! But if I commit an action which in the ordinary
   nature of things would destroy such a soul. If I utter teachings, or if
   I present an example which, if God did not prevent, would destroy such
   a soul, then I am guilty because I should have destroyed that soul if
   it had not been for God's interposing. His interposition does not take
   away my guilt though it prevented its effects.

   Though I cannot crucify the Lord afresh, that is to say, He is so
   exalted in Heaven that all Hell could not drag Him down to the
   Cross--yet if I do an action which would crucify Him again, if it could
   be done--an action which has a tendency to put Him to an open shame,
   though I may not be able to complete the thing in act, yet, since its
   natural influence would lead to such a result, I am guilty of it. This
   is easily illustrated. Suppose that a man who had the management of
   certain points on a railway should willfully turn the points in such a
   way that two trains must come into collision and the passengers must be
   killed.

   Imagine that an angel should descend from Heaven and stand between
   those two trains and prevent the collision. Where would be the
   difference between the man's guilt whether the people were killed or
   not killed? The guilt is the same, because the thing would have
   happened if it were not for a miraculous interposition. So by bad
   teaching, and by unholy living, those for whom Christ died would be
   made to perish if it were not for a Divine interposition. And by
   inconsistency of conduct Christ could be nailed again to the tree if it
   were not prevented by Divine power. But that prevention does not at all
   alter my sin. I am just as guilty as if the natural effect had
   followed. If you should fire at a man and the bullet were unexpectedly
   turned aside, you would be as truly guilty as if your victim had died!

   Human law might not call you a murderer, because human law is obliged
   very much to judge a sin by the effect, but the Lord looks at the heart
   and weighs the motive, the desire and the design. Please understand,
   then, that when I shall be speaking this morning about your destroying
   souls, I do not mean that you will in the end defeat the Divine purpose
   of Divine Grace, but you will be as guilty as if you could. Jesus
   Christ will not lose a soul whom He has determined to save, or be
   thwarted in any of His designs of mercy--but this will not extenuate
   your guilt, or mine. I put this in by way of caution, lest any should
   think me dubious of the great doctrines of Sovereign Grace which are
   every day dearer than ever to me.

   I. The first business this morning is to awaken and bring home to the
   conscience of this assembled multitude A STARTLING CRIME. There are
   many ways of being guilty of bloodshed. Every man is guilty of it in
   one respect, namely, concerning the death of our Lord. I will not say
   that we are all guilty of His actual murder upon the tree, for we were
   not then born. Yet, as it was the common sin of mankind which rendered
   it necessary that He should suffer, we cannot escape from a share in
   His death.

   This I can see very clearly, that those who reject, despise or neglect
   the claims of the Lord Jesus, and refuse to bow before Him, do, in
   effect mock Him, scourge Him, and put Him to death. In speaking against
   His Gospel, in deriding His servants, in neglecting His Book, in
   denying His Deity, and in refusing to believe in Him, men are virtually
   guilty of crucifying the Lord of Glory--for they thus do that which
   proves that if they had been in a like condition with the Roman
   soldiers and with the Jewish priests--they would have nailed Him to the
   Cross. We have committed actions tantamount to the crucifying of the
   Savior, and therein His blood comes upon us to our condemnation--unless
   by faith it comes upon us to our acceptance and forgiveness.

   Oh, Sinner, let this be forever a subject of trembling to you, that you
   have necessarily something to do with the Cross! That having heard of
   it, it shall be unto you either a savor of death unto death, or of life
   unto life! Either the blood of Jesus shall fall upon your heart to
   cleanse you from all guilt, or it shall fall upon your head to condemn
   you. You have said, "I know Him not. I will not obey Him. I will not
   yield to Him. I will, as far as lies in me, put out His light and
   quench His dominion in the midst of mankind." What is this but aiming
   at the very life of Christ, and being guilty of His blood?

   Another form of bloodshed, and I am only hinting at these two, is that
   of anger without a cause. We are told on Inspired authority that he
   that is angry with his brother is a murderer. Unless there is good and
   sufficient cause for anger, in which case a man may be angry and sin
   not, anger is murder! When I have a hasty thought against a man and
   wish him out of the world, I have killed him in thought, and even
   though I may disguise the wish under the expression of wishing him in
   Heaven, there is guilt in the desire! Oh the hard, cruel, black
   thoughts which men have towards one another when they are angry! Why,
   they kill and slay a thousand times over! These hasty sins are soon
   forgotten by us, but they are not soon forgotten by God. Let us weep
   over our hot tempers, for the fire of Hell burns in them!

   And let us be forever free from that lingering malice which harbors
   resentment and will not be brought to forgive, for this, especially, is
   before God a form of bloodshed, and concerning it we have need to pray,
   "Deliver me, O God, from malice, and evil temper, and envy, and all
   uncharitableness, lest the guilt of bloodshed should be at my door."
   Having hinted at these, I now come to what I am driving at, namely,
   those sins against men's souls by means of which blood may be at our
   door.

   Let me call to your remembrance, some of you, your early days and your
   first youthful transgressions. It is taken for granted in the world
   that young persons ought to be allowed to sow their "wild oats." And
   then it is hoped that afterwards they will settle down. But these wild
   oats are more easily sown than reaped, and many men might weep tears of
   blood to think of what a harvest has sprung from them. We sinned very
   carelessly and joyously, and led others into sin without a thought of
   the future. And now that we are converted to God we have to look back,
   and wish in vain that others could be turned from the dangerous paths
   into which we led them! I do not want to bring any needless bitterness
   into the heart of any person who is saved and pardoned, but I should
   like to cast a dash of gall into men's hearts who have never sought the
   Savior and who are growing gray.

   I would make them seriously reflect upon the mischief of their early
   days. Alas, you cannot undo the evils of your sins! Your children,
   trained amiss with a bad example before them, are not now to be tutored
   for God. Your acquaintances who have copied your habits are not now to
   be reclaimed. Perhaps some of you have had companions with whom you
   used to drink and feast who are now in Hell and brought there very much
   through you. How sad should be those depraved men who have been
   partners in the sin of guilty women, or women who have lured giddy
   young men into the paths of vice. I feel sure that even when such
   persons repent and find forgiveness the thought of the past cuts like a
   knife.

   I can hear one of them sighing. "Alas, I cannot undo my deeds! Those
   with whom I sinned are gone, gone where I cannot reach them even with a
   prayer. And although others linger upon earth, they are gone, now, to
   such extremes of sin that it is almost hopeless to think that they
   shall be reclaimed, and all this is due to my youthful follies. Oh that
   I could wipe them out, even with my blood!" "Deliver us from the guilt
   of bloodshed, O God, The God of our salvation."

   Many unconverted persons here will perhaps feel, I trust they may, the
   point of the next observation, namely, that false teaching involves the
   guilt of bloodshed. Some, who afterwards have become ministers of
   Christ, were at one time ministers of Arianism, Socinianism, Deism, or
   infidelity. Now the man who leads the young mind astray from the Truth
   of God and guides youth into doubt and skepticism must not think that
   he shall go unscathed. Those who err from the Truth perish, but their
   blood shall be laid at the door of the teachers who first sowed the
   seeds of evil thought within them.

   There was a despot in Italy who was wont to shoot poisoned adders at
   passersby in the street, and there are men who delight to shoot sharp,
   stinging doubts into young minds. They will not deny any one grand
   Truth of God, but they will insinuate covert doubts which assail the
   whole Gospel system. Pity, Brethren, heartily pity those false teachers
   who have been able to attain to eminence by the fatal gift of
   unsanctified talent. What must be at their door who have denied the
   Deity of Christ, who have despised and spoken slightingly of God's
   Atonement? To have beguiled the minds of men till they have looked upon
   you as their oracle, and then to have taught them false doctrine--what
   is more horrible? With what solemnity is the teacher's office invested
   when we remember that God will require at our hands the blood of souls!

   You who are now converted, but were once infidels, or miscalled
   Unitarians, I pray you go not to your bed tonight till you breathe this
   prayer, "Deliver me, O God, from the blood of souls! Let none go down
   to the pit cursing me because I taught them error and led them away
   from the fountain of life. Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, The God of
   my salvation." It is a dastardly thing to poison the wells of a city,
   but what is it to poison the well of the Truth of God and make
   soul-thirst the medium of soul-ruin?

   It was an accursed thing, in the old story, for a man to pour poison
   into his sleeping brother's ear, and yet hundreds have done the same!
   Sometimes by word of mouth, and still more often by infamous
   literature. Who knows the evil caused by evil books scattered broadcast
   over the land, which, like the ashes that Moses hurled into the sky,
   have brought a grievous plague wherever they have fallen? O you authors
   and editors of newspapers who teach ungodly principles and sneer at
   Divine Truth--take heed lest the blood of souls cry out against you--as
   the blood of Abel did against the first manslayer!

   Our text has a voice in another direction. Some men actually trade in
   luring others into sin. By this craft they get their wealth. Pandering
   to the drunken and vicious habits of the multitude, they literally
   fatten on the ruin of those whose evil tastes they gratify and excite.
   Satan has many soul-hunters in his pay who hunt for the precious life.
   It is an amusement to some to decoy others into the snares and meshes
   of the Evil One. I have known beings of this class. I will paint one
   whom I knew who is gone to his last account. He was an old drunkard,
   hoary with years of infamy. His language--profanity. His
   life--abomination. I should blush to mention the sins of which he would
   speak with a delighted leer.

   Never came there a young man within his range but what he tempted him
   to the tavern and to places still worse. If one saw any youth of the
   congregation walking with that man, you knew that he would soon be
   missing from the House of Prayer. It was impossible for a person to be
   five minutes with that old wretch without being infected by the
   contagion of his filthiness. His whole heart went with his foul tongue
   in the work of depraving the youthful mind! It was a sight to see the
   man's lips as he spoke lusciously of a dainty sin, and to see the
   contempt that was in his countenance as the minister of righteousness
   looked sorrowfully at the destroyer and his victim. His joy was
   greatest when he had been the means of casting down a professor of
   religion, or could see young Hopeful become as vile as himself!

   When he saw those die--whom he had led into sin and educated in
   profanity till they became as bad as himself--no twitch of conscience
   ever came over him! When he died and was buried, one almost thanked God
   for his removal, for he was a most fearful hindrance to the kingdom of
   the Lord Jesus. Oh, should I address some such who delight to sing
   lascivious songs, and to talk loosely, God forgive you! You are a great
   sinner, and may He take that black heart out of you, and give you a new
   heart and a right spirit, for, if He does not, double damnation must be
   your portion, since as he that, by God's Grace, turns many to
   righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever, so shall you
   who have turned many to unrighteousness be plunged in the blackness of
   darkness forever!

   This, I dare say, comes home to but very few--indeed, I trust to none
   of you here--but the next point may touch us all in some respects. Bad
   example is a way by which the blood of souls may come upon us. If a man
   should live in a densely populous neighborhood, and should carry on a
   trade which sent forth deadly fumes into the air so that everybody who
   breathed them would be infected with disease and die, who could acquit
   him of murder? Granted that he clearly knows that the fumes which he
   makes are deadly--if he, for any hope of gain--causes such ruin, he
   deserves to die himself.

   But what is bad example? Is not that in the family and in the social
   circle just such a deadly vapor? I spoke just now of bad teaching, but
   bad example is even more dangerous, because its range is wider. Bad
   example reaches those who would not have listened to false doctrine,
   but who receive the poison through their eyes. How do you know, Mother,
   but that the girl who breaks your heart learns her first sin from you?
   Father, can you be so angry with your child when you are not quite sure
   but what he has imitated you?

   Master, you, the other day, spoke very severely about a certain servant
   who forfeited your trust--are you sure there was not some irregularity
   in your conduct which misled him? Every man, especially in a great city
   like this, is responsible not only for himself but for his neighbors,
   and there are some of us who are like the church clock--other people
   set their watches by us. It becomes such of us as are religious
   teachers to be particularly careful. There are some things which I feel
   I might do, as far as I am concerned, which I believe I might do
   without suffering any personal hurt. But I do not do them for your
   sakes, and which I dare not do for the sake of many who would take
   license from my example to do a great deal more than I would do, and
   would make me the horse on which they would put the saddle of their
   sin.

   Christian parents, you must not always say, "I can do this." Yes, but
   would you like everybody else to do it? Because, if it is unsafe for
   one, it seems to me you have no business to touch it. "If meat offends
   my brother, I will eat no meat while the world stands," is a grand old
   Christian saying of one who was not a whit behind the very chief of the
   Apostles. We must be careful even of things indifferent. But when it
   comes to those things which are positively evil, the bad example of a
   Christian is ten times worse than that of one who is not a Christian.
   If I see a sinner commit sin, his example is poison, but it is labeled.
   The inconsistent life of a professor is unlabeled poison, and I am very
   likely to be injured by it. Inconsistent Christians, false professors,
   you that have a name to live and are dead, take care lest bloodshed be
   at your door, and much of it, too!

   But these are things of which the ungodly have their share, and
   therefore I come, now, to talk a few quiet words to the Christian only.
   I want to single out those Brothers and Sisters who love the Lord, and
   who are saved from the wrath to come through Him. I want to ask you, Do
   you not think that you and I may have been guilty of the blood of
   souls, though we are set by God to be, instrumentally, their salvation?
   Though we are the lights of the world and the salt of the earth, yet
   may we not have been darkness, and salt that has lost its savor?
   Answer, I pray, such questions as these! May we not have bloodshed laid
   to us from neglect of family duties? I fear that this is one of the
   sins of this age.

   The Puritans were noted for the care in which they brought up their
   children--they never fell into the fault of sparing the rod, and their
   children were catechized every Sunday. They were prayed for and wept
   over, and the Puritan household was a very Heaven upon earth. But oh,
   if some of us see our children running into sin, and growing up to be
   thoughtless, careless, and giddy--what can we say--who shall we blame?
   Are there none here, like Eli, who have only said to their children,
   when they have done wrong, "My sons, why do you do this?" but have let
   them go unchastised? Remember the character of Hophni and Phinehas, and
   the message of Samuel concerning them--"Thus says the Lord, I will do a
   thing at which both the ears of everyone that hears shall tingle: I
   will judge the house of Eli because his sons made themselves vile, and
   he restrained them not."

   Let us take heed, lest God bring the like on us! Oh, Sirs, it is no
   small charge to be a parent, and to neglect that charge brings no small
   guilt upon us! When I see so many children of Christians turn out worse
   than others. When I find some of the sons of ministers among the
   ringleaders in sin--what can I do but pray that I may sooner die than
   have such a curse fall upon myself? If any of us have neglected home
   duties, let us beware lest we have the blood of our children laid at
   our door!

   Have we not often neglected the souls of seekers in distress who would
   become very glad of our attention? At our meeting for prayer and
   fasting last Tuesday, a Brother who was, I think, the best man among
   us, made a confession of cowardice and we all looked at him and could
   not understand how he could be a coward. A bolder man I do not know! He
   told us that there was a man in his congregation who was a wealthy man.
   If he had been a poor man he would have spoken to him about his soul.
   But, being a wealthy man, he thought it would be taking too much
   liberty. At last, one of the members happened to say to him, "Mr.
   So-and-So, have you found a Savior?" and bursting into tears, the man
   said, "Thank you for speaking to me! I have been in distress for
   months, and thought the minister might have spoken to me. Oh, I wish he
   had. I might have found peace."

   I am afraid that often you good people have sinners convicted of sin
   sitting beside you in your place of worship, and when the sermon is
   over you ought to get a word with them--you might be the means of their
   comfort--but you forget it, and you go your way. Now, is this a thing
   to be forgotten, as if it were no great offense? Let me give you a
   picture which may set it forth. See yonder poor wretches whose ship has
   gone down at sea? They have constructed a poor tottering raft and have
   been floating on it for days. Their supply of bread and water is
   exhausted and they are famishing. They have bound a handkerchief to a
   pole and hoisted it, and a vessel is within sight. The captain of the
   ship takes his telescope, looks at the object, and knows that it is a
   shipwrecked crew.

   "Oh!" he says to his men, "we are in a hurry with our cargo, we cannot
   stop to look after an unknown object. It may be somebody perishing, and
   it may not be, but, it is not our business," and he keeps on his
   course. His neglect has murdered those who died on the raft! Yours is
   much the same case, only it is worse because you deal with immortal
   souls! And he only deals with bodies which he allows to die. Oh, my
   Brother, I do implore you before the Lord, never let this sin lay at
   your door again! If there is one who is impressed, and needs a word of
   comfort, fly on the wings of Mercy to such a soul and help cheer him as
   God enables you!

   May we not be guilty, in the next place, of neglecting to warn many
   that are not impressed? If I saw a man go reeling on towards a
   precipice, and knew, as he went staggering forward, that in a few
   minutes he would go over the edge and be plunged into eternity--if I
   did not shout out and warn him to draw back--I should feel that when he
   fell I had a share in his death. When you hear a funeral bell toll for
   a neighbor, can you say, "If that soul is gone to its last account, I
   did at least tell him of the way of mercy"? No, I fear there are many
   now slumbering in the sepulcher whom you can never warn now, but whom
   you ought to have warned--your brothers, your sisters, your own
   children, your next door neighbors-- they are gone, gone from where
   they never can return. And among the things they will have to say at
   the Day of Judgment will be this, that they can bear witness against
   you that you never warned them to flee from the wrath to come.

   O God, we are all guilty here! "Deliver us from the guilt of bloodshed,
   O God, The God of our salvation." Further, have we not been guilty of
   the blood of souls by exposing them to danger? When a father puts his
   boy apprentice, if he only cares about his worldly gain and not about
   his soul's interest, I cannot acquit him, nor will God acquit him.
   Parents have sometimes put their girls to school and their boys to
   trade where if they had obtained any good it would have been a miracle,
   and where if they met with mischief it was only what they might expect.

   Now it is according to law that if I expose my child to the cold and it
   perishes through my negligence I am punished. Surely it must be so with
   sin. So with our servants, our neighbors, and work people--if we expect
   them to do for us what we would not do for ourselves we are guilty of
   their sins. Some here may possibly be carrying on unnecessary trades
   which require working men to toil all Sunday (works of necessity, of
   course, I speak not of), but there are systems of trading which for no
   justifiable reason involve the keeping away of the men employed from a
   place of worship. Now when these men are lost, I ask at whose door will
   their blood lie? Who had the profits of their labor? Who fattened on
   their gains? Who sucked the very blood of their souls to coin it into
   wealth for himself? If there is such an one, let him cease from the
   sin, and pray, "Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, The God
   of my salvation."

   Christian, do you not think that sometimes you may have been guilty
   from unholy silence? When I hear God's name profaned and offer no
   rebuke, but take it quietly, is there no sin there? When I see my
   neighbor going into sin, and have an opportunity of speaking and do
   not, is that silence without blame? When I go up and down the street
   and meet people in many ordinary avocations to whom I might speak of
   Christ and never do--when they perish, shall I be clear? Oh the
   thousands that some of us come in contact with, and yet leave them as
   if we had no care about their eternal state! Shall we be clear,
   Brothers and Sisters, shall we be clear?

   May not another sin also be charged upon some of you? Some have a way,
   not only of doing no good, but doing a deal of mischief by their harsh
   conversation to young beginners. I have known elderly professors who,
   instead of encouraging the young, would seem as though they would snap
   the child's head off if it spoke of Divine things! They doubt the
   possibility of the conversion of little ones and will ask knotty
   questions, and raise difficult points to perplex those who have but
   lately found Christ. They delight to insinuate that the convert's joy
   is nothing but mere excitement, and they do all they can to thrust
   seeking souls into despair.

   Unlike the Master, who never broke the bruised reed, they break all
   they can! And, unlike He who never quenched the smoking flax, they
   would, if they could, quench even those that have begun to blaze! Is
   there no guilt here? Are there none such in this House? I know there
   are! May they have Divine Grace to feel the sin and to plead for mercy!
   Unhallowed levity about Divine things is another home-born sin. Do we
   ever trifle about God's Word? Are we not tempted to joke and utter a
   silly jest when it would have been prudent to have urged a warning? I
   fear, Brethren, and fear sorrowfully, that many of us who ought to know
   better are verily guilty here. To trifle with eternal things is no
   small crime.

   But here is a point upon which I would speak more earnestly, still--how
   often have we withheld prayer concerning others? We know they are
   perishing, but we do not pray for them! We are conscious that their
   state will be one of woe, but yet no tears flow from our inhuman eyes,
   and our spirits are not affected. Neglected closets shall call upon
   them to speak against us. I shall leave our lack of prayer in private
   to be a matter of personal confession, but I am afraid that after
   having thought it over we shall feel we have been guilty of bloodshed.

   Then there is a general need of earnestness especially chargeable upon
   us who are ministers. That I should ever have preached to you as I have
   sometimes done ought to break my heart. And that some of you should
   teach in Sunday school as you teach ought to cause you deep regret! And
   that you should go even about tract distributing in so cold a manner as
   you sometimes do should make you smite upon your breasts. Oh if we were
   half as earnest to serve God as others are to win gold, what success we
   might expect! And we have not had it because of our want of
   earnestness! Deliver us from the guilt of bloodshed, O God!

   II. In the second place, let us make AN EARNEST CONFESSION. Let us not
   deny our responsibility or we shall be like Cain, who said, "Am I my
   brother's keeper?" Shun a Cainish spirit. Let us not try to shift the
   responsibility to God's shoulders by saying, "God's decree will be
   fulfilled." That is true, but Divine sovereignty is no excuse for human
   negligence. Let us feel, "We are guilty here," and do not let us
   murmur, "Well, we have a right to do as we like. It is a voluntary
   work."

   It is so, but, Brethren, we are debtors unto the Jew and Gentile. Loved
   with such mercy as that which we have received, we ought to have done
   more for souls and we are guilty because we have not done it. Let us
   not soothe ourselves with, "Well, we will do better in the future."
   Look to the past--how can you undo that? And the souls that have gone,
   past recall, down the cataract of death--what can you do for them?
   Bestir yourself! Bestir yourself for the future! For there you can do
   much. But for the past, what is to be done but weep! Let us make a
   clean breast of it when we are alone, and solemnly confess that we have
   been guilty of the blood of souls.

   III. In the third place, our text has in it AN EARNEST PRAYER which I
   commend to you. You observe it is addressed to God. It is not a
   resolution made in his own strength, but it is addressed to God.
   "Deliver me, O God." You observe that it is addressed to the God of
   salvation. Thanks be to His name, He can save us! He is the God of
   salvation. It is His prerogative to forgive. It is His very name and
   office to save those who seek His face. Let us go to the God of
   salvation!

   Better still, the text calls Him the God of my salvation. Yes, blessed
   be His name, guilty as I am I am saved! Though the blood of others once
   lay at my door--and my sin humbles me--yet through Jesus' precious
   blood I can rejoice in the God of my salvation! Then look at the word,
   "Deliver." It has two meanings. "Deliver me from the guilt of the
   past-- whatever I may have been in the years gone by forgive it. But
   Lord, deliver me from the power of it for the future." If I am a
   minister, Lord, make me more prayerful. If I am a Sunday school
   teacher, help me to teach the children as though they would be dead
   before we met again. If I am a father or a mother, help me to instruct
   my dear children as though their salvation rested upon me.

   If I am a neighbor, let me not neglect the street, or court, or lane
   where I live. If I am a citizen, let me not neglect the claims of those
   who live in the same city with me. If I am a Christian, do not let me
   be a dark lantern, do not suffer me to be unsavory salt. Some of you
   professors are of no use to anybody. I know some professing Christians
   who hoard their money just as if they did not owe Christ anything. They
   never give to the cause of God and their gold and their silver are red
   with blood--the blood of those who might have had the Gospel preached
   to them if there had been the means of sending it. I know others who
   come in and out and occupy seats and sing and pray as others do, but
   take no part in the work of the Church. They are useless idlers, like
   the mixed multitude that came out of Egypt with the children of Israel.

   If such are present now, the Lord send the darts of conviction through
   them! If you are His people, I hope you have the Grace to receive the
   rebuke in the spirit in which it is sent to you and profit by it. If
   you have been bought with blood, live as one who is not his own! If you
   are a mere worldling, why do you come here and make a profession of
   Christianity? But if you have been saved, ask to be delivered from the
   great sin of bloodshed!

   IV. The psalmist ends with A COMMENDABLE VOW. It is about the only vow
   that I can advise any of you to make. He says, first of all, if God
   will deliver him, he will sing. And I vow I will. If I am only able to
   say as George Fox said, when he was dying--honest Quaker as he was--"I
   am clear"--oh if I can say, "I am clear," I will sing, indeed! It is
   enough to make any man sing if he can be minister to such a
   congregation as this and be clear.

   Sometimes when I have gone down out of the pulpit, and somebody has
   said, "There are six or seven thousand people without excuse because
   they have heard the Gospel," I have said, "Yes, it is so," but I have
   thought, "Have I preached it as earnestly as I ought?" And many a time
   it has made me toss on my bed to think of the responsibility of this
   mass of human beings, and the twenty thousand or more who regularly
   read the sermons as they come from the press. Who is sufficient for
   these things? Truly a saved minister will be an everlasting wonder!

   Then it is said, "My tongue shall sing aloud." Oh yes, indeed! Who can
   sing in any other style if such a mercy as this is afforded us? If,
   indeed, we are found faithful, we will not sing in a whisper! If we
   have discharged our conscience, and no man can say, "You have been
   unfaithful to me," our tongue shall sing aloud! But note the subject,
   note the subject! It does not say my tongue shall sing aloud of my
   faithfulness, of my integrity, or of my earnestness. Oh no! When I have
   done my best. When I am delivered from all guilt of bloodshed, and my
   tongue begins to sing--it shall not sing of anything but Your
   righteousness, YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS, YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS, O Jesus!

   We cannot sing of ourselves. We must sing of the finished work of a
   precious Savior. "Ah," said one to a dying saint, "you have fought a
   good fight!" "Ah," said he, "do not tell me that. I am thinking of how
   Jesus Christ said, 'It is finished.' " This is solid comfort for our
   souls. We must come as sinners, still! I would like to have some such
   verse sung over my dead body as was sung over dear Rowland Hill when
   they buried him under his pulpit at Surrey Chapel. He had asked them to
   sing the hymn--

   " Jesus, Your blood and righteousness
   My beauty are, my glorious dress" and that verse was sung slowly and
   solemnly--
   "When from the dust of death I rise,
   To take my mansion in the skies,
   Even then shall this be all my plea,
   'Jesus has lived and died for me.'"

   Yes, we shall sing and sing aloud, too, but we shall not sing of
   goodness, but of the righteousness of our dear Redeemer!

   Now, poor Sinner, what do you say of Christ's righteousness? Do you not
   see that you are guilty of many sins? Oh that you may have Divine Grace
   to confess them! Remember the righteousness of Christ can wash away all
   sin, and however black and foul we may have been, we have but to come
   to the fountain filled with blood, and if we wash there, we shall be
   white as snow! The Lord give us such a washing, and we will sing aloud
   of His righteousness!
     __________________________________________________________________

                           A Savior Such As You Need

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 7, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us: for after He had said
   before, This is the covenant thatI willmake with them after those days,
   says the Lord, I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds
   will I write them, then He adds, Their sins and iniquities I will
   remember no more. Now where there is remission of these, there is no
   longer an offering for sin." Hebrews 10:15-18.

   WE have all heard of Utopia, that imaginary land where all things are
   such as one might desire. A man who should conceive a spiritual Utopia
   might well be supposed to say, "What a delightful thing it would be if
   a man could, in this life, be completely saved! What a priceless gift
   would be bestowed upon a man if he could know, by infallible authority,
   that his every sin was pardoned as to the past, and that, as to his
   sins in the future, there is provided the certainty of pardon! And what
   if such a man should also possess the invaluable blessing of another
   nature, a nature which would be prone to good, just as his present
   nature is inclined to sin?

   "A nature which would prompt him to every holy thing, and spur him
   forward to the loftiest aims! What a thrice happy man would he be who
   could feel that death itself would be gain to him, and that the trials
   of life will cause him no real loss! He would be blest, indeed, who
   could rest secure at all times, because whenever the messenger of doom
   might come he was ready to meet him, prepared with the absolute
   certainty that he should enter into immortal glories!"

   A vision of such a supposable blessing as this has crossed the minds of
   many, but they have permitted it to melt into thin air, and have said,
   "The thing is impossible, but, if it could be attained, what a blessing
   it would be!" Now, I have come here this morning to tell you that this
   priceless blessing is obtainable! No, more--that it has been obtained,
   and is now enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of persons now living upon
   the face of the earth--and that you, my dear Hearers, shall every one
   of you enjoy it if you are led to put your trust in that Savior who
   came into this world on purpose to bring a perfect salvation to the
   sons of men!

   It is true that every man who has believed in Jesus is perfectly
   pardoned. There is against him no sin in God's book and God has blotted
   out all his transgressions. As for the sins which he may yet commit,
   the blood of Jesus has already been shed to make atonement for those
   possible sins, and they are already, in God's esteem, carried away by
   the great Sin-bearer. As to his nature, the Believer is a renewed man.
   Albeit that his old nature is still inclined to that which is evil, yet
   he possesses within him a mortal principle--an incorruptible
   seed--which lives and abides forever.

   And as to his dying or his living, these are but small matters to him.
   If he lives in the flesh he serves God, and if he dies he only falls
   asleep to wake up in Jesus Christ's likeness to serve Him yet more
   perfectly above. Thus, what was held to be Utopian is but the common
   possession of every Christian, and this supposable good, which might
   have been thirsted after if it had not been obtainable, is actually in
   the possession and enjoyment of every Believer in Christ Jesus!

   I. I must not tarry, but conduct you at once to the text--IT IS THIS
   WHICH CONSTITUTES THE GLORY AND SUPERIORITY OF THE NEW COVENANT OF
   GRACE--NAMELY THAT IT GIVES, TO ALL WHO ARE INTERESTED IN IT, PERFECT
   SALVATION.

   Under the Old Covenant no one who rested in its many sacrifices ever
   was or could be perfected. The worshipper brought his turtledoves or
   his young pigeons, his bullock or his ram, and these were offered. He
   went away feeling that he had been obedient to a ceremonial command,
   and therefore he enjoyed some degree of short-lived content. After a
   time he sinned again, and he had to say to himself, "I must provide
   another victim. I must go once more up to the tabernacle, or to the
   temple, for I have further sin to be washed away."

   And even when this was done, after awhile he must come again. He could
   never come to a point in his life in which he could say, "It is
   finished, there has been a sufficient sacrifice offered. The atonement
   is complete. I have no need from now on to bring another offering.""
   Such a state of mind was not supposable under the old Jewish law. There
   was always needed a renewal of sacrifice because it was always an
   imperfect thing, never finished, but always needing an additional
   sacrifice. It is true that the true saints under the old dispensation,
   did, I have no doubt, obtain peace and rest, but that was because they
   looked through and beyond the burnt offering upon the visible altar to
   the great Sin-Offering upon the invisible altar of God's eternal
   purpose, and virtually entered into the New Covenant.

   For instance, David, in the fifty-first Psalm, passed right through the
   veil of outward ordinances and stood before the true Mercy Seat in the
   secret of God. He says, "You desire not sacrifice, You delight not in
   burnt offering." He gets away from the ceremonial to the evangelical,
   and he rested in the real and true power of the sacrifice, which was to
   be presented in the latter days. The mass of the Jewish people--the
   great multitude of the nation--rested content with that which was
   outward. And they found no solid peace--for their very worship gave
   them a remembrance of sin every year.

   Let us rejoice that it is not so under the Gospel system. The sacrifice
   has been offered once--offered in such a way that complete atonement
   has been made. Sin has been pardoned, and the sinner who has taken that
   one finished sacrifice to be the ground of his trust feels that there
   is nothing left for him to do! It is all done for him! He has not to
   add a single stone to the building, for the topmost pinnacle, the Lord
   Jesus, has brought forth with shouts of, "Grace, Grace unto it," crying
   with His expiring breath, "It is finished!" Our text tells us that in
   two points the Old Covenant was far behind the new. First, in the
   matter of sanctification the Old Covenant did not do what the new one
   accomplishes, for the new writes God's Law upon our hearts and upon our
   minds, whereas the Old Covenant was only written out on tablets of
   stone.

   And secondly, the Old Covenant could not put away the guilt of sin,
   whereas the New Covenant runs on this wise: "Their sins and iniquities
   I will remember no more."

   1. To begin, then, with the first point--he who came to the outward and
   visible rites of Jewish ceremony was not sanctified. He might stand as
   long as he would at the altar, and watch the blood poured out in
   copious libations, but he would go away and sin just as he had sinned
   before. There were, no doubt, tens of thousands of persons who were
   familiar with all the ceremonies of the Jewish law who had no holy
   thoughts excited by it. They were neither hindered from sin nor
   impelled to virtue by anything which they beheld, for they only looked
   upon the outward, and never gazed into the inward meaning or felt the
   true spiritual power. And so they obtained no benefit as to the
   sanctification of their lives by all that they saw.

   I do not doubt that tens of thousands heard the Law of Moses read, but
   were not led to keep it. Did not the people stand shivering around
   Mount Sinai to hear that Law proclaimed as it never had been proclaimed
   since, and yet what effect had it upon them? A sort of stupid terror
   seized them so that they desired the voice of the Lord to be hushed,
   for they could not endure to hear it! But a very few days afterwards
   they took their earrings from their ears and made them into a molten
   calf--and bowing down before it, they said, "These are your gods, O
   Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt."

   All the quaking of the earth, all the moving of that smoking hill, all
   the thunder of the pealing trumpet could not make Israel obedient. They
   knew the Law, but they would not keep it! So far as its influence upon
   their lives was concerned, the Law with all the ceremonies which
   clustered around it was a failure. It did not make them holy--it could
   not! But the Gospel is no such failure. Observe that those who come
   under the influence of the New Covenant really are sanctified, and that
   by means calculated to so Divine an end. The New Covenant does not give
   me a Law, it is content to tell me that, "Heaven and earth shall pass
   away, but not one jot or tittle of the Law shall fail."

   But what does the New Covenant do? Instead of bringing me a Law, it
   says, "I will give you love instead of Law. You shall not be under the
   principle of Law any longer, but you shall be ruled by the principle of
   Divine Grace. Instead of saying to you, 'You shall do this, and you
   shall not do the other,' I will make you love your God. And when you
   love Him, then you will say, 'What is my God's will shall be my will,
   and that which my God abhors I will abhor for His sake.' " Law is a
   principle of power with perfect beings, but it is not powerful enough
   to keep such wretched hearts as ours in subjection. It rather provokes
   hostility and excites rebellion--but when love comes in, this
   omnipotent principle sweetly constrains us.

   Let me give you an illustration of the difference between the Old and
   the New Covenants drawn from human affairs. There are two
   schoolmasters. One of them, with many threats, issues rules and laws
   for his pupils as to what they shall do and what they shall not do, and
   certain severe punishments are threatened for disobedience, the rod
   being the great governor of the school. Now, I can suppose these
   children to be mere hypocrites--obeying when the master was present,
   but utterly destitute of any principle of order or obedience--glad
   enough to run into riotous disorder at the first instant the master's
   back is turned.

   But the other master, by his kindness, his gentle reasoning and loving
   instructions has won the hearts of his pupils. He has, therefore, no
   need to be always giving minute regulations because the lads
   themselves, knowing in their own consciences what is right to him, and
   having an affection for him, would be unwilling to grieve him. Men will
   do far more from love than we might dare to ask as a matter of duty.
   Napoleon's soldiers frequently achieved exploits under the influence of
   fervid attachment for him which no law could have required them to
   attempt. Had there been cold-blooded orders issued by some domineering
   officer, who said, "You shall do this and you shall do that," they
   would have mutinied against such tyranny. And yet when the favorite
   little corporal seizes the standard, and cries, "Come on," they will
   rush even to the cannon's mouth out of love to the person of their
   gallant leader.

   This is the difference between the Law and the Gospel. The Law says,
   "You shall, or you shall be punished." But the Gospel says, "I have
   loved you with an everlasting love. I have forgiven all your
   trespasses. Now My love shall sweetly constrain you, and the influence
   of inward principle shall guide you in My ways. My Law shall be written
   not upon stone but upon the fleshy tablets of your hearts." The Old
   Covenant, in all that it did, only provided precepts. But the Gospel
   provides the power to keep the precept. The Law appealed to the
   selfishness of our corrupt nature. The Gospel appeals to the nobler
   instincts of a Heaven-born life. The Law drove us, but the Gospel draws
   us. The Law came behind us with its dog and stick as our drovers do
   from the cattle markets. But the Gospel goes before us as the Eastern
   shepherd before his sheep, and we cheerfully follow where the Gospel
   leads the way.

   This is the difference, then, between the old Law and its inability to
   sanctify us, and the Gospel and its wonderful power to purify. Beloved
   Brethren upon whom the Gospel has exercised its power, you know that
   the love of Christ constrains you. Before your conversion you used to
   hear moral essays and to yield your assent to the excellence of virtue.
   But when temptation attacked you, what help could mere moral essays
   afford you? What strength to resist sin did you find in your belief in
   the excellence of virtue?

   Did you not resign yourself to the energy of evil as the snow melts in
   the fierce heat of the sun? But now, since you have been converted, you
   are not kept from sin by fear but by love, and you are not impelled to
   holiness because you are afraid of Hell, but because, being saved from
   the wrath to come and loved with an everlasting love, you cannot be so
   recreant to your heart's love and to every hallowed impulse of
   gratitude as to turn back to the beggarly elements from which you have
   been delivered.

   What the Law could not do with its iron fetters, the Gospel has done
   with its silken bonds. If God had thundered at you, you would have
   grown proud like Pharaoh, when he said, "Who is the Lord that I should
   obey Him?" But when the Lord Jesus spoke softly to you, you bowed
   before Him, and said, "He is my Lord and my God." The blustering wind
   of the Law made you bind about yourself the cloak of your sins, but the
   genial warmth of the sun of the Gospel constrained you to cast away the
   garments of your sin and fly to the Savior.

   Melted and constrained by love, the icy bosom flows in streams of
   devout affection and sacred love where the glorious summer of heavenly
   Grace pours its full influence upon it, while all the howling winds of
   winter did but lock it in more iron bonds. Yes, there is a sanctifying
   power in the principle of the Gospel which is not to be found in the
   principle of the Law!

   2. The second point concerns pardon of sin. The Law, as we have
   observed, could never put away sin. There was always a fresh offering
   needed because the stain still remained. But it is not so with the
   Gospel. Brethren, if you and I were living now as Jews under that old
   dispensation, when we came home from offering our sin-offering we could
   not be sure that we were pardoned. We should gravely question it, for
   our understanding would say to us, "What connection is there between
   the killing of a lamb or a bullock and the pardon of sin?" And the
   conviction would force itself upon our understanding that the blood of
   bulls or of goats could not take away sin.

   We would, therefore, feel uncertain as to whether any pardon was
   received. Moreover, we would never feel safe, for, albeit that
   yesterday we offered the sin-offering, and did feel secure, yet we have
   sinned since yesterday and in what state are we now? Suppose we die
   before we present another lamb, or suppose we expire just at the point
   when we had nearly completed a sufficient sacrifice, but yet some
   portion of sin is left--what then? Why, as a Jew, I could never have
   felt safe! I might have felt hopeful, but that would have been all.
   There would always have been the dark thought, "Perhaps I have not been
   fully obedient," and if I have failed in one point, I hear the rumbling
   of that curse in my ears, "Cursed is everyone that continues not in all
   things that are written in the Book of the Law to do them."

   But, Beloved, the Gospel yields us something solid to rest upon, for
   under the Gospel we have offered for us not a typical, but a real
   sacrifice for sin! This is an old story, but the Christian cannot hear
   it too often. Once in the end of the world God Himself descended from
   the skies and was veiled in our inferior clay. Here on earth God's
   eternal Son lived and dwelt like one of us. And in the fullness of
   time, when the sins of all His people had been laid upon Him, He was
   seized by the officers of Justice, and was taken away as having our
   sins upon His own Person. And on the tree was He fastened that He might
   die, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.

   Christ stood in the place of His people, and when God's wrath fell upon
   sin it fell upon Him and spent itself upon His Person. There is no
   wrath left in God's heart now against those for whom the Savior died.
   Christ has suffered all. The penalty which was due to our guilt has not
   been remitted, but has been paid to the utmost farthing by God Himself
   in the Person of His own dear Son. That death of Jesus Christ on
   Calvary has a sublimity about it which language fails to convey to the
   human mind--for He who there, as Man, was made an offering for sin was
   none other than God Himself! Is it not written, "The flock of God,
   which He has purchased with His own blood" (Acts 20:28)?

   He who died upon the tree was not mere Man, but, "Very God of very
   God," and hence there is an infinite efficacy in the pangs which He
   endured, and in the death to which He became obedient, by which the sin
   of man is put away from the Presence of God. My Brothers and Sisters,
   when you and I have been, by faith, to the Cross, we do not ask with
   the ancient Israelites what connection there can be between the
   sacrifice and pardon. On the contrary, we can clearly see a very
   distinct and logical connection between the Sacrifice of Jesus and the
   pardon of sin, for if Christ died for me I must be pardoned! How can it
   be possible that if Christ has suffered in my place I should suffer,
   too?

   Would this be just? How can it be consistent with justice to punish the
   Substitute and those also for whom He stood? A man employs a substitute
   for himself to serve in the army. Is he to be called upon to serve in
   person, too? A man finds another person to pay his debts for him. Is he
   to pay his own debts after that, himself? Surely not! For the thing is
   done and done with. I say it, not fearing to be misunderstood in the
   connection in which I say it, that the sin of God's people is "non
   est," has ceased to be, for Christ Jesus destroyed it by burying it in
   His tomb.

   The Prophet has said, "The Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us
   all." And since Jesus has taken upon Himself that sin, and has been
   punished for that sin, there remains nothing now for which God's people
   can be punished--their sins God has punished already. And it is
   according to neither justice nor mercy that sin should be atoned for
   twice--that first the bleeding Sufferer should endure--and then those
   for whom He suffered. Surely God is not unjust to forget the Savior's
   work and labor of love!

   Now there was no connection, you see, between the blood of a bull and
   the putting away of sin, but there is a great connection between the
   blood of Christ and the putting away of sin because that was shed
   instead of our blood. He died in the place of the multitude of men of
   Adam born who put their trust in Him. He was their Substitute and their
   complete salvation. You know this doctrine well enough, for you have
   heard it hundreds of times. Do you all believe it? Are you all resting
   on it? That is the point--to rest on this is to build on a rock which
   will not be shaken, even when earth's old columns bow, and the stars
   fall like fig leaves from the tree!

   Further, not only has a real sacrifice been offered, but sin is
   therefore really atoned for. I want to bring every Believer and every
   unbeliever, too, to face this Truth of God. What sin is that which I
   have committed? Do I trust Christ? If I unfeignedly trust Him, then the
   punishment due to my sin has been exacted already! Have I been a
   swearer? My blasphemy was laid on Christ before I was born, and I
   cannot be punished at God's bar for that blasphemy because Christ has
   been punished for it.

   Have I been a thief? Have I been a liar? Have I been a drunkard? Or,
   have my sins, instead of that, been merely sins of the heart rather
   than of the life? Have I been an unbeliever, hard-hearted, callous,
   careless? Whatever my sins may have been, they were numbered on
   Christ's head of old when He was the Scapegoat for my sins, and all the
   wrath which was due to all the sins which I have committed, or ever
   shall commit, if I am a Believer, was borne by my Redeemer! He received
   for my debts a full receipt from the hand of everlasting Justice, and
   my sins are forever put away by Him.

   What does the Scripture say? "He finished transgression, and made an
   end of sin." What a wonderful word--"made an end of sin"! And then,
   again, "Once in the end of the world has Christ appeared to put away
   sin." You know what that means: to put it right away so that you cannot
   find it any more. He has made an end, then, of His people's sin and put
   it away. Christ, by suffering what was due to God on account of sin,
   has uplifted sin from His people and destroyed it, stamping it out as
   men stamp out sparks of fire, casting it right into the depths of the
   sea as men cast away that which they wish never to see again.

   Surely this gives us solid ground for comfort if we now are resting
   upon it! It appears from the text, yet further, that since a real
   Sacrifice has been offered, and sin has been really atoned for, all the
   sin of those who are in the Covenant is gone. No, do not think I speak
   too boldly! What does the text say? "Their sins and iniquities I will
   remember no more." They are gone, then! Every Believer in Christ is as
   clear before God as though he had never sinned! If he had not sinned he
   would have worn the innocence of a creature, but now, though he has
   sinned, he has been washed in the blood of Jesus! And clothed with the
   righteousness of Christ he wears the righteousness of the Creator
   Himself.

   If I had been a perfectly innocent creature I could have gone up to
   Heaven on the footing of mortal merit. Yet, sinner as I am, I rest in
   Jesus and now I shall enter Heaven on the footing of immortal merit. I
   could have gone there had I never sinned, enrobed in a white garment,
   but I shall go there with a garment quite as white now, only I shall
   have to sing, "I have washed my robe, and made it white in the blood of
   the Lamb." Christian, let not your past sin lead you into despondency.
   Hate it, repent of it--but do not let it depress your spirit, or
   destroy your joy--for your sin is forgiven. "I have blotted out like a
   cloud your iniquities, and like a thick cloud your transgressions."

   The Lord has cast your sins into the depths of the sea. "Though your
   sins are as scarlet, they shall be as wool. Though they are red like
   crimson, they shall be white as snow." All the Believer's sins are
   gone, and what is more, they are gone on the highest authority, for
   what does the text say?--"Thus says the Lord, their sins and iniquities
   I will remember no more." Now, if the Jew received pardon from the lips
   of a priest he might not be quite sure that the priest had any right to
   give it.

   And I am sure if I received absolution from any priest on earth I
   should feel as if it was not worth the shilling which I paid for it.
   What right has he to pardon me? I never offended him. If I have
   offended him he can pardon me for the offense as it stands against
   himself--but it is clear that nobody can pardon except the person
   offended. If anybody insulted me and one of you forgave him for it, I
   should say, "Well, much good may it do him." Who can forgive but he who
   has been injured? Now, the pardon of our sin is no good except it comes
   from God Himself. And the text says, "Thus says the Lord, their sins
   and iniquities I will remember no more."

   God himself speaks here, not through the mediate interposition of some
   earth-born priest, but He speaks directly Himself, "I forgive them, I
   pardon them, I cleanse them. Their sins and iniquities I will remember
   no more." And then observe, this pardon is forever. It is not, "Their
   sins and iniquities I will forgive for the present," but, "I will
   remember them no more." Sin once pardoned can never be imputed to a man
   again! God never plays fast and loose with us. He does not say today,
   "I absolve you," and then the next day accuse us. The Apostle Paul used
   this as an argument. He says, "Who is he who shall lay anything to the
   charge of God's elect?"

   And, as if nobody could, he answers triumphantly, "It is God that
   justifies." He gives as a reason why none can condemn--the fact that
   Christ has died and risen again! Sin forgiven comes not back to us. Let
   none of you labor under fear of that. Your old sins are buried and they
   shall never have a resurrection. Then there comes in, to complete the
   whole, the sweet satisfaction that our sins are gone in the most
   complete sense. God says He will remember them no more. It is possible
   for God to forget, then? Can Infinite Wisdom cease to remember? Can the
   Eternal Mind cast a thing completely out of itself?

   Brethren, He speaks after the manner of men, and you know what a man
   means when he says he will never remember a thing. I have heard some
   say, "Well, I can forgive it, but I will never forget it," which being
   interpreted, means, "I never will forgive it." But God, when He
   forgives, forgets, too! That is to say, He will make no difference in
   His future dealings with us on account of our past sins. He will treat
   His children as though they had always been obedient children, and had
   never revolted. When the prodigal is received and forgiven, he is not
   put at the end of the table, below the salt, or sent into the kitchen
   with the servants as if his faults were forgiven but yet remembered. He
   is invited to the table and he feasts there upon the best the house
   affords. The fatted calf is killed, the ring is on his finger, and
   there are music and dancing for him--as sweet music and as joyous
   dancing as for the constantly obedient elder son--no, more, for there
   is more joy over him than over the son who went not astray.

   Brethren, God in this sense forgets His people's sins. Why is it, then,
   that you and I sometimes are desponding in spirit concerning past sin?
   It is right of us to hate it, to sorrow over it, but it is not right
   for us to get to fearing and trembling as to the punishment of that
   sin. Why do we? I will tell you. It is because we forget the Cross.
   That repentance which does not look to the Cross is a legal repentance,
   and it will breed misery.

   True Repentance looks to Jesus bleeding on the tree and she weeps, but
   as she weeps she says, "Lord, I do not weep for this sin because I
   believe I shall ever be punished for it. I know I never shall, for I
   see my sin punished in the Person of my Savior. I hear the whip that
   ought to have fallen on my back falling cruelly on Jesus. I see the
   wounds that ought to have been made in my soul and body made in my
   Lord's Person. The bitter cry of anguish which ought to have come from
   a soul like mine I hear coming from Him as He cries, 'My God, My God,
   why have You forsaken Me?' and I mourn for my sin because it made the
   Savior bleed. I mourn to think I should have been so guilty as to need
   that He should suffer in order that I might be delivered from my
   guilt."

   Brothers and Sisters, beware of an unbelieving repentance, for God does
   not accept it! Seek to get repentance at the foot of the Cross. If you
   have an eye to sin, take care to have an eye to the Atonement, too. Let
   your eyes be full of tears, but let those tears act like magnifying
   glasses to your eyes to make the Cross appear a grander and a dearer
   thing than ever. Never let your sin shake your confidence in Christ,
   for if you are a great sinner, glorify Him by believing Him to be a
   great Savior. Do not diminish the value of the blood while you magnify
   the intensity of your sin. Think as badly of sin as you can, but think
   right gloriously of Christ--for there is no sin, however hellish or
   devilish--which the blood of Jesus cannot take away! And if the
   concentrated essence of everything that is diabolical in iniquity is
   found in yourself, yet "the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us
   from all sin," and herein we must, yes, and will, rejoice!

   This, then, is the superiority of the Covenant of Grace. It really does
   sanctify a man, supplying him with motives for holiness. It really does
   justify and pardon a man, actually and really taking away his sin, so
   that it is said of him, "His sins and iniquities I will remember no
   more." We must now, very briefly, glance at the second point.

   II. Secondly, THERE IS A DOCTRINE TAUGHT BY THIS which is to be found
   in the eighteenth verse, "Now where there is remission of these, there
   is no longer an offering for sin." We have tried to show from the words
   of the text that Christ is sufficient to purify us by supplying us with
   holy motives, and to pardon us by His having Himself atoned for sin.
   The doctrine, then, is, that THERE IS NO MORE SACRIFICE FOR SIN,
   BECAUSE CHRIST SUPPLIES ALL THAT IS NEEDED.

   Just see what a broom this doctrine is to sweep this country from
   Popery, and to sweep all nations of it! Think, in the first place, of
   what is called, "the unbloody sacrifice of the 'mass for the quick and
   the dead.' " What becomes of that? The Apostle says, "Where there is
   remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin." Where,
   then, did the "mass" come from, and of what good is it? The Lord's
   Supper was intended to be the remembrance to us of our Lord's
   sufferings, instead of which it has been prostituted by the Church of
   Rome into the blasphemy of a pretended continual offering up of the
   body of the Lord Jesus Christ--a continual sacrifice!

   According to the Romish doctrine the offering upon Calvary is not
   enough! The Atonement for sin is NOT finished! It has to be performed
   every day, and many times a day, in the many churches of Christendom,
   by certain appointed persons, so that that sacrifice is always being
   offered. Do you notice how strongly the Apostle speaks in this matter?
   He says Christ offered a sacrifice for sin ONCE. He declares that while
   other priests stood ministering at the altar, this Man, the Lord Jesus,
   offered a sacrifice ONCE, and has by that ONE offering perfected
   forever His elect ones!

   Oh, Brothers and Sisters, the mass is a mass of abominations! It is a
   mass of Hell's own concocting, a crying insult against the Lord of
   Glory! It is not to be spoken of in any terms but those of horror and
   detestation! Whenever I think of another sacrifice for sin being
   offered, by whomever it may be presented, I can only regard it as an
   infamous insult to the perfection of the Savior's work!

   Then, again, what becomes of penance? Is not penance in its essence an
   offering for sin? I do not care who it is that prescribes the penance,
   nor what it is--whether it is licking the pavement with your tongues,
   or wearing a hair-shirt, or laying on the whip--if it is supposed that
   by the mortification of the flesh men can take away my sin, this text
   is like a two-edged sword to pierce the inmost heart of such teaching!
   "Where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for
   sin." Take off your hair shirt, poor Fool! Wash the stones with a
   dishcloth and keep your tongue clean! There is no need for these
   fooleries! Christ has completed the Atonement, you need not suffer
   thus! You need not, like Luther, go up and down the staircase of
   Pilate, and think that your poor sore knees will find favor with God!

   Christ has suffered! God exacts no more! Do not try to supplement His
   gold with your dross. Do not try to add to His matchless robes the rags
   of your poor penance. "There is no more sacrifice for sin." How this,
   again, shuts the gates of "purgatory"! It is held that there are some
   who die who are Believers, but who are not quite purified from sin, and
   in an after state they must undergo a purgatorial quarantine to be
   purged by fire, so that they may become quite complete. But, says the
   text, "Where there is remission of these, there is no longer an
   offering for sin."

   Beloved, when the thief died on the cross he had but just believed, and
   had never done a single good work! But where did he go? Well, he ought
   to have gone to "purgatory" by rights if ever anybody did, but instead
   of that, the Savior said to him, "Today shall you be with Me in
   Paradise." Why? Because the ground of the man's admission into Paradise
   was perfect. The grounds of his admission there was Christ's work, and
   that is how you and I will get into Heaven--because Christ's work is
   finished. The thief did not go down to "purgatory," nor, blessed be His
   name, neither shall you nor I if we trust in the finished work of the
   Lord Jesus.

   "Ah!" you will say, "this is meant for Romanists." Well, then, a little
   for yourselves. There are some of you who are quite as bad! You receive
   the same doctrine only in another shape. There are some here who think
   they cannot be saved by Christ because they have not had enough terrors
   of conscience. "Oh," say some, "if I could dream horrible dreams! If I
   could feel as if I could kill myself! If I were afraid that Satan would
   surely have me, then I could come to Christ!" Oh, you Simpleton! Do you
   think that this can be an offering for sin? Do you suppose that your
   frights, your dreams, your terrors, your unbelief, your distress of
   mind can help to make you fit for Christ?

   Come, poor Soul, without any terrors! Come as you are. Christ is enough
   for you! If you cannot bring a penny, come! If you are ever so
   empty-handed, Christ died for empty-handed sinners. He delights to meet
   with poor miserable beggars who have nothing of their own, that He may
   say, and say truly, "I have saved them completely, and I shall have all
   the glory for it." Some others of you think that you must get your
   hearts softened before you can trust in Christ. When we preach the
   Gospel to you, you say, "I do not feel such tenderness as I should like
   to feel." No, dear Friend, and you never will while you talk so-- for
   true tenderness of heart is not obtained by shutting your eyes to the
   Cross.

   If you will not trust Christ, your heart will grow harder instead of
   softer. And if you set up the softness of your own heart in the place
   of Christ's sufferings, you will find that this unbelief of yours will
   make you grow more stubborn still. "Oh," you say, "but I cannot pray as
   I would wish." Very likely, but then do you think that your prayers are
   to make up for Christ's work? I tell you that your prayer is a most
   precious thing, and that a broken heart is a precious thing, and yet
   your prayer and your broken heart are good for nothing if you put them
   in the place of Christ! You are not saved by your prayers or your
   brokenness of spirit, but by what Jesus did upon the tree. And you must
   rest there and there only.

   Will you, Sinner? Will you do this, or will you still put away the
   comfort of the Cross and say, "No, I will not trust Christ till I can
   trust my own prayers"? You will never be saved while you talk so. May
   the Holy Spirit cure you of your unbelief! "Ah!" says another, "but
   then I cannot realize this." Oh, I see, then is your realizing it that
   is to do it, is it? Not Christ's sufferings? You will have a finger in
   this pie, and think that surely my Master cannot do the work without
   your help. Oh, poor Sinner, you talk about humility, but this is the
   most rank pride in the world--to want to do something to save yourself!
   Come now! May the Holy Spirit help you to come now, as you are!

   Give up these dreams, these notions, these proud fancies, and come as
   you are, and say, "If God Himself became Man to die for sin, there must
   be merit enough in His death to remove my sin. Does God himself say
   that if I trust Christ my sins and my iniquities He will remember no
   more? Then I will trust Christ, I cannot help it. I must cast myself on
   Him." Oh, my dear Hearers, depend upon it--you may spin, and spin, and
   spin--but all that you ever spin God will undo as fast as you spin it!
   You will think, "Now I am in a fair way of going to Heaven." I tell
   you, you are in a fair way of going to Hell when you talk so!

   You are never on the road to Heaven unless you stand self-condemned.
   When you are convicted in yourselves, then God acquits you. But when
   you say, "Lord, I thank You that I am not as other men are," you are a
   poor condemned Pharisee, and your portion will be the flames! If you
   will come all unworthy and undeserving as you are--altogether lost and
   ruined, all hopeless and helpless, fit for nothing but to be swept out
   of God's universe--if you will acknowledge yourself to be an undutiful
   child, a wandering sheep and a sinner deserving His anger--then He will
   meet you! When you are yet a long way off He will meet you, and will
   fall upon your neck and kiss you, and say, "Take offhis rags and clothe
   him."

   My Savior loves sinners! My heavenly Father loves His prodigal
   children, but He does not love those who bring Him their own works, and
   their own righteousness. Away with these things, away with them! They
   are a stench in the nostrils of God! Your very prayers, and tears, and
   repenting, and humbling--if you put them in the place of the Cross of
   Christ--are only so much dogs' meat to be cast into the fire of Hell!
   He will not have you and your good works, but He will have you and your
   sins. He will not have you and your riches, but He will have you and
   your poverty. He will not have you and your fullness, but He will have
   you and your emptiness!

   He will have you as you are, just as you are--only trust Him! Trust
   Him, and you shall find that this New Covenant will do for you what the
   Old Covenant of "Do, do, do," could never do--it will sanctify you and
   justify you.

   III. Lastly, does not this doctrine ANSWER A QUESTION that has often
   been propounded to me, namely, HOW IS IT

   THAT THERE ARE SO MANY HEARTS WHICH CAN FIND NO PEACE? Some people are
   always learning, but never coming to the Truth of God. They are good
   people in many senses, and you are very hopeful that there is a work of
   Divine Grace in them, but they cannot be happy. They are always
   dissatisfied and discontented. And they are not only miserable,
   themselves, but they make other people miserable--and so do mischief to
   others' souls by their unhappiness.

   Now, what do you think is the reason? I am sure it is this--they will
   not agree that Christ shall be All in All to them. I tell you, in God's
   name, that I am sure in this thing I speak God's very mind. If you will
   have Christ to be All, you may have peace and joy--no--you SHALL have
   it! But there is a secret something which you are clinging to. You want
   to divide the glory with Christ. Your mind is not brought down to
   this--that Christ must be altogether your Savior. Remember--

   "'Tis perfect po verty alone
   That sets the soul at large,
   While we can call one mite our own
   We find no full discharge."

   When we get down to perfect poverty and have nothing to depend upon but
   Christ, if such a soul is not saved God must have reversed His plans
   and changed His Nature! He never did cast out a needy sinner yet, and
   He said, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." But oh, the
   stubbornness of the human will that it will not come to Christ! We may
   preach. We may continue to do so till we are dumb in death! Good books
   may be read. The Bible may be well known, but oh, you will not come and
   trust my Master! It is such a simple thing, too--and apparently so
   easy--and yet your proud heart kicks against it.

   Oh, you must come down to it, my Hearers, you must come down to it! You
   shall never have peace--you shall only get worse and worse with all
   your striving--you shall never have peace till you trust Christ. It is
   in this matter as it is with a man in the water. We are told that if a
   man who has fallen into the water kicks and plunges he is sure to be
   drowned, but if he throws himself back and floats he cannot sink. So it
   is with you. Now, leave off your kicking and your plunging, and throw
   yourselves back in simple confidence upon the mercy of our good God in
   the Person of His dear Son and you shall never perish!

   Now, Christians, do you not see the reason why you also sink into this
   state of heart sometimes? Why, Brothers and Sisters, it is the same
   with you as it is with sinners--if you do not keep close to the Cross
   you will soon become unhappy. I know you doubting professors, you who
   have been singing--

   "'Tis a point I long to know," you would not sing that if you lived
   close to the Cross and sung--

   "My faith looks up to You,
   You Lamb of Calvary,
   Savior Divine."

   And you backsliders, you would never backslide if you lived where the
   blood continually flows! For that which pardons us sanctifies us. I
   believe that when you and I begin to think we are fine saints, and
   forget that we are only just filthy sinners washed in the blood, we
   begin to backslide. There is nothing like living every day as we lived
   the first day of our conversion. Does not Paul say, "As you have
   received Christ Jesus the Lord so walk you in Him"? That is, live every
   day as you lived at first, being nothing in yourself, but Jesus being
   All in All to you. Away with self, and let Jesus be glorified! We must
   not have so much as a shadow of dependence upon anything that we can do
   or feel, or promise--we must depend alone upon that dear, that blessed
   Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us!

   I feel this morning as if I could come afresh to that dear Cross, and
   rest there on Christ. I feel as if I could put my finger into the print
   of the nails and thrust my hand into His side, and say, "My Lord and my
   God!" Oh, cannot some poor soul do this who never did it before? I pray
   God he may! And if it is done by you, and you trust in Jesus, then let
   Heaven rejoice! Let earth be glad, and praise surround the Throne of
   God, because such a one is saved, for is it not written, "Their sins
   and iniquities I will remember no more"?
     __________________________________________________________________

                         Children'S Bread Given To Dogs

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 14, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT
   THE FREE TABERNACLE, NOTTING HILL.

   "And she said, Truth, Lord: yet even the little dogs eat of the crumbs
   which fall from their masters' table."

   Matthew 15:27.

   IN this narrative we have the portrait of a soul for which a sure
   blessing is reserved. If the story closed without its final verse, one
   might be quite sure as to what the result of the woman's pleading would
   be. Christ must change His Nature if a person coming as she is said to
   have come, could be sent away empty! I shall with a few touches sketch
   the woman's picture, and shall beg you to see if you are like she, for
   if so it will be evidence to you that the time to favor you, yes, the
   set time, has come.

   This woman had a great and pressing need. Her daughter was vexed with a
   devil, and she could not endure to see the misery which that evil
   spirit caused her child. The pain and anguish, the delirium and horror
   into which the child was thrown were too much for her to bear. Her need
   was conscious, troublesome, burdensome. She had grown desperate under
   it--she must be rid of it. Is it so with you, dear Hearer? Does your
   sin plague you? Does your transgression come up before you like a
   continual offense? Does it vex you both day and night till it has come
   to this--that you cannot live without pardon--that you must be forgiven
   or driven into madness?

   Do you feel that things are at such a point with you that you cannot
   live any longer under the sentence of Divine wrath? This is a very
   blessed and hopeful sign. If there are many such here, there is music
   in store for angels. When her case was come to such a point, she heard
   of the Lord Jesus--and what she heard she acted upon. They told her
   that He was a great healer of the sick and able to cast out devils. She
   was not content with that information--she set to work at once to try
   its value. She went to Jesus with all speed and found that it was a
   convenient season, for He was near to her land, and she hastened to cry
   unto Him.

   Ah, dear Hearer, you, too, have heard of Jesus! I shall not ask you
   whether you know the doctrine of His Godhead and of His Manhood and of
   His Atonement for sin--you know it well--but have you put it to the
   trial? You understand that He saves souls--have you taken your own soul
   to Him to be saved? You know that He can forgive sin, are you looking
   to Him, now, to forgive your sin? If it is so, though as yet you sit in
   the shadow of death, your hour of deliverance hastens on apace! For a
   soul under a sense of need that honestly seeks the Savior's face is not
   far from the kingdom of Heaven!

   This woman was most desperately resolved. She had made up her mind, I
   believe, that she would never go back to the place from where she came
   till she had received the blessing. She would dog the Savior's
   footsteps. She would waylay Him. If the disciples pushed her back she
   would wait another opportunity. If not then successful, she would try
   the next occasion, and if that would not suffice, she would venture yet
   again. She was sorely tried by the Savior, for He sometimes tests those
   whom He knows to be strong enough to bear the trial. And when she
   obtained no answer from Him, but rather met with a rebuff, she was not
   daunted but pressed her suit, for she had drunk deep into the spirit of
   the hymn--

   "Resolved, for that's my last defense, IfI must perish there to die."

   If there is a soul here who has come to this--that he will never give
   up praying until he receives a comfortable answer, that he will never
   cease to weep for sin until the blood has washed it out--rejoice, you
   heavens, and be glad, O earth, for there are souls here who have come
   to the birth, and they shall be brought forth this day! There are souls
   here who are now upon the edge of liberty, upon the verge of
   peace--they shall even this day obtain a complete liberation from all
   their bondage! I said at the commencement that this woman was a correct
   portrait of the most hopeful case in the world. Can you spy your own
   face in her story, even as men see their countenances in a glass? Then
   am I happy, for your position is full of hopefulness.

   I may not leave this picture, however, without observing that this
   woman triumphantly endured a trial very common among seeking souls.
   Brethren, those evangelists who are not pastors will perhaps differ
   from me in what I am about to say, but if they knew more about souls
   they would not. It is customary in the pulpit to exhort people to
   believe in Jesus Christ. It is not only customary but it is most proper
   and right, and the more of it the better! But there are some who are
   content with giving the exhortation generally, and do not with
   affectionate discrimination deal with the separate cases of men.

   There are cases in which the bare exhortation to believe is not enough.
   I wonder what mere exhorters would do with certain peculiar instances
   which I have now under my own hand. I have explained the Gospel to them
   to the best of my ability many times, and have prayed with them and for
   them. I have given them books which God has blessed in other cases. I
   have directed them to passages of Scripture which have been the means
   of giving light to thousands. Yet these persons, month after month,
   remain in as much doubt and distress of mind as at first. No, they are
   even worse.

   This was my own case for years as a child. The Gospel was taught me by
   my parents but I was in such darkness and despondency of spirit that I
   could not do what I was bid to do, and felt as if when bid to look to
   Christ I had no eyes to look with. Even the Gospel did not then appear
   to suit my case. It was my sinful blindness and guilty folly which made
   me think so, but alas, how many are there equally blinded who need to
   have their cases handled gently and wisely! Albeit that we say to them,
   "Believe," they are far from being comforted by the advice. There is
   needed some further explanation, some simpler opening up of the saving
   Truth of God, and perhaps a laborious answering of their difficulties
   before they can find peace.

   Genuine seekers who as yet have not obtained the blessing, may take
   comfort from the story before us. The Savior did not at once give the
   blessing, even though this woman had faith. Be not startled! It is the
   truth. She had real and genuine faith in Christ when she came to Jesus,
   else she would never have put up with the rebuffs of the disciples.
   Yet, Believer as she was, she did not, at first, obtain the blessing
   which she sought! The Savior always intended to give it, but He waited
   awhile. "He answered her not a word." Were not her prayers good? Never
   better in the world! Was not her case needy? Sorrowfully needy! Did she
   not feel her need sufficiently? She did feel it overwhelmingly! Was she
   not earnest enough? She was as earnest as ever woman could be! Had she
   no faith? She had such a high degree of it that even Jesus wondered,
   and said, "O woman, great is your faith." Yet for awhile she could not
   obtain an answer to her prayers.

   See then, dear Friends, although it is true that faith brings peace,
   yet it does not always bring it instantaneously. There may be certain
   reasons calling for the trial of faith, rather than the reward of
   faith. Genuine faith may be in the soul like a hidden seed, but as yet
   it may not have budded and blossomed into joy and peace. Comfort is the
   child of Faith, but it is not always as old as its mother. I say this
   to cheer some of you. Do not, I beseech you, give up seeking! Do not
   give up trusting my Master because you have not yet obtained the
   conscious joy which you long for!

   I doubt not but that you certainly will be saved, even though as yet no
   kindly promise has gladdened your heart. "Slow breaks the light" on
   many a heart, but surely will it break before long! A painful silence
   from the Savior is the grievous trial of many a seeking soul, but
   heavier, still, is the affliction of a harsh cutting reply such as
   this, "It is not good to take the children's bread and cast it to the
   little dogs." Many, in waiting upon the Lord, find immediate delight,
   but this is not the case with all. Some, like the jailer, are in a
   moment turned from darkness to light, but others are plants of slower
   growth.

   A deeper sense of sin may be given to you instead of a sense of pardon,
   and in such a case you will have need of patience to bear the heavy
   blow. Ah, poor Heart, though Christ beat and bruise you or even slay
   you, trust Him! Though He should give you an angry word, believe in the
   love of His heart! And even if for the next few months you should not
   be able to say, "I know comfortably that He is mine," yet cast yourself
   on Him and perseveringly depend even where you can not rejoicingly
   hope!

   We come to the text itself. The woman's case is an instance of
   prevailing faith. And if we would conquer, we must imitate her tactics.
   If I were called to be a commander in an army I should observe how
   other commanders who have been successful have managed the matter. Here
   is a woman who conquered Christ! Let us go by her rule, and we will
   conquer Christ, too, by His own Divine Grace.

   I. In the first place, observe that SHE ADMITS THE ACCUSATION BROUGHT
   AGAINST HER. Jesus called her a dog, and she meekly said, "Truth,
   Lord." Here is no controversy with Christ--no setting up of
   oppositions, palliations, excuses, and mitigations. She is frank,
   prompt, humble, and open. "Truth, Lord"--that is her only answer to
   Him. When a man wrestles, much depends upon his foothold. If he does
   not stand firmly he cannot win the day, and if we would wrestle with
   the Angel of Mercy, we must find a foothold where this woman did--in a
   deep sense of unworthiness.

   She knew herself to be an outcast from Israel, and at once confessed
   it. The most of men, if they had been called dogs, would either have
   turned on their heel and gone away in sullen despair, or else would
   have blazed into a bad temper and replied to the Master, "I am no more
   dog than You, and if I come to ask a charity, can You not at least give
   me a civil refusal?" The natural heart rebels against what the
   Scriptures says about it. Until a man is truly humbled he scorns to
   admit the depravity of his nature.

   Though he may be quite willing to use the common terms of humility, he
   does not mean them, for if they were applied to him in another shape he
   would grow very angry. Like the monk who said he had broken all the
   Commandments and was as bad as Judas Iscariot. But when a bystander
   remarked, "I always thought so," the monk grew dreadfully angry, and
   vowed vengeance on the man who so insulted him! Call me a horse if you
   will, but it is quite another thing to put a saddle on my back.

   I have heard of a woman who told her minister who visited her that she
   was a shocking sinner. "Well," said the minister, "I have no doubt you
   are. Let us go over your sins." So beginning with the First
   Commandment, she declared that she had never broken that--she had never
   worshipped any other god but God. As to the Second Commandment, she had
   never set up any graven images, she was sure. Nor had she broken the
   Sabbath. She had honored her father and mother, never coveted, never
   borne false witness, never killed anybody. In fact she pleaded that she
   had not broken one of the Ten Commandments, notwithstanding she had
   confessed herself so sad a sinner!

   We plead guilty to stealing a forest, but deny that we ever thieved so
   much as a couple of sticks. The woman before us believed in her heart
   in the degradation of her state, so that when the Savior addressed her
   in apparently the coarsest manner as a dog, she was so thoroughly
   conversant with her own fallen condition that it did not startle her to
   be called what she knew herself to be! She had heard sin bark within
   her so often, and so loudly that when the Savior called her a dog she
   only felt that He was calling things by their right names.

   If I were to go over the whole statement of the Fall, and the mischief
   of sin, everybody in this place would say, "That is true." But oh, how
   few there are who really feel it to be true, and are deeply grieved
   over it! We are all sinners, so we say--but we all have our
   excellencies--so we feel. The Word of God does not give us a very
   complimentary picture of humanity. It informs us that our first father
   sinned, and that through him, as he stood for all of us, we all fell
   and lost the favor of God. The Herald's College of Scripture draws up
   for us a miserable pedigree. Those aristocrats who are so proud of
   their Norman ancestors would do well to trace the family tree to a
   still earlier date, and they will find the one of blue blood ending in
   the gardener who stole his Master's fruit, and was sent adrift without
   a rag to cover his nakedness!

   A beggarly pedigree this, you nobles of the earth! This is a sinister
   mark on your coat of arms which nothing can wipe out. The Inspired Word
   goes on to tell us that, in consequence of this, we are all born in sin
   and shaped in iniquity, and that in sin our mothers conceive us. It
   testifies that we are not only sinners with the hand, but with the
   heart--that sin is not merely a scab upon the skin, but a leprosy in
   the soul--that "the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint." It
   tells us that the heart, itself, is "deceitful above all things, and
   desperately wicked."

   No, it goes further and certifies that we are not simply sick and
   depraved, but utterly perverted--that through our sin our wills have
   become perverse so that we will not come to Christ that we might have
   life, habitually putting the bitter for sweet and sweet for
   bitter--choosing the evil and eschewing the good. It tells us that this
   inability of ours to goodness is so great as to be tantamount to
   spiritual death. It describes us as being by nature "dead in trespasses
   and sins." In such a state that we can no more restore ourselves to
   salvation than the dead in their graves can raise themselves of their
   own power and put themselves into a state of life and health. The Book
   of God says all against man that can be said, and more than man is
   willing to confess except when the Spirit of God comes, and then our
   heart answers, "Truth, Lord."

   Moreover, God's Word goes on to say that our sin is so great that it
   must be always hateful to God. That it deserves that we, who have
   committed it, should be banished from His Presence into unutterable
   woe. But human nature kicks at this, and says, "No, sin is a weakness,
   a foible, a mistake, and nothing more." But when the Holy Spirit enters
   the heart we cry, "Truth, Lord. It is a black thing, a devilish thing,
   an infernal thing. And if You cast us into Hell You only do with sin
   what ought to be done with it!" Beloved Friends, whenever you meet with
   a sinner bowed down with the burden of sin, never try to make his sin
   appear to be lighter! On the contrary, say to the soul that is most
   despairing, "You feel that you are a great sinner, but you are a much
   greater sinner than you feel yourself to be."

   When the soul cries, "My sin is very heavy," do not attempt to comfort
   it by making excuses for it. On the contrary, say, "Heavy as you think
   your sin to be, it is much heavier than you know." Never play into the
   devil's hands by excusing sinners in their sins. If you give comfort to
   your friend by saying to him, "Well, you have not been such a sinner as
   you think you are," you are giving him ruinous comfort. You are
   presenting to him a poisonous drug which may lull him to sleep, and
   which will therefore lull him to destruction! Tell him that sin is in
   itself so horrible that if a man could see a naked sin it would drive
   him mad! Tell him that the very least offense against God is so
   intolerable, that if Hell fire were put out, one sin could kindle it
   again.

   The woman in this case, if it had been a sound way of getting comfort,
   would have argued, "No, Lord, I am not a dog. I may not be all I ought
   to be, but I am not a dog at any rate. I am a human being. You speak
   too sharply. Good Master, do not be unjust." Instead of that she admits
   the whole. This showed that she was in a right state of mind, since she
   admitted in its blackest, heaviest meaning whatever the Savior might
   choose to say against her. By night the glowworm is bright like a star,
   and rotten touch wood glistens like molten gold. By the light of day
   the glowworm is a miserable insect, and the rotten wood is decay, and
   nothing more.

   So with us. Until the light comes into us we count ourselves good. But
   when Heaven's light shines, our heart is discovered to be rottenness,
   corruption, and decay. Do not whisper in the mourner's ear that it is
   not so, and do not delude yourself into the belief that it is not so.
   You are a lost sinner. You deserve damnation! You deserve it,
   especially, even if no one else deserves it! You have sinned against
   light and against knowledge! You are ruined, and ruined utterly. Bad as
   you think yourself to be, your case is infinitely worse than you
   conceive it to be, and I am not here to give you any comfort by saying
   peace, peace, where there is no peace.

   Your state, O Sinner, is horribly bad, and will soon be worse,
   hopelessly worse! And before God may you be made to feel this, and to
   say, "Truth, Lord."

   II. But notice, in the second place, SHE ADHERES TO CHRIST
   NOTWITHSTANDING. Did you notice the force of what she said? "Truth,
   Lord; yet the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from"--where? "From
   their master's table." Dogs in the East very seldom have a master.
   There are big dogs about every Eastern city that live on the garbage
   thrown from the houses, and these big dogs are such a nuisance that I
   am not aware that there is one word in the whole of Scripture in favor
   of them.

   The dog, as we know him, is a most affectionate, faithful servant of
   man, and deserves great honor. But the dog, as he is in the East,
   deserves nothing but contempt. He is simply a big howling brute who
   will bark at or bite anybody who is passing. In the Savior's days the
   Easterners had learned Roman manners and had introduced little
   household dogs. It is remarkable that our Lord did not call this woman
   one of the big dogs without a master, but one of the little lap dogs.
   It was a name of contempt, certainly, but still not the severest form
   of it. "It is not meet to give the children's bread to these little
   dogs."

   There is a word here which I want you to notice. The woman does not
   say, "the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table," but,
   "from their master's table." Notice her adherence to Jesus. She says in
   effect to Him, "You are my Master." She seems to say, "Lord, I am
   asking for a great blessing, and say what You will to me, I mean to
   have it. But if I cannot obtain the blessing, at any rate, I will
   always follow You--You shall be my Master. If You shall never say, 'go
   in peace, your faith has given you the blessing,' yet I take You to be
   my Master." As a stray dog picks up with a stranger and follows him
   home, and seems to say, "you may kick me or shut the door, but I have
   taken you to be my master. If you shut me out of one door I will go in
   at the other. If you shut me out at both doors I will be on the
   doormat. And if you kick me into the street, I will stand there until
   you come out, and then I will follow you--I have taken you to be my
   master, and my master you shall be."

   Now, poor Soul, is this your case? If not, I urge you to take that
   stand. You have admitted that all which Jesus has said is true, but you
   say, "For all that, whether I am a dog or a devil, I will never leave
   off coming to Christ as my Savior. If I am a dog I will follow at the
   heels of Mercy--morning, noon, and night I will crouch at my Master's
   feet--and I will never give up trusting in Jesus, even if I have no
   comfort from Him. I have argued out the case with may own heart, and I
   have concluded that if God becomes a Savior, there can be no case
   beyond His infinite power. If the Son of God dies and sheds His blood
   there can be no scarlet sin which His blood cannot wash out. And if He
   rose again and is gone up on high, then He is able to save unto the
   uttermost them that come unto God by Him. I am resolved, therefore, to
   wait and wrestle until He deigns to give me an answer."

   No man clings more closely to Christ than he who is most sensible of
   his lost estate. Who holds the plank the tightest? Why the man who is
   the most afraid of being drowned! Fear frequently intensifies faith.
   The more afraid I am of my sins the more firmly do I grasp my Savior.
   Fear is sometimes the mother of faith. One who was walking in the
   fields was surprised to find a trembling lark fly into his bosom. A
   strange thing for a timid bird to do, was it not? But there was a hawk
   after it, and therefore fear of the hawk made the bird bold enough to
   fly to man for shelter! And oh, when the fierce vultures of sin and
   Hell are pursuing a poor sinner, he is driven by the courage of despair
   to fly into the heart of the blessed Jesus!

   John Bunyan has said, somewhere, words to this effect, "I was brought
   into such a dread and horror under the wrath of God that I could not
   help trusting in Christ! I felt that if He stood there with a drawn
   sword in His hand I must even run right upon its point sooner than
   endure my sins." I hope and pray that the Lord may drive you to Jesus
   in such a way as this if you will not be drawn by gentler means.
   Brethren, a soul set upon Jesus, and clinging to Him with a death grip
   can by no means perish! The thing is utterly impossible! I have
   sometimes tried to picture a soul in Hell that has sought Jesus and
   resolved to die at the foot of His Cross. Such a thing cannot be. But
   suppose it for a moment, and the supposition will destroy itself.

   "Alas," says that lost soul, "Jesus, I did hang alone upon You, but I
   am undone. I was worthless. I deserved nothing of Your favor. But I did
   trust in You as the Savior of the vile. I did depend upon Your power to
   deliver me, and here I am in the pit." Can you fancy such a sound as
   that amid the wailings of Hell? How the devils would laugh! "Ha, ha!
   Where are the promises? Where is the great heart of Christ to let a
   sinner perish who twined his arms about Him? Was it because He could
   not?" Then Satan cries, "Ha, ha! He was not able to save to the
   uttermost them that came to God by Him. Though He claimed to be a
   Physician He could not heal. "Or else," says the arch-fiend, "He could
   not save those who longed and panted to be saved."

   You shudder to think what fearful blasphemy all this would be, and how
   it would tarnish the honor of the glorious Redeemer! It shall not be,
   Sinner, it shall not be! If you are the filthiest offender that ever
   lived, cast yourself at the feet of Jesus, resolved never to leave
   until He give you pardon! He cannot refuse you! We must not limit God
   and say what He can or cannot do. But we do read that He cannot lie,
   and certainly if Jesus were to cast out a soul that came to Him, He
   would lie. Therefore be of good cheer. Only stand to it that you will
   never leave the Savior--that you will die at the foot of the Cross--and
   all shall be well with you.

   III. Furthermore, the woman's great master weapon, the needle gun which
   she used in her battle, was this, SHE HAD LEARNED THE ART OF GETTING
   COMFORT OUT OF HER MISERIES. Jesus called her a dog. "Yes," said she,
   "but then little dogs get the crumbs." She could see a silver lining to
   the black cloud. Christ threw a bone at her. She took it up and cracked
   it, and got marrow out of it. It looked to be a very hard stone, but it
   had a lump of gold inside, and she knocked away the quartz and found
   the clear bright bullion and was enriched. "Call me a dog," she says,
   "very well, I will be a dog, and I shall get the crumbs."

   She draws water of comfort from the deep well of her miseries. Now,
   poor Soul, in the same state, try, by the Holy Spirit's aid, to do the
   same thing. Satan has been saying to you, "You have broken God's Law.
   You have offended Him. You have been a sinner." Soul, if you have any
   wit left, cut the devil's head off with his own sword! Say to him, "I
   am a sinner, but it is written, 'It is a faithful saying and worthy of
   all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.'
   What do you say to that, Satan? If I am a sinner He came into the world
   to save sinners. If I had not been a sinner Jesus would not have come
   to save me, for it is nowhere written that He came to save those who
   are not sinners."

   The more clearly I prove that I am a sinner, the more clearly I prove
   that I am an object for the Savior's mercy. Perhaps Conscience
   whispers, "You are not a sinner of an ordinary kind. You have gone to
   the greatest lengths until you have made your heart hard--you are a
   lostsinner." "Ah!" you can say, "I will catch at that then, for the Son
   of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. He did not come
   to seek those who did not need seeking. He did not come as the Great
   Shepherd to find the sheep that were in the fold, but those which had
   gone astray. And I, being a lost one, when I see the Shepherd going
   over the mountains after the lost ones, I will bleat like a lost sheep,
   for perhaps He has come to look after me." But Conscience says to you,
   again, "You are such an undeserving one. You are not only a lost
   sinner, but you are utterly unworthy." Sinner, catch at that and say,
   "God is a God of Mercy. If I deserved anything there would be the less
   room for mercy--for something would be due to me as a matter of
   justice. But as I am a sheer mass of undeservingness, there is room for
   the Lord to reveal the abounding of His Grace."

   There is no room for a man to be generous among yonder splendid
   mansions in Belgravia! Suppose a man had thousands of pounds in his
   pocket and desired to give it away in charity? He would be terribly
   hampered by princely palaces. If he were to knock at the doors of those
   great houses, and say he wanted an opportunity of being charitable,
   powdered footmen would slam the door in his face and tell him to be
   gone with his impudence. But come along with me! Let us wander down the
   Mews all among the dunghills, and get away into back alleys where
   crowds of ragged children are playing amid filth and squalor--where all
   the people are miserably poor--and where cholera is festering.

   Now Sir, down with your money bags! Here is plenty of room for your
   charity! Now you may put both your hands into your pockets, and not
   fear that anybody will refuse you. You may spend your money right and
   left now, with ease and satisfaction. When the God of Mercy comes down
   to distribute mercy, He cannot give it to those who do not need it! But
   you need forgiveness, for you are full of sin, and you are just the
   person likely to receive it.

   "Ah!" says one, "I am so sick at heart. I cannot believe, I cannot
   pray." If I saw the doctor's brougham driving along at a great rate
   through the streets, I should be sure that he was not coming to
   myhouse, for I do not require him. But if I had to guess where he was
   going, I should conclude that he was hastening to some sick or dying
   person. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Physician of souls. The more sick
   you are, the more room is there for the physician's art. When a man
   sets up in a trade, he likes to find a locality where his articles are
   needed, and there he opens his shop.

   What if I say it is my Master's trade to save sinners? What if I say it
   is the only business and calling that He undertook, to become a Savior
   of lost and ruined souls? Then He can drive a brisk trade in your
   heart, and I believe that He will open shop there and enrich Himself
   with your praise and your love by saving you. Do try now, my Hearer,
   thus to find hope in the very hopelessness of your condition, in
   whatever aspect that hopelessness may appear to you. The Bible says
   that you are dead in sin--then conclude that there is space for Jesus
   to come, since He is the Resurrection and the Life. If you were alive,
   you would not want two lives--but as you are dead, there is room for
   Jesus to give you life!

   The Bible tells you that you are empty--do not deny it--say, "Truth,
   Lord." But then there is room for Christ's fullness. If you were full
   you could not hold two fullnesses--your own fullness would keep
   Christ's fullness out. But now that you are empty there is room for
   Him. Dear Heart, instead of trying to make your case out to be better,
   believe in its thorough badness, and yet be of good cheer. You can not
   exaggerate your sin, and even if you could it were wiser to err in that
   direction than the other.

   A man called at my house some time ago for charity--an arrant beggar, I
   have no doubt. Thinking that the man's rags and poverty were real, I
   gave him a little money, some of my clothes, and a pair of shoes. After
   he had put them on and gone out, I thought, "Well, after all, I have
   done you a bad turn very likely, for you will not get so much money now
   as before, because you will not look so wretched an object." Happening
   to go out a quarter of an hour afterwards, I saw my friend, but he was
   not wearing the clothes I had given him, not he! Why, I should have
   ruined his business if I could have compelled him to look respectable!
   He had been wise enough to slip down an archway, take all the good
   clothes off, and put his rags on again.

   Did I blame him? Yes, for being a rogue, but not for carrying on his
   business in a business-like manner. He only wore his proper livery, for
   rags are the livery of a beggar. The more ragged he looked the more he
   would get. Just so is it with you. If you are to go to Christ, do not
   put on your good doings and feelings, or you will get nothing. Go in
   your sins, they are your livery. Your ruin is your argument for mercy!
   Your povertyis your plea for heavenly alms! And your need is the motive
   for heavenly goodness. Go as you are, and let your miseries plead for
   you.

   If I were wounded on the battle-field, and the surgeon was going about
   to attend on the sick, he would be sure to visit those first whose
   wounds were the worst. In the hurry of a battle they do not look after
   a man who has had his finger shot off when there are others whose arms
   and legs are gone! But I would take care to state my case as fully as I
   could-- by no means speaking lightly of my hurts--in order to have my
   bleeding wounds bound up as soon as possible. I should not feel
   inclined to say, "Oh, it is nothing, I am very little injured, it is no
   problem." I should be for taking time by the forelock, and getting what
   help I needed as soon as possible.

   Now, you too, sinner, learn this art. Do not paint yourself in bright
   colors, but admit yourself to be lost and ruined, and then, adhering
   still to Christ, make your very wants, and needs, and death, and ruin
   to be an argument why the Lord of Mercy should show His mighty power in
   you.

   IV. Let me, in the fourth place, notice the way in which the woman
   gained comfort: SHE THOUGHT GREAT THOUGHTS OF CHRIST. I must have your
   attention in this. The Master had talked about the children's bread.
   "Now," she argued, "since You are the Master of that table, I know that
   You are a generous housekeeper, and there is sure to be abundance of
   bread on Your table. You are no stingy provider, there will be such an
   abundance for the children that there will be crumbs to throw on the
   floor for the little dogs--and the children will fare none the worse
   because the little dogs are fed."

   She did not think the Lord Jesus to be a workhouse master who must
   serve out so many ounces of bread for each one! She thought Him to be a
   generous provider who kept so good a table that all that she needed
   would only be a crumb in comparison. Yet remember, what she wanted was
   to have the devil cast out of her daughter. It was a very great thing
   to her, but she had such a high esteem of Christ that she said, "It is
   nothing to Him--it is but a crumbfor Christ to give." This is the royal
   road to comfort! Great thoughts of your sin, alone, will drive you to
   despair--but great thoughts of Christ will soon bear you upwards upon
   eagle's wings!

   "My sins are many, but oh, it is nothing to Jesus to take them all
   away! He can as easily lift the mountains of my sin as I could lift a
   molehill on a shovel. It is true the weight of my guilt presses me down
   as a giant's foot would crush a worm, but it would be no more than a
   grain of dust to Him because He has already borne its curse in His own
   body on the Cross. It will be but a small thing for Him to give me full
   remission, although it will be an infinite blessing for me to receive
   it." She opens her mouth to expect great things of Jesus, and He fills
   it with His love.

   I ask you, dear Friends, to do the same. Oh may the Holy Spirit enable
   you! But you may say, "help me." Well, I will help you. You ought to
   think great thoughts of Jesus when you remember that He is God. What
   limit can you set when you have God to deal with? He with His span
   measures the heavens! In the hollow of His hands He holds the seas! He
   takes up the isles as a very little thing. If Jesus Christ is God, how
   can you think He cannot save you? O Man, when you have to deal with the
   Eternal and Infinite let your doubts fly to the winds!

   Think again that He, being God, suffered the penalty of sin--a grief
   which man alone could not have endured. The weight of His Father's
   wrath fell upon Jesus at Calvary. Can you see Him with His pierced
   hands and feet? Can you read the lines of agony written upon His crown
   of thorns and not believe that He is able to save? God over all, the
   glory of whose countenance fills Heaven with splendor, yields His face
   to be covered with shameful spittle, and His brow to be bedewed with
   drops of bloody sweat! Is anything impossible to the merits of the
   agonizing God? Think of that, Sinner, and you will put no limit to what
   Jesus can do.

   But Jesus rose again. See Him as He rises from the tomb, ascending to
   His Father's Throne amid the jubilations of ten thousand angels! See
   how He wears the keys of Heaven, and Death and Hell, swinging at His
   waist! What cannot He do? Not save you? He who is "exalted on high to
   give repentance," who is, "able to save to the uttermost," seeing that
   He ever lives to intercede--can you doubt His power to save? Oh, do not
   dishonor my Master! Trust Him now! But you are still doubting. Then I
   will bring you one thing more that shall, by God's sweet love, drive
   your doubts away and make you cling to the Savior.

   There are some country towns in the eastern counties where there is a
   celebrated doctor, and I have heard of wagons starting from remote
   hamlets loaded with people to go twenty or thirty miles to consult the
   famous man. Whether he does them good or not I am sure I cannot tell,
   but the illustration serves my purpose. Suppose one of you were to set
   off to see this doctor. Feeling very sick and ill, you are afraid that
   he will be of no service to you when you get there. But on the road you
   meet wagonloads of persons journeying cheerfully home. They ask, "Where
   are you going?" and you reply, "I am going off to Doctor So-and-So, for
   I am ill." "Oh!" they say, "you are very blest to be able to go! We
   have been there--we were all as bad as you and we have been cured, and
   are now going home."

   "But," you say, "had any of you a bad leg like mine?" "Oh, yes," one
   replies, "I had twobad legs! My case was even worse than yours." "Well,
   were you perfectly restored?" "Yes," says the man. "See how I can walk,
   I am fully restored."

   Would you not go on with confidence? You were half afraid before, but
   you say, "Now I shall proceed joyfully, for these cures are so many
   proofs of the physician's power." There are hundreds this morning, even
   in this free Tabernacle, who can say, "Yes! Jesus is able to save," and
   they can give the very best proof of it, too, by adding, "He saved me!"

   Dear Hearers, I know that Christ can save sinners, for I have seen His
   salvation in thousands of cases! But the best proof I ever had was when
   He saved me! When I looked to Him and was lightened, and my face was
   not ashamed, then I knew, I needed no further arguments. O Sinner, He
   has saved drunkards, swearers, harlots, whoremongers, adulterers. Paul
   says that He saved those that defiled themselves with nameless sins,
   for he says, "Such were some of you. But you are washed." Even the
   murderer can have deeds of blood washed out by the blood of Jesus. "All
   manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men," for "the blood
   of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses from all sin."

   He is a great Savior! He is the greatest Savior! He is a Savior greater
   than the greatest! And as for yoursins, they shall sink beneath the sea
   of His atoning blood and shall be found against you no more forever!
   The woman thought great thoughts of Christ, and that brought her
   comfort.

   V. And so you see, in the last place, SHE WON THE VICTORY. She
   confessed what Christ laid at her door. She laid fast hold upon Him and
   drew arguments even out of His hard words. She believed great things of
   Him, and she thus overcame Him. Now let me say that the reason why she
   overcame Christ was really here, that she had first of all overcome
   herself. She had conquered, in another fight before she wrestled with
   the Savior, her own soul.

   I think I see her before she started away from home. She was sitting
   down one day when a talkative neighbor came in and said, "Have you
   heard about the new Prophet?" "No, I have not. What about him?" "Oh! He
   is a great healer of diseases." "Tell me all about it," said the woman,
   for that subject interested her. She heard the story. She knew that her
   friend talked a great deal more than she needed, and she did not quite
   believe it. The next day she called at the house, and said, "Are you
   certain that what you told me was quite true?" "Well," she said, "I
   heard it from So-and-So, whose daughter was healed."

   The woman then determined to hunt the matter out, and at last found an
   eyewitness whose word could be taken. "Yes," said the friend, "it is
   the Messiah, the Son of God, who has come down to earth, and I am sure
   He is able to cure, for I have seen some wonderful miracles worked by
   Him. There can be no doubt about His power." At first the woman was
   puzzled. She had been brought up as a heathen. She had tried her
   heathen gods, and they had failed her. She had tried her priests, and
   they had only deluded her and she thought that this, perhaps, was a
   delusion, too. But she thought it over.

   There were fifty objections, but then she said, "I have heard that
   there will be such-and-such marks attending the coming of the Messiah
   and this Man is just what they said the Messiah would be. I believe He
   is the Messiah, and if He is God's Son, He must be able to heal my
   daughter." Then hosts of difficulties came up. "You are a Canaanite."
   "Yes, but it was said of the Messiah, 'A bruised reed He shall not
   break, and the smoking flax He shall not quench.' Therefore, I will go
   and try Him. And again it is written, 'In Him shall the Gentiles
   trust.' I am a Gentile, and I will trust in Him."

   I can suppose that she debated all this over in her mind, and having
   first conquered herself she easily overcame the willing Savior.
   Possibly some of you may suppose that there is a degree of difficulty
   in bringing the Lord Jesus to save a sinner. There is none whatever!
   The difficulty is in bringing the sinner to trust Jesus! This is the
   work, this is the labor. In this woman's case the conflict with Jesus
   was only external but not real. He was already on her side. The true
   conflict was with her own unbelief, and when her faith had proved
   itself victorious within, it became victorious with Christ.

   Sinner, there is nothing between you and salvation but yourself. Do I
   speak boldly? Christ has leveled every mountain that stands in your
   way! He has filled up every valley, and He has made a high road from
   you to the very Throne of God! The difficulty is with you, not with
   God. How, then, is it with you? Can you trust Christ, dear Hearer? Can
   you throw yourself wholly upon Jesus crucified?

   If so, your sins are forgiven you! Go your way and rejoice. But if you
   cannot, here is your difficulty. Oh, may God help you to contend with
   it! It is a sinto doubt Christ! It is a cruelty! It is an unkind cut to
   suspect that He is unwilling to forgive. Cast away, I pray you, your
   wicked unbelief! May God the Holy Spirit help you to do so! Come just
   as you are, and rest in Jesus, and you shall find eternal life.
     __________________________________________________________________

                              The Church Awakened

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 7, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   " Therefore He says: Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And
   Christ will give you light.'"

   Ephesians 5:14.

   WE have not time this evening to enter into the question as to where
   this quotation came from. There does not appear to be one exactly like
   it in the compass of the Old Testament--but we must remember that the
   Apostle very frequently quotes the spirit of texts rather than the
   words of them. In the eighth and in the tenth chapters of the Epistle
   to the Hebrews we find him quoting the same passage, but not in the
   same words, showing us that he, as an inspired man, felt himself able
   to deal rather with the spirit of a passage than with the precise words
   of it. There may, therefore, be no such passage in the Old Testament
   verbally, but as there are several which have the spirit of the
   exhortation, Paul was justified in saying, "God has said so-and-so."

   Besides, the passage may not be a quotation at all. The Apostle may
   mean to say that Christ said that to him, or that Christ said that by
   him--that Christ intended, even then, while he was handling the pen and
   writing, to say the words which he then wrote--"He said so-and-so." We
   have no time, however, to go into that matter. It is a more important
   question, perhaps--To whom is this text addressed? Nine times out of
   ten when it is preached, it is taken as though it were addressed to the
   ungodly. It is a very proper text to address to the ungodly, but I do
   not see that the connection permits it.

   There are some who would think it altogether unscriptural and unsound
   to address these words to those who have no spiritual life. We are not
   of their number. If we see a man ever so deadly asleep we believe we
   are commissioned by God to preach the Gospel to him, and to say,
   "Awake, you who sleeps," and though more and more persuaded of the need
   of moral sensibility in man and the desperate character of his
   depravity, we are not among those who fear to preach to dead sinners,
   but dare to say, even to the dead, "Thus says the Lord, You dry bones,
   hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord, You dry bones, live!" We
   can, therefore, very well take this text and address it to the ungodly.

   But this is not intended to be a sermon to the unconverted. It appears
   to me to have been addressed to the Church of God at Ephesus--to have
   been the language of Paul to God's own people--warning them not to fall
   into the same habits as did the children of darkness, but to come out
   and show themselves to be God's people. I know the objection will be
   raised that they are told to come forth from the dead. But I do not see
   that that is any obstacle at all, for albeit that the people of God may
   not be spiritually dead in the sense in which the ungodly are, yet how
   often do we speak of ourselves as feeling as if we were dead? How often
   do we speak of our graces and of our piety as though they were come
   into a cold and dead state?

   It is comparative death that the Apostle here means. We may use the
   words employed here as we would use them in common conversation and say
   that though there are some quivers of spiritual life in the breast of
   every Believer, yet there are multitudes who are outwardly dead as to
   their usefulness! And there are Christians and Churches, too, of whom
   we may say, without at all libeling them, "You are dead, awake you that
   sleep." Whatever objection there may be to addressing the text to the
   converted, there will be far more difficulty in addressing it to the
   unconverted, and I think there ought to be no hesitation in directing
   it to either.

   To raise difficulties is very easy, but meekly to try to learn what the
   Savior would say is far better. I intend tonight, then, to use the text
   to you Christians, you Church members, you professors. The first thing
   we shall discuss is the state of mind into which many Christians get.
   Secondly, what Christ has to say to them about this state, namely,
   "Awake, and arise from the dead." And then, thirdly, the gracious
   promise with which we are encouraged to make the effort. "Christ shall
   give you light."

   I. First, then, let us notice THE STATE OF MIND INTO WHICH A CHRISTIAN
   MAY SOMETIMES GET. The state of mind into which a genuine Christian may
   fall, and, if a genuine Christian, much more a spurious one--he may be
   asleep, and, in a modified sense, even dead. Let me begin describing
   this state of mind by mentioning the insidious character of it. A
   Christian may be asleep and not know it! Indeed, if he did know it he
   would not be asleep! It is a part of sleep for men to be in an
   unconscious state, and when a Christian begins to slumber, perhaps he
   dreams that he is rich and increased in goods. But he is not at all
   likely to take up a lamentation to himself, and say, "I am asleep," for
   if a man could say, "I am asleep," I think it would he pretty tolerable
   evidence that he was awake--and the fear of being asleep, the very
   dread of being asleep--would be proof, at any rate, of some degree of
   wakefulness.

   Often, very often, when young people come to me and say, "Oh, Sir, I am
   afraid I am a hypocrite," my answer generally is, "Then I am not afraid
   of it, for when you are afraid of such a sin as that it is not at all
   likely that you are guilty of it." Some of you, then, tonight, may be
   in a very sleepy state, and for this very reason you will not think so.
   And, Brethren, a man who is asleep may be kept in very good countenance
   by his neighbors. His fellow Christians may not be likely to accuse him
   of it, for probably they are in the same state. If you put number of
   sleeping people together they are not likely to be very active in
   rebuking one another--so that this state of mind is very dangerous and
   very insidious.

   A man may be in a Church where nearly all the members are asleep and
   they may say that the other Churches in the neighborhood are fanatical,
   enthusiastic, and a great deal too earnest. And thus all these people
   are sleeping to the same tune, and comforting one another in it. Oh,
   then, may God help them, for they are in a very perilous state! A
   person, too, who is asleep, may have taken care, before he went to
   sleep, to prevent anybody coming in to wake him. There is a way of
   bolting the door of your heart against anybody. If you get into certain
   views of doctrine you can very easily go to sleep and your doctrines
   will stand as sentinels at the doors to prevent anybody from awakening
   you.

   Beware of Antinomianism! If you once drink a draught of that it will
   send you into such a sleep as you may never awaken! If you fall into
   certain hyper-Calvinistic views you will have a reply ready to the
   rebuke of the most earnest of God's servants. You will begin to judge
   them instead of judging yourselves, and accuse them of being unorthodox
   while you believe yourselves to be sound--and so you are--but only in
   the sense of being sound asleep. This sleepiness in the Christian is
   exceedingly dangerous, too, because he can do a great deal while he is
   asleep that will make him look as if he were quite awake.

   For instance, some people talk in their sleep, and many professors will
   talk just as if they were the most active, the most earnest, the most
   gracious, the most warm-hearted people anywhere! I say to you what I
   mean when I declare that I have heard people in this very house pray in
   their sleep. I do not mean in their natural sleep, but in their
   spiritual sleep. I could tell by the droning way in which they prayed,
   and by their repeating some phrases that I had heard them use before
   that they were not awake to the duty--that they were not really
   praying, throwing their souls into it--but praying because they were
   asked to do so, and so just went through the motions, their souls being
   asleep all the time.

   And many a man has sung a hymn in this house asleep, too. His heart has
   never been awakened to the true melody of praise, yet he has got
   through the hymn somehow, his lips making a sound, but his heart never
   singing at all. He himself is awake enough to catch the notes, but his
   heart not awake enough to drink into the true spirit of thanksgiving.
   So, you see, it is hard for a man to know he is in this state, since he
   can talk when asleep even as others do! What is more amazing, some
   people can walk in their sleep! Yes, and walk in dangerous places where
   waking men would be unsafe. They, by some strange influence, seem to
   walk steadily and calmly along the eddies and turn by the dangers
   beneath. Even the howling of winds abroad seems to be inoperative upon
   their senses, and they, therefore, have a kind of security which more
   wakefulness would remove from them.

   And, oh, the fatal security of some professors, and the way in which
   they will dally with the world and yet keep up an outwardly consistent
   character! Oh, the manner in which some Christians will go as near to
   the fire of sin as well may be, and be scorched by it and yet not
   burned! Oh, some of you are good, excellent, moral people in the
   judgment of men, but nevertheless, as Christians you do not seem to be
   awake to the interest of Christ's kingdom! And as a man can thus talk
   in his sleep, and walk in his sleep, there is another thing he can do
   better than other people, namely, dream in his sleep! He is the man to
   concoct plans and discover new inventions. He can sketch out methods
   for building chapels, oh, so rapidly! He can find ways of bringing out
   ministers, and doing all sorts of things, and yet he is asleep all the
   while!

   The waking man does it, and proves that he is awake by doing it--but
   the slumbering man only calculates--so many pence a week, so many
   subscriptions, and the thing will be done! But there is never a brick
   to show for all his dreams! He dreams deliciously, but as for activity,
   it is not there. He could always manage a Sunday school, or build a
   Christian interest better than anybody else--but no Sunday school or
   Christian interest ever springs up under his hand because the man's
   whole activity shows itself in inventions which are never executed, and
   in plans which are never carried out.

   I say, then, that it becomes very dangerous, because sometimes these
   dreaming people do dream good things, and they get carried out by some
   practical person, while they, themselves, are asleep all the while. As
   we have often seen a sleeping drayman with his horses going on with
   their load, so they can make others work while they themselves sleep!
   And the worst of it is that when these sleeping people get into a nice
   comfortable position in the Christian Church they can fill it very
   well--and they are the last people in the world to get out--because,
   sleepy as they are, they know when the bed is soft and warm. And oh,
   when sleeping ministers get into the pulpit, what a curse they are to
   us! And when sleepy church officers once get into their places there is
   no moving them! There they are and they seem to fill the place quite
   well--while all the while it is as though the sentinel's box were
   filled with a slumbering man--and consequently the army is not guarded,
   and an attack may be made all of a sudden.

   Oh, Sirs, I fear that half of Christian people nowadays are in this
   sleepy state, and yet if they were told so to their face they would be
   very angry with the men who had the honesty to tell the truth! Perhaps
   some here are not awake, and if so they will be the ones offended. And
   I shall, therefore, be like Swift, who said, "No doubt this is a
   capital sermon in Church to those who are awake. But it is of no use to
   those who have been asleep while I have been preaching it." It is just
   that. The Brother to whom this applies most will be just the person to
   fold his arms and say, "We are well, and let us leave well enough
   alone." It is insidious in the last degree! I have thus endeavored to
   show the deceptive character of this evil.

   But, in the next place, what is the evil, itself? I do not know that I
   can describe it. But perhaps you have felt it, and certainly you must
   have seen it. It is an unconsciousness of one's own slate, and a
   carelessness of such a kind as not to want to be conscious of it. The
   man takes everything for granted in religion. Whether he is a Christian
   or not does not awaken in him any questions. He believes he is, thinks
   he is, and that is enough for him! He does not want to come to close
   dealings. He does not like the preacher who makes him try the
   foundations. He would rather not have such unpleasant points put to
   him. He says, like the man who sleeps on the mast, "A little more rest,
   and I will awake." I fear that many of us get into such a state as
   this.

   Then he also becomes indifferent to the state of other men. The man who
   is asleep does not care what becomes of his neighbors--how can he while
   he is asleep? And oh, some of you Christians do not care whether souls
   are saved or damned! It little concerns some Christians what becomes of
   St. Giles, or Bethnal Green, or Golden Lane. It is enough for them if
   they are comfortable! If they can attend a respectable place of worship
   and go with others to Heaven, they are indifferent about everything
   else. And whether there shall be an increase of darkness or of light in
   England does not seem to concern some Christians, nor even some
   ministers!

   I know some very good and eminent professors in their way, who seem to
   me, at least in my poor judgment, as if it did not matter to them
   whether half of England went to Hell, or whether all went to Heaven. No
   doubt they would be very pleased if the thing did happen that many were
   saved, but as to waking themselves up to the value of souls, and to
   engage in earnest effort and humble prayer, they are too much asleep
   for that and are insensible to the state of others. And they seem, too,
   to be perfectly immoveable by all appeals. The best argument is lost on
   a sleeping man! You might convince him if he were awake, but what can
   you do with him while he still slumbers?

   Therefore it is that many a Christian enterprise has no assistance from
   professed Believers because, and only because they are asleep. They
   might help it--they ought to help it--but they do not! They profess to
   be the servants of Jesus Christ, but they do not serve Him because they
   are indifferent, and because they are much given to slumber. And then
   this slumbering spirit spreads itself over everything else. The
   sleeping Christian does not enjoy the Word. If he reads it, the text
   seems meaningless. If he hears it, he thinks the preacher does not
   preach as he used to do. If he goes to sing with others, he throws no
   heart into it. If he joins in the Prayer Meeting he goes in and out,
   but he does not wrestle with the Angel of Mercy.

   As to his own closet, it is full of cobwebs! As to his own heart, he
   has not had an inspection of it for many a day because the man is got
   into a slumbering state. You can often detect Churches slumbering by
   the way in which they drawl out hymns, and their protracted prayers,
   which, after all, are no prayers at all! There is a heartlessness in
   the manner in which everything is done. Then these Brethren get
   unhappy, and afterwards they get to be quarrelsome. Do not let that be
   the case with any of us here!

   Then there are some who get their Christianity into such a state that
   they are so nearly dead that they are always looking after evidences.
   We get into a low and miserable state because we are in a sleepy state.
   Where this continues long, a Christian Church comes to be a positive
   nuisance. These are strong words to use of any Church, but it is so. I
   know villages where it would be easy to establish a Baptist church if
   it were not unhappily the case that there is one already there which
   does no good and which prevents anybody else from doing anything! A
   pulpit may sometimes be the emblem of a curse! It may stand there. The
   Chapel may stand there and earnest ministers in the neighborhood may
   say, "We cannot go there because good Brother So-and-So is there," and
   good Brother So-and-So may simply be a naughty one who occupies the
   place without bringing any return to his Master.

   You ask me how I can describe this state so well. I answer, because I
   have been in it myself, and have to mourn that I cannot thoroughly wake
   myself up even now! And oh, I am quite sure there are some of you who
   might well join with me in that mourning. Brethren, let us think of
   that word, ETERNITY, and how is it that we do not feel its power more?
   Think of the Judgment--think of the terrors of that tremendous day when
   Christ shall appear upon the Great White Throne! Remember the wrath of
   God! Remember the pit, which He has dug. Think of the Glory of
   Christ--of the robes of whiteness, and the tearless eyes of the
   blood-washed! Can we think of these things, and yet be cold, callous,
   and indifferent? Shall we always be at this poor dying rate? May God
   grant that these weighty themes may have such an effect upon us as they
   must have if we are awake and no longer seem to be indifferent matters
   because we ourselves are so nearly asleep, so nearly dead!

   Now, two or three words upon what makes this evil of Christians being
   asleep a great deal worse. It is this--they are Christ's servants and
   they ought not to be asleep! If a servant is set to do a certain duty,
   you do not continue him in your service if he drops off asleep.
   Remember the virgins who went out to meet the bridegroom? It was not
   wrong for them to be asleep at midnight. It was the proper time for
   sleep. But it was wrong for them to sleep seeing that the bridegroom
   was come, and that they had gone out to meet him. It was wrong for them
   to sleep!

   As I thought this matter over I thought that you and I, and every
   Christian who is asleep--we are very much like the Apostles at the gate
   of Gethsemane. There was their Master sweating great drops of blood in
   awful agonizing prayer, and where were they? Helping Him? Casting their
   prayers into the treasury? Oh, no, not they! Watching against His
   adversaries and guarding Him against surprise? No, not they! There is
   the bold Peter who said he never would forsake his Master, but his head
   is on his bosom. There is John, who has sincere affection for his Lord,
   but his eyes are fast closed! And James, also, is fast locked in the
   arms of Sleep.

   It is very much the same with us. Christ is up yonder interceding and
   we are down here sleeping, the most of us! Christ is up there showing
   His wounds and pleading before the Father's Throne that He would visit
   the sons of men, and give Him to see of the travail of His soul! And
   here are we, not watching against His enemies nor helping Him by our
   prayers! No, we are busy here and there wasting precious time, while
   immortal souls are being lost! We are sleeping like men in the midst of
   harvest when the grain is waiting for the sickle! Our sickles are laid
   low and we stretch ourselves beneath the shadow of some spreading tree
   and sleep!

   Though black clouds are gathering, and the rain which will spoil the
   corn is certainly coming on, we, hired to do the day's work, still
   sleep on! It is not so with you all, but it is so with many of us. It
   is so bad for us to be asleep, too, because it is quite certain that
   the enemy is awake. You remember old Hugh Latimer's sermon in which he
   says that the devil is the busiest bishop in the kingdom? "Other
   bishops," he said, "may not visit their dioceses, but he does. He is
   always at it, day and night." There is no waste of time with Satan! If
   we could send the devil to sleep we might take a nap ourselves, but we
   never can, and therefore we ought to be awake.

   Christian, while you are sleeping, remember time is running out! If you
   could stop the hands of time you might afford yourselves a little
   leisure. If you could, as we say, take Time by the forelock, you might
   pause awhile. But you must not rest, for the tremendous wheels of the
   chariot of Time are driven at such a fearful rate that the axles are
   red-hot with speed, and there is no pause in that tremendous rush! On,
   on, on it goes, and a century has fled like a watch in the night! Time
   stops not--how can you loiter, Christians? And, meanwhile, souls are
   being lost!

   Have you ever seen some of those marvelous pictures which illustrate
   Dante's "Inferno"? You may have seen one picture in which the artist
   represents souls as being driven about by wandering winds. I would
   change the picture and represent souls going along as in a mighty
   river--millions of them passing by the banks of Time every hour--many
   of them snatched out of the current by angelic hands and landed safely
   upon the shore. But oh, how many of them go onward to an awful
   waterfall? A waterfall of souls plunging over into eternal woe! As men
   stand to listen to the roar of Niagara and to see the flowing foam
   generated, so I would ask you to look at the waterfall of Death, and to
   see the multitudes of souls passing down it! A million a month in China
   alone, and how many millions in other parts of the world are passing
   into eternity, unforgiven, unwashed in the Savior's blood?

   Oh, Brothers and Sisters! And yet we sit down and sleep! God forgive
   us! God forgive us! I think that the very devil, if he were saved,
   would not sleep. If the fiends of Hell could be washed in blood and
   made new creatures, I think their restless activity which makes them go
   about like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour would turn into
   another channel, and they would go about to win souls! Are we to go
   like snails in the course of good, while swifter than the roe or the
   hart men fly in the road of evil? Shall it always be so?

   The Christian pastor may forget the villager, but the parish priest
   will not! The Christian minister may not proclaim the Gospel, but from
   the oratory of the monks there will be no uncertain sound! Christian
   women may forget to visit the sick, but the so-called "sisters of
   mercy" will be there! You may turn aside, Christian, if you please,
   from your position in the ranks of Christ, but you will not find the
   servants of Satan so unfaithful! Oh that such restlessness might come
   upon us that we might have an insatiable hungering to do good, and an
   awful passion to bless our fellow men! Oh that we might yearn and sigh
   because others will not repent and turn to God! May the Lord send us
   such an awakening! If not, our sin of sleeping is terrible, indeed.

   Now, what is it that causes us to sleep? I have heard some say that it
   is having too much business. I do not believe it! I do not find that
   you London Christians, as a body, are more asleep than country
   Christians. In fact, if I had my choice I might select my country
   Brothers and Sisters for a great many virtues, but certainly not for
   the virtue of being wide awake! Alas, in many of our country Churches
   nothing can be conducted in a more slumbering manner. I think that of
   the two I would rather have you business men with your pulses quickened
   by having so much to do than I would have you go into the obscurity of
   the country where there is so little to stir the blood. I believe those
   who have the most worldly business can often serve God better than
   those who have but little.

   But still, we must never throw our sins upon the Providence of God!
   What is it, then? I will tell you. First, we are inclined to slumber
   from the evil of our nature. This invests our sin with a double guilt.
   Master, deliver us from the guilt and then from the power of sin! All
   the while we are thus asleep about Divine things, we are wide awake
   like the rest of the world about other things. I have sometimes
   remarked the way in which men will speak out in the shop most
   distinctly but only mumble in the Prayer Meeting. I have sometimes
   thought I have seen persons who, at the sound of a shilling, seemed to
   open their ears and start up be just as much the opposite way when it
   came to doing things for Christ--first and foremost for this world, and
   last for the world to come--toiling like the ants to gain this world's
   dross, but as idle as a butterfly in regard to Divine things. This is
   so sad, because it proves that it is not lack of power to be active,
   but lack of will.

   Next, it is very easy to send a man to sleep if you give him the
   chloroform of bad doctrine. That has sent half our Baptist churches to
   sleep. They have been taught that man is not responsible to God. They
   have been taught clear fate and nothing better--and they have gone to
   sleep. And who, indeed, can take a dose of that without slumbering?
   Then, the sultry sun of prosperity sends many to sleep. You are
   prospering too much! God seems to be too favorable to you in Providence
   and then the soul begins to sleep. Fullness of bread is a strong
   temptation to a Christian. It has been asserted in high church papers
   that our youth--our young men and women--are dissatisfied with our
   services and system, and they are going to ritualism. I do not believe
   it!

   My observation goes to show it is not the case. There are some
   attendees of our places of worship who were with us when they were
   poor, who, having amassed a fortune, have retired to suburban villas
   and turned to places where they hear a Gospel alien to that which they
   heard when times were different with them. But it is not the case with
   the young men and women of our churches! I do not believe the blame
   rests with them. It is the power of wealth which comes to them. I
   admire that prayer of Mr. Whitfield's for a young man who had come into
   possession of a large property, that God would give him Divine Grace to
   persevere under such a trial.

   Then in some people it is the intoxication ofpride. Get proud of your
   spiritual condition and that will soon send you to sleep. In others it
   is the lack of heart which is at the bottom of everything they do. They
   never were intense. They never were earnest, and consequently they have
   such little zeal that that zeal soon goes to sleep. This is the age of
   the Enchanted Ground. He that can go through this age and not sleep
   must have something more than mortal about him--God must be with him
   keeping him awake! You cannot be long in the soporific air of this
   particular period of time without feeling that in spiritual things you
   grow lax, for it is a lax age--lax in doctrine, lax in principle, lax
   in morals, lax in everything--and only God can come in and help the
   Pilgrim to keep awake in this Enchanted Ground!

   These, then, are some of the things to guard against. My time,
   unfortunately, is almost gone, and therefore I can only say a few words
   upon the second point.

   II. What did Christ say to His people who were asleep? He said, "AWAKE
   YOU WHO SLEEP, ARISE FROM THE DEAD." Let me have a little quiet talk
   with you, then, in the Master's name. Remember that Jesus speaks this
   in love. You never knew him do or say anything that was not in love.
   Has there ever been anything which has come either from His hands or
   His lips which has not been in love? Oh, then, believe that He would
   not have said, "Awake!" if it were not the kindest thing He could
   possibly say to you!

   He loves you, then, though you love Him so little and go to sleep in
   His very Presence! And it is His love which shows itself to you in the
   best possible way by that startling word, "Awake! Awake! Awake!"
   Sometimes a mother's love lulls her child to sleep, but if there is a
   house on fire the mother's love would take another expression and
   startle it from its slumber. And Christ's love takes that turn when He
   says to you, "Awake! Awake! Awake!" Again, since Jesus says this to
   you, be assured that it is His wisdom as well as His love that makes
   Him say it. He knows that you are losing much by sleeping. The thief is
   pilfering while you are resting. The sower of the bad seed is
   scattering it in the field, while you, who ought to have watched, are
   going away to those unhallowed sleeps.

   He would not have you be a loser. He would have you be rich and
   increased in goods spiritually, and thus it is His wisdom that bids Him
   wake you. It is a wise voice and a tender voice, which says to the
   Christian--"Awake!" It is a voice, too, which you ought to listen to,
   for it is backed up by the authority of the Person from whom it comes.
   It is your Lord who says, "Awake!" What has He done for you? Shall I
   ask you what He has NOT done for you? You owe everything to Him! That
   robe that is now washed would have been black but for Him. Ah, some of
   you who are here today, oh, how much do you owe! I know, as I look
   around at you, what God's Grace has done for you. Oh, Brother, your
   voice was the loudest in the tavern! Many a time have you reeled home
   from the gin palace! Your mouth could once curse and swear, but you are
   washed!

   And as for myself, how much do I owe to the Grace of God! The most
   stubborn and self-willed of mortals cowed down before the feet of
   Christ to take and accept Him on His own terms! And ah, there are some
   of you who, like the Magdalen, would sit and wash His feet with tears,
   and would be glad to wipe them with the hairs of your head! Some of you
   mothers here owe all your children's souls to Him as well as your own.
   He saved your darlings! He has brought them to put their trust in
   Christ. Oh, we are over our head and ears in debt to Christ! We are
   what good Rutherford used to call, "drowned debtors to Christ!"

   Oh the depths of our obligation! Oh, how high should be the heights of
   our gratitude since He has done so much for us! If He says,
   "Awake!"--oh, Master, we would not only awake, but we would crave Your
   pardon a thousand times that ever we should have fallen into this
   sinful sleep! It is your Lord that speaks! It is your Master that
   cries, "Awake! Awake!" Oh, loyal hearts and virgin souls, by the lilies
   of your love, and by the roses of His blood with which He bought you,
   awake! Awake! Awake, and ask for an earnestness which you may never
   lose again.

   Further, this is a voice which has been very often repeated. Christ has
   been saying, "Awake! Awake!" to some of us hundreds of times. You were
   sick, were you, a few months ago? That was Christ, as it were, shaking
   you in your sleep, and saying, "Awake, My Beloved, awake out of your
   unhealthy slumber!" You had a loss in business the other day and you
   bemoaned it very much. Perhaps that, too, was the Master saying,
   "Awake!" A dear child was taken from you and borne to Heaven--it was
   Christ saying to you, "Awake!"

   And we have had many awakenings in this House of Prayer. I am sure our
   Monday evening Prayer Meetings have often been a voice to us--"Awake!
   Awake!" Sometimes a sermon, too, has come home from God to our hearts
   with-- "Awake! Awake! Awake!" Oh, shall we never awake? Shall Christ
   stand always at yonder door with its rusty hinges and shall He always
   say, "Open unto Me, My Love, My Dove, for My head is wet with dew, and
   My locks with the drops of the night"? Shall He always be shut out?
   Will we never open the door to Him and say, "We wake, Lord, we wake!
   Come in and sup with us that we may sup with You"?

   Now it seems to me as if it were a personal cry in the text. Did you
   notice the singular pronoun--"Awake, you who sleep"? It does not say,
   "Awake all of you," but "Awake, you!" Shall I pick you out one by one?
   There are too many of you for that. But I might say, my dear venerable,
   gray-headed Friend, if there is any tendency in you to slumber, Jesus
   says, "Awake, you." And you, Maiden, you who have given your heart to
   your Savior in your young days, He says, "Awake, you that sleep!" And
   you, young Man with many talents which you do not lay out for Christ as
   you ought--He says, "Awake, you that sleep." And to the most slumbering
   of us, He seems to say it most loudly and most lovingly, "Awake, you
   that sleep." May such a warning come home very personally!

   And to close this point I may add that He puts it very pressingly in
   the present tense: "Awake," He said, "awake now." Oh, it is very easy
   to say, "I hope I shall awake one day." But He says, "Awake now!" It is
   not what you will do in a few years, but now, now, NOW! I do not say
   that the word, "now," is in the text, but it is there truly, in spirit.
   "Awake." If I say to a man, "Awake!" I do not mean that he is to awake
   in an hour's time--that would be absurd! I mean him to awake NOW. And
   Jesus says this to us--friends who know His love and who have been
   visited by His Divine Grace--He says to us--"Awake now, My Beloved, and
   come forth to serve Me."

   III. But I must close, and the last point is THE PROMISE WITH WHICH
   CHRIST ENCOURAGES US TO AWAKE. The promise is, "Christ shall give you
   light." What does that mean? Why, light may mean sometimes instruction.
   We are often in the dark and puzzled about difficulties. But do you
   know half the difficulties in the Bible spring from a cold state of
   mind? When the heart gets right, the head seems to get right, too, in a
   great measure. I remember a person puzzling himself fearfully with that
   passage in Scripture about Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. He went and
   looked at Dr. Gill about it. He went to Thomas Scott about it, and he
   went to Matthew Henry about it--and these good Divines all puzzled him
   as much as they could--they did not seem to clear up the matter.

   The good man could not understand how Jesus Christ could say, as He
   did, "How often would I have gathered you, but you would not!" One day
   he received more Divine Grace and developed a love for souls. And then
   the old skin of narrow-mindedness which had been once large enough for
   him, began to crack and break, and he went to the passage and said, "I
   can understand it now! I do not know how it is consistent with
   such-and-such a doctrine, but it is very consistent with what I feel in
   my heart."

   And I feel just the same. I used to be puzzled by that passage where
   Paul says that he could wish himself accursed from God for his
   Brethren's sake. Why, I have often felt the same, and now I understand
   how a man can say in the exuberance of his love to others that he would
   be willing to perish himself if he might save them! Of course it never
   could be done-- but such is the extravagance of a holy love for souls
   that it breaks through reason and knows no bounds! Get the heart right
   and you get right upon many difficult points.

   Again, I think the light here meant is a further kind of light--not
   merely the light of direction, guidance, and knowledge--but chiefly the
   light of joy. Oh, there are some of you who are generally in the dark!
   You do not know whether you are Christians or not, half the time. You
   are spelling out your evidences, and so on. I compare you to a man who
   is almost drowned. He is alive, but how do they know it? Why, they have
   to hold a glass up to his month, and if there is a little steam, then
   they say, "Yes, he breathes." Well, there are some of you who need such
   an experiment as that tried upon you--for nobody would know that you
   are alive except by some very delicate test. The Christian existence is
   within you, but the manifestation is so feeble that it is not seen. You
   do not know whether you are alive or not!

   Why, nobody ever doubts whether he is alive! A man in health never
   says, "I do not know whether I am alive or not." He goes to work--he
   takes his plow and drives it across the field, or goes to his business
   and works all day long--and he knows he is alive by what he does. And
   if some of you Christian people would only wake up from your sleepy
   state and begin to labor for God, and to love souls, you would get such
   joy flooding through your spirits as you never knew before! It would be
   as though Heaven had opened up its floodgates and let the river of the
   Water of Life come bursting into your soul! And instead of being like a
   dry, howling wilderness, there would be a standing pool of water--no, a
   place in which the ships of your joy, and the galley with oars of your
   delight, might sail for many a day!

   More Divine Grace and more peace, more light and more joy--I pray God
   that you may have these. I have often prayed to God that I might not be
   the pastor of an army of invalids. I would be glad enough to comfort
   them and do my best to make this a hospital for them. But I want to be
   the captain of an army of soldiers and to turn this place into a
   barracks for them! I want you to go out every day from Monday till
   Saturday, and on Sunday, too, fighting for Christ, contending for the
   faith, seeking to gather in outcasts, looking after the poor and needy,
   helping the weak and feeble, comforting the disconsolate, and putting
   out all your strength in your Master's cause!

   We have enough Churches in London where they sleep. Oh, may God deliver
   us from having this place to be a huge cemetery, and make us to be a
   great House, a great City from which shall go forth the hosts and
   armies of the Lord to do battle for Him! May God send His Holy Spirit
   to abide among us in all His plenitude, and He shall have the glory!

   Now you all see this sermon is to the Christian. I tried to preach to
   seekers this morning [#714--a Savior Such As You Need] and gave them
   their turn, then. But if there is one here who has not found the
   Savior, I must add this word to him. The way of salvation is
   this--Trust Christ and you are saved! Christ suffered in the place of
   His people. God laid their sin on Him and punished Him as if He were
   they. And whoever trusts Christ is forgiven. He is saved! And when he
   is saved then I invite him to exert his strength for his Master. But
   till then look at home and then look at Jesus, and God grant that this
   look at yourselves and at your Savior may be the means of your
   salvation--to the praise of the glory of His Divine Grace.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 Pray For Jesus

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 21, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Prayer also shall be made for Him continually." Psalm 72:15.

   HAVING on one or two occasions made use of the phrase, "praying for
   King Jesus," I have been somewhat surprised to find that it was not
   understood, and I have been rather astonished at receiving several
   notes asking for an explanation of what I supposed to be a matter of
   common knowledge. It seemed to hearers and readers of my sermons as if
   the phrase must be a mistake, as if it could not really be a correct
   thing to do--to pray for the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet one moment's
   reflection would have shown them that the expression is Scriptural,
   that you have it here if you have it nowhere else, "prayer also shall
   be made for Him continually."

   Our Lord is undoubtedly intended, in this passage, for He it is in whom
   all nations of the earth shall be blessed, and whose name shall
   continue as long as the sun. It is quite easy to see how we could pray
   for Christ if He were still on the earth. I suppose that when He was a
   Child His parents prayed for Him. They needed not to pray some of the
   prayers which we offer for our offspring, for He was sinless, but I can
   scarcely imagine that a mother's love could have been restrained from
   seeking the richest blessings for her heavenly Child. And when He grew
   up, and came among men, and His lovely Character began to be known, how
   could His disciples do otherwise than pray that He might be speeded in
   His good work?

   Can we suppose them to have been loyal to the Master if they did not
   often join their prayer with His that His kingdom might come? Indeed,
   what is the prayer which He has taught us, "Our Father which are in
   Heaven," but in a certain sense, prayer for Jesus? "Your kingdom come,
   Your will be done on earth, even as it is in Heaven"--it is Christ's
   kingdom, and Christ's will, as well as the will of the Father, and the
   kingdom of the Father. That great cry which went up in the streets of
   Jerusalem when Jesus, in the days of His flesh, rode through them in
   state was a prayer--"Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord."
   Did not the multitude thus implore blessing upon the head of Him who
   came in Jehovah's name?

   His disciples might have done well if they had prayed for Him and with
   Him in Gethsemane, and it was a part of His griefs to find that they
   could not watch with Him one hour. It was ordained that He should tread
   the winepress alone. I think we shall all see that the same spirit
   which made holy women minister to Him of their substance--which made
   the daughters of Salem weep for Him as He was led to His
   Crucifixion--must have prompted all His sincere followers to say Amen
   to this prayer, "Father, glorify Your Son"--and what was this but
   praying for Him?

   But it will be said, "None of these things apply to Him now." My
   Brothers and Sisters, think a little, and you will see that we can
   still pray for Jesus, and you will remember that in our hymns we often
   do so! As, for instance, when we sing--

   "Let all that dwell above the sky,
   And air, and earth, and seas,
   Conspire to lift Your glories high,
   And speak Your endless praise."

   For albeit that He is, in one sense, exalted to the utmost height of
   glory and reigns victorious over His enemies, yet, in another sense He
   is here in the midst of His chosen host striving with principalities
   and powers. "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world,"
   is the blessed assurance that Jesus is our Captain in the great fight
   of faith, and is still present in the battlefield.

   His great cause is here! His enterprise and business are here below!
   The work which He undertook to accomplish is not yet accomplished in
   the person of every one of His elect. His blood has been fully shed and
   His Atonement has been perfected, but those for whom the Atonement was
   made are not yet all gathered in. Many sheep He has which are not yet
   of His fold. We are therefore to pray for Him, that the good work which
   He has undertaken may be prospered, and that one by one those whom His
   Father gave Him may be brought to reconciliation and to eternal life.

   Brethren, the Lord Jesus Christ describes Himself as being still
   persecuted and still suffering. He said to Saul, "Saul, Saul, why do
   you persecute Me?" He calls His people Himself! They are His mystical
   body, and in praying for the Church we pray for Christ! He is the Head
   of the body, and you cannot pray for the body except you pray for the
   Head! We must put them all into one prayer. He is still struggling with
   the hosts of darkness in His Church. He is still striving for the
   victory over sin in His people, and His people are waiting and longing
   for His second advent which shall fulfill their brightest hopes.

   We must still pray for Him, not personally, but relatively--for His
   cause, for His kingdom, for His Gospel, for His people, for His
   blood-bought ones who as yet are in the ruins of the Fall--for His
   second coming, and glorious reign. In this sense, I take it, the text
   is meant that "prayer also shall be made for Him continually." And now,
   Brothers and Sisters, I want, keeping to the one thought of the text,
   to show the light which gleams from it.

   I. And, in the first place, if it is so, if we do, indeed, pray for
   Christ continually, how this thought ELEVATES THE TONE OF OUR PRAYERS!
   Think awhile--there are some prayers which are terribly narrow,
   selfish, and contracted-- the suppliant mentions nothing but his own
   experience, or, at the widest, the trials of his household. He goes
   through his own private interests, and rehearses the sorrows of his own
   little sphere. He repeats them. He never seems to get beyond them.

   At family prayer in such a case, "Give us this day our daily bread"
   seems to be the major petition, and, "Forgive us our debts" is perhaps
   the only other. The man prays like the blind horse at the mill--he
   travels round, and round, and round continually the same circle of
   prayer. Now, if that Brother could but get into his mind once and for
   all that there were a great many others to pray for beside himself and
   beside his family--if he could remember that Paul wills, in the name of
   the Holy Spirit, that prayer should be made for all ranks and
   conditions of men--if such a man could hear all the ministers of Christ
   saying, "Brethren, pray for us," and could remember that we are to pray
   for all the household of faith, why that would tend to get the man off
   his narrow selfishness!

   And if he could grasp the still higher thought that in coming to the
   Mercy Seat we may come for Christ as well as by Christ, and may have a
   prayer to pray even for Him who is the Apostle, and High Priest of our
   profession, he would surely look upon prayer as being altogether a
   different thing from what he had conceived it to be! He would get out
   of that narrow rut and begin to pray something more worthy of a child
   of God! Full conviction of this thought would save us from selfishness
   in connection with those prayers which have a wider circumference but
   have their secret center in ourselves.

   We do pray for the conversion of sinners, but I have been afraid,
   sometimes, lest I have been praying for sinners to be converted under
   my own ministry, with the view of being thought a useful preacher. And
   it is not impossible that some of you, in your classes, seeking to do
   good, may have desired usefulness with the view of wearing it as a
   jewel to ornament yourselves--or, if you sought not honor for self
   exactly--it may have been for some honored person whom your affection
   has made to be part of yourselves.

   Now I do not think I ought to desire conversions for the sake of my
   minister, even though his ministry may be very dear to me, nor for the
   honor of my Christian Sister or Christian Brother, though their work
   may be exceedingly precious in my sight. I must take care that I
   supplicate for souls to be saved, and the kingdom of Christ to be
   advanced with no sinister aim mingling with the prayer.

   Now if I pray it for Christ, if I pray that sinners may be converted
   for His glory, to show forth the power of His Gospel, to let men see
   that the pleasure of the Lord is prospering in His hands, then I shall
   ask for the mercies which I need with a better Grace and be less likely
   to "have not, because" I "have asked amiss." And do you not see, also,
   how this would lift us beyond the narrow hounds of sectarianism? I mean
   just this--there is a possibility of desiring the extension of the
   Savior's kingdom only in one direction--namely, in that direction in
   which we are most interested. It is right for a man to love that body
   of Christians with which he is most intimately connected, and to love
   them best because he believes that they are most faithful to the Truth
   of God--but he should not desire their increase merely for the
   prevalence of a party name!

   He must desire it for the increase of the one great universal Church of
   Christ, and for the extension of the Truth of God because it is the
   Truth of God--not because it happens to be a Truth which he has
   received. I heard a speech the other day by a beloved Wesleyan Brother,
   and it did me much good to hear it. He said, "If God is pleased to
   scourge us Wesleyans for our sins, and to withhold a large measure of
   success, I will then pray that he would bless you Baptists, and make up
   through you what the Church may lose through us." When I heard him say
   it and knew he meant it, I could not but feel my soul knit to such a
   man--a man who loves the Church of Christ and loves it for Christ's
   sake, for the sake of souls--and for the Truth's sake. This is just how
   all of us ought to feel--that we wish to see all the Churches multiply
   and increase--and wherever Truth is preached, wish to see that Truth
   prevail.

   Dear Friends, if we adopt the thought that we must pray for conversions
   for Jesus' sake, we shall be uplifted from the realm of jealous
   bickering! We shall say, "No, I do not desire conversions because of
   that Church, or that man, or that body, nor even merely because of the
   whole Church itself! But I desire the extension of the Truth of God for
   Christ. I pray for Him." Your minds will be enlarged, your souls will
   be expanded, and you will have come to the stature of men in Christ
   Jesus.

   Moreover, I have noticed, dear Friends, that when we can ask for any
   deliverance as for Christ, we may pray very earnestly against an evil
   without any bitterness mingling with the prayer. It is the duty of
   every Christian to pray against Antichrist, and as to what Antichrist
   is. No sane man ought to raise a question. If it is not the Popery in
   the Church of Rome and in the Church of England, there is nothing in
   the world that can be called by that name. If there were to be issued a
   hue and cry for Antichrist, we should certainly take up those two
   churches on suspicion, and they certainly would not be let loose again,
   for they so exactly answer the description.

   Popery anywhere, whether it be Anglican or Romish, is contrary to
   Christ's Gospel! And it is the Antichrist, and we ought to pray against
   it! It should be the daily prayer of every Believer that Antichrist
   might be hurled like a millstone into the flood and sink to rise no
   more. If we can pray against error for Christ because it wounds Christ,
   because it robs Christ of His glory, because it puts sacramental
   efficacy in the place of His Atonement and lifts a piece of bread into
   the place of the Savior, and a few drops of water into the place of the
   Holy Spirit, and puts a mere fallible man like ourselves up as the
   vicar of Christ on earth--if we pray against it because it is against
   Him--we shall love the persons though we hate their errors! We shall
   love their souls though we loathe and detest their dogmas, and so the
   breath of our prayers will be sweetened because we turn our faces
   towards Christ when we pray. We are to pray for Him.

   Do you know, dear Brothers and Sisters, it seems to me to make prayer
   so sweet to think that we can pray for Jesus! The Mercy Seat is
   inestimably precious to us when we can pray there for ourselves. When
   we can bring the case of a dear child or loving friend it is a blessing
   for which to be perpetually grateful. Oh the blessedness of prayer! Our
   hearts might break for lack of a way of expressing our love if we had
   not this method of telling it out before the Mercy Seat on the behalf
   of those dear to us. But, Beloved, to think that I may pray for
   Christ--that I may pray for Him who prayed for me, and plead on His
   behalf who with sighs and tears pleaded on the behalf of poor helpless
   me--it ought to be a very great comfort to some of you who cannot do
   much else beside pray for Jesus.

   I dare say you have thought, "I wish I could preach for Christ." It is
   a very laudable wish! Covet earnestly the best gifts. But if you feel
   that you cannot speak to edification and are thus debarred from that
   honorable exercise, you must seek another mode of service. Then you
   have said, "I wish I could give to Christ's cause. If He would make me
   His steward. If He would trust me with money, how willingly would I
   consecrate it to Him!" But you have no money and you are, perhaps, so
   poor you cannot do anything in that direction--though you would do very
   much if you could. Now, what a mercy it is that there is this which you
   can do--you can pray for Christ! You can come to the treasury and drop
   in your prayers, and if they are all you have, they will be like the
   widow's two mites which were not precious to Christ because they were
   mites nor because she was a widow--but because they were all her
   living.

   Ah, if your prayers are all you can give God--and all your living--drop
   them into the Church's treasury, and say, "Well, I cannot do much else,
   but my daily constant prayer shall go up that the Lord would prosper
   the Gospel of His dear Son and make Him to rule and govern the wide
   world over." Dear Friends, here is room for questioning ourselves. Have
   you and I been neglectful in this form of prayer? If we have, I am
   persuaded that it will cast a flatness and a staleness over all our
   devotional exercises. If you have not prayed for Christ, I am afraid,
   dear Friend, that much of your own prayer will have been displeasing to
   God. Remember that the same Christ who tells us to say, "Give us this
   day our daily bread," had first given us this petition, "Hallowed be
   Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in
   Heaven."

   Do not let your prayers be all about your own sins, your own needs,
   your own imperfections, your own trials! Let them climb the starry
   ladder and get up to Christ Himself! And then, as you draw near to the
   blood-sprinkled Mercy Seat, offer this prayer continually, "Lord,
   extend the kingdom of Your dear Son." Such a petition, fervently
   presented, will tend to elevate the spirit and tenor of our prayers.

   II. In the second place, praying for Christ will suggest to us MANY
   THEMES OF PRAYER. To pray for Christ is a very large topic, for it will
   bring before us something fresh for every day in the week. I must plead
   for Christ's cause on earth according to its present condition and
   circumstances. Consequently I shall need to keep my eyes open to see in
   what plight the kingdom of Christ is. As a general looks along the
   whole line of battle and sends reinforcements where the line appears to
   be most weak, so will the true man who prays for Christ look along the
   line of the Church's work and pray most for that which is in the worst
   state--offering up his prayers for Christ according as Christ's cause
   seems to need those prayers.

   There are some topics which constantly claim our care--you may always
   pray for them. One is that Christ may have always enough witnesses for
   the Truth on earth. Your Lord has said, "Pray you the Lord of the
   harvest, that He would send forth laborers into His harvest." It is a
   prayer much forgotten, but it needs to be revived in the Church before
   we shall see much revival. There are many Churches now that cannot find
   pastors. In some districts, especially in America, there are Churches
   by the score without ministers, and apparently they must remain so for
   years to come. There is a general complaint throughout all
   denominations of a shortage of earnest first-class men who shall devote
   themselves to the ministry. And this shortage will be and will increase
   until the Church takes it up and prays that He who ascended up on high
   and received gifts for men would be pleased to give her again her
   Apostles and ministers, her teachers and her evangelists, each
   according to his proper station.

   We must pray for men of God, and you need never be afraid that the
   prayer will be needless in your lifetime, for if we had ten times as
   many witnesses for Christ, the world needs them. Look at China with its
   millions, India with its teeming masses, and even our colonies wide and
   far spread with a fearful lack of preachers of the Word! There are
   large companies of men who speak our language and who left our shores,
   who, for lack of teachers, are almost subsiding into heathendom and
   will perish for lack of knowledge unless there is a fresh host raised
   up of preachers of the Cross of Christ!

   Pray, then, dear Friends, that God would find out and equip men to be
   heralds of peace to the people, and help those of us who labor even
   beyond our strength to aid young men whom God has called to His work to
   get the knowledge which their office requires. Another prayer may
   always go with it, namely, pray for those that are already in the
   field. "Brethren, pray for us," said the Apostle. If you have nothing
   to pray for, for yourselves, here stands one before you who needs all
   your prayers and feels that he needs them, and humbly with his whole
   heart begs you to let him live in your private devotions.

   Brethren, we are rich when you enrich us with your supplications! We
   are strong when you strengthen us with your prayers! A few loving tears
   shed for us in private will be of more value to us than anything else
   you can possibly bestow upon us. Some of my Brethren are fainting from
   lack of success--hundreds of them are growing cold because of the
   coldness of the church members who surround them. Some of them are
   struggling with poverty--all of us, alas, are too weak for the work we
   have engaged in! Pray for us! You are praying for Christ, and if we are
   His servants--if He has truly sent us--you pray for the Master's
   business when you pray that the servants may do that business well. You
   pray for the Owner of the vineyard when you ask that the trimmers of
   the vines may know how to execute their tasks.

   And when these two prayers have passed from your hearts to your lips,
   there is another--pray that God would open doors of utterance to us
   among the people. Ask that God would send the spirit of hearing
   throughout this city to begin with, and then throughout all England. It
   is poor gain that you have the preachers unless the people will
   listen--the trumpet sounds in vain if men stop their ears! God can, in
   a moment, as we know by past experience, influence people to say, "Come
   and let us go up to the house of the Lord."

   I believe that through the last visitation of the cholera there is a
   spirit of hearing in London such as has not been for many years. Thank
   God for this! Ask that a desire to hear may be continued and increased.
   Intercede with the great Lord of All that in every country the hearing
   ear may be bestowed--that God's faithful servants may be cheerfully
   received and be enabled to accomplish their errand with a hundred-fold
   success. But, my Brothers and Sisters, I have only opened the bag. I
   have only commenced the list of matters for which you could pray if you
   would really pray for Christ! I would ask you, then, to pray especially
   for the conversion of many souls. This is Christ's delight, His love,
   His heart's joy.

   You were told last Sunday morning that there was "joy in Heaven over
   one sinner that repents." The angels sing, but Christ is the
   Choirmaster there. He is the chief Musician, for He has the greatest
   joy! It is His joy, His Heaven to see sinners saved! Pray, pray for
   Him, then! You are praying for the Shepherd when you pray for the lost
   sheep. You are praying for the King when you ask that the lost jewels
   of His crown may be found and set therein! Oh that we loved souls as
   Christ loves them! Then we would hunger and thirst after their
   salvation! Oh for the tender heart of the weeping Savior, that no soul
   might go down to Hell not sprinkled with our tears!

   Brethren, pray for those who are saved, or who make a profession of it,
   that they may be kept from falling into sin. You are in an eminent
   degree praying for Christ when you offer such an intercession, for He
   is crucified afresh when professors fall. If I had an offer now of
   losing this right arm or having to endure in this Church some such
   falls as we have had to mourn over, and as the world has seen of late
   among high professors, I do feel I can say without hypocrisy I would
   choose to be cut limb from limb sooner than see those whom I have loved
   and honored fall from the faith. It is a bitter thing to us, who are
   ministers of Christ--it is our curse and plague--it costs us sleepless
   nights and miserable days when we hear of those that apparently did run
   well but turn back to the world!

   Pray for professors that they fall not! And as you hope to be kept
   yourselves, I charge you pray for every tempted soul that his faith
   fail him not in the trying hour. Forget not to pray for the Church of
   God that it may be knit together in one. Do not ask that it may be made
   uniform--that is neither desirable nor probable--but pray that all
   Christians may be one as the Father is one with the Son. That is, one
   in spirit, so that we, divided as we always shall be as to our thoughts
   upon many points, may be one in the hope that animates us--in the
   spirit that actuates us. Pray that we may be one in the life of God
   that pulsates in our souls. Pray that the Churches may be knit together
   in holy love and may strive together for nothing but the advancement of
   the faith of Christ.

   Nor have I done. When you have thus prayed for Christ, and I am sure it
   is all for Christ if you so pray, then ask that the kingdoms of this
   world may become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. Let no
   ideas of doctrine check you in such a prayer--you are bound to pray it!
   The example of Prophets and of Apostles urges you forward! Your
   allegiance to King Jesus should constrain you to it. You believe that
   He will come, but believe also the Truth of God which is equally
   certain that He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river
   even to the ends of the earth.

   Though you may not be able to reconcile that universal reign with the
   other Truth of His coming as a thief in the night, do not try to
   reconcile it! Believe it because you find it in the Bible and,
   believing it, pray that you may see it. Do not indulge the thought that
   Christ is not to reign in China. That He is not to be King where the
   gods of the heathens rule. My Brothers and Sisters, He is to be so! Do
   not think He has only suffered upon Calvary to gather out a few from
   among men! The day is coming when He shall gather out a multitude that
   no man can number--who shall be His in the day of His appearing. Pray
   for this. Pray for the all-conquering progress of the Gospel of King
   Jesus!

   Do not restrict your thoughts and limit your desires. Be ambitious for
   Christ. Nothing but universal monarchy ought to content you, as only it
   will content the Master. The little stone cut out of the mountain
   without hands must fill the whole earth, and every other image, though
   it is an image of gold or iron, shall be broken in pieces before the
   dominion of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ! Pray for it, my
   Brothers and Sisters! Pray for it day and night, and let the verse of
   Dr. Watts be true of you--

   "For Him shall endless prayer be made, And praises throng to crown His
   head."

   Thus I have tried to show you that this doctrine of praying for Christ
   instructs us in a variety of topics. I should again like to ask the
   question, whether you really have been up to the mark in this--whether
   there has not been a good deal of negligence upon many of these points?
   I am afraid I shall have to confess negligence myself, and perhaps most
   of you will. But do not let us remain satisfied with confession! Let us
   ask for Divine Grace that our prayers, from now on, shall be larger,
   wider, broader, more heavenly, more generous, more like the thoughts of
   the Infinite Mind, while we chiefly, and above all things, remember the
   work, and interest, and cause of Christ! As He remembers us, so let us
   remember Him.

   III. Thirdly, it appears to me that if we were to look upon our prayers
   as being in a great measure prayers for Christ, this would tend to
   inspire us with PECULIAR EARNESTNESS. I must pray for Christ or else I
   am not consistent with my profession. I profess to be His servant.
   What? And not ask for the success of my Master? I avow myself to be His
   disciple--a disciple, and not anxious that the Truths which I receive
   from my Teacher should win their way? I call myself His friend. He
   calls me so in return--a Friend--and not show myself friendly enough to
   put up a word of prayer for Him? He has said I am His brother--a
   brother who does not pray for his brother is most unbrotherly!
   Moreover, He has deigned to call the collective body of His people His
   spouse--a spouse that does not pray for her husband is most unwifely.
   We must not so act if we are Christians in deed and in truth.

   One of the first marks of Christians was that they met together and
   sung hymns in the honor of one called Christ. And another mark is that
   they meet together and pray for the extension of the kingdom of one
   whom they called Jesus. I have a second reason for so praying, namely,
   that gratitude dictates to me to pray. Oh, what has Jesus done for me!
   When I am praying for His Church I am apt to think of her faults,
   perhaps of her unkindness to me, and my prayer lacks force. But when I
   pray for Christ, so good, so tender, so self-denying, laying down His
   life for His sheep. When I think of His bleeding out that life for
   me--for me a sinner and once His enemy--how can I but pray for Him?
   Pray for You, Jesus? This is but a poor return for all Your groans and
   bloody sweat and agony for me.

   I think I shall love prayer better than I have ever done if I am able
   to remember that I can speak a word in God's ear for Him whose blood
   speaks for me! It will be a delightful satisfaction for me in my times
   of communion with my Father who is in Heaven to say to Him--"and, my
   Father, there is One whom You love, who died on my behalf, though I
   deserved it not, and I pray You glorify Him. Increase His kingdom! Help
   me to honor Him. Cause human hearts to feel His power. Give Him
   dominion over tens of thousands of the sons of men."

   Does it not, dear Friend, quicken the pulse of your prayer? Do you
   think it possible to pray at a sluggish rate when you pray for Jesus? I
   have heard some people say, "I could not speak upon any subject but
   one," and that one subject has been some kind friend who helped them in
   time of trouble. "Oh," they say, "I could speak about him! That is a
   topic I could always find words upon." Someone to whom you are grateful
   holds a key with which to unloose your tongue. And if you cannot pray
   for anything else, surely you can, you must, you shall pray for the
   Lord Jesus! As both our consistency and our gratitude will thus quicken
   us to prayer if we pray for Christ, surely our love to Him will tend to
   do the same.

   Loved of Christ from before all worlds, we love Him in return. We never
   pray more fervently, I suppose, than for those whom we love best. He
   who does not love sinners cannot pray aright for them. When we love
   sinners, then the prayer is fervent. And when we love Jesus, then will
   the prayer be earnest. Love is the flaming torch to kindle the pile of
   our devotions. Brethren, we have something more than love to Christ. We
   are, if we are true Believers, one with Him-- members of His body. All
   that concerns Him concerns us, not because we are partners merely, but
   because we are part and parcel of Himself. There is but one Christ, and
   His Church is one with Him.

   We, members of His Church, are each one in living union with Him. No
   man, says Paul, ever yet hated his own flesh! Now, if I, professing to
   be a Christian, were to neglect Christ, I should be neglecting myself
   since He takes me into union with Himself. Do I ask that His kingdom
   may come? It is a kingdom in which I am to reign! Do I ask that His
   glory may be increased? It is a glory of which I am to be a partaker!
   Do I crave that His joy may be full? That joy is to be in me! How can I
   but pray when I am one with the Savior for whom I put up my
   supplications?

   I am afraid I cannot put what I mean into words which carry it home to
   you. But to my own mind it is like a wafer made with honey which I can
   roll under my tongue and enjoy in its sweetness, to think that I have
   the possibility of pleading for Jesus! I feel convinced that it has a
   tendency to blow up the flame of prayer. I trust that the man who
   traveled slowly before will all at once put on his speed when he comes
   to pray for Christ Jesus.

   IV. Very briefly, in the fourth place. If I can look at my prayers in
   the light which has been mentioned, it will tend very much to give me
   SPECIAL ENCOURAGEMENT in offering them at the Mercy Seat. He who has to
   present a petition will go with great confidence when he feels that the
   person for whom he makes intercession is exceedingly well worthy.
   Brothers and Sisters, if I pray for a guilty sinner I may have
   confidence. But when I pray for such a One as the Lord Jesus, my
   confidence can have no bounds set to it! Observe what He is! He is in
   constant favor with God. "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well
   pleased."

   From the excellence of His Character and the dignity of His Person, He
   deserves to be the Beloved of His Father, and He is such. He is God's
   well-beloved. It is easy work, then, to plead for Him. Now, if I pray
   for my minister, for the Church, for the conversion of sinners, I may
   feel a little difficulty. But when I can make sure that I am praying
   for these for Christ's sake and with a view to His honor--and am thus
   virtually praying for Christ--why then, if enabled by the Holy Spirit,
   it becomes easy to pray because I know I must succeed when I am asking
   honor for Him whom the King delights to honor!

   Brethren, when I think upon the merits of Christ in the matter of His
   mediatorial sufferings, how it encourages me to pray! I ask that He may
   be crowned who was obedient to death, even the death of the Cross. Can
   this be denied? Is not the crown well earned? Can the reward be
   withheld? I ask that the pierced hand may be filled with the scepter,
   and that the feet once nailed to the Cross may be planted upon earth's
   dominions as upon a footstool. Can it be refused? Am I not asking that
   which His merit deserves? Which His triumph claims and wins? In this
   case I have something more to plead, I have God's promise. It is
   written, "He shall see His seed. He shall prolong His days, and the
   pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hands."

   It is easy work to pray when we are grounded and bottomed, as to our
   desires, upon God's own promise! How can He that gave the word refuse
   to keep it? Immutable veracity cannot demean itself by a lie! And
   eternal faithfulness cannot degrade itself by neglect. God must bless
   His Son--His covenant binds Him to it. That which the Spirit prompts us
   to ask for Jesus is that which God decrees to give Him! Brothers and
   Sisters, whenever you are praying for the kingdom of Christ, let your
   eyes behold the dawning of the blessed day which draws near when the
   Crucified shall receive His coronation in the place where men rejected
   Him! The cause of Christ is downtrodden now--it shall not be so
   forever.

   We have been for centuries like soldiers that keep the field against a
   foe inveterate and mighty. We have been wearily waiting in the
   trenches. We have been mournfully standing behind the bulwarks. But the
   day is coming when the Master shall say to us what the Hebrew Prophet
   said to Israel's tribes at the Red Sea, "Forward, forward!" And then we
   will be no longer merely keeping the ground but winning province after
   province for King Jesus! No longer storing our arrows in our quivers
   that they may be ready for the onslaught--but fitting them to the
   string and sending them like a mighty shower--we shall march to triumph
   and to universal victory!

   Courage, you that prayerfully work and toil for Christ with success of
   the very smallest kind! It shall not be so always. Better times are
   before you. Your eyes cannot see the blissful future! Borrow the
   telescope of faith. Wipe the misty breath of your doubts from the
   glass. Look through it and see the coming glory! Messiah's kingdom
   comes! The trumpet soon shall sound! Peace shall be proclaimed! His
   saints shall reign in joy! Before long the millennial era shall begin
   and Jesus shall have His own.

   Behold Him reigning upon the throne of His father David. The kings of
   the Isles bring him presents, Sheba and Seba offer Him their gifts. It
   must be so, Brethren! Christ has not died merely to win this little
   island, and a few other nations! He has died to redeem this whole round
   world as a jewel which He will wear in His crown, and He shall have it!
   I say the whole round world yet shall shine like a pearl in His diadem!
   He must, He shall reign over all nations till every enemy is put under
   foot. The sails that whiten every sea shall bear His messengers to the
   islands of the South. The caravans that cross the desert shall convey
   His ambassadors to proclaim in the far-off oasis or among the wandering
   Bedouins His sacred name. The gates of brass which deny Him entrance
   must be broken! The bars of iron that shut out His heralds from any
   land must be snapped.

   Hoary systems of superstition must crumble and the moles and bats shall
   yet be the sole companions of the gods of heathendom. Rejoice, rejoice!
   The cause for which you plead is one which Heaven ordains to bless!
   Everlasting decrees stand like lions to guard the throne of Christ! The
   mighty arm of the Most High is made bare to avenge His own elect. High
   shall the banner of the Cross be lifted! Soon shall the shout of
   victory make Heaven's loftiest arches ring and Hell itself shall
   tremble at the dreaded sound--for the King immortal, eternal,
   invisible, must reign and put down all dominion and power--and then
   shall He give the kingdom to God, even the Father.

   V. In closing, the last thought which occurred to me was this--when we
   put our prayer in such a light that we pray for Christ it DEMANDS
   CONSISTENT ACTION. I cannot pray for Christ and then rise from my knees
   and go and sin against the very kingdom which I hope to spread! I ask
   you what is it but damnable hypocrisy for a man to say, "Your kingdom
   come," and then to go out, and by inconsistent conduct, pull down the
   walls of Zion? What shall I say of that professor whose daily life in
   ordinary business is a continual splattering the Gospel with mud, and
   yet he says, "Your kingdom come"? Away with the hypocritical lips which
   can honor Christ in public, when the hands, the true token of the
   heart, will afterwards privately pluck down the Cross!

   Ah, my Hearers, how many professors do this! How many who even give and
   contribute liberally will afterwards, in the way in which they get
   their money, or seek to get it, or in the conduct of their daily
   business, or in their families, bring infinitely more discredit upon
   religion than their contributions can ever bring honor to the Cross? If
   you pray for Christ, live like He lived! If you profess to desire His
   prosperity, do not, I pray you, cause Him to be wounded in the house of
   His friends!

   But further, this is not enough. If I really pray for Christ I must
   take care to be on my watch to know what to pray for, so as to make my
   prayer a sensible prayer--a prayer of the understanding. Some members
   of the Church do not know what the Church needs at the present moment.
   They could not plead for Sunday schools, for they never take the
   trouble to enquire into their present condition. Could some of you pray
   for our own school as it should be prayed for? You could pray a sort of
   general hit-or-miss prayer, but you do not know whether the Sunday
   school is well attended. You do not know whether the teachers are godly
   young men and women and knit together in love, or whether they are all
   divided and split into factions.

   We ought to know, as Church members, it seems to me, something about
   all the agencies--but all about some one agency in which we take
   particular concern. And we should get to be acquainted with the
   condition of the Church of which we are members. And also, as far as
   our means will allow us, we should be acquainted with the condition of
   the Church of God at large. We should take interest in it, feeling that
   it is our own concern. And then when we pray we should pray with better
   spirit, understanding what we are asking for. Then, Friends, if we did
   this we are not afraid but what the last thing would be well attended
   to, namely, that we should take care that we add to our prayers our
   continual personal service.

   The old fable of the priest who would not give the man a farthing but
   would give him his prayers, is very like many professors. They pray for
   the kingdom, but what are they doing? Many young men who are quietly at
   home in England ought to be missionaries abroad! Many others who are
   following their calling successfully ought to have devoted themselves
   to the ministry. And there are many Christian men who are making money
   for themselves who have got enough and ought to shut up shop for
   themselves and keep shop for Christ--they ought to make money for
   Christ with as much earnestness as I would preach the Gospel for
   Christ!

   I have no doubt that many would thus serve the Master far more
   eminently than do half the professed preachers. Oh, if you are not
   doing something for Jesus let your closets chide you! Let your hymns,
   which you have been singing about His coming and His triumph--let them
   provoke you! But oh, my Brothers and Sisters, instead of appealing to
   all these considerations, I shall put it upon this footing--by Him who
   loved you, if, indeed, He loved you! By Him who died for you, if,
   indeed, you have a share in His passion! By Him who lives for you, if,
   indeed, you have been quickened together with Him! By Him who pleads
   for you this day before the Eternal Throne, if, indeed, your names are
   on His breastplate--I do charge you--live to Jesus!

   Live now to Him! Live while you live! Live with all the possible energy
   of life! Let the love of Christ be an all-consuming passion with you!
   Find out some way in which to increase His kingdom. Ah, my Hearers, I
   bless God for you because the most of you are serving Him. I rejoice in
   you! You are the jewels of my crown of rejoicing because you do serve
   the Master! Many of you live even Apostolic lives in your eagerness to
   spread abroad the Truth of God! But alas, some of you I might speak of
   "even weeping," because you are indifferent and almost dead to the
   blessed power of love within the soul!

   May God revive us all! May the Holy Spirit constrain us to more
   consecrated living! I am in hopes that the Prayer Meetings held every
   morning and evening will be the means of bringing the Church into a
   warm-hearted, happy, holy, earnest state and that there will not be one
   left among us whose soul shall have been so dead as never to himself
   have said, "This is my work. Christ is my King. And now I will live for
   Him and pray for Him in the hope that I may at last die and be with Him
   where He is, and behold His glory--the glory which His Father gave
   Him--and be one with Him in Heaven forever and ever!"
     __________________________________________________________________

                  The Standard Uplifted In The Face Of The Foe

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 28, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord
   shall lift up a standard against him." Isaiah 59:19.

   THE Hebrew seems to be very difficult to interpret in this verse and
   there have been as many translations given it as there are days in the
   month. Upon the whole, one is most satisfied with the translation of
   our authorized version. And without troubling your minds with a host of
   various renderings, we will keep to the one before us, which, even if
   it should not happen to be the precise truth taught in the passage, it
   is, nevertheless, a great Scriptural Truth, and one which it is
   important for us just now to remember.

   "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord
   shall lift up a standard against him." This is referred by Dr. Gill and
   sundry other commentators to the latter days in which they believe
   there will be a most terrible apostasy--when the Man of Sin shall reach
   a yet greater development than at present--and the Christian Church
   shall be brought to its very lowest ebb. At such a time the Spirit of
   the Lord will lift up a standard for the Truth of God and, by the power
   of His Grace, the kingdom of Jesus shall be revealed in fullest glory.

   We are not, however, inclined to interpret this text in a restricted
   manner as relating solely to one period of time. Nothing shall induce
   me to attempt to interpret the prophecies. By God's Grace I will be
   content to expound the Gospel. I believe it to be one of the most fatal
   devices of Satan to turn aside useful Gospel ministers from their
   proper work into idle speculations upon the number of the beast and the
   meaning of the little horn. The prophecies will interpret themselves by
   their fulfillment--no expositor has yet arisen who has been able to do
   it. Providence is the true interpreter of prophecy--

   "God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain."

   But for us to try the mysterious visions of Daniel and John before they
   are fulfilled will, I believe, be worse than folly. It will be a guilty
   waste of energy which should all be spent in the winning of souls. We
   shall only consider the general principle, which is clear enough that
   when the enemy shall come in the greatest force against the people of
   God, at such times God's Holy Spirit shall put forth His glorious
   power, and a standard shall be lifted up against the inroads of the
   foe.

   We shall first refer the text to the holy war in our own hearts. And
   secondly to the holy war which is being waged in the world--not with
   flesh and blood--but with spiritual wickedness in high places.

   I. First we shall take the general statement of the text as referring
   to THE CONFLICT WHICH IS RAGING IN THE CHRISTIAN'S INNER MAN. It is
   well for us distinctly to understand the position of the Christian.
   This is not the land of our triumph. Neither is this the period of our
   rest. If we bind our brows with laurel and cast aside our armor, our
   folly will be extreme. The ship is not yet in the harbor--many storms
   must yet beat upon her. The warrior has not slain the last of his foes,
   neither has the pilgrim fought with the last of the giants.

   The moment of conversion is rather the commencement than the closing of
   spiritual warfare, and until the Believer's head shall recline upon the
   pillow of death he will never have finished his conflicts. The war will
   not be over till we shall depart and be with Christ, which is far
   better! Beloved Christian, you are in the land where foes abound! There
   are enemies within you--you are not delivered from the influence of
   inbred sin. The new nature is of Divine origin, and it cannot sin
   because it is born of God--but the old nature, the carnal mind, is
   there, too, and it is not reconciled to God-- neither, indeed, can it
   be! And therefore it strives and struggles with the new nature. The
   house of Saul in our heart wars against the house of David and tries to
   drive it out and despoil it of the crown. This conflict you must expect
   to have continued with more or less violence till you enter into rest.

   Moreover, in the world without there are multitudes of foes. This vain
   world is no friend to the principle of the work of Divine Grace. If you
   were of the world the world would love its own, but as you are not of
   the world, but of a heavenly race, you may expect to be treated as an
   alien and foreigner. No--as a hated and detested foe! All sorts of
   snares and traps will be laid for you. Those who sought to entangle the
   Master in His speech will not be more lenient towards you. Moreover
   there is one whose name is called "the enemy," the "Evil One"--he is
   the leader among your adversaries! Hating God with all his might, he
   hates that which he sees of God in you.

   He will not spare the arrows in his infernal quiver. He will shoot them
   all at you. There are no temptations which he knows of--and he
   understands the art well from long practice--there are no temptations
   which he will not exercise upon you. He will sometimes fawn upon you,
   and at other times will frown. He will lift you up, if possible, with
   self-righteousness, and then cast you down with despair! You will
   always find him your fierce, insatiable foe. Know this, then, and put
   on the whole armor of God! March with your sword always drawn in your
   hand as one who sees a foe in the path.

   The text leads us to look for seasons when this position will be more
   than ordinarily perilous. Who that has gone on pilgrimage does not know
   that at certain times the enemy comes in upon him like a flood? Like a
   flood--suddenly, without notice--as when the mountain lake bursts
   through its banks and rushes into the valley beneath, irresistibly
   destructive, sweeping everything before it in its headlong career!
   Insatiable! Sparing neither cattle, nor abode of man, nor provender for
   the ox, nor corn for the household--drowning young and old in one
   watery grave--with cold unfeeling power destroying all within its awful
   sweep!

   The flood has no compassion, and yields to no entreaties. Such and so
   terrible are the onsets of our spiritual foes! When sins, and doubts,
   and temptations assail us, who can, without Divine aid, stand against
   them? Who is able to resist them? You who are veterans in the spiritual
   fight, you know right well that there are times when kings go forth to
   battle--seasons when the traitors within are unusually troublesome--and
   when you have need of extraordinary Grace. It will be well for you who
   know the spiritual conflict to be thoroughly conscious of your own
   utter impotence against this terrific danger.

   What can a man do against a flood? How shall he escape it or stem it?
   The strongest swimmer, though he strains every muscle, must, if he is
   unaided, yield to its overwhelming force. If a man has nothing to
   depend upon but his own vigorous struggling, what can he do against a
   foaming torrent? Not all the impetuous fury of a rushing flood can
   exceed the fury of our enemies! Where is the human strength which can
   avail to endure its force? Christian, you are surrounded with enemies,
   and you, in your own person, are helpless in the day of battle! If you
   are not clothed with heavenly armor, you are like a naked man into
   whose flesh every dart must penetrate! If the shield of faith shall not
   cover you, the spears of the tempter will soon reach your heart!

   Against him you are crushed as a moth, and as easily trampled upon as a
   worm. You are as weak as water, as frail as dust. Your strength, your
   fancied strength, is perfect weakness--then what must your weakness be?
   Your highest natural wisdom is folly--then what must your folly be? As
   well should a bird with broken wing attempt to mount into the skies as
   you attempt to reach Heaven by your own strength! As well should a
   child with a straw hope to stand against a host of armed men, as you to
   bear the onslaught of your spiritual enemies--unless the mighty God of
   Jacob should be your defense! Your warfare needs the Eternal arm to
   bear you through it, and yet you are weakness itself! How shall you be
   able to achieve the victory? Cease from self-confidence! Know yourself
   to be feebleness itself! Look above you to a nobler and surer source of
   strength than yourself!

   The text, after having plainly bid us to thoroughly realize our
   position, and after suggesting to us our weakness, bids us turn to our
   only help, a Helper mysterious but Divine. When the enemy comes in like
   a flood, what then? Shall the Christian stem it? It is not so written!
   Shall he avoid it? Not thus is it in the Word. Shall he fly to his
   minister? Shall he gather together his Christian friends and shall they
   conjointly dam the stream or turn the battle? Not they! They are all
   alike weak, and their union will bring no strength. What can a
   multitude of ciphers make? They are each one nothing, and add them all
   together they make but nothing. The united fullness of so much
   emptiness is only a greater display of emptiness. The united wisdom of
   a thousand fools is only so much more folly.

   Where, then, does the text direct us? It reminds us of One whose name
   we mention with affectionate reverence--the Spirit of the Lord. What do
   we not owe to Him already? Blessed Spirit! You are He who sought us
   when we were strangers, wandering from the fold of God! You strove with
   us when our desperate wills were set on mischief! You bowed us down at
   length as You convicted us of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to
   come. Blessed Spirit! It is to Him we owe our present holy comfort! He
   brought us to the Savior's Cross and opened our blind eyes to see the
   wonders of atoning love! He endeared the Savior, applied the promise,
   gave us the spirit of adoption, and taught us to say, "Abba, Father."

   It was by His living power that we were quickened and made alive. We
   were lying, like Lazarus, rotting in the grave, until He called us
   forth. It is by His teaching that we have been enlightened thus far in
   the things of Christ. He has taught us all things, and brought all
   things to our remembrance, whatever Christ delivered unto us. Up till
   now He has been our indwelling Guide, illuminating the darkness of our
   faith, constraining the waywardness of our will, sanctifying our
   nature, and bearing us onward against ourselves towards the ultimate
   perfection for which our spirit pants.

   Blessed Spirit! Brothers and Sisters, let us never grieve Him! "Quench
   not the Spirit." Let His faintest admonitions be obeyed. Whatever He
   says to you, do it. Let His power in our spirits be like that of the
   centurion in the ranks which he commanded. If He says unto us, "Go,"
   may we go! And if He says unto His servant, "Do this," may it be said,
   "He does it." Let us beware of losing the comforts of His Presence lest
   we have mournfully to bemoan His absence, crying out--

   "Return, O holy Dove, return,
   Sweet Messenger of rest!
   I hate the sins that made You mourn,
   And drove You from my breast."

   Let us cultivate an affectionate dependence upon His power and
   Presence. In all our Christian exercises let us wait upon Him for
   strength. Let us entreat Him to incite our prayers and inspire our
   songs--in both exercises helping our infirmities and encouraging our
   hearts. Let us continually believe in the Holy Spirit as the true life
   of all Christian effort! When we think of our ministries, let us refer
   them to the Spirit who gives them, and who alone can bless them. And
   for the many works which the Church performs let us only look for
   success to attend them as the Holy Spirit is pleased to put forth His
   power by them.

   See then, dear Friends, we are not referred to one of whom we do not
   know, and who is a stranger to us, but our tearful eyes are bid to look
   for Divine assistance from our best and dearest Friend, from Him who,
   though He fills Heaven itself and is God over all, blessed forever, yet
   makes our poor bodies to be His temples and dwells in the Church
   continually! It is said of the Holy Spirit that in our times of
   distress He will come to our rescue. Has it not been so with us until
   now? Just when Faith was fainting, the Holy Spirit feasted her upon a
   comfortable promise which Faith fed upon as Elijah did upon the cake
   baked on the coals, so that she went in the strength of that meat a
   forty days' journey into the wilderness!

   When it appeared that our love had ebbed out till there was none of it
   left, the Holy Spirit came, and by revealing the glorious Person of the
   Lord Jesus, our soul, or ever it was aware, was made like the chariots
   of Amminadab. We thought, surely, no spiritual life remained in us, but
   the Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove, came with all His quickening powers,
   and by shedding abroad a Savior's love He instantly rekindled the flame
   upon the altar of our hearts. We were lifted up from lethargy to
   earnestness, from sloth to zealous industry! We scarcely understood how
   it could be that we, who groped with the mole, suddenly mounted with
   the eagle! This is the Spirit's work. When the enemy comes in like a
   flood He then lifts up in our hearts a standard against him. We have,
   then, to fall back as to our present difficulty, whatever it may be,
   upon spiritual power.

   Oh, Beloved, if the battle of salvation were to be fought by man alone,
   then you and I might throw down sword and shield and despairingly give
   it all up--why should we waste our exertions in fruitless toil? But
   when we understand that the Spirit of God has laid bare His holy arm to
   save us, and that He works in us to will and to do of His own good
   pleasure--we are not afraid of the worst moment in the fight--we are
   not dispirited concerning the blackest hour of the conflict! Let the
   enemy rush forward with concentrated and infuriated force. Let the
   powers of darkness and of inward corruption advance with malignant
   might! There is One who is greater than they all--whose standard shall
   stop their onslaught!

   Let the evil spirit do his uttermost, for then we shall see what the
   Holy Spirit can do when the fullness of His power is displayed! We
   cannot expect to see God at His best unless we see the devil at his
   worst. And when our plight becomes the most dolorous, then shall our
   help become the most glorious! When the creature is ready to die of
   despair, then there shall be an opportunity for the Creator's
   irresistible arm to put forth its energy and to glorify itself in us!

   Let us now, for a minute or two, take two or three instances in which
   this great Truth of God is conspicuous. This is true of a soul under
   conviction of sin. This is Satan's hour and opportunity with many
   seeking souls. When sin is heavy upon the Christian and his soul is
   burdened, he is very apt to be, as John Bunyan says, "Tumbled up and
   down in his mind," till he hardly has his right wits and senses. The
   terrors of the Law are sometimes so distracting that the poor heart
   which is the subject of them scarcely knows darkness from light, or
   light from darkness!

   At such a times, just when Satan knows that the creature is very weak
   and without courage to resist him, he comes in with some detestable
   suggestion, either that such a soul is appointed to everlasting
   destruction and to present despair, or that its sins are past
   forgiveness--that it has committed the unpardonable sin--or that it is
   not in a right state to receive mercy. He will say its heart is
   hardened, left by the Spirit, and is quite unfit to receive Divine
   favor. If all these insinuations are driven out, one by one, Satan has
   as many more. In fact, the variety of temptations with which Satan can
   assault a troubled, seeking soul, is as nearly infinite as possible.

   A wide pastoral experience has never enabled us to set any limit to the
   craft of Satan--for though the temptations of this state are very much
   the one like the other, yet in no two cases are they precisely similar.
   It is a part of Satan's policy to make each man think that his case is
   the only one of the kind. That he is peculiar. That there is no
   description given of him in the Word of God, no promise meant for him.
   That he is one whom God did not, in fact, intend to bless, and
   therefore left him entirely out of His Word.

   And this old Liar, who was a murderer from the beginning, continues to
   pour in these horrible thoughts one after another, not distilling them
   like drops of poison, but as if to make sure of his prey, pouring them
   into the human heart like a flood--sometimes so commingled and
   indistinct that the person who is the subject of them cannot tell one
   from another--so that his friends may give him comfort. He is so beset,
   so downcast, that he is like a struggling fly in the midst of a flood
   that is carried on, whirled round and round in every eddy, tossed on
   every wave, without a hope of being rescued from the stream. Now what
   is to be done? The foe has fairly got possession of the field and
   treads it under foot, and plows it up, and dyes it with blood. What is
   to be done?

   Why, nothing can be done in such a case without the Holy Spirit's
   interposition! The preacher tries to comfort. He seeks out goodly words
   by which he may bring peace. But he is disappointed, for the case of
   many a soul beset with sin is the minister's nonplus. As they used to
   say of certain diseases, that they were the scandal of the physician,
   the physician could not touch them--so some soul-sicknesses are the
   scandal of the minister! Though we can find promises which should suit
   the case and do teach doctrines which ought to give comfort, yet it is
   one thing to find the medicine, and quite another thing to bring the
   soul to receive it.

   As the old proverb has it, "One man may bring a horse to the water, but
   twenty cannot make it drink." And one man may bring a soul to the
   promise, but twenty men cannot make that promise to be received by the
   soul. But oh, the joy of my text: "The Spirit of the Lord shall lift up
   a standard against him"! And that standard, in your case, poor troubled
   Soul, will be the CROSS! He will lift up before your eyes the suffering
   Son of God! This is the standard that makes Hell flee! Satan knows the
   power of that heel which once he bruised--the foot of Jesus has already
   broken his head--and he takes flight whenever God's Son is lifted up. I
   beseech you, poor Sinner--and may the Holy Spirit enable you--I beseech
   you to look to the slaughtered Lamb of God upon Calvary's Cross.

   There is Atonement for sin in those sufferings! There is readiness to
   receive you in that pierced heart! There is cleansing, sanctifying
   power in that water which flows with blood from His opened side! There
   is nothing asked of you but to look and live. And oh, at this moment
   may the Holy Spirit do for you what I cannot--may He lift up that
   standard in your heart, that all your doubts and fears may flee at
   once--and the battle may be yours because Christ has espoused your
   cause! I believe it will be so. You may be a long time in the darkness,
   but you shall not always be there. Never did a soul perish that sought
   the Lord with all its heart. You may be outside Mercy's door and knock,
   and it may be a cold wintry day and your very fingers may get chilled
   as you hold the rapper--but the door must open ultimately, there is no
   question about that! God must un-God Himself before He can refuse a
   pleading sinner! If you are willing to be

   God's, God is willing to be yours, for He never yet turned the human
   will where He had not already made up His own will as to the salvation
   of that soul. The Spirit of the Lord will be your Helper.

   Now we will suppose that there is another case present, and try and
   apply the text. After conversion it frequently happens, and especially
   to those who have been guilty of gross sin before conversion, that
   temptation comes in with unusual force. You must not suppose that a man
   who is converted from drunkenness will never be tempted to drunkenness
   again. He will! That will probably be his burden for a long time. Any
   person who has fallen into lust will find it in his bones, and though
   he hates it and strives against it, yet there will be times when it
   will be as much as he can do and more than he could do without God's
   Grace to stand against it.

   Some of us who from the early period of our conversion were spared the
   grosser sins have nevertheless been tormented with very horrible
   temptations. I believe God sends great temptations to those of His
   ministers whom He means to use to comfort afflicted souls. Oh the
   horrible blasphemies, the infernal suggestions, the worse than hellish
   thoughts that some of God's servants have had to struggle with by the
   hour together so that they clapped their hands to their mouths for fear
   such thoughts should ever be spoken! These men have hated these evil
   thoughts even to loathing, and have endeavored to cast them out and
   shake them off as Paul shook the viper from his hand into the fire, and
   yet they could not be rid of them.

   It is a dreadful thing to be tempted as some of God's best servants are
   tempted, for there is no Christian, let him live where he may, who will
   wholly escape temptations. And full often the more eminently useful,
   the more eminently tempted. What then? Why, at such times look not to
   your own experience for strength, neither turn to your own wisdom for
   guidance--for then your trouble will be ten times worse than before! Go
   not to these broken cisterns, for they hold no water. But I charge you,
   Christian, go to the strong for strength! Go to the blessed Spirit who
   alone can effectually lift up the standard, rally your soul anew to the
   conflict and give you the victory! You shall conquer through the Lamb's
   redeeming blood! This is the victory which overcomes the world, even
   our faith. We shall need spiritual reinforcements and we shall have
   them in the time of trouble.

   Another case sometimes occurs to a Christian when it is not so much
   enticement to sin as temptation to doubt. What a mercy it would be if
   we could live without doubting! But so common are doubts and fears that
   Mr. John Bunyan, the greatest master of Christian experience that ever
   lived, in his, "Holy War," represents an army of doubters as trying to
   capture the city of Mansoul. He divides them into a great number of
   regiments--there are the Election Doubters, the Calling Doubters, the
   Perseverance Doubters, and so on. And these fellows, with the great
   Hell drum which they kept continually beating, much alarmed the town of
   Mansoul.

   They even forced an entrance into it, and well-near took the castle of
   the heart itself. But they could not quite take the citadel, and were
   ultimately driven out. When doubts and fears prevail, do not tell me
   that you can get rid of them when you like. I know they are sins, and
   they are strong sins. I know it is a disease to doubt, but it is a
   disease which is very common among God's people--I wish it were
   not--and when these gloomy doubts prevail, there is no comfort in the
   heart nor joy in life--

   "For oh, when gloomy doubts prevail, I fear to call You mine. The
   springs of comfort seem to fail, And all my hopes decline."

   What, then, shall we do? Why, once again fly to the Comforter, and cry,
   "Blessed Consoler of Your people, You whose balmy wings can bring us
   peace, descend!" When He works within us, and spreads abroad those
   wings of love, order reigns instead of confusion. He says, "Let there
   be light!" And the thick darkness yields, and there is light. And our
   soul rejoices "with joy unspeakable and full of glory."

   Now this is the experience, I believe, of every Christian, and it shall
   be your experience, my beloved Brothers and Sisters, if you can but
   cast yourself upon Divine power. I leave this promise in its relation
   to our inward state, only reminding you that it is a sure and true
   promise. It is one of God's "shalls," and it is a comfortable thing
   when you grasp a Divine "shall." "The Spirit of the Lord shall lift up
   a standard." It is as true now as when Isaiah wrote it. It is true of
   you! It is true in your present darkness! You shall find it true! And
   in Heaven you shall bear testimony that the Spirit of God does lift up
   the battle standard against the enemy in the day of conflict.

   II. Let us now turn to the second head--THE HOLY WAR AMONG US. The
   Christian Church is too conspicuous an object of Divine love not to be
   the butt of the malice of the powers of darkness. From the very moment
   when the Church was born, Satan, like Herod, tried to destroy the young
   Child. And if the flames of persecution and the inventions of heresy
   could have destroyed the Church, she would have been destroyed long
   ago. There have been distinct periods all down Church history when the
   enemy has come in upon her, making a more than unusually terrific and
   effective onslaught.

   How terrible was the attack upon the early church when Peter was laid
   in prison, James having already been slain with the sword. Herod
   designed to extirpate the whole band of followers of the despised
   Nazarene, and after him the Pharisaic zeal of Saul hounded them to
   death. But the Spirit of God very speedily made amends for all Herod's
   operations, and the persecutions of the Pharisees met with a most
   effectual rebuff when the leader in them was himself converted, and
   Saul of Tarsus became Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles!

   The spiritual power which rested upon the Church in the early ages was
   sufficient for her protection against the malevolence of her enemies.
   Not only so, but it was so mighty that it made profit out of that which
   was for its damage! The zeal of the Church turned her persecutions into
   fiery chariots in which she rode forth triumphantly to the uttermost
   ends of the earth. Satan stirred a series of persecutions which you who
   are acquainted with history will remember to have been of the most
   ferocious kind. These persecutions we may compare to Nebuchadnezzar's
   furnace when it was heated seven times hotter--but not so much as the
   smell of fire passed upon the Church! The game of persecution was
   played out and ended in the total defeat of the persecutor, for do you
   not remember how the saints volunteered to die, and even panted for the
   martyrs' crown?

   Young men came before the tribunals. Young men, did I say? OLD men
   leaning upon their staffs, and women, and even little children came to
   the tribunal and shouted that they were followers of Jesus! The prisons
   were crowded with Christians and the amphitheatres glutted with their
   blood. The spirit of holy boldness was so abundant that the foe was
   baffled! Glutted with blood, he turned with loathing from the murder of
   the inoffensive sheep which was once so great a luxury to him. The
   Spirit of God, by giving to Christians an indomitable courage which
   made them, as it were, insensible to pain and defiant of Death in his
   most ghastly form, lifted up a standard against the fury of the enemy!

   Then Satan changed his tactics and set on that baptized heathen
   Constantine to profess to become a Christian. And he, for reasons of
   State-craft and subtle policy, made Christianity the national
   religion--and thus struck the most fearful blow at the heart of
   Christianity. The union of Church and State is a fatal blow to true
   religion! The king's hand, wherever it falls upon the Church of Christ,
   brings the king's evil with it! There never was a Church whose
   spirituality survived it yet, and there never will be. Christ's kingdom
   is not of this world, and if we try to marry the Church of Christ to a
   worldly kingdom we engender innumerable mischiefs.

   So it happened that when the Church became outwardly glorious she
   became spiritually debased. Her communion table glittered with gold and
   silver plates, but her communion with Christ was not so golden as
   before. Her ministers were enriched, but their doctrine was
   impoverished. For every ounce of outward gold which she gained, she
   lost a treasure of Divine Grace. Her bishops became lords, and her
   flocks were famished. Her humble meeting places were exchanged for
   grand basilicas, but the true Glory of God was departed. She became
   like the heathen around her, and began to set up the images of her
   saints and martyrs, till at last, after years of gradual declension,
   the Church of Rome ceased to be the Church of Christ and that which was
   once nominally the Church of Christ actually became the Antichrist.

   Black darkness covered the lands, and dark ages set in. Finally,
   instead of pardon bought with the blood of Jesus, false priests made
   merchandize of souls, and pardons were hawked in the streets! Finally,
   instead of deacons and elders adorned with holiness and purity, monks,
   and nuns, and priests, and even popes became monsters of filthiness!
   And instead of justification by faith, men proclaimed justification by
   pilgrimages and by penances! The crucifix took the place of Christ
   Jesus, and a piece of bread was lifted up as a god and men bowed before
   it, and said, "These be your gods, O Israel, that redeemed you from the
   wrath to come."

   What was done in this emergency? All through that long, long period of
   darkness the Spirit of God lifted up a standard among the faithful few.
   Up yonder on the snow-clad Alps, and down deep in the secluded valleys
   of Piedmont, the Lord kept alive the "two witnesses" for the truth. The
   Albigenses and Waldenses, hunted like partridges upon the mountains,
   were God's standard-bearers and maintained that unbroken line of true
   Apostolic succession from which we date our succession--a succession
   infinitely purer than the Tractarian chain of infamous prelates and
   Popish priests! The Spirit of God maintained the living Church in the
   day of her obscurity in France, Hungary, Bohemia, Switzerland, and
   other regions--till at last the men came whom Jehovah had ordained most
   greatly to bless!

   The nations rejoiced at the coming of Luther and his great allies,
   Zwingli and Calvin. What a lifting up of the standard was then seen, my
   Brothers and Sisters! They said that Luther's words were carried on the
   wings of angels! The sermon which he preached today was dispersed by
   means of the printing press so that tomorrow heard it thundering along
   the foot of the Apennines, and old Rome itself trembled at the voice of
   the monk of Germany! Then God lifted up a standard in England, and our
   glorious old Hugh Latimer, with simple and rough speech rebuked kings,
   and spoke the Truth of God in the presence of the mighty!

   And up there in Scotland John Knox published the Gospel of Jesus with
   all the energy of his fiery nature. The Spirit of God lifted up the
   Cross, and, like the sound of a clarion, a voice was heard resounding
   over hill and dale, "By the works of the Law there shall no flesh
   living be justified." "Therefore, being justified by faith, we have
   peace with God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." It needs not that I
   should tell the tale how, in succeeding years, throughout England
   Christianity had declined to the verge of death--when drunken parsons
   polluted the pulpits, and were zealous in nothing but in feasting and
   fox-hunting! When Dissenting ministers were either semi-Socinian or
   else so somnolently orthodox as not to care whether men's souls were
   saved or damned!

   Then, again, the Spirit of the Lord lifted up a standard! Six young men
   were expelled from Oxford for praying, and these men, driven sorely
   against their will to uncanonical action, began to preach in the open
   air! Crowds in London gathered at Moorfield and Kennington. The
   Kingswood miners caught the flame of Divine Grace! Cornwall, far away,
   began to blaze with spiritual fervor. The uttermost ends of our island
   perceived that God the Holy Spirit had visited us, that the "Daystar
   from on high" was shining again!

   The name of "Methodist" was the terror of Satan and the joy of the
   Church--

   "See how great a flame aspires, Kindled by a spark of Grace! Jesus'love
   the nations fires, Sets the kingdoms on a blaze."

   Then men knew that the blessed Spirit of the living God had appeared
   and lifted up a standard against false doctrine and sin. Dear Friends,
   I am not giving you this history for the mere purpose of detailing it,
   but with a practical end. I believe that no exaggeration would be
   possible as to the present unhappy condition of certain sections of the
   Christian Church. The enemy is, indeed, coming in like a flood. This
   time the peril is within the visible Church, itself. We have High
   Church--what is it but bastard Popery!? We have Broad Church--what is
   it but dishonest infidelity!?--An infidelity which takes the pay of a
   church whose foundations it labors to undermine.

   These two powers are advancing at present like two armies in victorious
   march. They are sweeping everything before them. Our timid and weak
   hearted Evangelical friends have been so long accustomed to submit that
   they have little stomach for the fight. They have acted so miserable a
   part in the great conflict that the power they once possessed has been
   taken from them and they are a pitiable instance of the weakening
   effect of accustoming one's tongue to the use of language against which
   the conscience revolts! They are not now an integer in the
   calculation--their friends and their foes, alike, know their utter
   unfitness for the battle!

   He who hopes that the battle of Protestantism will be fought by the
   Evangelicals trusts in a broken reed. I only wish I could think
   otherwise, but I cannot. What is to be done? I discern no sign of help
   from any quarter but from above. It is our hope that the Holy Spirit
   will now interpose and save His Church. This is a dark hour, and now
   will He show His strength! We have now no desire that the bishops
   should interfere with the Ritualists--they have let them tamper with
   the Church so long that everybody asks what is the use of bishops? Alas
   for the Church of God if the bishops were the only guardians! Even the
   interference of Parliament will avail little. Let parliament look after
   politics and leave religion alone! What we need is something superior
   to bishops and Parliament--we need the Holy Spirit--and if the Holy
   Spirit will take the matter in hand, He will make very short work with
   all this imitation of Romanism!

   But how will it be done? I think I see the beginning of it. A general
   spirit of prayer will come over those Churches which are faithful.
   Already it is descending! Almost in every quarter the spirit of
   devotion is increasing. Our Brethren in

   London have appointed, as you know, the fifth of November to be spent
   by all the ministers, deacons, and elders of our Churches as a day of
   fasting and prayer to entreat the Lord's blessing upon the universal
   Church. I find our friends are to do the same in Birmingham, and in
   most of the large towns. And all this has come without any dictation
   from anyone. Indeed, we have no power to dictate in our
   denomination--it has come spontaneously--the Brethren moving towards
   one another as by a common instinct, coming together in the time of
   danger.

   I think I perceive among Christian men, generally, the relinquishment
   of controversy about minor points and a determination for union about
   the one great thing. We feel that we must stand together, shoulder to
   shoulder, as a solid phalanx in this day of conflict and fight with
   heavenly weapons, or else it will go ill with us. We feel we must cry
   to God, for no one else can help us. With this spirit of prayer I
   believe there is returning to us in the Church--I may be optimistic but
   I think I see it--a deeper love to the old truth than there used to be.
   Do not my Brethren in the ministry preach more of Christ than they once
   did? Are they not tired of philosophical essays and returning to the
   simple Truth of God? They are no longer teasing us with Genesis and
   geology, but give us more of Christ on the Cross! We know that
   preaching science and ethics instead of the Gospel is all wrong, and
   our Brethren see that it is so.

   It was but the other day I heard a Wesleyan minister stating that the
   reason why they had, to a great extent, lost a blessing for the last
   few years, was because they had not given enough prominence to the
   Doctrines of Grace, and he pointed to this House of Prayer and the
   prosperity that God gives to this Church as an indication that if
   Christ is preached and nothing but Christ--and if salvation by blood is
   the one staple theme--there is no fear of there being hearers, nor of
   there being converts, for the old standard, whenever it is uplifted,
   brings victory with it! You have only to let the standard of Christ's
   Truth be opened to the breeze, and the battle is ours!

   Now I think I can see that the Spirit of God is lifting up this
   standard! There is more Gospel preaching, more earnest declaration of
   Christ in England than there has been for many a day. Now, Brothers and
   Sisters, as the Spirit begins, let us follow! What is a standard lifted
   up for but for every soldier to rally to it? Press where you see it
   displayed to the wind! Press to it, every man among you! The soldier
   does not look at a standard as being a place from which he is to march,
   but around which he is to rally in the day when it is in danger. Every
   man must do his duty now in the Christian Church, and count it a
   privilege to do it! You must scatter the Gospel! You must tell it with
   your lips! You must pray for it with your hearts! You must distribute
   it as it is printed!

   Do all you can to increase the sale of sound Gospel literature, but use
   your own mouths, also, to tell of the Savior's love. Every man, now, to
   his post today, for now must we awake out of sleep! Oh, if the Holy
   Spirit will but visit us now, we need not fear concerning old Rome.
   Like chaff before the wind, the foes shall fly--they shall be driven
   like thin clouds before a Biscay gale! When once God comes into the
   fight, woe unto you who are His enemies! Woe unto you! You may fight
   like mighty men, but you know the might of Israel's sword in ancient
   times, and you shall feel it now!

   Soldiers of Jesus, never despair! My Brothers and Sisters, do not even
   fear! Be of good courage! Be confident! God is on our side.
   "Immanuel"--let that be your watchword--"God with us--Immanuel." Be
   very courageous and very earnest, and the Spirit of the Lord will lift
   up a standard when the enemy comes in like a flood. God grant it for
   His name's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                           Praying In The Holy Spirit

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 4, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Praying in the Holy Spirit." Jude 1:20.

   THESE words occur in a passage where the Apostle is indicating the
   contrast between the ungodly and the godly. The ungodly are mocking,
   speaking great swelling words and walking after their ungodly lusts,
   while the righteous are building themselves up in their most holy
   faith, and keeping themselves in the love of God. The ungodly are
   showing the venom of their hearts by mourning and complaining, while
   the righteous are manifesting the new principle within them by "praying
   in the Holy Spirit." The ungodly man bears wormwood in his mouth, while
   the Christian's lips drop with the virgin honey of devotion. As the
   spider is said to find poison in the very flowers from which the bees
   suck honey, so do the wicked abuse to sin the same mercies which the
   godly use to the glory of God.

   As far as light is removed from darkness, and life from death, so far
   does a Believer differ from the ungodly. Let us keep this contrast very
   vivid. While the wicked grow yet more wicked, let us become more holy,
   more prayerful, and more devout, saying with good old Joshua, "Let
   others do as they will, but as for me and my house, we will serve the
   Lord." Observe that the text comes in a certain order in the context.
   The righteous are described, first of all, as building themselves up in
   their most holy faith. Faith is the first Divine Grace, the root of
   piety, the foundation of holiness, the dawn of godliness--to this must
   the first care be given.

   But we must not tarry at the first principles. Onward is our course!
   What, then, follows at the heels of faith? What is faith's first-born
   child? When the vine of faith becomes vigorous and produces fruit unto
   holiness, which is the first ripe cluster? Is it not prayer--"praying
   in the Holy Spirit"? That man has no faith who has no prayer, and the
   man who abounds in faith will soon abound in supplication. Faith the
   mother, and prayer the child, are seldom apart from one another. Faith
   carries Prayer in her arms, and Prayer draws life from the breast of
   Faith. Edification in faith leads to fervency in supplication. Elijah
   first manifests his faith before the priests of Baal, and then retires
   to wrestle with God upon Carmel.

   Study our text carefully and see what follows after "praying in the
   Holy Spirit." "Keep yourselves in the love of God." Next to prayer
   comes an abiding sense of the love of God to us and the flowing up of
   our love towards God. Prayer builds an altar and lays the sacrifice and
   the wood in order, and then Love, like the priest, brings holy fire
   from Heaven and sets the offering in a blaze! Faith is, as we have
   said, the root of Grace. Prayer is the lily's stalk, and love is the
   spotless flower. Faith sees the Savior, prayer follows Him into the
   house, but love breaks the alabaster box of precious ointment and pours
   it on His head.

   There is, however, a step beyond even the hallowed enjoyments of love!
   There remains a topstone to complete the edifice--it is believing
   expectantly--"looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto
   eternal life." Far-seeing Hope climbs the staircase which Faith has
   built, and bowing upon the knees of Prayer looks through the window
   which Love has opened, and sees the Lord Jesus Christ coming in His
   glory and endowing all His people with the eternal life which is to be
   their portion. See, then, the value of prayer as indicating the
   possession of faith, and as foreshadowing and supporting the strength
   and growth of love.

   Coming directly to the text, we remark that the Apostle speaks of
   prayer, but he mentions only one kind of praying. Viewed from a certain
   point, prayers are of many sorts. I suppose that no two genuine prayers
   from different men could be precisely alike. Master artists do not
   often multiply the same painting--they prefer to give expression to
   fresh ideas as often as they grasp the pencil. And so the Master
   Artist, the Holy Spirit, who is the Author of prayer, does not often
   produce two prayers that shall be precisely the same upon the tablets
   of His people's hearts.

   Prayers may be divided into several different orders. There is
   deprecatory prayer in which we deprecate the wrath of God, and entreat
   Him to turn away His fierce anger, to withdraw His rod, to sheath His
   sword. Deprecatory prayers are to be offered in all times when calamity
   is to be feared, and when sin has provoked the Lord to jealousy. Then
   there are supplicatory prayers in which we supplicate blessings and
   implore mercies from the liberal hand of God, and entreat our heavenly
   Father to supply our needs out of His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
   There are prayers which are personal in which the supplicant pleads
   mainly concerning himself. And there are pleadings which are
   intercessory, in which, like Abraham, the petitioner intercedes for
   Sodom, or entreats that Ishmael might live before God.

   These prayers for others are to be multiplied as much as prayers for
   ourselves, lest we make the Mercy Seat to become a place for the
   exhibition of spiritual selfishness. The prayer may be public or
   private, vocal or mental, protracted or ejaculatory. Prayer may be
   salted with confession, or perfumed with thanksgiving. It may be sung
   to music, or wept out with groans. As many as are the flowers of
   summer, so many are the varieties of prayer! But while prayers are of
   these various orders, there is one respect in which they are all one if
   they are acceptable with God--they must be, every one of them, "in the
   Holy Spirit."

   That prayer which is not in the Holy Spirit is in the flesh. That which
   is born of the flesh is flesh, and we are told that they which are in
   the flesh cannot please God. All that comes of our corrupt nature is
   defiled and marred, and cannot be acceptable with the most holy God. If
   the heavens are not pure in His sight, how shall those prayers which
   are born of the earth be acceptable with Him? The seed of acceptable
   devotion must come from Heaven's storehouse. Only the prayer which
   comes from God can go to God! The dove will only bear a letter to the
   cote from which it came, and so will prayer go back to Heaven if it
   came from Heaven. We must shoot the Lord's arrows back to Him.

   That desire which He writes upon our heart will move His heart and
   bring down a blessing, but the desires of the flesh have no power with
   Him. Desirous to press this great Truth of God upon the minds of my
   Brothers and Sisters this morning, I shall use the few words of the
   text in five ways.

   I. First we shall use the text as A CRUCIBLE to try our prayers in. I
   beseech you, examine yourselves with rigorous care! Use the text as a
   refining pot, a furnace, a touchstone or a crucible by which to discern
   whether your prayers have been true or not! This is the test--have they
   been in very deed--"praying in the Holy Spirit"? Brothers and Sisters,
   we need not judge those who pray unintelligible prayers, prayers in a
   foreign tongue, prayers which they do not understand. We know without a
   moment's discussion of the question that the prayer which is not
   understood cannot be a prayer in the Spirit, for even the man's own
   spirit does not enter into it--how then can the Spirit of God be there?

   The mysterious words or Latin jargon of the priests cannot come up
   before God with acceptance! Let us, therefore, keep our judgment for
   ourselves. There may be those present who have been in the habit of
   using from their infancy a form of prayer. You perhaps would not dare
   to go out to your day's business without having repeated that form at
   the bedside. You would be afraid to fall asleep at night without going
   through the words which you have set yourselves to repeat. My dear
   Friends, may I put the question to you--will you try to answer it
   honestly? Have you prayed in the Holy Spirit? Has the Holy Spirit had
   anything to do with that form? Has He really made you to feel it in
   your heart? Is it not possible that you have mocked God with a solemn
   sound upon a thoughtless tongue? Is it not probable that from the
   random manner in which one comes to repeat a well-known form that there
   may be no heart whatever in it--and not an atom of sincerity?

   Does not God abhor the sacrifice where the heart is not found? It would
   be a melancholy thing if we had increased our sins by our prayers! It
   would be a very unhappy fact if it should turn out that when we have
   bowed the knee in what we thought to be the service of God, we were
   actually insulting the God of Heaven by uttering words which could not
   but be disgusting to Him because our hearts did not go with our lips!
   Let us rest assured that if for seventy years we have punctually
   performed our devotions by the use of the book, or of the form which we
   have learned, we may, the whole seventy years, never once have prayed
   at all! And the whole of that period we may have been living in God's
   esteem an ungodly, prayerless life because we have never worshipped
   God, who is a Spirit, in spirit and in truth, and have never prayed in
   the Holy Spirit! Judge yourselves, Brothers and Sisters, that you be
   not judged!

   But are there not others of us who never did use a written prayer? Who
   from our earliest childhood have eschewed and even abhorred forms of
   prayer, who nevertheless have good reason to try our prayer just as
   much as others? We have given forth extemporaneous utterances, and
   those extemporaneous utterances necessarily required some little
   exercise of the mind, some little attention--but still we may have been
   heartless in them. I suppose we are well aware that we can get into
   such a habit of extemporaneous prayer that it is really very little or
   no better than if we repeated what we had learned. There may be such a
   fluency acquired by practice that one's speech may ripple on for five
   or ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, and yet the heart may be
   wandering in vanity or stagnant in indifference! The body may be on its
   knees, but the soul on its wings far away from the Mercy Seat.

   Let us examine how far our public prayers have been in the Holy Spirit.
   The preacher standing here begs God to search him in that matter. If he
   has merely discharged the business of public prayer because it is his
   official duty to conduct the devotions of the congregation, he has much
   to account for before God--to lead the devotions of this vast throng
   without seeking the aid of the Holy Spirit is no light sin! And what
   shall be said of the prayers at Prayer Meetings? Are not many of them
   mere words? It were better if our friends would not speak at all rather
   than speak in the flesh!

   I am sure that the only prayer in which the devout hearer can unite,
   and which is acceptable with God, is that which really is a heart
   prayer--a soul prayer, in fact--a prayer which the Holy Spirit moves us
   to pray. All else is beating the air and occupying time in vain. My
   Brethren, I thank God that there are so many of you in connection with
   this Church who are gifted in prayer, and I wish that every member of
   every Christian Church could pray in public. You should all try to do
   so, and none of you should give it up unless it becomes an absolute
   impossibility. But oh, my Brethren who pray in public, may it not be
   sometimes with you as with others of us--the exercise of gift and not
   the outflow of Divine Grace? And if so, ask the Lord to forgive you of
   such praying and enable you to wait upon Him in the power of the Holy
   Spirit.

   We may not forget to scrutinize our more private prayers, our
   supplications at the family altar, and above all, our prayers in that
   little room which we have dedicated to communion with God. O Brothers
   and Sisters, we might well be sick of our prayers if we did but see
   what poor things they are! There are times when it is a sweet and
   blessed thing to lay hold of the horns of the altar and to feel that
   the blood which sprinkles the altar has sprinkled you--that you have
   spoken to God and prevailed! Oh it is a blessed thing to grasp the
   Angel of the Covenant, and to wrestle with Him even hour after hour,
   saying, "I will not let You go except You bless me"! But I fear these
   are not constant things. We may say of them that they are angels'
   visits, few and far between.

   Come, my Brethren, put your prayers into this crucible of "praying in
   the Holy Spirit." You will cast in much metal, but there will come out
   little of fine gold. Come and lay your prayers upon this threshing
   floor, and thresh them with this text, "praying in the Holy Spirit."
   And oh, how much of straw and of chaff will there be, and how little of
   the well-winnowed grain! Come and look through this window at the
   fields of our devotions, overgrown with nettles, and briars, and
   thistles--a wilderness of merely outward performances! And how small
   that little spot, enclosed by Grace, which God the Holy Spirit Himself
   has cleared, and dug, and planted--from which the fruit of prayer has
   been brought forth unto perfection!

   May our heavenly Father teach us to be humble in His Presence as we
   reflect how little even of our best things will stand the test of His
   searching eyes, and may those of us who are His saints come to Him
   afresh, and ask Him to fill us with His Spirit, and to accept us in His
   Son!

   II. We shall next use the text as A CORDIAL. It is a very delightful
   reflection to the Christian mind that God observes His people and does
   not sit as an indifferent spectator of their conflicts and
   difficulties. For instance, He closely observes us in our prayers. He
   knows that prayer, while it should be the easiest thing in the world,
   is not so. He knows that we erring ones find it not always easy to
   approach Him in the true spirit of supplication and He observes this
   with condescending compassion. That is a precious verse for those
   hearts which are very weak and broken, "He knows our frame: He
   remembers that we are dust." And that other, "Like as a father pities
   his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him."

   He takes notice of our frailties and of our failures in the work of
   supplication. He sees His child fall as it tries to walk and marks the
   tears with which it bemoans its weakness. "The eyes of the Lord are
   upon the righteous, and His ears are open unto their cry." A sweeter
   thought remains in the text, namely, that having considered these
   failures of ours, which are many of them sinful, our Lord is not angry
   with us on account of them. And instead of being turned to wrath, He is
   moved to pity for us and love towards us. Instead of saying, "If you
   cannot pray, you shall not have. If you have not

   Grace enough even to ask aright, I will shut the gates of mercy against
   you." No, He devises means by which to bring the lame and the banished
   into His Presence! He teaches the ignorant how to pray and strengthens
   the weak with His own strength!

   Herein He also does wonders, for the means whereby He helps our
   infirmity are exceedingly to be marveled at. That help is not to be
   found in a book or in the dictation of certain words in certain
   consecrated places, but in the condescending assistance of God Himself,
   for who is He that is spoken of in the text but God? The Holy Spirit,
   the third Person of the adorable Trinity, helps our infirmities, making
   intercession for us with groans that cannot be uttered! It is a mark of
   wondrous condescension that God should not only answer our prayers when
   they are made, but should make our prayers for us! That the King should
   say to the petitioner, "Bring your case before me and I will grant your
   desire," is kindness. But for him to say, "I will be your secretary. I
   will write out your petition for you. I will put it into proper words
   and use fitting phrases so that your petition shall be framed
   acceptably"--this is goodness at its utmost stretch!

   And this is precisely what the Holy Spirit does for us poor, ignorant,
   wavering, weak sons of men. I am to understand from the expression,
   "praying in the Holy Spirit," that the Holy Spirit is actually willing
   to help me to pray--that He will tell me how to pray! And that when I
   get to a point where I am at a pause and cannot express my desires, He
   will appear in my extremity and make intercession in me with groans
   which cannot be uttered. Jesus in His agony was strengthened by an
   angel--you are to be succored by God Himself! Aaron and Hur held up the
   hands of Moses, but the Holy Spirit Himself helps your infirmities!

   My beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the thought needs no
   garnishing of oratorical expressions! Take it as a wedge of gold of
   Ophir and value it. It is priceless, beyond all price. God Himself, the
   Holy Spirit, condescends to assist you when you are on your knees, and
   if you cannot put two words together in common speech to men, yet He
   will help you to speak with God! Ah, and if at the Mercy Seat you fail
   in words, you shall not fail in reality, for your heart shall conquer.
   God needs not words. He never reads our petitions according to the
   outward utterance, but according to the inward groaning. He notices the
   longing, the desiring, the sighing, the crying.

   Remember that the outward of prayer is but the shell--the inward of
   prayer is its true kernel and essence. If prayer is wafted to Heaven in
   the song of the multitude, with the swell of glorious music, it is not
   one whit more acceptable to God than when it is wailed forth in the
   bitter cry of anguish from a desolate spirit. That cry so discordant to
   human ears is music to the ears of God--

   "To Him there's music in a sigh, And beauty in a tear." Notice this,
   then, and be comforted.
   III. The text may further serve as A CHART to direct us in the way of
   prayer. Here I shall need to speak at greater length. Praying how? By
   the book? Without a book? In public? In private? By the way? In the
   house? On your knees? Standing? Sitting? Kneeling? Nothing is said
   about these! Posture, place, and time are all left open. There is no
   rubric except one--"in the Holy Spirit."

   That is indispensable. That granted, nothing else matters one whit. If
   it is praying in the Holy Spirit, all else may be as you will. What
   does praying in the Holy Spirit mean? The word may be translated, "by
   the Holy Spirit," or, "through the Holy Spirit," as well as, "in the
   Holy Spirit." And the phrase means, first, praying in the Holy Spirit's
   power. The carnal mind knows nothing about this. I might as well
   express myself in high Dutch as in English upon this point to an
   unregenerate man. But regenerate men who are born of the Spirit and
   live in the Spirit world are cognizant of communications between their
   spirits and the Holy Spirit who is now resident in the midst of the
   Church of God.

   We know that the Divine Spirit, without the use of sounds, speaks in
   our hearts. We know that without an utterance which the ears can hear
   He can make our soul know His Presence and understand His meaning. He
   casts the spiritual shadow of His influence over us, coloring our
   thoughts and feelings according to His own design and will. It is a
   great spiritual fact which the Christian knows for certain that the
   Holy Spirit, the Divine Spirit, has frequent dealings with spiritual
   minds and imparts to them His power. Our new-born spirit has a certain
   degree of power in it, but the power is never fully manifested or drawn
   out except when the Spirit of God quickens our spirit and excites it to
   activity.

   Our spirit prays, but it is because it is overshadowed and filled with
   the power of the Holy Spirit. I cannot just now explain myself, but I
   mean this, that if I, as a man, could go to the Throne of Grace and
   only pray as my fleshy nature would pray, that prayer would be
   unacceptable. But when I go to the Mercy Seat and my new nature prays
   as the Holy Spirit enables me to pray, then my prayer will succeed with
   God. If I do before God at the throne what flesh and blood can do and
   no more, I have done nothing--for that which is of the flesh still
   mounts no higher than flesh.

   But if, in coming before the Throne of the heavenly Grace, God's
   eternal Spirit speaks to my soul and lifts it out of the dead level of
   fallen humanity. And if He brings it up to be filled with Divine
   force--if that Spirit is in me a well of water springing up unto
   everlasting life, if I receive that Divine light and power of the Holy
   Spirit--and if in His power I fervently draw near to God, my prayer
   must be prevalent with God! This power may be possessed by every
   Christian. May God grant it to all of His people now, that they may all
   pray in the Spirit!

   That, I think, is one meaning of the text--praying in the power of the
   Spirit. No doubt the principal sense of the text is praying in the
   Spirit as to matter. We do not know always what to pray for, and,
   Brothers and Sisters, if we were to refrain from prayer for a few
   minutes till we did know, it would be a good and wise rule. The habit
   into which we have fallen, in extemporaneous praying, of always praying
   directly what we are asking--without an instant's pause in which to
   think of what we are going to ask--is very prejudicial to the spirit of
   prayer. I would like, when I am alone, to take a few minutes to
   consider what I am going to ask of God, for otherwise it seems to me to
   be like seeking an interview with one of the officers of State to ask
   for something which might occur to us at the moment.

   How would you like to have an audience with Lord Derby, and then
   consider all of a sudden what it was you had come for? Surely common
   sense would say, Tarry awhile till you have your case mapped out in
   your own mind, and then when you clearly know yourself what it is you
   want, you will be able to ask for what you need. Should we not wait
   upon God in prayer, asking Him to reveal to us what those matters are
   concerning which we should plead with Him? Beware of hit-or-miss
   prayers! Never make hap-hazard work of supplication. Come to the Throne
   of Grace intelligently understanding what it is that you require.

   It is well with us in prayer when the Holy Spirit guides the mind. Are
   not all spiritual men conscious of this, that they feel themselves shut
   up as to certain matters, and only free in another direction? Then let
   them obey the Holy Spirit and pray as He directs, for He knows what
   should be our petition. Well, then what? My dear Brothers and Sisters,
   pray for that which God the Spirit moves you to pray for, and be very
   sensitive of the Holy Spirit's influence. I like a metaphor used by
   Thomas Shillitoe in his Life, when he says he wished his own mind to be
   like a cork upon the water, conscious of every motion of the Spirit of
   God. It were well to be so sensitive of the Spirit of God that His
   faintest breath should cause a ripple upon the sea of our soul and make
   it move as the Spirit would have it.

   We have reached a high state of sanctification when God the Spirit and
   our own inward spirit are perfectly in accord. May we be led into that
   unspeakably blessed state! We do not pray aright if we think what it is
   we want and we wish for, and then ask for it in selfish willfulness. We
   pray aright when we consent to that which is the mind of the Spirit,
   and speak as He moves us to speak. We shall be surely enriched with
   good things when we wait for the very matter of our supplications to
   have it all from Him. Lord, teach us to pray! Put the thoughts into our
   minds, the desires into our hearts, and the very words into our lips,
   if it is Your will, so that all our prayers may be praying in the
   Spirit and not in the flesh.

   The main part of praying in the Spirit must lie not merely in the
   Spirit's power, or in the Spirit's teaching us the matter, but in the
   Spirit's assisting us in the manner. Observe, Brothers and Sisters, the
   many ways there are of praying which are obnoxious to God--observe them
   and avoid them! There is but one manner of praying which the Lord
   accepts. You know what it is. I will briefly describe its attributes.
   He that comes to God must remember that He is "a Spirit, and that they
   who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, for the Father
   seeks such to worship Him." The very first essential of prayer is to
   pray in truth, and we do not pray in truth unless the Spirit of God
   leads our vain minds into the sincerity and reality of devotion.

   To pray in truth is this--it is not to use the empty expression of
   prayer, but to mean what we say. It is for the heart to agonize with
   God and heave with strong desires. And where will you obtain such a
   manner of prayer except in the spiritual man, when moved by the Holy
   Spirit? The carnal man, if he is foolish enough, can intone a prayer.
   The carnal man can "read the office," and "do duty" as well as anybody
   else who can read a book, but he is not praying! No prayer can come
   from him. Only the spiritual man can sigh and long, and cry in his
   inmost heart, and in the chamber of his soul before God--but he will
   not do it except as the Spirit of Truth leads him in sincerity into the
   secret of heart prayer.

   Praying in the Holy Spirit is praying in fervency. Cold prayers, my
   Brothers and Sisters, ask the Lord not to hear them! Those who do not
   plead with fervency, plead not at all. As well speak of lukewarm fire
   as of lukewarm prayer! It is essential that it be red hot. Real prayer
   is burnt as with hot iron into a man's soul, and then comes forth from
   the man's soul like coals of juniper which have a most vehement heat.
   Such prayers none but the Holy Spirit can give. I have heard from this
   spot prayers which I never can forget, nor will you ever forget them
   either.

   Last January and February there were times when certain of our Brethren
   were helped to pray with such power that we were bowed down in
   humiliation, and afterwards borne up as on the wings of eagles in the
   power of supplication! There is a way of praying with power in which a
   man seems to get hold of the posts of Heaven's gate, as Samson grasped
   the pillars of the temple, and appears as though he would pull all down
   upon himself sooner than miss the blessing. It is a brave thing for the
   heart to vow, "I will not let You go except You bless me." That is
   praying in the Holy Spirit. May we be tutored in the art of offering
   effectual fervent prayer!

   Next to that, it is essential in prayer that we should pray
   perseveringly. Any man can run fast at a spurt, but to keep it up mile
   after mile--there is the battle! And so, certain hot spirits can pray
   very fervently every now and then, but to continue in prayer--who shall
   do this except the Spirit of God sustains him? Mortal spirits flag and
   tire. The course of mere fleshly devotion is as the course of a snail
   which melts as it crawls. Carnal minds go onward and their devotion
   grows small by degrees and miserably less, as they cry out, "What a
   weariness it is!" But when the Holy Spirit fills a man and leads him
   into prayer, he gathers force as he proceeds--and grows more fervent
   even when God delays to answer! The longer the gate is closed the more
   vehemently does he use the knocker till he thunders in his prayer! And
   the longer the Angel lingers, the more resolved is he that if he grasps
   Him with a death grip he will never let Him go without the blessing.

   Beautiful in God's sight is tearful and yet unconquerable importunity.
   Jesus delights to be laid hold of by one who says, "I cannot take No
   for an answer, this blessing I must have, for You have promised it and
   You have taught me to ask for it, and I will not believe that You can
   belie yourself." Surely we must have the Holy Spirit to help us thus to
   pray. Praying in the Spirit we shall be sure to pray in a holy frame of
   mind. Brothers and Sisters, do you ever get distracted in your minds?
   "Ah," you say, "I wonder when I am not." I will venture to say that you
   have come into this house burdened, and yet on the road you were
   saying, "This is a blessed Sunday, I feel I have God's Presence."

   Then some silly gossip met you on the steps and told you an idle tale
   which distracted you. You may even get quietly seated here, and then
   the recollection of a child at home, or the remembrance of what
   somebody said about six weeks ago will perplex your mind so that you
   cannot pray. But when the Holy Spirit comes, He takes a scourge of
   small cords and drives these buyers and sellers out of the temple and
   leaves it clear for God. And then you can come with a holy, devout
   frame of mind, fixed and settled in your great object of approach to
   God. This is to approach Him in the Spirit. Oh for more of this
   blessed, undisturbed devotion!

   I could not, however, finish the description of praying in the Spirit
   if I did not say that it means praying humbly, for the Holy Spirit
   never puffs us up with pride. He is the Spirit that convicts of sin and
   so bows us down in contrition and brokenness of spirit. We must pray
   before God like the humble publican, or we shall never go forth
   justified as he was. We shall never sing Gloria in Excelsis except we
   pray to God De Profundis--out of the depths must we cry, or we shall
   never see the glory in the highest! True prayer must be loving prayer
   if it is praying in the Holy Spirit. Prayer should be perfumed with
   love, saturated with love--love to our fellow saints, and love to
   Christ. Moreover, it must be a prayer full of faith. The effectual
   fervent prayer of a man prevails only as he believes in God, and the
   Holy Spirit is the Author of faith in us, and nurtures and strengthens
   it so that we pray believing God's promises.

   Oh that this blessed combination of excellent Graces, priceless and
   sweet as the spices of the merchant, might be fragrant within us
   because the Holy Spirit's power is shed abroad in our hearts! Time
   fails me, therefore I must dispense with a full description of what
   praying in the Holy Spirit is, but I hope you will possess it and so
   understand it.

   IV. Fourthly, I shall use the text as A CHERUB to proclaim our success
   in prayer. Praying in the Spirit--blessed words! Then with such prayer
   it is an absolute certainty that I must succeed with God in prayer. If
   my prayer were my own prayer, I might not be so sure of it. But if the
   prayer which I utter is God's own prayer written on my soul, God is
   always One with Himself--and what He writes on the heart is only
   written there because it is written in His purposes.

   It is said by an old Divine that prayer is the shadow of Omnipotence.
   Our will, when God the Holy Spirit influences it, is the indicator of
   God's will. When God's people pray, it is because the blessing is
   coming and their prayers are the shadow of the coming blessing! Rest
   assured of this, Brothers and Sisters, God never did belie Himself! He
   never contradicted in one place what He said in another. You and I may
   contradict ourselves, not only through untruthfulness, but even through
   infirmity.

   We may not be able to stand up to our word, and we may forget what we
   said--and so in another place may say something that contradicts
   it--but God is neither infirm as to memory, nor yet changeable as to
   will. What He promised yesterday He fulfils today. What He said in one
   place, He declares in another. Then if God said in my heart, "Pray for
   So-and-So," it is because He has said it in the book of His decrees.
   The Spirit of God's writing in the heart always tallies with the
   writing of destiny in the book of God's eternal purpose. Rest assured
   that you cannot but succeed when you have laid your soul like a sheet
   of paper before the Lord and asked Him to write upon it! Then it is no
   more your own prayer, merely, but the Spirit making intercession in you
   according to the will of God.

   At such time you need not say, "I hope God will answer the prayer." He
   will do it--He is pledged to do it. It is a kind of infidelity to say,
   "I do not know whether the Lord is true to His promise or not, but I
   hope He is." He is true! Let God be true and every man a liar. Oh, if
   more of you tried Him as some of us have been compelled to do, you
   would have to hold up your hands in astonishment, and say, "Truly,
   whatever else is not a fact, it is a fact that God, who sits in the
   highest heavens, listens to the cries of His people, and gives them
   according to the desire of their hearts." If the Spirit teaches you to
   pray, it is as certain as two times two make four that God will give
   you what you are seeking for.

   V. Then I will use the text in conclusion as A CHARIOT in which to
   convey our own souls onward in the delightful exercise of prayer. The
   exercise allotted to us today and tomorrow is that of praying in the
   Spirit. Brothers and Sisters, it is delightful to some of us to believe
   that the Spirit of God is the Author of the great wave of prayer now
   breaking over the Churches to which we belong. It was not of our
   devising or planning, but it was the motion of God's Holy Spirit upon a
   few Brethren who desired to spend a day in solemn prayer and found such
   blessing in it that they could not but tell others of it!

   That, then, others spontaneously moved, and without a word of
   opposition or difference of opinion all said, "Amen. Let us also meet
   together for prayer." The spirit of brotherly kindness, unanimity, and
   love was given to our denomination, and then a spirit of earnest desire
   to bring down a blessing from God. We have known the time when it was
   not so. We have known the time when a day of fasting and prayer, if not
   despised, at any rate would not have been appreciated as it will be
   now. We are of one heart in this matter and I know from communications
   with many Christian men that many of God's people already feel as if
   they were peculiarly in prayer--as if it were no effort now to pray,
   but as if it were their very breath now to breathe out longing desires
   for the revival of saints and the ingathering of sinners.

   Brothers and Sisters of this Church, you have had God's Presence. For
   many years you have been favored with much of "praying in the Holy
   Spirit," and seen with your own eyes the great things God has done in
   answer to supplication. Will one of you draw back now? Will there be
   one man today or tomorrow who will not be earnest in prayer? Will one
   man, or even one child in union with this Church, be lukewarm in
   prayer? I would say, Sin not against the Lord by abstaining from going
   up to the Mercy Seat with your Brothers and Sisters. Offend not the
   Lord so that He deprive you of the blessing because you deprive
   yourself of joining in the exercise.

   My dear Friends, it was when they were all met together with one accord
   in one place that suddenly they heard the sound as of a rushing, mighty
   wind. We cannot be all in one place, but, at any rate, let us be all
   with one accord. What? Do you say you have nothing to pray for? What?
   No children unconverted, no friends unsaved, no neighbors who are still
   in darkness? What? Live in London and not pray for sinners? Where do
   you live? Is it in some vast wilderness, amidst "some boundless
   contiguity of shade," where rumor of sin and of ignorance has never
   reached your ear? No, you are living in the midst of millions of
   ungodly millions! Millions that despise the God who made them! Millions
   that despise the Gospel of Christ!

   Millions, not thousands! Hear that word and see if you can tell its
   meaning! Millions who are living without God and without hope, and are
   going down to Hell! We have, throughout the realm, too, dangerous
   mischiefs spreading. Need I continually remind you of them? Infidelity
   wearing the miter, and Popery usurping the place of Protestantism! You
   are assailed by the wolf and the lion, the serpent and the bear! All
   forms of mischief are coming forth to attack the

   Church. Not pray? If you pray not, shall I say, May you smart for your
   negligence? No I dare not in the slightest shade speak as though I
   imprecated a woe upon you, but the woe will come upon you, depend upon
   it! If I say it not, yet will God say it at this present hour. "Curse
   you Meroz, said the Lord, because they came not up to the help of the
   Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty."

   We are not asking you to contribute of your wealth in this case. If we
   did, the Lord Jesus has a right to it, and you should freely give it.
   Neither are we asking you all this day to preach. If we did, some of
   you might be excused for lack of ability. But we claim your prayers,
   and must not be denied! Not able to pray? Then are you graceless,
   Christless, hopeless, lost, and I will not ask you to join with us! But
   I ask you first to go to God for yourselves. And if you are a Christian
   you can pray. Poverty does not make you poor in prayer. Lack of
   education need not hinder you upon your knees. Lack of position and
   rank in society will be no encumbrance to you when you deal with God
   who hears the poor man when he cries and answers him with a largess of
   Divine Grace!

   Brothers and Sisters, if you love Christ, if you ever felt His love
   shed abroad in your heart. If you have been washed in His blood. If you
   have been saved from wrath through Him. If you are new creatures in
   Him. If you hope to see His face with acceptance at the last, I might
   put it to you as a demand! But I press it upon you as a brotherly
   entreaty--join with us in praying in the Holy Spirit! Shall one start
   back? Take heed, then, if you refuse to unite with your Brethren in
   prayer, lest when you choose to cry you should find yourself straitened
   and shut up in prison! Beware, lest by refusing to pray now, that the
   Spirit of God has come, you afterwards feel yourself deprived of the
   comfortable Presence of the Holy Spirit and find the sweetness of
   devotion to have departed from you.

   The Lord send a blessing. He must send it--our hearts will break if He
   does not! We feel that it is coming. We have grasped the promise. We
   have pleaded with Jehovah! We have pleaded the blood of Jesus! We are
   pleading it now! We mean to continue in such pleading till the blessing
   comes, and we may rely upon it that the heavenly shower will soon
   descend! He has not said to the seed of Jacob, "Seek you My face in
   vain." Brothers and Sisters, be hopeful, and let us unanimously join in
   praying in the Holy Spirit!

   May the Lord bless you, dear Friends, in this respect for Jesus' sake.
     __________________________________________________________________

                           The Gospel'S Healing Power

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 11, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT
   THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And it came to pass on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there
   were Pharisees and doctors of the la w sitting by, which were come out
   of every town of Galilee, and Judea, and Jerusalem: and the power of
   the Lord was present to heal them." Luke 5:17.

   LUKE, the writer of this Gospel, was a physician and therefore had a
   quick eye for cases of disease and instances of cure. You can trace
   throughout the whole of his Gospel the hand of one who was skilled in
   surgery and medicine. I gather from this that whatever may be our
   calling, or in whatever art or science we may have attained
   proficiency, we should take care to use our knowledge for Christ. And
   that if we are called being physicians we may understand the work of
   the Lord Jesus all the better by what we see in our own work, and we
   may also do much for our Lord in real substantial usefulness among our
   patients.

   Let no man despise his calling. Whatever instrument of usefulness God
   has put into your hands, consider that the Great Captain knew what
   weapons were best for you to wield. Covet not your neighbor's sword or
   spear, but use that which your Lord has given you and go forth to the
   battle of life to serve according to your capacity. If you are placed
   in this corner of the vineyard or that, consider that you are in the
   best place for yourself and the best place for your Master. And do not
   always be judging what your fellow servants ought to do in their place,
   nor what you could do if you were in another place, but see what it is
   that you can do where you are and use such things as you have in
   glorifying your Lord and Master.

   One is pleased to observe in the language of a true man how the man's
   self shows itself. David frequently sings like one who had been a
   shepherd boy, and though a king he is not ashamed to admit that he once
   grasped the crook. There is a manifest difference between the
   prophecies of Amos, the herdsman, and of Isaiah, the royal seer. True
   men do not imitate one another, but each one, moved of God, speaks
   according to his native bias and according to the circumstances in
   which Providence has cast him. It was destructive to Egyptian art when
   the great men of the land framed articles of taste, and laws of
   statuary and of painting by which every sculptor must be bound--for
   then everything like freshness and originality was driven away. The
   proportions of every colossal statue and of every figure upon the wall
   were rigidly fixed, and then the glory and excellence of art vanished
   from the land.

   To do the same in religion is even more unwise. To say, "You shall all
   speak after one fashion, and you all shall conform to this manner of
   talk and life," is folly at its height! Let each man speak after his
   own manner, every man in his own order, each quickened soul bringing
   out its own individuality and seeking in that individuality to magnify
   God and to show forth the riches of His Divine Grace. These remarks
   were suggested by the abundant record of cures in this chapter and
   elsewhere in Luke's Gospel. Luke does not write like John, nor copy the
   style of Matthew. He writes not as a fisherman or a publican, but as a
   physician.

   Luke did not cease to be Luke when he was called by Divine Grace. He
   was the same man elevated and refined, and taught to consecrate to
   noblest ends the gifts which he had acquired in his earthly calling. He
   was a physician before, and he became "the beloved physician" after his
   conversion.

   I. The text, as we read it, suggests, in the first place, that THE
   POWER OF CHRIST IN THE GOSPEL IS MAINLY A POWER TO HEAL. "The power of
   the Lord was present to heal them." The power of the Gospel, of which
   Christ is the Sum and Substance, is a healing power. My Brethren, when
   Christ came on earth He might have come with destroying power. Justly
   enough might God have sent His only Son with the armies of vengeance to
   destroy this rebellious world.

   But--

   "Your hands, dear Jesus, were not armed
   With an avenging rod.
   No hard commission to perform,
   The vengeance of a God.
   But all was mercy, all was mild,
   And wrath forsook the throne,
   When Christ on the kind errand came,
   And brought salvation down."

   "I have not come," He said, "to destroy men's lives, but to save them."
   Elijah calls fire from Heaven upon the captains of fifties and their
   fifties, so that they are utterly consumed. But Christ brings fire from
   Heaven for quite another purpose, namely, that by its power men might
   be saved from the wrath to come. The Gospel is not intended to be a
   power to destroy. "God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the
   world, but that the world through Him might be saved." And if that
   Gospel is made a savor of death unto death unto any, it is not on
   account of its own intrinsic qualities or design but because of the
   perversity and wickedness of the human heart.

   If men perish by the Gospel of Life, it is because they make that to be
   a stumbling stone which was meant to be a foundation. The Gospel does
   not even come into the world merely to reveal disease. It is true it
   does discover, detect, and describe the maladies of fallen man. One of
   the clearest exposures of man's fallen estate is the Gospel of the
   Grace of God. But it is rather the design of the Law than of the Gospel
   to discover to man his ruin. It is by the glare of Sinai lightning that
   men tremblingly read the sentence of condemnation upon those who have
   broken God's Law. By the gentler light of Calvary they may read the
   same Truth of God, and must read it--but this is not the main purpose
   of Calvary.

   Calvary is the place for the healing balm rather than for the lancet
   and the knife. The work of Jesus, our heavenly Physician, is not so
   much to point out disease as to indicate and to apply the remedy.
   Certain philosophers have made it their business and delight, with grim
   sarcastic smiles upon their faces, to put forth the finger and mark out
   human wickedness and weakness as a theme for ridicule and sarcasm. The
   philosophy of the Stoics, the wisdom of such men as Diogenes, was but a
   heartless unpitying showing up of human folly and sin.

   It knew no remedy, and cared not to search for one. They showed poor
   manhood to he besotted, befooled, debased, and depraved. And there they
   left it, passing by on the other side as the priest and Levite did with
   the wounded man in the parable. But Jesus came upon no such fruitless
   errand. He convicts the world of sin by His Spirit, but it is not to
   leave the world hopelessly despairing of its restoration, but to
   recover it by His power! Jesus bears with Him power to heal! This is
   His honor and renown. He has the eagle's eye to see our sicknesses, the
   lion's heart bravely to encounter them, and the lady's hand to gently
   apply the heavenly ointment! In Him the three requirements of a good
   surgeon meet in perfection.

   Beloved, I trust you and I have known this power to heal in our own
   cases, and if it is so we know of a certainty that it is a Divine power
   which comes from our Lord Jesus because He is most surely God. It is
   the sole prerogative of God to heal spiritual disease. Natural disease
   may be instrumentally healed by men, but even then the honor is to be
   given to God who gives virtue unto medicine, and bestows power unto the
   human frame to cast off disease. But as for spiritual sicknesses, these
   remain with the great Physician alone. He claims it as His prerogative,
   "I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal." And one of the Lord's
   choice titles is Jehovah Rophi, the Lord that heals you. "I will heal
   you of your wounds," is a promise which could not come from the lip of
   man--only from the mouth of the eternal God.

   On this account the Psalmist cried unto the Lord, "O Lord, heal me, for
   my bones are sorely vexed." And again, "Heal my soul, for I have sinned
   against You." For this, also, the godly praise the name of the Lord,
   saying, "He heals all our diseases." He who made man can heal man. He
   who was at first the creator of our nature can new create it. What a
   transcendent comfort it is that in the Person of Jesus Christ of
   Nazareth we have Deity Incarnate! "In Him dwells all the fullness of
   the Godhead bodily." My Soul, whatever your disease may be, this great
   Physician can heal you! If He is God, there can be no limit to His
   infinite power! If He is truly Divine, there can be no boundary to the
   majesty of His might!

   Come, then, with the blind eye of your understanding. Come with the
   limping feet of your energy. Come with the maimed hand of your faith.
   Come just as you are, for He who is God can certainly heal you! None
   shall say unto the healing flood of His love, "Up to here can you go
   and no further." The utmost length of human sickness can be reached by
   this great Physician! Have confidence, O poor doubting heart! Have
   unstaggering confidence in the Divine Healer!

   Although our Lord Jesus healed as Divine, remember that He also
   possessed power to heal because of His being human. Is it not written,
   "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we
   are healed"? He used no other remedy in healing our sin-sickness but
   that of taking our sicknesses and infirmities upon Himself.

   This is the one great cure-all. Blessed be the Son of God that the
   medicine, bitter as it is, is not for us to drink, but was all drained
   by Himself! He took the terrible cup in Gethsemane and drank it dry on
   our account. The sharp but healing cuts of the lancet are not made in
   our bodies--He bore them in His own flesh. When the plowers made deep
   furrows, those furrows were not upon the sinner's shoulders, but upon
   the shoulders of the sinner's Substitute. Did you ever hear, O Earth,
   of such a Physician as this? Who heals by suffering Himself? Whose
   pains, and sorrows, and griefs, and pangs, and torments, and anguish,
   and death are the only medicine by which He removes the woes of men?
   Blessed Son of God, if I trust You, seeing that You are Divine, how I
   will love You!

   How I will cling to You, seeing You are human! With what gratitude I
   will look up to Your Cross and view You, while those blessed fountains
   of health are streaming crimson floods, and while Your heart, the
   source of all spiritual sanity, is pouring forth a heavenly efficacious
   torrent to wash the sinner from all his sicknesses! Come here, all you
   sin-sick ones, and behold the glorious Son of God, made in the likeness
   of human flesh, breathing out His life upon the Cross! Come here, you
   that mourn for sin, you who are palsied and diseased with iniquity!
   Here is power, power still present in the dying Savior to heal you,
   whatever your diseases may be!

   He healed all that had need of healing while He sojourned here, and the
   costly balm of His Atonement has lost none of its power. The power
   which dwelt in Christ to heal, coming from Him as Divine and human, was
   applicable, most eminently, to the removal of the guilt of sin. Reading
   this chapter through, one pauses with joy over that twenty-fourth
   verse, "The Son of Man has power upon earth to forgive sin." Here,
   then, is one of the great Physician's mightiest arts-- He has power to
   forgive sin! While He lived here below, before the ransom had been
   paid, before the blood had been literally sprinkled on the Mercy Seat,
   He had power to forgive sin! Has He not power to do it now that He has
   died? Brethren, what power must dwell in Him who to the utmost farthing
   has faithfully discharged the debts of His people! He has power,
   indeed, seeing that He has finished transgression and made an end of
   sin!

   If you doubt it, see Him rising from the dead! Behold Him in ascending
   splendor raised to the right hand of God! Hear Him pleading before the
   Eternal Father, pointing to His wounds, urging the merit of His sacred
   passion! What power to forgive is here! "He has ascended on high, and
   received gifts for men." "He is exalted on high to give repentance and
   remission of sins." At this moment, Sinner, Christ has power to pardon,
   power to pardon you and millions such as you are. He has nothing more
   to do to win your pardon. All the atoning work is done! He can, in
   answer to your tears, forgive your sins today, and make you know it!

   He can breathe into your soul at this very moment a peace with God
   which passes all understanding, which all spring from perfect remission
   of your manifold iniquities. Do you believe that? I trust you believe
   it! May you experience now that the healing power of the Gospel is
   power to forgive sin! Waste no time in applying to the Physician of
   souls, but hasten to Him with words like these--

   "Jesus! Master! Hear my cry! Save me, heal me with a word. Fainting at
   Your feet I lie, You my whispered plaint have heard."

   This is not the only form of the healing power which dwells without
   measure in our glorious Lord. He heals the sorrow of sin. It is
   written, "He heals the broken in heart and binds up their wounds." When
   sin is really manifest to the conscience it is a most painful thing.
   And for the conscience to be effectually pacified is an unspeakable
   blessing. Sharper than a dagger in the heart, or an arrow piercing
   through the loins is conviction of sin. He that has ever smarted under
   the pricks of an awakened conscience well knows that there is no pain
   of body that can be compared to it. When crushed under the hand of God,
   a man may form some idea of what the miseries of Hell must be.

   Correspondingly joyous is the relief which Immanuel brings to us when
   He brings better balm than that of Gilead and ministers Heaven's
   infallible medicine to a diseased soul. When Jesus is received by
   faith, He lifts all our sorrow from us in a moment. One promise applied
   by His Spirit, one drop of His blood brought home to the conscience,
   and at once there is such a peace so deep and profound that nothing can
   rival it! What the poet wrote concerning recovery from bodily sickness
   is doubly true of spiritual restoration!--

   "See the man that long has tossed
   On the thorny bed of pain,
   At length repair his vigor lost,
   And breathe and walk again:
   The meanest floweret of the vale,
   The simplest note that swells the gale,
   The common sun, the air, the skies,
   To him are opening Paradise."

   God grant that to you who fear His name the Sun of Righteousness may
   arise with healing beneath His wings!

   Jesus also heals the power of sin. Sin may be, in your case, dear
   Friend, so mighty that like a whirlwind it hurries you away at its
   pleasure. You feel like the sere leaves which are driven by the
   tempest. You have scarcely power to resist your passions. You have,
   perhaps, yielded so long to certain forms of evil that now you are
   positively powerless in strife against them. Do not, however, despair!
   Christ can surely deliver you! The demoniac had such an energy of evil
   within him that he broke the chains and bands with which he had been
   bound. He cut himself with stones, and howled all night amidst the
   tombs. But when Jesus came near to him he was soon seen clothed and in
   his right mind, sitting meekly at the great Physician's feet!

   And so will you, poor captive of evil! Do not think that you have to be
   a drunkard, or that your angry temper needs always be your master! Do
   not conceive that you must always be a slave to lust, or led captive at
   the devil's will. There is hope for you, Man, where Christ is! And
   though your disease is of as long standing as your very life, yet a
   word from the powerful lips of the Son of God can make even you, whole!
   The power of the Gospel is a power to heal the guilt, the sorrow and
   the influence of sin. Jesus Christ came into the world to destroy the
   works of the devil in all their forms. It should not be forgotten that
   the Lord Jesus is able to heal us of our relapses. I have heard men say
   that a relapse is what the physician frequently fears more than the
   primary disease, and that there is frequently a period in the healing
   process when the virus of disease gathers renewed energy and the
   physician feels that now, and not at the first, the true battle has to
   be fought.

   We have met with men who have professed conversion, and we trust were
   changed, who have gone back like the dog to his vomit and the sow that
   was washed to her wallowing in the mire. We have had to mourn over
   those in whom the change appeared to be great, but it was superficial,
   and soon the power of evil returned upon them. But, my backsliding
   Hearer, Jesus is able to heal your backslidings! What a mercy that is!
   "I will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely, for My anger
   is turned away from them," What if you are sevenfold more a child of
   Hell than you were before, yet even now, eternal mercy that drove out a
   legion of devils from one of old can drive them out of you! The healing
   power of my Master is such that if you have backslidden ever so far yet
   He says unto you, "Return! Return! Return!"

   There shall be more joy over you, you poor lost sheep, than over ninety
   and nine that went not astray. He shall be more glad to receive you,
   you wandering prodigal child, than He has joy even over that righteous
   son who remained always in the father's house. To sum up much in
   little, my Master, as a Physician, works cures very suddenly. He
   touches, and the deed is done at once! He works cures of all kinds.
   Such as have been the stumbling stones of other physicians have been
   readily overcome by Him. He never fails. He has not in His diary one
   single case that has overmatched His mighty power. He heals
   effectually--the disease never again reigns when He has once dethroned
   it. When He casts the devil out of the man, the devil shall not return.

   He heals with His word even those who think that they cannot be healed!
   There is no hospital for incurables now as to souls, for incurables
   there are none. The Friend of sinners is "able to save unto the
   uttermost those that come unto God by Him." Cases of disease so putrid
   that men say, "Put them out of sight." Vice so detestable that the very
   mention of it makes the cheek of modesty blush! Such as these the
   master hand of Immanuel can heal! With God nothing is impossible, and
   with the Son of God nothing is difficult! He can save the chief of
   sinners, and the vilest of the vile! In the highest conceivable degree
   the power of the Gospel is power to heal. Come, poor Sinner, and behold
   Him who is able to heal you of your deadly wounds! Come look upon Him
   now and live!--

   "Raise to the Cross your tearful eyes,
   Behold, the Prince of Glory dies!
   He dies extended on the tree,
   And sheds a sovereign balm for you."

   II. A second remark arises from the text. THERE ARE SPECIAL PERIODS
   WHEN THE POWER TO HEAL IS

   MOST MANIFESTLY DISPLAYED. The verse before us says that on a certain
   day the power of the Lord was present to heal, by which I understand,
   not that Christ is not always God, not that He was ever unable to heal,
   but this--that there were certain periods when He pleased to put forth
   His Divine energy in the way of healing to an unusual degree. The sea
   is never empty. It is, indeed, always as full at one time as at
   another, but yet it is not always at flood. The sun is never dim, he
   shines with equal force at all hours, and yet it is not always day with
   us, nor do we always bask in the warmth of summer.

   Christ is fullness itself, but that fullness does not always overflow.
   He is able to heal, but He is not always engaged in healing. There are
   times when the power to save is more than usually manifest--times of
   refreshing, seasons of revival, days of visitation--acceptable days,
   days of salvation. Any student of the world's history who has read it
   in the light of true religion will have observed that there have been
   favored periods when the power of God has been peculiarly present to
   heal men. My solemn conviction is that we are living in such an
   era--that this present moment is one of the set times when God's power
   is peculiarly manifest.

   I gather this from many signs, but even the text assists me in my
   belief. Observe that on the occasion mentioned in the text there was a
   great desire among the multitude to hear the Word. In the opening of
   the chapter we read that they pressed upon our Lord by the sea. Further
   on we find them coming from all parts of the country in multitudes.
   Special mention is made of doctor's of the law and Pharisees, the last
   people to be impressed, who nevertheless, overcome by the common
   enthusiasm, were found mingling with the throng. We are told that the
   people thronged the house at such a rate that the palsied man could not
   be brought into the congregation except by the expedient of breaking
   through the roof!

   When God's power is moving there will be a corresponding motion among
   the people! They will long to hear when God's power is with the
   speaker. Take it as a sign of Divine Grace when the houses dedicated to
   worship are full. Consider that the Lord is about to fill the net when
   the fishes crowd around the boat. We cannot expect the Gospel to be
   blessed to those who do not hear it. We may lawfully and properly
   expect it will be a blessing to those who have an intense anxiety to
   listen to it. At the present hour I see a religious awakening among the
   masses of London, not so great a one as we desire, but still there it
   is and we must be grateful for it.

   We shall not long have to put up with the pernicious nonsense of
   Puseyism--public opinion will aid us in putting it down. It has taken a
   long time to wake up our nation, but it will awaken after all. I think
   I see the tide of popular feeling turning in the right direction. Men
   are just now occupied about religious thought, and whether they think
   rightly or wrongly, there is more attention just now paid to religious
   truth than has been for many a day. And where ministers do but preach
   simply and lovingly the Gospel of Christ at this moment they find no
   lack of hearers. This is a sure sign that the power of the Lord is
   present to heal.

   Observe next that the healing power was conspicuously present when
   Christ was teaching. Note carefully the favored hour, "when He was
   teaching." Jesus linked the healing with the teaching. It was so with
   the material healing, much more with the spiritual healing, for "faith
   comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." Brethren, is there
   not among our own Brethren, of whom we can speak with the most
   certainty, more teaching of Christ now than there was? I am persuaded
   that the most of my Brethren preach more faithfully and fully the
   simple truth of Christ Jesus than they once did. Teaching is returning
   to the pulpits.

   Now mark, dear Hearer, whether you are saved or not--if you are present
   where Christ is fully preached, where He is lifted up, exalted,
   proclaimed, and commended to you--you are in a place where He also is
   present to heal. Is it not written, "I, if I am lifted up, will draw
   all men unto Me"? A further sign of present power is found most clearly
   in the sick folk who were healed by Jesus. Now we know that in this
   very house not a Sunday passes without souls being converted. We have
   before our Church meetings the cases of hundreds whom God has blessed
   by the simple telling of the story of the Cross. This, then, is proof
   positive that when Christ is being taught, and souls being blessed, He
   is in a remarkable manner present to heal.

   One other thing must be noted, namely, that this particular time
   mentioned in the text was prefaced by a special season of prayer on the
   part of the principal Actor in it. Did you notice it? He withdrew
   Himself and prayed, and then the power of the Lord was present to heal
   them. Is it so that even with regard to Christ Himself, the Lord and
   Giver of

   Life, in whom dwells the fullness of the Godhead, and who has the
   Spirit without measure, yet before that Spirit is publicly manifested
   in any high degree there must be a special retirement for fervent
   prayer? How plainly does this say to us that the Church must pray if
   she would have the healing power! And, my Brothers and Sisters, we have
   prayed! There has been such prayer put up by this congregation as I
   believe was never excelled, even in Apostolic times!

   Last Monday was a day of wrestling of such a kind that the blessing
   could not be withheld! I have almost ceased to ask further! I wait in
   joyful anticipation of the heavenly visitation! I come not forth today
   so much as a sower as a reaper! I believe that the fish are taken in
   the net, and that we have only to pull it to land! God grant the net
   may not break by reason of the multitude of fishes! God is with us, and
   that of a truth in this House this day. Wonders of Divine Grace are
   being worked--while we are yet speaking men are being inclined to look
   to Christ! While we are lifting Him up, tearful eyes are looking to
   Him! In many a heart there may be heard the cry, "I will arise and go
   to my Father."

   Now with all these signs meeting together--a desire to hear, a set time
   of private prayer, the teaching of the Word, and the manifest blessing
   of souls under that Word--I gather that we have arrived at this present
   moment at that state which is described in the text.

   III. Passing on to a third thought, we observe that WHEN THE POWER OF
   THE LORD IS PRESENT TO HEAL,

   IT MAY NOT BE SEEN IN ALL, BUT MAY BE SHOWN IN SPECIAL CASES AND NOT IN
   OTHERS. It is a melancholy reflection that men may be in the region of
   Divine power and yet not feel its operations. I have read this verse
   through a great many times with one object--I have tried, if I
   could--to make the text mean that the Pharisees and doctors of the law
   were present and that the power of the Lord was present to heal them.

   But the text does not so teach us. The power of the Lord was not
   present to heal the doctors and Pharisees, for they were not healed.
   The word "them" agrees with the noun further back, according to the
   frequent usage of the New Testament by which the pronouns are not made
   to refer to the nearer noun, but to another more remote. The power of
   God was present to heal the sick--not to heal the doctors, nor the
   Pharisees. And yet how nearly they could have gained it, for had they
   but known their sickness, and been willing to confess their infirmity,
   there was power enough to have healed even them!

   But as it was, we do not find that one of them was healed--not so much
   as a single doctor of the law, or a Pharisee felt the power which was
   passing so near to them that they were amazed and staggered and fell to
   quibbling about it. Dear Hearers, this very melancholy observation must
   be applied to some that are present now. You may be in the midst of
   this congregation which is under remarkable visitations of God's Divine
   Grace, and yet there may be no power present operating in your heart to
   heal you. You will observe that those who missed this Grace were not
   the harlots. Infamous as they were by character, they felt the power of
   the love of Jesus and entered into His kingdom. We do not find that
   this power was lacking among the publicans--we have an instance here of
   one of them who made a great feast in his house for Christ.

   Where, then, was the power lacking? Where was it unsought and unfelt?
   It was, in the first place, among the knowing people--the doctors of
   the law. These teachers knew too much to submit to be taught by the
   Great Rabbi. There is such a thing as knowing too much to know
   anything, and being too wise to be anything but a fool. The knowledge
   of the doctors was that which puffs up--not the knowledge which comes
   from God. Ah, dear Hearer, beware of head knowledge without heart
   knowledge! Beware of being so orthodox as to set yourself up as a judge
   of the preacher, and to refuse to be obedient to the Truth of God.

   Beware of saying, "Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, that is very applicable to
   So-and-So, and very well put." Do not criticize but feel. It were
   better for you that you had been a common plow-boy, whistling at the
   plow, who never heard these things until today, and have now listened
   to them, and have received them in all their novelty, and power, and
   beauty for the first time. This were better for you than to have heard
   them till they ring in your ears like the bell which you have heard
   every Sunday, of whose monotony you are weary! Beware of going down to
   Hell with a millstone of sound doctrine about your necks, for if you
   will be damned you may as well perish knowing the Truth of God as not
   knowing it!

   No, if you catch the formula and lay hold upon the creed, and imagine
   yourself to be teachers of others, it is even easier to perish in that
   state than it is if you came in to hear the Word untaught before in its
   glad message. These were the knowing ones who had no power to be
   healed! Those, moreover, who had a good opinion of themselves were left
   unblessed. The Pharisees! No better people anywhere, from Dan to
   Beersheba, than the Pharisees, if you would take them upon their own
   testimony!.

   Observe with due respect their public character. Were they not most
   eminent? See the breadth of the borders of their garments! How visible
   were their phylacteries! How diligently did they wash their hands
   before they ate! How scrupulous about straining out gnats from their
   wine! How careful to tithe the anise, and mint, and cummin! Yet these
   were the people who obtained no blessing from Jesus. They were too good
   to be saved. How many people there are of this kind! "Well," says one,
   "I know I never robbed anybody. I have brought up my family respectably
   and conducted myself with such decorum that nobody could possibly find
   fault with me."

   Just so, and you will not have Christ because you are whole, and have
   no need of a physician. "Ah," says another, "surely if we do our duty
   to the best of our ability it will be all right with us." If you think
   thus you will find that when you have done your duty to the best of
   your ability, you will have no part nor lot in a Savior because
   manifestly, on your own showing, you do not require one! The Lord Jesus
   will take your own showing and will say, "I never knew you. How could I
   know you? You were never sick. You never needed Me. You declared that
   you were whole, and you would not stoop to accept the salvation which
   I, the Savior, came to bring." Thus will Jesus speak to you who now
   proudly despise His Grace.

   Once again, the people who did not get the blessing were not only the
   knowing ones and the very good ones, but they were also the people who
   stood by. As one observes, they did not come to be preached at, they
   came for Christ to preach before them. That used to be the old style of
   sermon prefaces--"A sermon preached before the honorable or worshipful
   company of So-and-So." Now that is the worst kind of preaching
   anywhere, preaching before people. Preaching right at people is the
   only preaching worth hearing and worth uttering. But they did not come
   for Christ to operate upon them--they were not patients--they were
   visitors in the hospitals. Like visitors they went round to the beds
   and looked at the prescriptions put over the sick and observed each
   case.

   And when the physician came in and began to exercise his art upon the
   sick, they stood by and criticized his treatment, imagining all the
   while that they were not sick themselves. If they had been lying on the
   bed sick they could have been healed, but they took only a superficial
   interest in the healing, for they came not to partake in it. Beware, my
   dear Hearers, of going to places of worship merely to be lookers! There
   will be no lookers on in Heaven! And there will be no lookers on in
   Hell! Take care that you do not play the looker in the worship of God
   here. Every Truth of God spoken by God's servants has a bearing upon
   you. If it is threatening and you are in the gall of bitterness, it is
   yours-- tremble under it!

   If it is the promise of Divine love, then if you have no part in it, be
   afraid, be ashamed, be alarmed--and fly to Christ that you may partake
   in it. Those who get no blessing are those who suppose they do not
   particularly need it and stand by, having merely come to see and to be
   seen, but not to receive a cure. Those who felt not the healing power
   sneered and caviled. They said further down in the chapter, "Who can
   forgive sins but God only?" When a man gets no good out of the
   ministry, he is pretty sure to think there is no good in the ministry.
   And when he himself, for want of stooping down to drink, finds no water
   in the river, he concludes it is dry--whereas it is his own stubborn
   knee that will not bend, and his own willful mouth that will not open
   to receive the Gospel.

   But if they quarrel, if they raise questions, if they dispute, we know
   their breed. We understand the race to which they belong, and we know
   how Jesus said to them of old, "You generation of vipers, how shall you
   escape the damnation of Hell?" If any shall not escape, surely they
   shall not whose only hearing of the Gospel is to make it the butt of
   their sarcasm and the object of their ridicule--who look derisively
   even at the Cross itself with a dying Savior upon it--and thrust their
   tongue into their cheek and make jests and merriment of the agonies of
   the world's Redeemer.

   Beware, lest you have those jests in your mouth on earth, which you
   will have to digest in Hell! Beware, lest your mockery return upon you
   at the Last Great Day when the words of Solomon shall be fulfilled,
   "Because I called and you refused, I stretched out My hands and no man
   regarded, I also will mock at your calamity, I will laugh when your
   fear comes." There were persons, then, to whom the present power of
   Christ to heal was of no service whatever and there may be such now.
   Friend, are you such an one?

   IV. In the last place, I want Christian people here to observe that
   WHEN THE POWER OF CHRIST WAS PRESENT IT CALLED FORTH THE ENERGY OF
   THOSE WHO WERE HIS FRIENDS TO WORK WHILE THAT

   POWER WAS MANIFEST. My dear Brothers and Sisters, the members of this
   Church especially--what I have to say is earnestly addressed to you.

   You will perceive that as soon as ever it was discovered that the power
   of healing was present, loving hearts desired to bring in others that
   they might experience it. Four persons took each a corner of the bed
   and brought in a palsied man who could not come of himself. They let
   him down with much inconvenience through the roof. God is blessing the
   Church now. Christian men and women, join together to pray for your
   friends who cannot or will not pray for themselves! And if you meet
   with any in deep distress, palsied with despair who cannot lift the
   finger of faith, strive to bring them to hear the Gospel. Bring them
   where Christ is working miracles!

   If one of you cannot prevail to lay the case before the Lord, let two
   of you unite. If two should not be enough, let four blend their
   petitions. If four should not suffice, tell it to the Church and ask
   the whole to pray. But strive to bring dying sinners where Christ is
   working spiritual miracles. If you read further on in the chapter you
   will learn how to bring some persons to the Savior who would never hear
   of Him otherwise. Levi made a great feast, for he thought to himself,
   "I should like Jesus to come and preach to the publicans. They are such
   great sinners, just such as I am. If I could but get them to hear Him
   they might be converted.

   "But," he thought, "if I ask them they would say they could not afford
   to give up a day's work. They will not care to listen to a sermon. So
   (he said) I will get them this way--I will invite them to my house to a
   feast. They will be sure to come then, and then I will ask Jesus to
   come and eat with them, and I know He will not let them go without
   saying a good word." So you see he used arts as fowlers do when they
   are anxious to catch their prey! Now cannot you be as watchful and
   thoughtful in your generation as Levi was? Cannot you get the outcasts
   and the neglecters of the Sunday to your own house or to anybody else's
   house, and use means to bring them under the sound of God's Word?

   Why, if you have a few flowers in your back room, if it rains in the
   summer time, do not you always put them out in it? You put all the pots
   out in the garden to let them catch the shower. Do so with your
   friends, your neighbors, your children, your kinsfolk--while the rain
   of Divine Grace is dropping, try to get them under the influence of
   it--and if they will not come by one means try another! Only get them
   where the power of the Lord is present, for perhaps Jesus may look upon
   them and they may look to Him and may be healed!

   And oh, let me say in closing, if they should not be saved, the
   responsibility will not then rest with you, even as the responsibility
   this morning does not rest with me. We have proclaimed to you in this
   House many times that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
   We have told you that the heavenly Father is willing to receive
   returning sinners. That He delights in mercy. That He is free to blot
   out sin. We have told you that the blood of Christ can make the
   filthiest clean, that all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven
   unto men. We have urged you to flee away like doves to Jesus' wounds.

   The power of the Spirit of God has led many of you to come to Him, and
   you are saved! But alas, there still remains a multitude who are
   unsaved. Well, if you perish it is not because Christ has not been
   taught in your streets. You will go down to Hell, some of you, with the
   light shining on your eyelids, but with your eyes willfully closed
   against it. You will perish with the voice of Mercy ringing in your
   ears--and in Hell you will be awful monuments to the justice of God who
   will then say to you, "You sinned against light and knowledge, and
   against love and mercy."

   If they perish who despised Moses' law, how shall you escape if you
   neglect so great a salvation? May the Holy Spirit now, with mighty
   energy, apply the precious blood of Jesus to every hearer, and unto God
   shall be glory world without end. Amen.

   "Blessed Savior, at Your feet I lie, Here to receive a cure or die. But
   Grace forbids that painful fear, Almighty Grace, which triumphs here.
   You will withdraw the poisoned dart, Bind up and heal the wounded
   heart. With blooming health my face adorn, And change the gloomy night
   to morn."
     __________________________________________________________________

                            The Last Enemy Destroyed

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 18, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT
   THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." 1 Corinthians 15:26.

   OUR Savior stooped to the lowest depths of degradation--He shall be
   exalted to the topmost heights of glory. "Being found in fashion as a
   man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death
   of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him, and given Him
   a name which is above every name." Our Lord was trampled beneath the
   feet of all, but the day comes when all things shall be trampled
   beneath His feet. By so much as He descended, by so much shall He
   ascend. By the greatness of His sufferings may we judge of the
   unspeakable grandeur of His glory. Already sin lies beneath His feet,
   and Satan, like the old dragon bound, is there also.

   The systems of idolatry which were paramount in the days of His flesh,
   He has broken as with a rod of iron. Where are the gods of Rome and
   Greece? Where are Jupiter, Diana, and Mercury? Let the moles and the
   bats reply. The colossal systems of idolatry which still dominate over
   the minds of men must yet come down. The truth as it is in Jesus must
   before long prevail over those ancient dynasties of error, for Jesus
   our Lord must reign from the river even unto the ends of the earth. In
   these last times, when sin in all its forms and Satan with all his
   craft shall be subdued, then Death itself, the unconquerable Death, the
   insatiable devourer of the human race who has swept them away as grass
   before the mower's scythe--then shall Death who has feared the face of
   none, but has laid armies prostrate in his wrath, be utterly destroyed!

   He who is immortality and life shall bring death of Death and
   destruction to the grave, and unto Him shall be songs of everlasting
   praise. Contemplate the glory of your Master, then, Believer! From the
   base of the pyramid, deep in darkness, He rises to the summit which is
   high in glory! From the depths of the abyss of woe He leaps to the tops
   of the mountain of joy. Anticipate His triumph by faith, for you shall
   partake in it! So surely as you share in His abasement, you shall also
   partake in His glory, and the more you shall become conformable unto
   Him in His sufferings, the more may you rest assured that you shall be
   partakers with Him in the glory which is to be revealed.

   Come we now to the text itself. The text teaches us that Death itself
   is, at the last, to be vanquished by Christ. No, it is to be utterly
   destroyed by Him so that it shall cease to be! In handling the text,
   there are four things which at once strike you. Here is Death an enemy.
   But, secondly, he is the last enemy. Thirdly, he is an enemy to be
   destroyed, but, fourthly, he is the last enemy that shall be destroyed.

   I. First, then, you have in our banquet of this morning, as your first
   course, BITTER HERBS--wormwood mingled with gall--for you have DEATH,
   AN ENEMY. It is not difficult to perceive in what respects Death is an
   enemy. Consider him apart from the Resurrection, apart from the
   glorious promises which spring up like sweet flowers sown by celestial
   hands upon the black soil of the tomb, and Death is preeminently an
   enemy. Death is an enemy because it is always repugnant to the nature
   of living creatures to die. Flesh and blood cannot love Death. God has
   wisely made self-preservation one of the first laws of our nature--it
   is an attribute of a living man to desire to prolong his life. "Skin
   for skin, yes, all that a man has will he give for his life."

   Life is our dearest heritage. To throw away life by suicide is a crime,
   and to waste life in folly is no mean sin. We are bound to prize life.
   We must do so--it is one of the instincts of our humanity, and he were
   not greater but less than man who did not care to live. Death must
   always, then, by creatures that breathe, be looked upon as a foe. Death
   may well be counted as a foe because it entered into the world and
   became the master over the race of Adam through our worst enemy, SIN.
   It came not in accordance to the course of nature, but according to the
   course of evil. Death came not in by the door, but it climbed up some
   other way, and we may therefore rest assured that it is a thief and a
   robber.

   It was not in the natural constitution of humanity that man should die,
   for the first man, Adam, was made a living soul. Eminent physiologists
   have said that they do not detect in the human system any particular
   reason why man should die at fourscore years. The same wheels which
   have gone on for twenty, thirty, forty years might have continued their
   revolutions for a hundred years, or even for centuries, so far as their
   own self-renewing power is concerned. There is no reason in man's body,
   itself, why it should inevitably return to the dust from which it was
   taken. Or if there is now such a reason, it may be traceable to the
   disease which sin has brought into our constitution. But, as originally
   formed, man might have been immortal--he would have been immortal.

   In that garden, if the leaves had faded, he would not. And if the
   animals had died (and I suppose they would, for they certainly did die
   before Adam came into the world), yet there is no need that Adam should
   have died. He could have renewed his youth like the eagle and remained
   immortal amidst mortality--a king and priest forever, if God had so
   chosen it should be. Instead of which, through sin, though he is even
   now a priest, he must, like Aaron, go up to the top of the hill and put
   off his priestly garments and breathe out his life. Sin brought in
   death, and nothing that came in by sin can be man's friend.

   Death, the child of Sin, is the foe of man. That the Truth of God
   before us is most sure, some persons know by very bitter experience,
   for it embitters their existence. To some men this is the one drop of
   gall which has made life bitter to them. The thought that they should
   die shades them with raven wings. By the fear of death they are all
   their lifetime subject to bondage. Like Uriah the Hittite, they carry
   in their bosom the message which ordains their death--but, unlike he,
   they know that it contains the fatal mandate. Like cloth which feeds
   the moth which devours it, their fears and forebodings feed the fatal
   worm. When their cups are sweetest they remember the dregs of death.
   And when their viands are the daintiest they think of the black
   servitor who will clear away the feast.

   They can enjoy nothing because the darkness of death's shade lies
   across the landscape. The ghost of Death haunts them. The skeleton sits
   at their table. They are mournfully familiar with the shroud, the
   coffin, and the sepulcher--and they are familiar with these not as with
   friendly provisions for a good night's rest--but as the cruel ensigns
   of a dreaded foe. This makes Death an enemy with emphasis, when our
   fears enable him thus to spoil our life. When Death rides his pale
   horse, roughshod, over all terrestrial joys, he makes us feel that it
   is a poor thing to live because the thread of life is so soon to be
   cut--a miserable thing even to flourish, because we only flourish like
   the green herb--and, like the green herb--are cut down and cast into
   the oven.

   Many others have found Death to be their foe, not so much because they
   themselves have been depressed by the thought, but because the great
   enemy has made fearful breaches in their daily comforts. O you
   Mourners! Your somber garments tell me that your family circle has been
   broken into, time after time, by this ruthless destroyer! The widow has
   lost her comfort and her stay. The children have been left desolate and
   fatherless. O Death! You are the cruel enemy of our hearths and homes!
   The youthful spirit has lost half itself when the beloved one has been
   torn away, and men have seemed like maimed souls when the best half of
   their hearts has been snatched from them.

   Hope looked not forth at the window because the mourners went about the
   streets. Joy drank no more from her crystal cup, for the golden bowl
   was broken and the wheel was broken at the cistern, and all the
   daughters of music were brought low. How often have the unseen arrows
   of Death afflicted our household, and struck at our feet those whom we
   least could spare? The green have been taken as well as the ripe--death
   has cut down the father's hope and the mother's joy, and, worse than
   this--he has pitilessly rent away from the house its strongest pillar
   and torn out of the wall the corner stone. Death has no heart of
   compassion. His flinty heart feels for none. He spares neither young
   nor old. Tears cannot keep our friends for us, nor can our sighs and
   prayers reanimate their dust. He is an enemy, indeed, and the very
   thought of his cruel frauds upon our love makes us weep.

   He is an enemy to us in that he has taken away from us One who is
   dearer to us than all others. Death has even made a prey of Him who is
   immortality and life! On yonder Cross behold death's most dreadful
   work! Could it not spare Him? Were there not enough of us? Why should
   it smite our David who was worth ten thousand of us? Did it not suffice
   that we, the common men who had been tainted by sin, should fall by a
   doom that was justly due to our sin--but must the virgin-born, in whom
   there was no sin--the immaculate Savior--must He die? Yes, Death's
   vengeance was not satisfied till out of his quiver had been drawn the
   fatal arrow which should pierce the heart of the Son of God. Behold He
   dies!

   Those eyes that wept over Jerusalem are glazed in death's deepest
   darkness. Those hands that scattered blessings hang as inanimate clay
   by that bloodstained but lifeless side. The body must be wrapped in
   spices and fine linen and laid within the silent tomb. Weep, Heaven!
   Mourn, earth! Your King is dead! The Prince of Life and Glory is a
   prisoner in the tomb! Death, all-conquering tyrant, you are an enemy,
   indeed, for you have slain and led our dearest One into your gloomy
   cell!

   We may more fully perceive Death's enmity in our own persons. He is an
   enemy to us because very soon he will bear us away from all our prized
   possessions. "These things," said one, as he walked through fine
   gardens and looked upon lawns, and parks, and mansions--"these things
   make it hard to die." To leave the fair goods and gains of earth, and
   to return into the womb of mother earth as naked as first we came forth
   from it--to have the crown taken from the head, and the ermine from the
   shoulder, and to be brought down to the same level as the poorest
   beggar that slept upon a dunghill is no small thing.

   Dives must be unwrapped of his scarlet, and if he shall find a tomb he
   shall be no more honored than Lazarus though Lazarus should die
   unburied. Death is an enemy to man, because though he may store up his
   goods and build his barns and make them greater, yet it is Death who
   said, "You fool, this night shall your soul be required of you." Death
   makes wealth a dream! It turns misers' gain to loss, and laughs a
   hoarse laugh at toiling slaves who load themselves with yellow dust.
   When the rich man has made his fortune he wins six foot of earth and
   nothing more, and what less has he who died a pauper?

   Death is an enemy to Christians, too, because it carries them away from
   choice society. We have often said--

   "My willing soul would stay In such a frame as this."

   We love the Saints. The people of God are our company, and with our
   Brethren we walk to His house, who are our familiar companions, and
   alas, we are to be taken away from them! Nor is this all--we are to be
   parted from those who are nearer still--the wife of our bosom and the
   children of our care. Yes, we must bid farewell to every loved one, and
   go our way to the land from which no traveler returns, banished from
   the militant host of God and from the happy homes of men.

   Death is an enemy because it breaks up all our enjoyments. No cheerful
   peals of Sunday bells again for us. No going up to the much-loved
   sanctuary where the holy hymn has often borne us aloft as on eagle's
   wings. No more listening to the teachings of the Christian ministry
   where Boanerges has awakened us and Barnabas has consoled us until the
   desert of our life has blossomed like a rose. No mingling in communion
   around the Master's table. No more drinking of the cup and eating of
   the bread which symbolizes the Master's sufferings. At Death's door we
   bid farewell to all Sunday enjoyment and sanctuary joys. Oh you enemy,
   you do compel us to give a long, a last farewell to all our
   employments!

   The earnest and successful minister must leave the flock, perhaps to be
   scattered or torn by grievous wolves. Just when it seemed as if his
   life were most necessary, the leader falls, and like a band of freshly
   enlisted young recruits who lose the warrior whose skill had led them
   on to victory, they are scattered when he seemed necessary to make them
   one, and lead them on to conquest. He who was training up his children
   in God's fear sleeps in the grave when the children need him most, and
   he who spoke for Christ, or who was a pillar in the House of God, who
   served his day and generation--he, too, must fall asleep--no more to
   feed the hungry, or to clothe the naked, or to teach the ignorant, or
   comfort the feeble-minded.

   He is gone from the vineyard of the Church that needed him to trim the
   vines, and from the House of God which needed him as a wise master
   builder to edify it to perfection. Who but an enemy could have taken
   him away at such a moment and from such engagements? He is gone, too,
   dear Friends, from all the success of life--and herein has Death been
   his bitter enemy. He is gone from hearing the cries of penitent
   sinners--the true success of God's ministers. Gone from leading
   pilgrims to the Cross and hearing their songs of joy. Great-Heart has
   led many a caravan of pilgrims to the Celestial City, but now he,
   himself, must cross the Jordan! It little avails him that he has fought
   with Giant Despair and brought him to his knees.

   It matters little that he slew old Giant Grim who would have forced
   Christiana and the children to go back. Hero as he has been, the floods
   must still roll over his head! Of that black and bitter stream he, too,
   must drink, and that, too, very probably when God had honored him most,
   and favored him with the prospect of yet greater success. So, Brothers
   and Sisters, it may be with you. When you are most diligent in
   business, most fervent in spirit, and serving the Lord with the
   greatest joy--when your sheaves are heavy and you are shouting the
   Harvest Home it may be, then, that this unwelcome enemy will hasten you
   from the field of your triumph to leave to others the work you loved so
   well.

   Nor is this all. This enemy is peculiarly so to us, because we are
   accustomed to surround the thought of his coming with many pains, with
   many infirmities, and above all, since the decay, corruption, and utter
   dissolution of the body is in itself a most terrible thing, we are
   alarmed at the prospect of it. The pains and groans and dying strife
   drive us back from the grave's brink, and make us long to linger in our
   prison and our clay. We fear to pass through the gate of iron because
   of the grim porters of Pain and Sickness who sit before the gate.
   Certainly to some it is hard work to die!

   While life is still vigorous it will not yield its dominion without a
   struggle. In other cases where old age has gradually smoothed the
   pathway we have known many of our Brothers and Sisters who sleep
   themselves into a better land--and none could tell when they passed the
   mysterious line which divides the realm of life from the domain of
   death. It is not always that Death is escorted by bodily griefs, but so
   often does he come with clouds and darkness round about him that men at
   the first glance conclude from his hostile array that he is no friend!

   He is an enemy, no, the enemy, the very worst enemy that our fears
   could conjure up, for we could fight with Satan and overcome him, but
   who can overcome Death? We can master sin through the precious blood of
   Jesus, and can be more than a conqueror over all our fears--but we must
   bow before the iron specter of this grim tyrant. To the dust we must
   descend, and midst the tombs we all must sleep (unless, indeed, unless
   the Lord should speedily come), for it is appointed unto men once to
   die.

   II. Having said enough upon this topic we shall now take away the dish
   of bitter herbs, and bring forth a little salt while we speak upon the
   second point--though death is an enemy, IT IS THE LAST ENEMY. I say
   salt, because it is not altogether sweet. There is a pungency as well
   as a savor, here. It is the last enemy--what if I say it is the dreaded
   reserve of the army of Hell? When Satan shall have brought up every
   other adversary, and all these shall have been overcome through the
   blood of the Lamb, then the last, the bodyguard of Hell, under the
   command of the King of Terrors, the strongest, the fiercest, the most
   terrible of foes, shall assail us!

   It has been the custom of some great commanders to keep a body of
   picked men in reserve to make the final assault. Just when battalion
   after battalion have been swept away, and the main army reels. Just
   when the victory is almost in the enemy's hands, the all but defeated
   commander pours his mightiest legions upon the foe, uncovers all his
   batteries and makes one terrible and final charge with the old guard
   that never has been beaten, and never can surrender, and then, perhaps
   at the last moment, he snatches triumph from between the enemy's teeth!

   Ah, Christian, the last charge may be the worst you have ever known.
   You may find in your last moments that you will have need of all your
   strength, and more--you will be constrained to cry to the Strong for
   strength--you will have to plead for heavenly reinforcements to succor
   you in that last article! Let no man conclude himself at the close of
   the war till he is within the pearly gates, for, if there is but
   another five minutes to live, Satan will, if possible, avail himself of
   it. The enemy may come in like a flood precisely at that flattering
   moment when you hoped to dwell in the land Beulah, and to be lulled to
   rest by soft strains from the celestial choirs.

   It is not always so, it is not often so, for, "at eventide there shall
   be light" is usually the experience of the Christian. But it is
   sometimes so. It has been notably so with those whose previous life has
   been very peaceful--a calm day has ended with a stormy evening--and a
   bright sun has set amid dark clouds. Some of those whose candle never
   went out before have been put to bed in the dark. The soldiers of the
   Cross have been pursued by the foe up to the city walls, as if the Lord
   had said to His soldier, "There are more laurels yet to win. Behold I
   give you another opportunity of glorifying My name among My militant
   people."

   Brethren, if Death is the last enemy I do not think we have to fight
   with him now. We have other enemies who claim our valor and our
   watchfulness today. We need not be taken up with devising plans of
   present defense against an enemy that does not yet assail us. The
   present business of life, the present service of God and of His cause
   are our main concern, and in attending to these we shall, as
   Christians, be found best prepared to die. To live well is the way to
   die well! Death is not our first foe but the last! Let us then fight
   our adversaries in order and overcome them each in its turn, hoping
   that He who has been with us even until now will be with us until the
   end.

   Notice, dear Friends--for here lies the savor of the thought--it is the
   LAST enemy. Picture in your mind's eye our brave soldiers at the battle
   of Waterloo. For many weary hours they had been face to face with the
   foe. The fight had lasted so long and been so frequently renewed that
   they seemed to have encountered successive armies, and to have fought a
   dozen battles. Charge after charge had they borne like walls of stone.
   Imagine, then, that the commander is able to announce that they have
   only to endure one more onslaught of the foe. How cheerfully do the
   ranks close! How gallantly are the squares formed! How firmly their
   feet are planted!

   "Now," they say, "let us stand like a wall of rock! Let no man shrink
   for a moment, for it is the last the enemy can do. He will do his
   worst, but soon he will be able to do no more but sound to boot and
   saddle and leave the field to us." The last enemy! Soldiers of Christ,
   do not the words animate you? Courage, Christian, courage! The tide
   must turn after this--it is the highest wave that now dashes over
   you--courage, Man, the night must close. You have come to its darkest
   hour, the day star already dawns!

   Now that you are dying you begin to live. The last enemy conquered!
   Does it not bring tears to your eyes to think of bearing your last
   temptation? We little care who the foe may be if he is but conquered
   and is but the last, for have we not been perplexed with a succession
   of enemies? We have only conquered one foe to find another waiting for
   us. Our path has been, up to now, from temptation to temptation, from
   trial to trial, from tribulation to tribulation. We are growing weary,
   we cannot forever bear wave upon wave, grief upon grief, and temptation
   upon temptation. Like the warrior of old, our arm grows weary, but our
   hand (glory be to Divine Grace!) cleaves to our sword! We are faint,
   yet pursuing!

   And what good news when we shall hear that the present enemy is the
   last! Though it is Death, we will rejoice! O Christian, there will be
   no more poverty to tempt you to murmur, no more losses and crosses to
   cast your spirit down, no more inbred sins to mar your devotion and to
   spoil the glory of your faith! There will be no outward temptation, no
   sinners with their trifling talk to vex your ears, no blasphemies to
   torment your soul, no more aches and pains of body, no more tortures
   and troubles of spirit!

   The Dog of Hell will be silenced forever! There will be no more
   Canaanites to drive out of the land! The race of Amalek shall be
   utterly destroyed. And where will you be? In the land that flows with
   milk and honey! In the home of peace and the abode of rapture--

   "Far from a world of grief and sin, With God, eternally shut in."

   Well may you welcome Death! Let him come in his chariot of fire--he
   bears you to Elijah's God! Let him lay hold of the shield and buckler
   and frown upon you like a king of fierce speech and terrible
   countenance--he carries you not into captivity, but delivers you out of
   bondage!

   At his coming your sky may be darkened, the thunders may roll, and the
   solid pillars of your house may be shaken, but it is the last
   commotion, and is therefore the token of everlasting rest! Having
   overcome death, peace is proclaimed, the sword is sheathed, the banners
   furled, and you are forever more than a conqueror through Him that
   loved you!

   III. Having come so far, we may now proceed another step. Death is an
   enemy, the last enemy--HE IS AN ENEMY TO BE DESTROYED. Here I take away
   the salt and bring the milk and honey, for surely here is much of
   exquisite sweetness and of true spiritual food to the child of God.
   Death is the last enemy to be destroyed. The destruction of Death will
   be perfectly achieved at the Resurrection, for then Death's castle, the
   tomb, will be demolished and not so much as one stone left upon
   another.

   All Death's captives must go free! Not a bone of the Saints shall be
   kept as a trophy by the arch foe. Not so much as a particle of their
   dust shall he be able to show as a spoil which he has been able to
   preserve. He must disgorge the whole that he has fed upon. He must pay
   back all that he has stolen. The prey shall be taken from the mighty,
   and the lawful captive shall be delivered. From the land and from the
   sea, those that were lately dead, and those that centuries ago had
   dissolved into dust shall rise. The quickening trumpet shall achieve a
   work as great as the creation!

   The voice of God which said, "Let there be light" and there was light,
   shall say, "Let there be life," and there shall be life. And, as in the
   valley of vision--bone shall come to bone, and flesh shall come upon
   them, and life shall come into them--and they shall live! The same
   bodies shall arise, the same for identity, but not the same for
   quality! The same, but oh, how changed! They were the shriveled seed
   when Death sowed them in the earth--they shall be the fully developed
   flower when Resurrection's springtime shall bid them blossom from the
   dust! They were battered and time-worn when he dragged them to his
   den--they shall come forth with the dew of their youth upon them when
   Christ shall give them life. Oh the sweet gains of death!

   "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption." Oh the
   interest which we shall win from that arch usurer who thought to claim
   both principal and interest! "It is sown in weakness, it is raised in
   power." It is sown a natural body, it is raised a heavenly and
   spiritual body. O Death, you are no gainer by us! But we shall be
   mighty gainers by you! And though this poor body shall become worms'
   meat, and decay shall drive its tunnels through and through and through
   this mortal frame and make its solemn way--though back to dust eye and
   arm and hand and brain must mold--yet not lost, nor in any degree
   injured, shall the whole fabric be! It will be as if it were filtered,
   purified by the grave, and my fair body shall emerge again!

   The grave shall be to the Believer's body as the bath of spices in
   which Esther bathed herself to make herself ready to behold the great
   King. Corruption, earth, and worms do but refine this flesh and make it
   pure according to God's will, until we shall put it on afresh at His
   bidding. We throw aside a workday dress, all torn, and crumpled and
   dusty! We are glad to put it off, glad that evening time has come, and
   that it is time to undress. But when we awake we shall find, instead of
   that worn-out vesture, a noble change of raiment! The same dress will
   be there, but marvelously changed--the great Fuller shall have
   exercised His art upon it, and made it like the array which Moses and
   Elijah wore on Tabor!

   How goodly will our royal robes be! How dressed with pearls, how stiff
   with threads of gold, and studs of silver! How fitted for God's priests
   and kings! How meet for those who shall enter the pearly gates and
   tread the golden streets of the heavenly Jerusalem! How meet for those
   that shall walk in the golden light of the city that has foundations,
   whose Maker and Builder is God! Death is thus to be destroyed by the
   resurrection of the body when our Lord shall descend from Heaven with a
   shout. A resurrection which shall prove to assembled worlds that to
   those who are in Christ Jesus, "to die is gain."

   But, dear Friends, although this is a great Truth of God with regard to
   the future, I desire to conduct your minds for a few minutes over the
   road by which Christ has, in effect, virtually destroyed Death already.
   In the first place, He has taken away the shame of death. It was once a
   shameful thing to die. A man might hold his head low in the presence of
   angels who could not die, for he might remember with shame that he is
   the brother of the worm and corruption is his sister. But now we can
   talk of death in the presence of archangels and not be ashamed, for
   Jesus died. It is from now on no degradation for man to die, to sleep
   in the bed where Christ reposed. It is an honor! And angels may almost
   regret that they have not the ability in this respect to be made like
   unto the angels' Lord.

   Oh, Christian, you need not speak of death with bated breath, but
   rather rejoice that you have fellowship with Jesus in His tomb, and
   shall have fellowship with Him as one of the children of the
   Resurrection! Christ has, moreover, taken away the sting of death. The
   sting of death lay in this--that we had sinned and were summoned to
   appear before the God whom we had offended. This is the sting of death
   to you, unconverted ones--not that you are dying, but that after death
   is the judgment--and that you must stand before the Judge of the quick
   and the dead to receive a sentence for the sins which you have
   committed in your body against Him.

   This makes it death to die. This hangs the dying bed with black
   curtains, and puts out the light of the sick chamber. The second death
   makes death to be death, indeed, but--

   "If sin is pardoned I'm secure, Death has no sting beside. The law gave
   sin its damning po wer, But Christ, my Ransom, died."

   Christmas Evans represents the monster Death as being so intent to
   destroy our Lord that it drove the dart in its tail right through the
   Savior till it stuck in the Cross on the other side--and the monster
   has never been able to draw it out again! Christ on the Cross took away
   the sting of Death, so that he has no further power to hurt the
   Christian. "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the
   Law, but thanks be unto God which gives us the victory through our Lord
   Jesus Christ."

   Our Divine Lord has taken away from sin its slavery. The bondage of
   death arises from man's fearing to die. Death has fitted fetters upon
   many a man's wrists, and fixed an iron collar on his neck, and driven
   him with his whip about the world--but Jesus has taken away the yoke of
   Death from the necks of His disciples. The Christian is not afraid to
   die. He looks forward to it, sometimes, with equanimity, and frequently
   even with expectation! Hundreds of Saints have been able to speak of
   dying as though it were but everyday work, and there have been hundreds
   more who have looked forward to their last day with as much delight as
   the bride hopes for her wedding. Was not our song, which we sung just
   now, a truthful one?--

   "Sweet truth to me! I shall arise, And with these eyes My Savior see."

   It was to some of us, at any rate, and we are still desirous to sing
   it, longing for that time when our death shall come and we shall enter
   into the joy of our Lord!

   Moreover, Christ has abolished Death by removing its greatest sorrows.
   I told you that Death snatched us away from the society of those we
   loved on earth. It is true, but it introduces us into nobler society by
   far. We leave the imperfect Church on earth, but we claim membership
   with the perfect Church in Heaven. The Church militant must know us no
   more, but of the Church triumphant we shall be happy members! We may
   not see time-honored men on earth who now serve Christ in the ministry,
   but we shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the noble army of martyrs,
   the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, and the glorious company of the
   Apostles! We shall be no losers, certainly, in the matter of society,
   but great gainers when we are introduced to the general assembly and
   the Church of the First-Born, whose names are written in Heaven!

   I said that we should be taken away from enjoyments. I spoke of Sunday
   bells that would ring no longer, of communion tables at which we could
   not sit, and songs of holy mirth in which we could not join--ah, it is
   small loss compared with the gain unspeakable! For we shall hear the
   bells of Heaven ring out an unending Sunday! We shall join the songs
   that never have a pause, and which know no discord! We shall sit at the
   banqueting table where the King Himself is present, where the symbols
   and the signs have vanished because the guests have found the
   Substance! And the King eternal and immortal will be visibly in their
   presence!

   Beloved, we leave the desert to lie down in green pastures. We leave
   the scanty rills to bathe in the bottomless river of joy. We leave the
   wells of Elim for the land which flows with milk and honey. Did I speak
   of leaving possessions? What are the possessions? Moth-eaten garments,
   cankered gold and silver, things that rust consumes and that thieves
   destroy! But we go to the land where nothing corrupts or decays, where
   flowers fade not, and riches take not to themselves wings to fly away.
   Loss? Let the word be banished! Death gives us infinitely more than he
   takes away.

   I spoke of Death as an enemy because he took us from sacred
   employments. It is so, but does he not usher us into far nobler
   employments? To stand before that Throne of God upon the sea of glass
   mingled with fire! To bow within the Presence chamber of the King of
   kings, gazing into the glory that excels! And to see the King in His
   beauty--the Man that once was slain wearing many crowns and arrayed in
   the vesture of His glory--His wounds like sparkling jewels still
   visible above. Oh to cast our crowns at His feet! To lie there and
   shrink into nothing before the Eternal All! To fly into Jesus' bosom!
   To behold the beauty of His love and to taste the kisses of His mouth!
   To be in Paradise, swallowed up in unutterable joy because taken into
   the closest, fullest, nearest communion with Himself! Would not your
   soul burst from the body even now to obtain this rapture? Cannot you
   say--

   "I'd part with all the joys of sense To gaze upon Your throne, Pleasure
   springs fresh forever there, Unspeakable, unknown"?

   If death does but give us a sight of Jesus and makes it our employment
   forever to sing His praise, and forever to learn His Character--forever
   more lie in His bosom--then let him come when he wills--we will
   scarcely call him enemy again! An enemy destroyed in this case becomes
   a friend. The sting is taken away from you, you hornet, and you become
   a bee to gather sweet honey for us! The lion is slain, and like Samson
   we go forth to gather handfuls of sweetness. I shall not tarry longer,
   though greatly tempted, except to say this one thing more--the fear of
   death which arises from the prospect of pain and grief is also taken
   away by Christ when He reminds us that He will be with us in our last
   moments. He will make the dying bed feel soft, and in the midst of the
   river He will say, "Fear not, I am with you." So that in all respects
   death is to be destroyed.

   IV. Time warns us to clear the tables and send home the guests with the
   fourth consideration, THAT DEATH IS THE LAST ENEMY THAT WILL BE
   DESTROYED. Do not, therefore, give yourself so much concern if you do
   not feel death to be destroyed in you at present. Supposing that it
   does cause you pain and fear, remember that dying Grace would be of no
   value to you in living moments. Expect that if your faith is not faith
   enough to die with, yet if it is faith as a grain of mustard seed it
   will grow--and grow it will, into a more developed state, enabling you
   to die triumphantly when dying time comes.

   When I looked at the Book of Martyrs and noticed the fearful pictures
   of Saints in their dying agonies, I asked myself, "Could I bear all
   that for Christ?" and I was compelled to say, "No, I know I could not
   as I am now." But suppose I were called to martyrdom, could I bear it?
   And I thought I could say without presumption I could, for Christ would
   give me Divine Grace when dying Grace was needed. Now Death is to be
   destroyed, but not till the last. You have many enemies who are not
   destroyed, and you have inbred sins not slain. Look well to them. Until
   they are all gone you must not expect Death to be destroyed, for he is
   the last to die.

   So then, Friend, let me whisper in your ear--expect, still, to lose
   your dear ones--for Death is not destroyed. Look not upon any of your
   friends as though they would be with you tomorrow, for Death is not
   destroyed yet. See the word "mortal" written upon all our brows. The
   most unlikely ones die first. When I heard during this week of several
   cases of dear friends who have gone to their reward, I could have
   sooner believed it had been others, but God has been pleased to take
   from us and from our congregation many whom we supposed to be what are
   called good lives, and they were good lives in the best sense, and that
   is why the Master took them!

   They were ripe and He took them Home. But we could not see that. Now
   remember that all your friends--your wife, your husband, your child,
   your kinsfolk--are all mortal. That makes you sad. Well, it may prevent
   your being more sad when they are taken away. Hold them with a loose
   hand. Do not count that to be freehold which you have only received as
   a leasehold. Do not call that yours which is only lent you, for if you
   get a thing lent you and it is asked for back, you give it back freely.
   But if you entertain the notion that it was given you, you do not like
   to yield it up. Now, remember, the enemy is not destroyed and that he
   will still make inroads into our family circle.

   And then remember that you, too, must die. Bring yourself frequently
   face to face with this Truth of God--that you must die. Do not forget
   it, Christian Friend! No man knows whether his faith is good for
   anything or not if he does not frequently try that faith by bringing
   himself right to the edge of the grave. Picture yourself dying.
   Conceive yourself breathing out your last breath and see whether, then,
   you can look at Death without quaking--whether you can feel, "Yes, I
   have rested upon Jesus. I am saved. I will go through Death's
   tremendous vale with His Presence as my stay, fearing no evil."

   If you have no good hope, may God give you Divine Grace at this moment
   to fly to Jesus and to trust in Him. And when you have trusted in Him,
   then, and only then, will Death be to you a destroyed enemy. May God
   grant His blessing for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                     The Captive Savior Freeing His People

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 25, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT
   THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Jesus answered, 'I have told you that I am He. If therefore you seek
   Me, let these go their way,' that the saying might be fulfilled, which
   He spoke, 'Of them whom You gave Me have I lost none.'" John 18:8,9.

   THE whole story of our Lord's passion is exceedingly rich in meaning.
   One is tempted to linger over every separate sentence of the narratives
   given by the Evangelists. It is possible to preach several series of
   sermons upon the whole story, and there is not a single incident,
   though it may seem to be but accidental, which might not furnish a
   wealth of holy thought to the careful student.

   In looking through this chapter one was greatly tempted to speak awhile
   upon the Master's selecting the place of His prayer as the place of His
   agony and betrayal--the holy prudence and forethought by which He had,
   as it were, cast up His entrenchments and made His defenses upon the
   very spot where He knew He should meet the shock of the evening's first
   onslaught. This is a lesson to us, Christians, not to venture out into
   the day's battle without girding on our armor, nor make a voyage upon
   the sea of life without having seen to it that the vessel is well
   supplied against every possible danger which may be encountered upon
   the storm-tossed sea. Jesus prays before He fights, and so must we if
   we would overcome.

   One is tempted, also, to dwell upon that remarkable expression, "Judas,
   also, which betrayed Him, knew the place," to show the futility of
   knowledge apart from sincerity. Oh, the injuriousness of knowledge, if
   it is not attended with corresponding Grace! Had the traitor not known
   he could not have betrayed, and had he not been an intimate friend, he
   could not have been so base a wretch! Strange, but strangely true is
   it, that the ability to become the child of perdition by betraying his
   Master was found in the fact of his having been the near acquaintance
   of the Savior. He could never have been so sevenfold an inheritor of
   Hell if he had not been so largely a receiver of the privilege of
   companionship with Christ.

   Direful truth, that to be educated to take the highest degree in Hell
   it is almost necessary to enter hypocritically into the school of
   Christ. Terrible reflection, which should well check any of us who make
   high professions without a corresponding weight of sincerity. But as
   time does not allow us, like the bee, to gather honey from every
   flower, we shall dwell upon the text. In this passage there is much
   instruction and we shall endeavor to draw it forth. And then we shall
   take the liberty to spiritualize it, to set the words in another sense
   in order that we may still be promoting our great object of setting
   forth our Lord Jesus Christ.

   I. When we observe the words of the text, we notice upon the very
   surface a sure proof of THE WILLINGNESS OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST TO
   GIVE HIMSELF TO SUFFER FOR OUR SINS. The voluntary character of
   Christ's suffering makes it beam with a matchless splendor of love! He
   needed not to have died. If it had been His good pleasure He might have
   tarried gloriously among the songs of angels. He came not to earth to
   win a crown because He had none, for all honor and glory are His by
   right.

   It was not to earn a dominion, or because He was not Lord of
   principalities and powers, that He descended from the skies: "Who,
   though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we, through
   His poverty, might be made rich." It was a disinterested mission upon
   which the Redeemer came to the abodes of sinful men. He had nothing to
   gain-- rather He had everything to lose--and yet let me say to correct
   myself, by that losing He did gain, for as our Mediator, He is clothed
   with a special glory of unrivalled Grace, unequalled by any other
   manifestation of the Divine perfections.

   The proofs that the Master went voluntarily to His death are very
   abundant. He rose from supper when He knew that Judas had gone out to
   betray Him, but He did not seek a hiding place in the corners of
   Jerusalem, or retire to the calm retreat of Bethany. If He had chosen
   to parry His betrayer's thrust that night and to wait until the day,
   the fickle multitude would have gathered around Him and protected Him
   from His foes, for they would soon have been won to His side if He
   would have consented to become their king.

   Instead of retreating, even for a moment, Jesus, attended by His
   disciples, boldly advanced to the spot where Judas had planned to
   betray Him. He went as calmly as though He had made an appointment to
   meet a friend there, and would not be late when he arrived. He entered
   upon His terrible sufferings with His whole heart, with the full
   concurrence of His whole being having a baptism to be baptized with,
   and being straitened until it was accomplished. What true courage is in
   those words, "Arise, let us go from this place," when He knew that He
   was going to the Cross! When the band came to take Him, it appears that
   they did not know Him. "I am He." He said to them twice, "Whom are you
   seeking?"

   He had to reveal himself, or the lanterns and the torches would not
   have revealed him. He was not, after all, taken by Judas' kiss--the
   kiss was given--but in the confusion they may have missed the token.
   Jesus had to ask, "Whom are you seeking?" And He had to twice announce
   Himself plainly with the words, "I am He." He yielded Himself to His
   bloodthirsty foes and went willingly with His tormentors! It is very
   clear that He went willingly, for since a single word made the captors
   fall to the ground, what could He not have done?

   Another word and they would have descended into the tomb! Another, and
   they would have been hurled into Hell! He put forth just that little
   finger of His potency in order to let them feel what He could have done
   if He had chosen to lay bare the arm of His strength and to utter but
   one word of wrath against them. It is very sure that he went willingly,
   for how could He have gone at all if not with His own consent? There
   was no power on earth that could possibly have bound the Lord Jesus,
   had He been unwilling. He who said, "Let these go their way," and by
   that word secured the safety of all His disciples, it is certain could
   have said the same of Himself and so have gone His way where He would.

   Men might as well speak of loading the sun with chains, or holding the
   lightning flash in bondage, or like the foolish king of old, fettering
   the wild uproarious sea as to suppose that they could constrain the
   Lord of Life and Glory, and lead Him a captive against His will! He was
   led, and led bound, too, but He could have snapped those bonds as
   Samson did the Philistines' bonds of old. There were other cords that
   bound Him--invisible to carnal sense--the bonds of Covenant
   engagements, the bonds of His own oath and promise, the bonds of His
   love to you and to me, my Brothers and Sisters. There were the mighty
   bonds of His marriage union to our souls which constrained Him, without
   a word, to yield Himself as a lamb to the slaughter.

   The willingness of Jesus! Let us see it clearly, and let us reverently
   adore Him for it. Blessed Master! You go of Yourself to die for us! No
   compulsion but that of Your own heart! Nothing brought You to the tomb
   but Your almighty love to us! I do not intend to dwell upon this
   thought, but having brought it before you, the practical use of it is
   just this--Let us take care that our service of Christ shall ever be
   most manifestly a cheerful and a willing one. Let us never come, for
   instance, up to the place of worship unwillingly, merely because of
   custom, or because it is the right thing to do--which we would gladly
   avoid doing if we dare. Let us never contribute of our substance to the
   Master's cause with a grudging hand, as though a tax collector were
   wringing from us what we could not afford.

   Let us never enter upon Christian exercises as a slave would enter upon
   his labor, hearing the crack of the whip behind him. But let love put
   wings to our feet and inspire our souls with a sacred alacrity, that as
   the seraphs fly upon the high behests of Heaven, we may run upon our
   Savior's commands with as much swiftness as mortals can command. Let
   our duty be our delight! Let the service of Christ be a kingdom to us!
   Let us count it to be our highest gain to suffer loss for Him, and our
   greatest ease to be fully immersed in abundant labors for His sake. His
   willing sacrifice ought to ensure our willing sacrifice. The Savior
   bleeds freely like the camphor tree that needs no pressure--let us as
   freely, from our very hearts, pour forth our love and all the kindred
   graces and deeds of virtue.

   II. Turning from this thought, I beg you, secondly, to notice OUR
   LORD'S CARE FOR HIS PEOPLE IN THE

   HOURS OF HIS GREATEST DISTURBANCE OF MIND. "If you seek Me, let these
   go their way." That word was intended, in the first place, to be a
   preservation for His immediate attendants. It is singular that the Jews
   did not surround that little handful of disciples, put them in prison,
   and then execute them in due season. If they had done so, where would
   have been the Christian church?

   If they, the first nucleus of Christianity had been destroyed, as it
   seems likely they could have been, where would have been the Church of
   after ages? But those words, "Let these go their way," very efficiently
   protected all the weak and trembling fugitives. Why did not the
   soldiers capture John? He seems to have gone in and out of the palace
   without even a single word of challenge. Why did they not seize Peter?
   They were searching for witnesses, why did they not examine Peter under
   torture, as was the Roman custom, in order to have extorted from him
   some railing accusation against his Lord whom he so readily denied?

   Where were the others? Timid, trembling folk, they had fled like harts
   and roes when they first heard the baying of the dogs of
   persecution--why were they not hunted up? The Jews did not lack for
   will, for afterwards they were gratified when James was killed with the
   sword, and pleased when Peter was laid in prison--why were they allowed
   to go unharmed? Was it not because the Master had need of them? The
   Holy Spirit had not yet been poured out upon them, and they were not
   yet fit to be martyrs. They were like green wood that would not burn!
   They were as yet unbroken to the sacred yoke of suffering. They had not
   been endowed with that irresistible spiritual strength which made them
   able to bear tribulation with rejoicing, and therefore that good
   Shepherd, who tempers the wind to shorn lambs, tempered the wind to
   these young beginners.

   Those words, "If you therefore seek Me, let these go their way," were
   like coats of mail to them, or those fabled, invisible garments which
   concealed their wearers from their enemies. Under the more than bronze
   shield of their Lord's words, the disciples walked securely in the
   midst of the boisterous mob! We find John and others of the disciples
   even standing at the foot of the Cross while those who gnashed their
   teeth at Christ and laughed at Him, and revealed their savage malice in
   a thousand ways, did not touch so much as a hair of their heads, or, as
   far as we know, utter one jest against them. The words of Jesus proved
   to be right royal words--they were Divine words--and men were
   constrained to obey them.

   The Lord had said, "Touch not Mine Anointed, and do My Prophets no
   harm," and therefore, for the time, His disciples were safe. It strikes
   me that the expression was not only a guard for the disciples for the
   time, but, as no Scripture is of private interpretation, I believe that
   such a royal passport has been given to all Christ's people in the way
   of Providence. Fear not, you servant of Christ, you are immortal till
   your work is done! When you are fit to suffer, and if needs be, even to
   die, Christ will not screen you from so high an honor, but permit you
   to drink of His cup, and to be baptized with His baptism! But until
   your hour is come you may go and return secure from death. Though cruel
   men may desire your ill, and devise mischief against you, you are safe
   enough until the Lord shall be pleased to let loose the lion-- and even
   then you shall suffer no permanent injury.

   It is wonderful, in the lives of some of God's ministers, how
   strikingly they have been preserved from imminent peril. We cannot read
   the life of Calvin without being surprised that he should have been
   permitted to die peaceably in his bed, an honored man, surrounded by
   the town councilors and the great ones of the very city from which he
   had been once expelled! It seems astounding that a poor weak man whose
   body was emaciated with diseases of all kinds, who had no arms to wield
   against the furious hosts of Rome, should yet live in usefulness and
   then die in circumstances of peace and comfort.

   It is no less remarkable that the brave hero of the Cross, Martin
   Luther, should seem as if he had carried a safe conduct pass, which
   permitted him to go anywhere and everywhere. He stood up in the Diet of
   Worms expecting to die, but he came out unscathed! He passed, as it
   were, between the very jaws of death and yet remained unharmed. Though,
   as I have said before, Christ has suffered many of His people to die
   for Him, and they have rejoiced to do so, yet, when He has willed to
   preserve any of His servants who were needed for a special work, as
   Calvin and Luther undoubtedly were, He had a way of taking care of
   them, and saying, "Let these go their way."

   Take, for instance, another illustration, the life of our remarkable
   reformer, John Wickliffe. Many times his life was not worth a week's
   wages, and yet the old enemy of the Saints were robbed of their prey
   and could never touch a bone of him until years after he had been
   buried. When he was brought up for trial before the bishop at St.
   Paul's, it was a very singular circumstance that John of Gaunt should
   stand at his side, fully armed, proudly covering the godly man with the
   prestige of his rank and the arm of his power!

   When Wickliffe was faint with standing, and begged to be allowed to
   sit, the bishop tells him that heretics shall have no seats, but John
   of Gaunt with rough, uncourtly words swears that he shall sit when he
   wills! And when the time comes the good man goes forth through the
   midst of the rabble protected by his friend! I know not that John of
   Gaunt knew the Truth of God, but yet God touched the man's heart to
   protect His servant in the hour of peril. Vultures, when God has willed
   it, have protected doves, and eagles have covered with their wings
   defenseless children whom God would save. When the Lord wills it, if
   all Hell should shoot such a shower of arrows as should put out the
   sun, and if all those arrows were aimed at one poor heart, yet not a
   single shaft would find its mark, but all would be turned aside by an
   invisible but irresistible power from the man whom Jehovah ordained to
   save!

   We understand, then, that Jesus has issued a royal passport for all His
   servants which enables them to live on in the midst of deaths
   innumerable. Mystically understood, the words have a far deeper
   meaning. The true seizure of Christ was not by Romans or by the envious
   Jews, but by our sins. And the true deliverance which Jesus gave to His
   disciples was not so much from Roman weapons as from the penalty of our
   sins. How anxiously do I desire that those here this morning, whose
   sins have been tormenting them, would hear the voice of Jesus, "If
   therefore you seek Me, let these go their way." The Law of God comes
   out to seek us who have violated it. It has many and just demands
   against us, but Jesus, who stood in our place, puts Himself before the
   Law, and He says, "Do you seek Me? Here I am. But when you take Me
   prisoner let these, for whom I stood, go their way."

   So then, Beloved, when the Law met with the Lord Jesus and made Him its
   servant, and constrained Him to bear its penalty, all those for whom
   Christ stood were, by His being bound, absolutely and forever set free!
   Christ's suffering the penalty of the Law was the means of removing His
   people forever from under the legal yoke. Now let me try to apply that
   Truth to your case. A poor soul under distress of mind has gone to the
   priest, and the priest says, "If you would be pardoned do penance."
   While the poor soul is flogging his back and laying on the stripes most
   earnestly I think I hear the Savior saying to the whole tribe of
   priests, "Let these poor souls go their way. My shoulders have borne
   all they ought to have borne. My heart has suffered all the griefs that
   they were condemned to know. The chastisement of their peace was upon
   Me, and by My stripes they are healed. Let these go!"

   Put away your whip! Cease from your bodily tortures, they are of no
   service! The Law has taken the Redeemer, it does not want you. You need
   not suffer, Christ has suffered and all your sufferings will now be
   useless and in vain! Christ has paid the debt, no need for you to
   attempt it again. Another poor trembler has been sitting under a legal
   ministry, and he has been told that if he would be saved he must keep
   the Commandments. He has, therefore, endeavored to forego this sin and
   the other, and as far as possible to be perfect in holiness. But he has
   made no headway. His soul is as much in bondage as ever, unsaved with
   all his exertions, destitute, still, of true peace notwithstanding all
   his good works.

   This morning my Master cries to the preacher who talks after this
   fashion, "Let these poor bondaged ones go their way. Do not preach to
   them salvation by their own doing! Do not tell them that they are to
   earn admittance to Heaven. I have worked out and finished their
   redemption! Their salvation is complete in ME! There is nothing for
   sinners to do to win forgiveness. All they have to do is to receive
   what I have done for them! All the righteousness they need to recommend
   them before God is My righteousness--which requires not that theirs be
   added to it--for why should their rags be joined to my cloth of gold?
   All the merit a sinner can plead is the merit of My passion. Why should
   they seek after merit through their repentance and their good works?
   Why should such stagnant water be poured into the midst of the wine of
   My merit?"

   Away with your fancied good works! Away with your boasts, your
   religions doings, your weeping, and your prayers--for if they are used
   as a ground of confidence instead of the work of Jesus Christ, they are
   things of nothing-- mere rottenness and dung to be cast upon the
   dunghill! Since Jesus was accepted and punished by the Law, sinners
   believing in Him are free from the Law's exactions and may go their
   way!

   Perhaps there are some here in whose hearts the Law of God is making
   terrible confusion. You feel that you have broken the Law and that you
   cannot keep it. And now the Law is flogging you! It has tied you up as
   they tie up soldiers in the army to the stocks and it has been laying
   on the great cat-o'-ten-tails to your back--the Ten Commandments of the
   Law--till you are smarting, smarting all over! Your whole conscience is
   troubled. Now the Lord Jesus Christ says to the Law, "Put up, put up
   that whip! Do not smite the sinner any more! Did you not smite Me, why
   should you vex him?"

   Sinner, the only way in which you can escape from the Law's whip is
   this--hasten to Jesus Christ. You must flee to Christ! You must trust
   in Jesus, and if you shall trust in Jesus He will cast His robe over
   you! He will lift up the broad shield of His merit and protect you from
   the shafts of the foe, so that you can say to the Law, "I am not under
   the curse of the Law now, for I have fulfilled it in the Person of my
   Surety, and I have suffered its penalty in the Person of my Savior--

   "The terrors of Law and of God With me can ha ve nothing to do! My
   Savior's obedience and blood Hide all my transgressions from view."

   Jesus Christ, then, as He stands before the Law and is bound by the
   Law, and flogged by the Law, and crucified by the Law, and buried by
   the Law, says to you who trust in Him, "Go your way. The Law cannot
   touch you, for it has struck Me instead of you. I was your Substitute,
   and you may go free." Why you all know that this is simple justice! If
   another person shall have paid your debts, you are not afraid of being
   immersed again in those debts, are you? And if you are drafted for the
   army and a substitute has taken your place, you are not afraid of being
   drawn a second time, are you? So the Lord Jesus Christ is the
   Substitute for all His people, and if He was a substitute for you, the
   Law has no further penal claims upon you! Christ has obeyed it. Christ
   has suffered its penalty. You may rejoice in the Law as being, now, to
   you, a gracious rule of life--but it is not to you a yoke of
   bondage--you are not under it as a slave! You are free from its
   dominion! You are not under the Law! You are under Grace!

   What a blessing is this! Further, these words seem to me to bear such a
   meaning as this--that as we are delivered from legal exaction so are we
   also delivered from all penal infliction. I wish that some children of
   God were clearer on this point. When you suffer tribulation, affliction
   and adversity, do not think that God is punishing you for your sins,
   for no child of God can be punished penally for sin. Let me not be
   misunderstood. A man is brought before God, first of all, as a criminal
   before a judge. You and I have stood there. Through Christ's blood and
   righteousness we have been absolved and acquitted as before God the
   Judge, and it is not possible for the Law to lay so much as the weight
   of a feather upon us since we have been perfectly acquitted. In all the
   pains and sufferings which a Christian may endure, there is not so much
   as a single ounce of penal infliction. God cannot punish a man whom He
   has pardoned!

   And that criminal, being pardoned, is then adopted into the family and
   becomes a child. Now, if he shall, as a child, offend against his
   father's rule, he will be chastened for it. Everyone can see the
   distinction between the chastening of a father and the punishment of a
   judge. If your child were to steal, you would not think of punishing
   that child in the light in which the judge would do it, who would
   commit him to imprisonment for having broken the law. No, you chasten
   your child yourself, not so much to avenge the law as for the child's
   good, that he may not do this evil thing again.

   So our heavenly Father chastens His people with the rod of the
   Covenant, but He never punishes them with the sword of vengeance. There
   is a difference between chastening and punishing. Punishing is from a
   judge--Christ has suffered all such punishment--so that no penal
   infliction can fall upon a soul that believes in Him. But we may have
   chastisement which comes to us as the result of a father's love, but
   not as the result of a judge's anger. We have felt such chastisement,
   and have reason to bless God for it. Our Lord Jesus says with regard to
   all legal penalty, "If you seek Me, I have borne it: let these go
   free."

   Once more, this text will have its grandest fulfillment at the last.
   When the destroying angel shall come forth with his sword of fire to
   smite the sinner. When the gulf of Hell shall open and vomit forth its
   floods of flame. When the dread trumpet shall sound and shall make all
   ears to hear the voice of an avenging God, Christ shall stand forth in
   the front of all the blood-bought souls that came to trust under the
   shadow of the wings of His mercy, and He will say to Justice, "You have
   sought Me once, and you have found all you can ask of Me. Then let
   these go their way." And up the glorious steeps of the celestial hills
   the happy throng shall stream, singing as they pass through the gates
   of pearl and tread the pavement of transparent gold, "Unto Him that
   loved us and washed us from our sins in His blood, unto Him be glory
   forever and ever!"

   Then shall the great freeing of the slaves take place because Christ
   was bound! Then shall the deliverance of the captive come, because
   Christ slept in the prison house of the tomb. "If you seek Me, let
   these go their way." I would to God that some here would perceive that
   the way of deliverance is for the Lord Jesus to be bound in their
   stead. Trust in Jesus, and it shall be so.

   III. Thirdly, but very briefly, notice why our Lord exhibited this
   great care for His people. PONDER OVER HIS SAYING concerning them,
   "That the saying might be fulfilled which He spoke, Of them which you
   gave Me I have lost none." Here is much of matter for thought at your
   leisure. Do you know that that text was a prayer? Now here it is made
   into a promise. What? Then is everything that Christ asks for
   guaranteed to His people, so that His prayer is God's promise? It is
   so!

   Notice next, that verbally understood, this expression, which is quoted
   from the seventeenth of John, could only relate to the souls of God's
   people. But here it is taken as though it related to their bodies. From
   which I gather that we are never wrong in understanding promises in the
   largest possible sense. It is, I believe, a rule of law that if a man
   should get a privilege from the king, that privilege is to be
   understood in the widest sense, whereas a punishment, or penalty, is
   always to be understood in the narrowest sense.

   In the olden times, when princes and kings used to grant monopolies, if
   a king had granted a monopoly upon all kinds of foreign fruits, if the
   words had so run, you may rest assured that the person obtaining that
   monopoly would have put everything down as foreign fruit that could
   possibly bear the name--and he would have been justified by the law for
   doing so. Now, when the great King gives a promise, you may encompass
   everything within its range which can possibly come under the promise!
   And we may be sure that the Lord will not run back from His word! God's
   words are never to be taken with a rebate, or discount, but with such
   blessed interest as your faith is able to put to them! The grant of
   eternal life includes such providential protections and provisions as
   shall be necessary on the road to Heaven. The house is secured for the
   sake of the tenant, and the body because of the soul.

   There is also one more remark I cannot help making, namely, that this
   text is not in the form of a promise at all. "Of them which you gave Me
   have I lost none." It relates to the past--but here it is used as a
   reason why none should be lost of the present. From which I gather that
   as Jesus has done in the past so will He act in the future, and that
   all He ever was to His people He will be to them forever more. We may
   look upon every past act of Divine Grace as being a token and guarantee
   of future Grace, and we may gather from all our experience of the
   Lord's goodness in the days that are gone, that He will do yet again
   unto us as He has done, and still more abundantly until we see His face
   in Heaven!

   The gracious words before us read as follows: "Of all them which You
   have given Me I have lost none." Then some are given. There is an elect
   nation. Oh that we may be found in that happy number! Then Jesus keeps
   those who are given! They cannot keep themselves, but He can keep them
   and will. He so well preserves them that not so much as one is lost. I
   have sometimes thought I might imagine such a scene as this at the
   gates of Heaven when the great Shepherd comes to give His charge. "Here
   I am," He says, "and the children which You have given Me." "But are
   they everyone brought safely here?" "Yes," says the great Shepherd, "of
   all whom You have given Me I have lost none."

   "But where is Peter? Did he not deny You to Your face in the hall? Did
   he not three times say, "I know Him not!" "Yes, but I made him go out
   and weep bitterly, and then I washed him in My precious blood, and here
   he is," and Peter sings as sweetly as any! Then, perhaps, the question
   may be asked, "And where is such a one, the least of all the saints?"
   Brother, you feel yourself to be the weakest, the meanest, the most
   useless, but an enquiry will be made for you, and the answer will be,
   "He is here! Of all whom You have given Me I have lost none."

   Oh, happy sheep in the care of such a Shepherd! Oh happy, happy hearts
   that can rely upon such a Keeper! Dear Hearer, is Jesus yours? Are you
   depending upon Him? Say, have you cast yourself upon Him? Then do not
   fear concerning your last days! It must be well at the last, if it is
   well now. If you are now in Christ, He never did cast away any and He
   never will. Oh if you have but come to Him and are now depending on
   Him--

   "His honor is engaged to save The meanest of His sheep! All that His
   heavenly Father gave His hands securely keep."

   He suffered for you and therefore you shall go your way, and the
   Covenant shall be fulfilled. "Of those whom You have given Me I have
   lost none."

   I have thus used the text as briefly as I could. I shall want your
   patience a few minutes while I apply this text in a sort of SPIRITUAL
   SENSE. The first remark in this department of the subject is--many seek
   Jesus but do not know who He is. So that Christ says to them, "Whom do
   you seek?" Some here this morning are seeking rest, but they do not
   know that Jesus is the rest. You feel an aching void in your hearts.
   You are not happy. The theater does not give you the pleasure it once
   did. Somehow life has grown insipid to you. There is a still small
   voice within your soul like the voice of wailing--like Rachel weeping
   for her children and refusing to be comforted.

   You are seeking you know not what. You have begun to read your Bible.
   You are eager to attend upon the preaching of the Gospel but you do not
   know what it is you want. Ah well, it is a good thing to be a seeker.
   Though you cannot tell what it is you need, if you do but desire and
   lift up your voice to God sincerely and earnestly, He will be found of
   you. We now note the fact that those who seek Christ will find Him, but
   they find Him only because He reveals Himself to them. These men sought
   Christ to kill Him, yet He came and said, "I am He."

   There was a woman, if you remember, at the well of Sychar, who sought
   Him for a very different purpose. She said, "I know that Messiah comes,
   which is called Christ. When He is come He will tell us all things."
   And Jesus said, "I that speak unto you am He." Whoever seeks Jesus,
   Jesus will show Himself to them! They came with lanterns and with
   torches, but they did not find Christ with lanterns and with torches.
   And you, too, may come, dear Friend, with a great many of your own
   inventions--a great many fancies and imaginings--but you will not find
   Him. How could you expect to find the sun with a lantern?

   No. Christ must come and reveal Himself to you, and if you seek Him He
   will do so. Only continue to seek Him. Let not past disappointments
   make you leave off seeking. As long as you have breath continue in
   prayer. I charge you before the living God if you have sought in vain,
   do not let Satan make you give up! Ask that Christ would lead you in
   the right way, for if you did but know the right way you need not seek
   long, for He is here now. Jesus can forgive this morning! Before you
   leave that seat you shall have a full assurance of your interest in Him
   if you are led to understand the way of salvation!

   That way is simply to trust Christ! Simply to believe that He can and
   will save you, and to trust yourself with Him. I will never believe
   that He will let a sincere soul go hungering and thirsting after Him,
   and let that soul die without Him! Though He may be pleased for a while
   to let that spirit wander, even in apparent blackness and darkness, yet
   He will at the last lift the veil from His blessed face, and ah, the
   sight of that face will well repay you for all the sighs and cries with
   which you sought Him! To hear Him say, "I have loved you with an
   everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you,"
   will so wake up the music of Heaven within your soul that you will
   think of the months of weariness and the nights of waiting as all too
   little, and more than enough repaid!

   One thing more. When Jesus is found there is always much to be given
   up. "If you seek Me, let these go their way." There are always many
   things that you will have to let go if you have Christ, and this is
   very often the testing point. If a man keeps a public house which he
   opens on Sunday, in which cursing and swearing abounds. If he has
   encouraged all sorts of vice in order to increase his customers, can he
   continue in this and yet have Christ? Impossible! Now that man would
   like to go to Heaven, but if he would, he must let go of his evil
   occupation. Yonder is a woman who has tasted the pleasures of sin. She
   would gladly have a Savior, but if she will have a Savior she must let
   her sins go.

   There is a young man over yonder, proud, vain, giddy. If he would have
   Christ, he must let all these evils go. Our sins must be abandoned or
   we cannot receive a Savior. Christ Jesus will pardon sin, but He will
   never dwell in the same heart with sin. Though you may have been as
   base as base could be, it can all be forgiven you now--but if you
   continue in it-- there is no mercy for you. He that confesses his sin
   and forsakes it shall find mercy--but not the man who with hypocritical
   lip bewails it, and then with vicious heart plunges into it again. "If
   you seek Me, let these go."

   What? Can't you give them up? Silly companions, idle habits, foolish
   songs, pleasure-seeking, so-called--are these too dear to be renounced?
   Really, some of the things which give pleasure to men nowadays are so
   absurd, so empty, so devoid of true wit that I wonder the swine do not
   revolt against the moldy husks which they are fed with now-a-days! We
   cannot wonder that swine eat husks--it is natural they should and we
   would not deny them their native food. If I were a swine, I think I
   should like to have husks that have some sort of substance in them, but
   the world's pleasure grows more and more vapid and worthless--the
   pleasure of idiots rather than of men.

   Can't you give these poor things up? Are they such dear attractions,
   such precious things, that you let Heaven go, and Christ go, sooner
   than let them go? No, I hope it will be a voice of power to you, and
   that you will say, "My Savior let them all go! What are they to me? I
   shall find ten thousand times more pleasure, and more profit, too, in
   following Christ than in following the best of them. So I let them go
   forever, and may they never entice me again." Have you any
   self-righteousness remaining? Are you in your own conceit better than
   other people? Do you secretly trust in your works? Now if you want
   Christ, you must let all that go!

   Christ will tread the winepress alone, and of the people, there must be
   none with Him. And if you seek to be saved by Christ it must not be by
   the works of the Law, but by Grace alone. Would to God that there might
   be a clean sweep made in some of your hearts, and that you would come
   to Jesus all empty-handed as you are, and say, "Yes, Master, Your
   precious blood, Your triumphant Resurrection, Your effectual
   plea--these are our hope and these our joy. We would serve You in life,
   and bless You in death. Yours we are, Son of God, and all that we have!
   Take us and keep us, and Yours be the praise. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          The Root That Bears Wormwood

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 2, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood."
   Deuteronomy 29:18.

   THE people of Israel, after all the wonderful things which God had done
   for them, should have felt themselves bound forever to their father's
   God. They had received the clearest possible proof that Jehovah alone
   was the living and true God. How could they debase themselves to
   worship graven images when they had seen such signs and wonders worked
   by their great I AM? Surely idolatry after such a history as theirs
   must have been sinful to the worst degree.

   They were, however, in great danger from two or three circumstances
   which in the chapter before us are set before them as a ground of
   caution. "You know how you dwelt in the land of Egypt," is the first
   caution. They had dwelt so long in the midst of the idolatrous
   Egyptians that it would have been strange if they had not become
   tinctured with the idolatrous spirit which was so powerful in the land
   of Ham. Alas, Israel's hosts drank deep into Egypt's superstitions, and
   not long had they been in the wilderness before they made a golden ox,
   contemptuously called by Moses a golden calf, in imitation of the ox so
   solemnly adored in Egypt.

   Probably the mixed multitude never wholly ceased from idol-worship, for
   we find it said in Amos, "Have you offered unto Me sacrifices and
   offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? And you
   have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the
   star of your god, which you made to yourselves." The Egyptians were
   infamous among all nations as almost indiscriminate worshippers of
   innumerable objects. They not only worshipped beasts, comely in
   proportion and useful to men, but they bowed down before the snake and
   the crocodile. They worshipped the beetle that is engendered from filth
   and the frog that comes up from the slime. "Oh, happy nation," says one
   of the old satirists, "whose gods grow in their own gardens," for they
   actually bowed down before onions and leeks, as though these were the
   gods that made Heaven and earth!

   Knowing, as we do, that depraved nature is so strongly inclined to
   worship visible objects, we do not wonder that the contagion of
   Egyptian idolatry infected the children of Israel. Remember again, that
   in passing through the wilderness, all the people that Israel came in
   contact with for forty years were idolaters. With the exception of
   Moses' father-in-law, who may have been a priest of God, a spiritual
   worshipper, it does not appear that there were any tribes on the face
   of the earth that worshipped the Most High. When the children of Israel
   passed by Moab or Edom, or when they came into contact with the
   subjects of Sihon or Og, they found them all prostrate in the same
   reverence of idols, bowing down before abominations--idols of wood and
   silver and gold.

   We are all too much affected by our surroundings. The imitative faculty
   is very forcible, especially in a direction pleasing to our fallen
   nature. And when these people found themselves to be singular and
   alone, worshipping God whom they could not see, while their neighbors
   practiced gorgeous rites and mystic ceremonies, it is no wonder that
   they were strongly tempted to set up idols. Yet further, when they had
   passed through the forty years in the wilderness, what kind of country
   were they to enter into? Not a land in which there was a temple to
   Jehovah--or where the inhabitants would all assist them in cultivating
   the worship of the only true God--but a land that was full of idols!
   Where every green hill was consecrated to a false deity. Where the
   stones of the valley were piled up into a thousand altars. Where every
   city had its own peculiar deity!

   The country was full of temptations to allure them from allegiance to
   the true God. Israel should have been faithful under every test, but he
   who knows what is in man will perceive the need of the heavenly
   caution, and of the warning of our text by which the Lord assured His
   people that to rebel against Him would be to plant a root that bears
   gall and wormwood.

   Let us apply their history to ourselves. Remember the Egypt out of
   which we have been redeemed by mighty Grace! Remember the sins which
   once had the mastery over us! Do we wear no relics of our bondage? Is
   it so easy to shake off old habits? Is there no hankering after the
   flesh pots of worldly pleasure? I am sure we have to protest before the
   Lord's people that we are in very great danger from our former habits,
   and that the twitching of the old Adam are not things to be laughed at!
   Would not our evil hearts soon lead us back to our old slavery if the
   Grace of God did not prevent it?

   Look, moreover, at the people among whom we dwell! Is this vain world a
   friend to Divine Grace? Do you not, on the contrary, find it to be your
   perpetual foe? Why, you cannot go out into your trade, or follow your
   occupation--no, worse--you cannot even tarry at home without meeting
   with temptations! This world does not worship the true God. It bows
   down before gods of its own choosing. They may not be of wood or stone,
   but they are, nonetheless, dangerous! Men say unto their lusts or to
   their pleasures, to their persons, their intellects, their gains,
   "These are our gods! These are the pursuits which we count worthy of
   our immortal minds!"

   Are not Believers tempted to follow the same ends and objects? Does not
   our personal advantage frequently aim at the throne of our hearts? Do
   we never find our losses, or our gains endeavoring to thrust Jehovah
   from the rightful dominion of our souls? I am sure, Brothers and
   Sisters, from the oldest to the youngest, we all feel we are in
   peculiar danger from the people among whom we dwell. And will it be any
   better in the future? Have we any reason to expect that the places to
   which we shall journey between this and the hour of death will be any
   less full of temptation? May we not expect that as it has been, so it
   will be even till the end comes? May we not have to meet with
   temptations even more severe than those which we have encountered? May
   not the Providence of God call us into circumstances where we will pass
   through severer tests, and our piety have to endure yet heavier trials?
   It is probable it will be so.

   Until we reach our home in Glory, we shall have need to be often warned
   and put on our guard lest our evil hearts of unbelief should depart
   from the living God, and we should become as the rest of mankind are--a
   people that forget God--and that offer themselves unto strange lords
   and follow their own devices. These were the Lord's reasons for
   warning, and these are my motives, this day, for reminding you that sin
   is an evil and ruinous thing, "a root that bears gall or hemlock, and
   wormwood." Sin, in the text, is styled a root that produces bitterness.
   This is our main thought this morning. If we have time we shall
   institute the enquiry as to whether that root is in our hearts, and
   then, thirdly, we shall show the way of deliverance from the root and
   from its fruit.

   I. SIN IS THE ROOT WHICH BEARS GALL AND WORMWOOD. That this was true in
   the case of the Israelites is very manifest. Their history tells us the
   whole generation which came up out of Egypt died in the wilderness
   because of their sins. Their sin, then, was a root which bore to them
   the poisonous hemlock, for they left a line of graves along their line
   of march as a sad memorial of their iniquities--only Joshua and Caleb
   ever entered into the promised land.

   At terrible intervals their sins bore fearful fruit for them. Sometimes
   the fiery serpents bit them. At other times the plague broke forth
   among the people, or the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the
   rebellious. We find them put to rout because of their sin at Ai
   although they had been victorious at Jericho, for Achan had hidden in
   his camp the accursed thing which was a root that bore to his nation
   wormwood and gall.

   After Israel had driven out the heathenish nations they gave way to
   many forms of idolatry--and their land was invaded and they were
   enslaved or driven into holes and dens. Famine devastated the land and
   pestilence laid it waste till the repenting people cried unto God in
   the bitterness of their sorrows and He raised them up a Jephthah, or a
   Gideon, a Samson or a Barak--but on each occasion the mother of their
   sorrow was their sin--the cause of their lamentation was their turning
   aside from their God.

   Then came the days of the kings of Israel when the people for awhile
   feared the Lord. But at length the heart of the people went aside to
   the calves of Bethel and they were given over to Assyria and carried
   away captive after being struck in battles innumerable and reduced to
   be the lowest of nations. Then remember what became of Judah, which was
   for a time faithful to God. The eyes of their king were put out and
   themselves driven into cruel bondage far away from their much-loved
   land, having before their captivity been subject to sieges and famine
   so terrible that it is said that the woman who was tender and delicate
   among them did eat her own children by reason of the terribleness of
   the siege.

   After the Lord had pardoned them and brought them back again and given
   them a name once more among the nations, they revolted from Him
   again--they smote His Only-Begotten and crucified the Lord of Glory!
   And what did He do to them? It shall make both the ears of him that
   hears it tingle to read the story of the siege of Jerusalem written by
   one of themselves--Josephus. They were crucified till men lacked wood
   on which to crucify them! They were sold as slaves till men would not
   buy them at the price of one farthing each, for Jewish slaves had
   become so common and were so despised! The plow-share was driven over
   the very site of Jerusalem, and a mandate made that the Jew should
   never look towards that city.

   They were scattered and banished as they are unto this day. Truly the
   whole house of Israel is God's witness at this day that sin against
   Jehovah is a root that bears gall and wormwood. As it was in their case
   we may rest assured it is in other cases, for God makes no exceptions
   in His dealings. He is not a judge who punishes one sin and allows
   another to go unpunished--He deals equal justice to all men. If He
   spared not Israel, how shall He spare the Gentiles? If Jerusalem
   escaped not, how shall London escape? If He gave up to the spoiler and
   to the sword the seed of Abraham His friend, how shall He spare us in
   the day of His visitation if we sin against Him?

   Again, dear Friends, not only does the history of the Jews prove that
   sin is a root of bitterness, but our judgment tells us that it is most
   fitting it should be so. If sin were in the long run pleasurable, and
   really produced advantage to man, it would be a very strange
   arrangement in the Divine economy. The Judge of all the earth must do
   right, but would it be right that sinning should be rewarded with
   blessedness? If the root of sin, instead of bearing gall and wormwood,
   dropped with honey and streamed with milk, where would be the holiness
   of the great Governor who so ordained it?

   I would even venture to put this to the depraved intellect of those men
   who rail at Divine justice--I would ask them what they would have?
   Would they have sin rewarded? Would they have virtue punished? If so,
   would not the devil be the most fitting ruler of such a dispensation?
   What sort of God could He be who should make holiness to bring forth
   misery, and sin to be the perpetual spring of delight? If any one of
   us, not absolutely mad, could be put into the position of the governor
   of the world, so soon as we had made laws should we not at once decree
   that the violation of law should involve punishment?

   Why whenever savages become semi-civilized and form themselves into a
   little state, one of the first things they do is, having made laws, to
   lay down penalties for the breach of those laws! And men cannot form a
   government without penal sanctions. I will defy men to do so! If they
   will reward the breach of their laws and punish those who keep them, it
   will not be long before a general revolt and universal mutiny will give
   the law to the winds. It was right, then, and according to the natural
   order of things, that rebellion against the Law of the great moral
   Governor should, in the long run, if not at once, involve sorrow and
   misery.

   This Truth of God is continually being denied and yet is all but
   self-evident. I believe this is the point of teaching which is just now
   more assailed than any other, namely, the doctrine of the future
   punishment of sin. I find it is become quite a popular thing to assert
   that we who preach of Hell and everlasting punishment libel the
   Character of God. It is constantly asserted that this doctrine is an
   old worn-out dogma! And, therefore, we beg to bring it before you once
   again as being, notwithstanding all the gainsayer may say, the Truth of
   God.

   Let no man deceive himself and think that sin will go unpunished! Let
   no man, be he ever so specious and his words ever so flattering, lead
   you to imagine that in the next world God will pass by iniquity, for,
   as surely as this Book is His Word, sin is a most fearful evil, and the
   wrath to come will be terrible--so terrible that the hardest language
   ever used by the most vehement speaker falls infinitely short of what
   the judgment of God will be when His wrath smokes against the sinner,
   and His curse descends with full force upon the offender!

   Sin is a root which has not always budded and blossomed in this life,
   but which will bud and blossom and bring forth its fruit in the life to
   come. And the fruit of sin will be more bitter than hemlock and
   wormwood. I gather this, first, from my reason. Let an intelligent
   person only think a minute, and I am sure he will be convinced that
   there must be a terrible punishment for sin. Remember there are other
   laws in the world besides moral laws. There are what is called by the
   philosopher physical laws, that is to say, laws which concern matter
   rather than mind. Now, if men break these laws, does any ill result
   follow from the violation?

   For instance, the law of attraction, or gravitation--that certain
   bodies shall attract other bodies. Can that be infringed without risk?
   Here is a man who says he does not believe in gravitation. He does not
   believe, for instance, standing here on this lofty rock, that he shall
   fall if he springs off into the air. He declares that he means to try
   the issue with that antiquated old law, and he laughs at Sir Isaac
   Newton, and everybody else. He says, "I am not to be bound by such a
   bugbear as this law of gravitation! I am a freethinker and am not to be
   led by the nose by your physical creeds."

   We warn him, "You will break your neck if you do." He says, "Do you
   mean to represent God to me as such a Being, that if I merely violate
   one of His laws He will actually put me to pain or even kill me? Do not
   tell me, I know better, and am not to be trammeled by the superstitions
   of the dark ages." Yet let him say what he will, his leap will be fatal
   and his life will pay the penalty of his rashness. If you rebel against
   gravitation it will crush you up as a man would a beetle, or a fly--and
   without a particle of pity--will avenge its insulted authority. See the
   fool leap from the lofty crag into the air! Ah, unhappy wretch, there
   is no escape for him!

   Notwithstanding his religious belief that he would escape, we find him
   a mangled corpse at the bottom. The physical laws of God do not stay
   their action on account of the men who break them, but push on to their
   purposed end, let the results be what they may. Take another case. It
   is a law of nature that filthiness shall beget disease. Over yonder a
   number of persons herd together in impure air. They never cleanse their
   bodies, or wash their clothes. They leave heaps of filth to rot outside
   the door. Drainage is neglected. Water is scant and poisonous. The
   Sanitary Commissioner warns them-- "My dear good people, if you do not
   alter this, you will have the fever or the cholera."

   "What? Do you believe," says a woman, "that God Almighty is so cruel
   that He will take away this dear little child from my bosom just
   because we do not happen to wash ourselves, but prefer to live in dirt
   and drunkenness?" "Yes," says the Sanitary Commissioner, "whatever you
   may think of it, that is the fact. Filth and vice will bring disease"
   "Well," says some babbling freethinker, "it is a very shocking
   doctrine! You slander God! I do not believe it!" Yet the Lord did
   permit the plague a few weeks ago, right and left, to slay its
   thousands. Who says it is a cruel decree that foul air should make men
   sick? Nobody complains of the cruelty of God in His physical laws,
   although if men set themselves against them there is no sort of pity
   for them! The physical law goes on and stamps out all rebels against
   its power.

   Go to sea in a leaky ship and see if when the storm comes the sea does
   not swallow you up without an atom of pity! Or stand under a tree when
   lightning is abroad, and if the lightning strike that tree and you are
   under it, see if the lightning will care for you. You have violated the
   physical law--you may have done it ignorantly--but it has no pity! It
   just smites with all its force. Now I say if this is a fact which
   nobody can dispute, that the God of Nature is a terrible God, oh you
   that worship the God of Nature and say you do not care for the God of
   Revelation, I ask you what you make out of all this? I ask you whether
   even Nature itself does not say to you, "If God so terribly avenges His
   ordinary physical laws when they are broken, how much more surely will
   He avenge His moral laws when men wantonly and wickedly throw
   themselves in their way"?

   Again, we are not left to this argument alone, for there is one out of
   the Ten Commandments to which I can only allude which involves more
   especially the bodies of men. Now, when a man offends against the one
   Command, we shall see if God does really punish sin. We shall see in
   the man's body whether or not sin does produce gall or wormwood. I
   allude, of course, to the command, "You shall not commit adultery,"
   which forbids all classes of lasciviousness and uncleanness. No sooner
   is this Law broken in any case than straightway man receives the
   recompense which is meet. The men or women who violate this precept
   soon find that they have not only done wrong to God but wrong to
   themselves.

   Our hospitals and asylums could tell you into what a fearful state men
   have brought themselves by sins of the flesh. States of body and mind
   so terrible that the very phrases in which Scripture speaks of future
   misery might, without exaggeration, be used in describing them! This is
   rather the physician's business than mine, but if this were the fit
   place and the fit time I could prove it--so that your very hair might
   stand on end. God forbid that any of you should prove in yourselves the
   misery which this sin brings even on earth!

   Now, if the violation of this one Command which happens to touch the
   body, does, beyond all doubt, make men smart for it. If this one set of
   sins makes him feel that sin is as poison to the blood and the bones.
   If such is the case with one Commandment, why not with the rest? And as
   the other Commands, for the most part, do not seem to bring upon us a
   punishment here, it is rational to believe that they will bring it upon
   us in the next state. And as this is a state in which the body
   evidently suffers from the breach of one Command, it is natural to
   expect that in the next state the body and soul will suffer for the
   breach of the other nine!

   I believe that every sin creates disease in the soul. I believe that
   every sinful thought, and word, and deed poisons our spiritual nature.
   I believe that sin is to be dreaded not merely because God will smite
   us, but because sin itself will plague us. If a man cuts himself he
   expects to bleed. And if a man sins he is wounding his soul--and his
   soul must bleed. If a man drinks poison, he must expect to have it
   lying in the system if it does not kill him outright. And if a man
   takes sin into his spirit it lies rankling within. This root will bear
   hemlock and gall, if not in this life, yet in the life to come.

   Still further, to bring out this argument. We have no reason to believe
   that death will change the character of man at all. I have no reason to
   believe that my dying, if I am a sinner, will make a saint of me. I
   certainly can have no thought that if I die as a saint death will make
   a sinner of me! A man might as well believe the one as the other, and
   they are both irrational. Death says, "He that is filthy, let him be
   filthy still. He that is holy, let him be holy still." Then, a man
   dying as a sinner, when he gets into the next world, what will he do?
   Why, he will sin as he did here--not in the same shape and way--but he
   will in some way go on sinning. He will die a sinner, rise a sinner,
   live a sinner, and forever live a sinner.

   Now, if he forever lives as a sinner, he will continue to get worse and
   worse in sin, for we all know that it is the nature of sin to grow
   worse, and sin has a self-developing power within itself. If in the
   other life the man goes on sinning worse and worse, and even in this
   life we have many instances that sin brings misery, may we not
   rationally conclude from the Bible that increasing sin in the next life
   will bring forth increasing misery, which will be intolerable beyond
   all conception? I tremble as I see the drift of this line of thought!
   May you tremble, too, and fly to the Lord Jesus for pardon! Depend upon
   it, as long as a man goes on sinning the Law will necessitate that he
   shall be miserable. He is out of accord with the great moral forces,
   and he must as surely suffer as another man would do who perished in
   fighting with gravitation or any other physical law.

   "Oh," cries one, "that is not the doctrine we kick against! We speak
   against God's punishing sin!" But what if this should be the way in
   which sin is punished? What if it is written, "Evil shall slay the
   wicked." "You have destroyed yourself." If this is the way in which God
   punishes sin, even you that sin are compelled to say that it is right.
   Did anybody ever think it wrong that if a man tried to float upon a
   stone he should drown? Everybody says, "Why does the fool attempt it?
   It is a law of Nature that the stone should sink! Why does he kick
   against it?" Nobody thinks it cruel that he should drown if he ties a
   millstone to his neck and leaps into the sea. If a man thrusts his hand
   in the fire, nobody thinks it cruel on God's part if that man's hand is
   burned.

   The natural effect of the violation of a Divine command is misery. Oh
   that men would believe it, and cast out the root which produces
   wormwood! But we are not, happily, left to our reason about it. We can
   turn to the Book of God, and call up the witnesses. Ask Noah, as he
   looks out of his ark, "Does sin bring bitterness?" And he points to the
   floating carcasses of innumerable thousands that died because of sin.
   Turn to Abraham. Does sin bear bitterness? He points to the smoke of
   Sodom and Gomorrah that God destroyed because of their wickedness. Ask
   Moses, and he reminds you of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, who were
   swallowed up alive. Turn to Paul, and you do not find Paul speaking
   with the honeyed phrases of these modern deceivers who would make
   people believe that sin will not be punished!

   He says, "He that despised Moses' Law died without mercy under two or
   three witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose you, shall he be
   thought worthy who has trod underfoot the Son of God, and has counted
   the blood of the Covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy
   thing, and has done despite unto the Spirit of Grace?" Listen to James
   or Jude, or Peter, and you hear them speak of chains of darkness and
   flaming fire. Hear John as he writes of the wrath of God and of the
   winepress of it, out of which the blood flows up to the horse's
   bridles! Let the Savior Himself speak to you. He cries, "These shall go
   away into everlasting punishment." He is the author of those words,
   "Where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched."

   It is He who speaks of the outer darkness, where there is weeping and
   wailing and gnashing of teeth! This Book is as opposite as light to
   darkness to the mawkish softness of modern heretical divinity which
   drivels against the just judgment of God! It tells you, (and oh that
   you might hear it as God's own voice to you!)--it tells you not that
   sin will end in pleasure and joy, but that the wrath of God will abide
   upon you if you do not turn from sin! It tells you that the soul that
   sins, it shall die. That God's curse is upon the wicked, and that
   everlasting punishment is the portion of the impenitent. Dreadful as
   that Truth of God is, it is clearly revealed, and let it be received
   and trembled at!

   Once again, whereas right reason shows it and Scripture confirms it, I
   believe that conscience in every enlightened man asserts it. I read the
   other day, in a lecture against this doctrine, that Augustine was the
   author of the doctrine of eternal punishment. It was a great piece of
   news, certainly! But we are further told that it was because he had
   been a great sinner, and therefore he felt such horror of conscience on
   account of sin that his mind was morbid and he fancied that he deserved
   eternal punishment. Well, then, here I stand in the same position as
   Augustine! Having been a great sinner, too, and because of my great
   conviction of sin I also feel that sin deserves eternal punishment!

   And, dear Friends, I do not believe the witness of Augustine is at all
   weakened by his having had a clear sense of sin! On the contrary, I
   accept him as all the better witness because, having known what sin
   meant and having felt its weight in his own conscience, he was better
   able to judge what sin deserved! It is strange that men should assert
   that because the man felt a great horror of sin, therefore he misjudged
   its desert. That would be the very reason why he should judge
   correctly! And if the gentlemen who oppose this doctrine had any true
   sense of sin themselves, they would soon change their present views.

   When my heart was awakened to feel the guilt of sin, I never quarreled
   with God upon the matter of punishment. I felt, "Let God do what He
   will with me on account of sin, I deserve it all." I was compelled to
   bow my head and not so much as lift my eyes to the place where He
   dwelt. I could but simply say, "God be merciful to me a sinner." I had
   no demurrer to plead in court against the Divine sentence. I assented
   to it. But if there is a man before me who says that the wrath of God
   is too heavy a punishment for his little sin, I ask him, if the sin is
   little, why does he not give it up? If it is such a little pleasure to
   you, why not renounce it?

   A gentleman, a man of wealth who is now dead, as I one day walked with
   him in his garden, took me by the buttonhole and said, "What an awful
   thing, Sir, that I should fling my soul away for the sake of a little
   worldly mirth when I know that I shall have to smart in Hell for it
   forever!" He looked me through and through as he spoke to me, but after
   we had prayed together, and I had laid before him the way of salvation,
   I was pained to see that he had made his choice for the pleasures of
   sin. When a man deliberately does that, what can you say but that he
   must take his choice? If you know that Hell is so dreadful, and you
   pretend that your sin is so little, why do you choose your sin? Why do
   you not renounce it?

   I will take you on your own footing. You say the punishment is too
   severe for so small a pleasure. Then why do you take the pleasure? The
   more terrible the punishment is, the more foolish is it on your part to
   run the risk of it for the sake of such a paltry gain. Sinner, I charge
   you by the terrors of Hell--do not buy sin at such a fearful price--but
   rather say, "I cannot sell my soul so cheaply. I must have something
   better than the gaiety of life to reward me for being cast away
   forever." I put it yet again. The plan of salvation by Jesus Christ is
   very clear and very plain. It is, "Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and
   you shall be saved." Oftentimes our hearers say, "Oh it is so easy, so
   very simple--nothing to do but just trust in Christ."

   My dear Hearer, if it is so simple, why not receive it?--

   "How they deserve the deepest Hell That slight these joys above! What
   chains of vengeance must they feel That break these bonds of love!" If
   to trust in Christ is so simple, how can you refuse to believe in Him?
   Why will you live an unbeliever when God Himself has said, "He that
   believes not shall be damned"? Oh, fly from unbelief, which is the root
   that bears gall and wormwood!

   II. I must be very brief on the other two heads. IS THERE SUCH A ROOT
   AS THIS GROWING IN THE HEART OF ANY ONE OF US HERE? I am afraid there
   is, because upon looking at the text it appears that some have this
   root that will bear gall and wormwood in them who are not actually
   gross outward sinners. They are described as those who forget God. The
   verse from which the text is taken says of them, "whose heart turns
   away this day from the Lord our God."

   Is there no heart here that is turned away from God? Very personally do
   I put this question to you all. Are you all followers of God? If your
   heart does not love God, the non-loving of God is that root which will
   bear for you the anguish of Hell. The non-loving of the Most High, even
   though you never curse or swear, even though you do not break the
   Sabbath is that root that will bear gall and wormwood. Next we read of
   "men seeking after another God." Are you loving someone better than
   God? Are you living for money--is that your great object? Are you
   seeking fame? Whatever it is to which you give your whole life, that is
   your god.

   Is there no one here who is living for self? If so, though you may be
   outwardly a most respectable people, if you are living for anything but
   God, that root will bring forth gall and wormwood. Ah, my dear Hearers,
   I feel as if my eyes would burst into weeping while I am talking to
   you! My head aches, my heart is burning as I think how many there are
   of you who are in this state! You are living for that which will bring
   forth to you the wrath to come. Do think of this? If I tell you what is
   not true reject it, but as God, my Master, has put it into my heart to
   speak it to you, take warning!

   Again, this root is in every man who disbelieves the penalty of sin.
   The verse following the text speaks of one who said, "I shall have
   peace though I walk after my own heart." Are you saying that? If so,
   you have the evil root in your heart. There is no more sure sign of
   reprobation than callousness and carelessness! And if you are saying
   this morning, "Well, I will try it. I will have the pleasures of sin
   and will run all risks," then you are the man. I do not say that the
   root has blossomed yet, but you have it within, and as surely as God's
   Word is true, if you die in such a state, you shall forever know that
   this root produces nothing but gall and wormwood!

   III. The last point was to be, HOW ARE WE TO GET RID OF IT? Is there a
   possibility of being delivered from the gall and wormwood? There is. As
   many as trust in Christ shall be rid of the gall and wormwood. How?
   Shall it be poured on the ground so that you shall not drink it? No, it
   must be drunk! All the bitter results of sin must be endured. Sin
   produces Hell, and that Hell must be suffered!

   But listen, Christ has drunk the gall and wormwood for every soul that
   trusts Him! He has drunk the gall and wormwood for you, if you trust
   Him now! Come and rest upon my Master and you shall find that there is
   not a drop of gall nor wormwood left for you--for in the garden and on
   the bloody tree Christ endured what you ought to have endured--He felt
   the full results of sin in His own Person which otherwise you must have
   felt. "Well," you say, "thank God for that! But how can I cut up the
   root itself?"

   In order to escape the punishment of sin you must be saved from sin
   itself, and the way to it is this--you must deeply feel in your own
   soul that sin is a bitter thing. If you do not feel and acknowledge
   this you will never find mercy. My dear Hearer, if sin is a sweet
   morsel in your mouth, it will be bitter in your heart forever! And as
   long as you love sin you cannot love God. You must go to God and pray,
   "Lord, tear these sins out of me--do not leave one--neither a little or
   a great one." Mark me, you may talk what you will about believing in
   Christ, but if you love sin you will suffer for sin! Now, lay bare your
   heart before the Eternal One, and say, "O God, You see my sins, You see
   the evil I did love, I hate it now, Lord, help me to overcome it! Let
   me not be the victim of my sins--

   'The dearest idol I have known, Whatever that idol is, Help me to tear
   it from Your throne, And worship only You.'

   "As for the past, wash me in the blood of Your dear Son. As for the
   present, send Your Spirit down to write Your Law upon my heart."

   I did want, this morning, to have pleaded with sinners. I had it in my
   heart to have put before you the blessing and the curse, and then to
   have said, "By God's Grace lay hold on eternal life, and let your sins
   go! Trust Jesus, and let the pleasures of the world go." But if I
   cannot plead with you, I will ask God the Holy Spirit to plead with
   your consciences afterwards. Sin cannot bring you pleasure. Man, it
   cannot profit you in the long run. You may get a little money or
   pleasure now, but you will lose by it in the long run of eternity! If
   your existence were only on earth, I believe your happiness would be
   greatest by being a Christian--but this world is only the first step or
   two in a race that never has an end.

   May God the Holy Spirit influence your will that you may choose that
   which will endure, and not that which will be buried in the tomb! Oh by
   the frail character of life, by the certainty of death, by the judgment
   of God, by His hatred of sin, by the flames that know no abatement
   though briny tears forever flow, fly away to Christ! Oh may you fly to
   Him now and find life in His death, healing in His wounds, and
   everlasting mercy through His merits!
     __________________________________________________________________

                        His Name--The Everlasting Father

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 9, 1866,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The Everlasting Father." Isaiah 9:6.

   How complex is the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ! Almost in the same
   breath the Prophet calls Him a "Child," and a "Counselor," a "Son," and
   "the Everlasting Father." This is no contradiction, and to us scarcely
   a paradox, but it is a mighty marvel that He who was an Infant should
   at the same time be Infinite--He who was the Man of Sorrows should also
   be God over all, blessed forever--and that He who is in the Divine
   Trinity always called the Son, should nevertheless be correctly called
   "the Everlasting Father."

   How forcibly this should remind us of the necessity of carefully
   studying and rightly understanding the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ!
   We must not suppose that we shall understand Him at a glance. A look
   will save the soul, but patient meditation alone can fill the mind with
   the knowledge of the Savior. Glorious mysteries are hidden in His
   Person. He speaks to us in plain language, and He manifests Himself
   openly in our midst, but yet in His Person itself there is a height and
   depth which human intellect fails to measure.

   When he has looked long and steadily, the devout observer perceives in
   his Well-Beloved beauties so rare and ravishing that he is lost in
   wonder! Continued contemplation conducts the soul, by the power of the
   Holy Spirit, into an elevation of delighted admiration which the less
   thoughtful know nothing of. So deep is the mystery of the Person of our
   Lord that He must reveal Himself to us or we shall never know Him! He
   is not discovered by research nor discerned by reason. "Blessed are
   you, Simon Barjona," said Christ to Peter, "for flesh and blood have
   not revealed this unto you." "When it pleased God," says the Apostle,
   "to reveal His Son in me."

   Another Apostle asked the question, "How is it that You manifest
   Yourself unto us?" There is no seeing Jesus except by His own light. He
   is the Door, but no man opens that Door but Jesus Himself, for "He
   opens, and no man shuts. He shuts, and no man opens." He is the lesson,
   but He is also the schoolmaster. He is both key and lock, answer and
   riddle, way and guide. He is that which is to be seen, for we are to
   look unto Him, but it is by Him that we are enabled to see, for He
   gives sight to the blind!

   Let us then, dear Friends, if we really desire to understand that most
   excellent of all sciences--the science of Christ Crucified--entreat the
   Lord Himself to be our Rabbi, and beg to be allowed to sit with Mary at
   the Master's feet. Be this our prayer, that "we may know Him," and be
   this our desire, that "we may grow in Grace and in the knowledge of our
   Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." For "to know Him is life eternal," and
   to be taught of Him is to be "wise unto salvation."

   The title before us is a somewhat difficult one. Some years ago I
   preached to you from "His Name--Wonderful" [Sermon #214, Volume 4.] I
   felt I could expatiate upon that with ease. We advanced as far as
   "Counselor," and then we halted a while. After a time we were led to
   preach upon "The Mighty God." But we have been somewhat diffident of
   our ability to open up this particular title, for there is a depth in
   it which we are not able to fathom. This morning I cannot pretend to
   dive into the profound depths of the Word, but can only skim the
   surface as the swallow skims the sea. Silver of deep learning and gold
   of profound thought I have none--but such as I have I give you. If my
   basket contains nothing more than a barley loaf and a few small fishes,
   may the Master of the feast multiply the food in the breaking, that
   there may be food convenient for His people.

   It is necessary at the outset to observe that the Messiah is not here
   called "Father," by way of any confusion with Him who is pre-eminently
   called "THE FATHER." Our Lord's proper name, so far as the Godhead is
   concerned, is not the Father, but the Son. Let us beware of confusion.
   The Son is not the Father, neither is the Father the Son. And though
   they are one God, essentially and eternally, being forever One and
   indivisible, yet still the distinction of Persons is to be carefully
   believed and observed. For the mere word "Persons" we do not
   contend--it is but a make-shift word, although we know not what better
   term to use.

   But the fact is all-important that the Father is not the Son, and the
   Son is not the Father. Our text has no bearing upon the position and
   titles of the three Persons with regard to each other. It does not
   indicate the relation of Deity to itself, but the relation of Jesus
   Christ to us. He is to us "the Everlasting Father." The light of the
   text divides itself into three rays--Jesus is Everlasting." He is a
   "Father." He is the "Everlasting Father."

   I. First, Jesus Christ is EVERLASTING. Of Him we may sing with David,
   "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever." A theme for great rejoicing
   on our part! Rejoice, Believer, in Jesus Christ, the same yesterday,
   today, and forever! Jesus always was. The Babe born in Bethlehem was
   united to the Word which was in the beginning, by whom all things were
   made. The title by which Jesus Christ revealed Himself to John in
   Patmos was, "Him which is, and which was, and which is to come."

   "His head and His hair were white like wool, as white as snow," to
   betoken that He is the Ancient of Days. "Before sin was born, or Satan
   fell, He led the host of morning stars. (Your generation who can tell,
   or count the number of Your years)?" In His priesthood, Jesus, like
   unto Melchisedek, "has neither beginning of days nor end of life." His
   pedigree is thus declared by Solomon: "When there were no depths, I was
   brought forth. When there were no fountains abounding with water.
   Before the mountains were settled, before the hills were I was brought
   forth. While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the
   highest part of the dust of the world.

   "When He prepared the heavens, I was there. When He set a compass upon
   the face of the depth: when He established the clouds above: when He
   strengthened the fountains of the deep: when He gave to the sea His
   decree that the waters should not pass His commandment: when He
   appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one
   brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always
   before Him; rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth; and My
   delights were with the sons of men."

   Think not that the Son of God ever commenced to be--

   "Ere the blue heavens were stretched abroad, From everlasting was the
   Word; With God He was; the Word was God, And must divinely be adored."

   If He were not God from everlasting, we could not so devoutly love Him.
   We could not feel that He had any share in the eternal love which is
   the fountain of all Covenant blessings. He must be eternal who has a
   part in the eternal purpose! Since our Redeemer was from all eternity
   with the Father, we trace the stream of Divine love to Himself equally
   with His Father and the blessed Spirit. We were chosen in Him from
   before the foundation of the world, and thus in our eternal election He
   shines forth gloriously.

   We bless and praise, and magnify Him that the name, "Son," does not at
   all import any time of birth or generation, or of beginning. We know
   that He is as eternally the Son as the Father is eternally the Father,
   and must be looked upon as God from everlasting. He is "the image of
   the invisible God, the first-born of every creature: for by Him were
   all things created that are in Heaven, and that are in earth, visible
   and invisible, whether they are thrones, or dominions, or
   principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him:
   and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist."

   As our Lord always was, so also He is for evermore the same. Jesus is
   not dead! He ever lives to make intercession for us. He has not ceased
   to be. He has gone out of sight, but He sits at the right hand of the
   Father. Of Him we read, "And, You, Lord, in the beginning have laid the
   foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of Your hands:
   they shall perish, but You remain. And they all shall wax old as does a
   garment, and as a vesture shall You fold them up, and they shall be
   changed: but You are the same, and Your years shall not fail." Jesus is
   as truly the I AM, as that Jehovah who spoke out of the burning bush to
   Moses, at Horeb!

   He lives! He lives! This is the foundation of your comfort, "Because He
   lives you shall live also." "Seeing, then, that we have a great High
   Priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us
   hold fast our profession. For we have not an High Priest which cannot
   be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points
   tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly
   unto the Throne of Grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find Grace to
   help in time of need."

   Resort to Him in all your times of need, for He is waiting to bless you
   still! He is made higher than the heavens, but He still receives
   sinners and effectually puts away their sins. And since "He ever lives
   to make intercession for them, He is able to save unto the uttermost
   them that come unto God by Him." Jesus, our Lord, ever shall be! He
   could not be called "Everlasting" if it were supposable that He must
   one day cease to exist! No, Believer, if God shall spare your life to
   fulfill your full day of threescore years and ten, you shall find that
   His cleansing fountain is still opened and His precious blood has not
   lost its power! You shall find that the Priest who filled the healing
   fount with His own blood still lives to purge you from all iniquity!

   When only your last battle remains to be fought you shall find that the
   hand of your conquering Captain has not grown feeble, nor His arm waxed
   short. The living Savior shall cheer the living saint! Nor is this all,
   for when death has taken you away as with a flood, and all the men of
   your generation have fallen like grass beneath the mower's scythe,
   Jesus shall live, and you, caught up to Heaven, shall find Him there
   bearing the dew of His youth! And when the sun's burning eye shall be
   dim with age, and the lamps of Heaven shall be paled into eternal
   midnight--when all this world shall melt as melts the winter's ice at
   the approach of spring--then shall you find the Lord Jesus still
   remains the perennial spring of joy, and life, and glory to His people!

   Living waters you may draw from this sacred well! Jesus always was, He
   always is, He always shall be! He is eternal in all His attributes, in
   all His offices, in all His might, and power, and willingness to bless,
   comfort, guard and crown His chosen people. The connection of the word,
   "Father," with the word, "Everlasting," allows us very fairly to remark
   that our Lord is as everlasting as the Father, since He Himself is
   called "the Everlasting Father," and whatever antiquity paternity may
   imply is here ascribed to Christ.

   According to our common notions, of course, the Father must be before
   the Son, but we must understand that the terms used in Scripture to
   represent Deity to us are not intended to be literally understood, and
   rendered in their exact terrestrial sense. They are only so far
   descriptive as they may be but do not compass the whole Truth of God,
   for human language utterly fails to convey the very essence and
   fullness of celestial things. When God condescends to speak to men, who
   are but as infants before Him, He adopts their childish speech and
   brings down His loftiness of thought to the littleness of their
   capacities.

   Babes have no words for the thoughts of senators and philosophers, and
   such matters must be stated in childish language if babes are to know
   them--and then the statement must inevitably fall far short of the
   great fact. The relation between the Father and the Son is a case in
   point. It is not precisely the same as the relation between a father
   and a son on earth, but that happens to be the nearest approach to it
   among men. We must beware of stretching and straining the Word in its
   letter, especially in points where it would make us err from the spirit
   of the Truth. Christ Jesus is as eternal as the Father or He would
   never have been called "the Everlasting Father."

   It is the manner of the Easterns to call a man the father of a quality
   for which he is remarkable. To this day, among the Arabs, a wise man is
   called "the father of wisdom." A very foolish man is called, "the
   father of folly." The predominant quality in the man is ascribed to him
   as though it were his child, and he the father of it. Now, the Messiah
   is here called in the Hebrew "the Father of Eternity," by which is
   meant that He is pre-eminently the possessor of eternity as an
   attribute. Just as the idiom, "the father of wisdom," implies that a
   man is pre-eminently wise, so the term, "Father of Eternity," implies
   that Jesus is preeminently eternal--that to Him, beyond and above all
   others--eternity may be ascribed.

   No language can more forcibly convey to our minds the eternity of our
   Lord Jesus. No, without straining the language, I may say that not only
   is eternity ascribed to Christ, but He is here declared to be the
   parent of it. Imagination cannot grasp this, for eternity is a thing
   beyond us! Yet if eternity should seem to be a thing which can have no
   parent, be it remembered that Jesus is so surely and essentially
   eternal that He is here pictured as the Source and Father of eternity.
   Jesus is not the child of eternity, but the Father of it! Eternity did
   not bring Him forth from its mighty deep, but He brought forth
   eternity!

   Independent, self-sustained, uncreated, eternal existence is with Jesus
   our Lord and God. In the highest possible sense, then, Jesus Christ is
   "the Everlasting Father." I will only pause one minute to draw a
   practical inference from this doctrine. If our Immanuel is, indeed,
   eternal and ever-living, let us never think of Him as One dead, whom we
   have lost, who has ceased to be! What could be a greater sorrow than
   the thought of a dead Christ? He lives, and lives to care for us.

   He lives in all the attributes which adorned Him upon earth, as gentle
   and kind and gracious now as He was then. Come to Him, Christian, rest
   upon Him now, just as if He were visible in this place, and you can
   whisper into His ear your troubles, and confess your sins at His feet.
   He is here spiritually. Your eyes cannot see Him, but faith will be
   better evidence to you than eyesight. Trust Him now with your cares!
   Rest upon Him in your present difficulties!

   And you, poor Sinner, if Christ were on this platform would you not
   come and touch the hem of His garment and cry, "Jesus, let Your pitying
   eyes look on me and change my heart"? Well, dear Friend, Jesus lives!
   He is the same today as He was in the streets of Jerusalem. And though
   your feet cannot bear you to Him, yet your desires shall serve you
   instead of feet! And though your finger cannot touch Him, your
   confidence shall be a hand to you. Trust Him now! He whose love made
   Him die lives on! His precious blood can never lose its power. Come
   now, humbly come, and confide in "the Everlasting Father."

   II. We come, in the second place, to the difficult part of the subject,
   namely, Christ being called FATHER. In what sense is Jesus a Father?
   Answer, first. He is federally a Father representing those who are in
   Him, as the head of a tribe represents his descendants. The Apostle
   Paul comes to our help here, for in the memorable chapter in
   Corinthians he speaks of those who are in Adam, and then he talks of a
   second Adam.

   Adam is the father of all living. He federally stood for us in the
   garden, and federally fell and ruined us all. He was the representative
   man by whose obedience we should have been blessed, but through whose
   disobedience we have been made sinners. The curse of the Fall comes
   upon us because Adam stood in a relation towards us in which none of us
   stand towards our fellows. He was the representative head for us--and
   what a fall was there when he fell--every one of us in his loins fell
   in him. "In Adam all die."

   Since his day there has been but one other here to the human race
   federally. It is true, Noah was the father of the present race of men,
   for we have all sprung from him, but there was no covenant with Noah in
   which he represented his posterity. There was no condition of obedience
   by which he might have obtained a reward for us, and no condition of
   disobedience for the breach of which we are called to smart. The only
   other man who is a representative man before God is the second Adam,
   the man Christ Jesus, the Lord from Heaven! Brothers and Sisters, we
   mournfully call Adam father, for we are cast out of Eden by him--and we
   till the ground with the sweat of our face--in sorrow did our mothers
   bring us forth, and to the grave in sorrow must we go.

   But we who have believed in Jesus call another man Father, namely, the
   Lord Jesus! And we speak this not sorrowfully but joyfully, for He has
   opened the gates of a better Paradise. He has taken away the sweat of
   toil from our faces spiritually, for we who have believed do "enter
   into rest." He has borne Himself the pangs which were brought upon us
   by sin. He took our sicknesses and bore our sorrows, while death
   itself, the heaviest affliction, He has overcome, so that he that lives
   and believe in Him shall never die, but pass out of this world into the
   life celestial!

   The grand question for us is this, Are we still under the Old Covenant
   of works? If so, we have Adam as our father, and under that Adam we
   died. But are we under the Covenant of Grace? If so, we have Christ as
   our Father, and in Christ shall we be made alive! Generation makes us
   the sons of Adam. Regeneration acknowledges us as the sons of Christ.
   In our first birth we come under the fatherhood of the fallen one. In
   our second birth we enter into the fatherhood of the innocent and
   perfect One. In our first fatherhood we wear the image of the earthy.
   In the second we receive the image of the heavenly.

   Through our relation to Adam we become corrupt and weak, and the body
   is put into the grave in dishonor, in corruption, in weakness, in
   shame. But when we come under the dominion of the second Adam we
   receive strength, and quickening, and inward spiritual life--and
   therefore our body rises again like seed sown which rises to a glorious
   harvest in the image of the heavenly--with honor, and power, and
   happiness, and eternal life! In this sense, then, Christ is called
   Father, and inasmuch as the Covenant of Grace is older than the
   Covenant of Works, Christ is, while Adam is not, "the Everlasting
   Father." And inasmuch as the Covenant of Works, as far as we are
   concerned, passes away, being fulfilled in Jesus, and the Covenant of
   Grace never passes but abides forever, Christ, as the Head of the New
   Covenant, the federal representative of the great economy of Grace, is
   "the Everlasting Father."

   Secondly, Christ is a Father in the sense of a Founder. You know,
   perhaps, or at least you readily remember when I remind you, that the
   Hebrews are in the habit of calling a man a father of a thing which he
   invents. For instance, in the fourth chapter of Genesis, Jubal is
   called the father of such as handle the harp and organ. Jabal was the
   father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle--not that these were
   literally the fathers of such persons--but the inventors of their
   occupations. Jabal first took upon himself a nomadic tent life and set
   the example of wandering about with flocks and herds. Jubal first put
   his fingers to musical strings, and his lips to pipes from which the
   wind is breathed melodiously.

   The Lord Jesus Christ is in this sense the Father of a wonderful
   system. Now, our Lord Jesus Christ, who brought life and immortality to
   light, and introduced a new phase of worship to this world is, in that
   respect, a Father. He is the Father of all Christians--the Father of
   Christianity--the Father of the entire system under which Divine Grace
   reigns through righteousness. Jesus is the Father of a great doctrinal
   system. All the great Truths of God which we are in the habit of
   delivering in your hearing as the precious Truths sent down from
   Heaven, fell first, clearly and powerfully, from the lips of Jesus.

   These things were dimly hinted at in the ceremonies of the Law, but
   Christ first of all put them into plain letter so that he who runs may
   read them. Practically it is Jesus who teaches us the doctrine of
   electing love. It is Christ who reveals to us redemption by blood. It
   is Christ that reveals regeneration by the work of the Spirit, saying
   plainly, "You must be born-again." It is Christ that reveals the
   perseverance of the saints. In fact, there is no doctrine of the
   Christian system which is not so clearly set in the light of His own
   glorious Spirit by His teaching that we may not fairly call Him the
   Father of it.

   Our great Master is also the Father of a great practical system. If
   there are any in the world who "love their neighbors as themselves,"
   the Man of Nazareth is their Father, for, albeit that the Law signified
   all that, yet men had not discovered it, but had misread the Law. "Eye
   for eye and tooth for tooth" was their version of Law. But Christ comes
   and says, "I say unto you, Resist not evil. If any man smite you on the
   one cheek, turn to him the other also." If any man can suffer with
   patience and can return good for evil, heaping coals of fire upon the
   head of his foes, this man is a child of Christ!

   If men worship God in the spirit and have no confidence in the flesh.
   If they know no holy place but recognize every place as holy where a
   holy man is found, such are the true children of Christ, for He said,
   "They that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth." He is
   the Father of spiritual worship. It has been common to call Socrates
   the "father of philosophy." Jesus is Father of the philosophy of
   salvation! Galen may be the "father of medicine," Jesus is Father of
   the medicine of souls! Herodotus is credited as the "father of
   history," but Jesus is the Father of Heaven on earth! He is the Father
   of disinterested living, of true love to men! He is the Father of
   forgiving one's enemies, the Father, in fact, of the Divine system of
   Christian life!

   The system of salvation claims Christ to be its Father. Whoever said,
   "By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it
   is the gift of God"? Who but the Apostle of this Man, Christ Jesus? Who
   told men that it was not by works of righteousness which they had done,
   but by the merit of His passion and His life that they were saved? Who
   revealed the way of faith to men but Christ, the great doctrine of,
   "Believe and live"? And those who receive it may claim Christ as
   Father. He is the Father of the Christian faith--a faith, my Brothers
   and Sisters, which has done much already for the world.

   For in old Rome it put down the fights in the Coliseum, threw down the
   bestial gods of heathendom, and albeit that it is doing much for the
   world even now, and helping to purge the vast Augean stable of
   humanity, it is to do more still! It is to cast out war. It is to
   destroy error. It is to regenerate the human race. The Father of this
   purifying system which is doctrinal and practical, and which has
   already worked the best results for men, is the Lord Jesus! And since
   it was devised of old, and will be prolonged as long as the world
   stands, He is called "the Everlasting Father."

   Now, there is a third meaning. The Prophet may not so have understood
   it, but we so receive it, that Jesus is, in the third place, a Father
   in the great sense of a Life-Giver. That is the main sense of "father"
   to the common mind. Through our fathers we are called into this world.
   Now it is by Christ that there is a communication of Divine energy to
   the soul. It is through Him, through His teaching--through the Spirit
   that He has given, through the blood that He has shed--that life is
   given to those who were dead in trespasses and sins. He that sits upon
   the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." "If any man is in
   Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away, behold, all
   things have become new."

   "This is the record, that God has given to us eternal life, and this
   life is in His Son." "For as the Father raises up the dead, and
   quickens them, even so the Son quickens whom He will. Verily, verily, I
   say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear
   the voice of the Son of God. And they that hear shall live. For as the
   Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son to have life in
   Himself." We know that through Jesus Christ the Divine life is given to
   us. "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." He gives the
   living water, and then it is in us "a well of water springing up into
   everlasting life."

   He is that living grain of wheat which was cast into the ground to die,
   that it might not abide alone, but become a root that brings forth
   fruit, which fruit we now are, receiving life from Him as the stem
   receives life from the seed from which it sprang. Jesus is our Father
   in that sense. It is the Spirit of God who operatively quickens the
   soul and makes us live, but Jesus Christ's Gospel is the channel
   through which the Spirit works, and Jesus Christ is the true life to
   us. Receiving Christ we receive life, and without Him we cannot have
   life. "He that has the Son has life. He that has not the Son shall not
   see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."

   As through the energy of Adam this vast world is peopled till hill and
   dale are covered with a teeming population, so through the life-energy
   of our Lord Jesus Christ the plains of Heaven and the celestial hills
   shall be peopled with a throng that no man can number. Out of every
   realm, a people, speaking every language--having been bronzed by the
   heats of the torrid zone, or frozen amidst the frosts of the frigid
   north--Christ shall find a people into whom His quickening shall come,
   and they shall live through the energy of His Spirit, and He shall be
   their everlasting Father. It is in this sense, because that life is
   everlasting and can never die out, that Jesus Christ is called "the
   Everlasting Father."

   Everything in us calls Christ, "Father." He is the Author and Finisher
   of our faith. If we love Him, it is because He first loved us. If we
   patiently endure, it is by considering "Him who endured such
   contradiction of sinners against Himself." He it is who waters and
   sustains all our graces. We may say of Him, "All my fresh springs are
   in You." The Spirit brings us the water from this well of Bethlehem,
   but Jesus is the Well itself. Spring up, O Well! Spring up, O Well!
   Divine Father, blessed Jesus, prove Your Fatherhood by re-quickening
   our souls this morning according to Your Word!

   Fourthly, I do not think that we have yet come to the bottom of this
   title of "Everlasting Father." The term implies that Jesus Christ is to
   be in the future, the Patriarch of an age. Many translators render the
   passage, "the Father of the future age." So Pope in his famous Poem of
   the Messiah understands it, and calls Him, "The promised Father of the
   future age." It has been the custom with men to speak of ages as "the
   age of brass or iron," and "the age of gold."

   This age of gold we are always looking for! The world's face is
   constantly turned to it--so much so that quacks play upon the
   simplicity of men and tell them when this golden age is coming and
   fleece them of their pence--and sometimes of their pounds under the
   notion that they can tell them somewhat about the good times which are
   coming. They know nothing about it whatever. They are blind leaders of
   the blind. But this one thing is clear to everyone who cares to see it,
   namely, that such an age of gold shall come--that a period far brighter
   than fancy paints will dawn upon this poor, darkened, enslaved world.

   I am always jealous with a godly jealousy lest you should forget this
   doctrine, or throw it up in disgust because of the shameful way in
   which it is made merchandize of by others. Brethren, calculate no
   dates! Sit down to devise no charts, but in your heart be satisfied
   with this--that there will be a kingdom and a reign--and that in that
   kingdom there shall be no strife to vex the nations. There shall be no
   affliction to grieve the people. In that kingdom, Jesus, the King,
   shall be conspicuous and His refulgent glory shall be the light of all
   the inhabitants. It shall be a New Jerusalem coming down from Heaven,
   prepared by God, as a bride is prepared for her husband, worthy of her
   Lord and a meet recompense for the crown of thorns, for the
   flagellation of His shoulders, for the shame, the spitting, and the
   Cross!

   Lift high the Cross, my Brothers and Sisters, for it shall be lifted
   high! Speak not of Christ with bated breath, for He comes to be a King.
   You Christians, think not yourselves, though despised and rejected of
   men, to be men of a mean birth, for "it does not yet appear what you
   shall be. But we know that when He shall appear you shall be like He,
   for you shall see Him as He is." Joyfully drink the cup of bitterness,
   for you shall soon drink the wines on the lees well refined! Cheerfully
   pass through the darkness, for the morning breaks, and the day dawns,
   and the shadows flee away. Be content to have the offscouring of all
   things, for one day, when kings shall bow down before Him, and all
   nations shall call Him blessed, you shall partake in His honor, and
   shall be as princes upon the throne with Him!

   Yes, He is to be the Father of a future age. Men have called certain
   great patriots the fathers of their country. Today let us call Christ
   the Father of our world. O Jesus, You have given to earth far better
   than a creation. You have formed it from chaos into order and then
   brought it from darkness into light! You have brought it from death
   into warm life and beauty! You have recovered it from worse than
   pristine chaos and saved it from a darkness worse than the primeval
   gloom. You have saved if from a death more horrible than the primeval
   shades.

   You have descended into the depths into which this pearl, the world,
   was cast! Like a mighty diver all the waves and billows have gone over
   You. But You have come up again bringing this pearl with You, and it
   shall glisten in Your crown forever when You shall be admired of angels
   and adored of all created spirits. This shall be the sweetest part of
   their admiration and their adoration--You were slain and have redeemed
   us unto God by Your blood, and therefore unto You be glory forever and
   ever. He shall be in this sense, then, the Father of an everlasting
   age.

   Once more--for the text is very prolific--Christ may be called a Father
   in the loving and tender sense of a Father's office. Here is a text to
   show what I mean. God is called the Father of the fatherless, and Job,
   I think, says of himself that he became a father to the poor. You know
   what it means, of course, at once. It means that he exercised a
   father's part. Now, albeit that the Spirit of adoption teaches us to
   call God our Father, yet it is not straining truth to say that our Lord
   Jesus Christ exercises to all His people a Father's part.

   According to the old Jewish custom the elder brother was the father of
   the family in the absence of the father. The firstborn took precedence
   of all, and took upon him the father's position. So the Lord Jesus, the
   First-Born among many Brethren, exercises to us a Father's office. Is
   it not so? Has He not succored us in all time of our need as a father
   succors his child? Has He not supplied us with more than heavenly bread
   as a father gives bread unto his children? Does He not daily protect
   us? No, did He not yield up His life that we, His little ones, might be
   preserved? Will He not say at the last, "Here am I, and the children
   that You have given Me. I have lost none"?

   Does He not chastise us by hiding Himself from us, as a father chastens
   his children? Do we not find Him instructing us by His Spirit and
   leading us into all Truth? Has He not told us to call no man father
   upon earth in the sense that He is to be our true Guide and Instructor?
   And are we not to sit at His feet and make Him our Rabbi and our
   authoritative Teacher? Is He not the Head in the household to us on
   earth, abiding with us, and has He not said, "I will not leave you
   orphans (that is the Greek word), I will come unto you"?

   As if His coming were the coming of a Father, if He is a Father, will
   we not give Him honor? If He is the Head of the household, will we not
   give Him obedience, and say in our hearts, "Other lords have had
   dominion over us, but from now on, Everlasting Father, we will give You
   reverence"? If He is, in all these senses, "the Everlasting Father"--

   "Then let us adore and give Him His right, All glory and power, and
   wisdom and might, All honor and blessing, with angels above, And thanks
   never-ceasing, for infinite love."

   III. Lastly, we weigh the words, "EVERLASTING FATHER." I have already
   explained what this means. Christ is called, "the Everlasting Father"
   because He does not, Himself, as a Father, die or vacate His office. He
   is still the Federal Head and Father of His people. He is still the
   Founder of Gospel Truth and of the Christian system--not allowing
   archbishops and popes to be His vicars and to take His place. He is
   still the true Life-Giver from whose wounds and by whose death we are
   quickened. He reigns, even now, as the patriarchal King. He is still
   the loving family Head. And so, in every sense, He lives as Father.

   But here is a sweet thought. He neither Himself dies, nor becomes
   childless! He does not lose His children! If His Church could perish He
   would not be a Father. A Father without a son? And this is the best of
   all, that He is "an Everlasting Father" to all those to whom He is a
   Father at all. If you have entered into this relationship so as to be
   in union with Christ, and to be covered with the hem of His garment,
   you are His child and you shall forever be! There is no unfathering
   Christ, and there is no unchilding us! He is everlastingly a Father to
   those who trust in Him, and He never does, at any one moment, cease to
   be Father to any one of these.

   This morning you may have come here in trouble, but Christ is still
   your Father. This day you may be much depressed in spirit and full of
   doubts and fears. A true father never ceases, if he is a father, to
   exercise his kindness to a child. Nor does Jesus cease to love and pity
   you. He will help you. Go to Him, and you shall find that loving Friend
   to be as tender as in the days of His flesh. He is the Author of an
   eternal system. As I glanced at the words ,"Everlasting Father," and
   thought of Him as the Founder of an ever-living system, I said to
   myself, "Ah then, the Christian religion will never die out!" It is not
   possible that the Truth as it is in Jesus should ever be put away if He
   is "the Everlasting Father"!

   I feel as if I should quote again Master Hugh Latimer, when, standing
   back to back with Ridley--"Courage, Master Ridley," he said, "we shall
   this day light such a candle in England as shall never be put out."
   Look yonder at Christ on the Cross! He did that day light such a candle
   as never can be put out! He is "the Everlasting Father." He set rolling
   that day, as it were, a snowflake of Truth as He died upon the Cross.

   And you know what the snowflake does upon the high Alps--a bird's wing,
   perhaps, sets it rolling, and it gathers another and another and
   another, till, as it descends, it becomes a mass of snow! And
   by-and-by, as it leaps from crag to crag, it grows larger and larger
   and larger until ponderous masses of ice and snow cohere together. And
   at the last, with an awful thundering crash, the avalanche rolls down,
   fills the valley and sweeps all before it! Even so this Everlasting
   Father on the Cross set in motion a mighty force which has gone on
   swelling and increasing, gathering to be a ponderous mass of mighty
   teaching! And the day shall come when, like an irresistible avalanche,
   it shall fall upon the palaces of the Vatican and upon the towers of
   Rome! There shall come a day when the mosques of Mohammed and the
   temples of the gods shall be crushed beneath its stupendous weight--and
   the Everlasting Father shall have done the deed!

   "The Everlasting Father," last of all, because He is the Father, in all
   His people, of eternal life. Adam, you are a father, but where are your
   sons? If you could return to earth, O Mother Eve, where would you find
   your children? I think I see her as she paces round the earth and finds
   nothing but little grassy mounds, heaps of turf, and sometimes a valley
   sodden blood-red where her children have been slain in battle. I hear
   her weeping for her children. She will not be comforted because they
   are not!

   But hush, Mother Eve, what life did you give them? What life was that
   which Father Adam conferred upon your sons and daughters? Why, only
   life terrestrial, a bubble life that melted and disappeared! But Jesus,
   as He comes again, will find none of His children dead! None of His
   sons and daughters lost! Because He lives, they live also, for He is
   the Everlasting Father and makes those to have everlasting life who
   live and breathe through Him. Thrice happy they who have an interest in
   the truth of our text!

   Now, dear Hearers, may I ask you whether Christ is Everlasting Father
   to you? There are other fathers. The Jew said, "We have Abraham as our
   father," and to this day certain divines teach that we have covenant
   rights because of our earthly fathers. They believe in the Abrahamic
   Covenant much after the manner of the Jews. "We have Abraham as our
   father"-- therefore we have a right to baptism. Therefore we are church
   members--"born into the church." Yes, I have heard it said, "born into
   the church."

   Let no man deceive you! This is not Christ's teaching! "You must be
   born-again." If not, though your mother were a saint in Heaven, and
   your father an undoubted Apostle of God, you should derive no advantage
   but a world of solemn responsibility from the fact--unless you are
   yourself born-again! Do not, then, say unto yourself, "we have Abraham
   as our father," for God is able of the very stones to raise up children
   unto Abraham! We had a very remarkable instance not very long ago in
   this Tabernacle of how God does sometimes bless the outcasts and leaves
   some of you, the children of godly parents, in the hardness of your
   heart to perish.

   There was a man known in the village where he lives by the name of
   Satan because of his being so thoroughly depraved. He was a sailor, and
   as another sailor in that town had been the means of the conversion of
   all the sailors in a vessel that left the town, this man desired to
   sail with him to try and beat his religion out of him. He did his best,
   but he signally failed, and as they happened to be coming to London,
   his friend asked him whether he would come to the Tabernacle. He did
   not mind coming to hear me, for, as it happened, I was brought up near
   the place where he lived.

   This Satan came here on the Lord's Day morning, when the text was upon
   soul murder, [Sermon #713, Volume 12] and he sat (some of you noticed
   him that day), and sobbed and cried under the sermon at such a
   broken-hearted rate that he could only say, "People are noticing me, I
   had better go out." But his companion would not let him go out, and
   that man from that day forth was begotten by the Everlasting Father and
   is living and walking in the Truth of God, an earnest Believer, doing
   all that he can for the spread of the kingdom, and singularly clear in
   his doctrinal knowledge!

   Here is a man who had been everything that was possible in the way of
   evil, yet God met with him! And some of you who have Abraham as your
   father, and are related to godly people, are just all the more hardened
   for all the preaching you have heard! May God have pity upon you and
   save you yet! Do not be content with fleshly fatherhood! Get the
   spiritual fatherhood which comes from Christ. Others of you are this
   day perhaps saying, "Well, we can trust in our good works." Well, then,
   Adam is your father, and you know what will come of you!

   Adam was driven out of Paradise, and you will never be admitted there!
   Adam lost all his hopes and you will lose yours. On the ground of the
   Law shall no flesh living be justified! Alas, I fear that many here
   have another father. How does Christ put it? "You are of your father,
   the devil," says He, "for his works you do." Not works merely of open
   sin in the form of adultery, uncleanness, theft, and such like, but
   opposition to Christ is peculiarly a work of the devil! And unbelief in
   Christ is the devil's masterpiece! If you do not, then, trust the Lord
   Jesus, do not say tonight when you kneel at the bedside, "Our Father,
   which are in Heaven," for your father is not in Heaven--your father is
   in Hell!

   Go to the blood of Jesus and ask that you may be cleansed from all
   iniquity, and then may you say through the Everlasting Father, "O God,
   You have made me Your child, and I love and bless Your name." May God
   be pleased to give you all His blessing for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                  A Message From God To His Church And People

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 16, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT
   THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "O Lord, I have heard Your speech, and was afraid: O Lord, revive Your
   work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the years make it
   known; in wrath remember mercy." Habakkuk 3:2.

   "O LORD, I have heard Your speech!" This is the language of reverent
   obedience and is a fit preface to a fervent prayer. If we are not
   willing to hear God's voice, we cannot expect Him to hear our voice. It
   is an admirable preparation for prayer, first to hearken diligently to
   what God the Lord shall speak, and then to be obedient to His commands.
   He who would hear God speak needs not to wait long, for God speaks to
   men continually by the Scriptures, which are given to us by
   Inspiration. Alas that we should be so deaf to its teachings! This
   wonderful volume, so full of wisdom, is so little read that few of us
   could dare to gaze upon its pages and say, "O Lord, in this Book I have
   heard Your speech."

   At other times, the Lord speaks by Providence. Both national
   Providences and personal Providences have a meaning. Providences that
   are afflicting, and Providences which are comforting all have a voice.
   But, alas, I fear that oftentimes to us Providence is dumb because we
   are deaf. How often, in our stubbornness, we are like the horse and the
   mule which have no understanding, and when God speaks to us we do not
   regard Him? He therefore multiplies our afflictions, and holds us in
   with the bit and bridle of adversity because we will not be governed by
   gentler means. Look, my Brethren, at the Providence of God throughout
   the whole of your lives, and I am afraid few of you can say of it, "O
   Lord, in Providence I have heard Your speech."

   The God of Heaven speaks to men by His Holy Spirit. He does this, at
   times, in those common operations of the Spirit upon the ungodly, which
   they, as did also their fathers, resist. The Spirit strives with men.
   He calls, and they refuse. He stretches out His hands, and they regard
   Him not. The unregenerate man is like the deaf adder that will not
   hear, charm we ever so wisely. Even when the Holy Spirit speaks to us,
   His people, we are not always willing and obedient. And though we have
   ears to hear we frequently quench the Spirit. We grieve Him. We neglect
   His monitions, and, if we do not despise His teachings, yet too often
   we forget them, and listen to the follies of earth instead of regarding
   the wisdom of the skies. I am afraid that in looking into our own
   hearts and studying them in connection with the operations of the Holy
   Spirit, not one of us could dare to say, without exception, "O Lord, I
   have heard Your speech."

   In the text before us we meet with a Prophet whose ears had been
   spiritually opened and who, therefore, heard the still, small voice of
   Jehovah where others perceived neither sound nor utterance. There are
   times even with us when, being under the influence of the Holy Spirit,
   we hold near communion with our God. Then are our hearts like wax to
   His seal, receiving the impression of the Divine Mind! Are you not
   conscious of having been in such a state? It must be so, dear Hearer,
   in a measure, with all the Lord's servants! But especially must it be
   often so with those of us who are called to bear His messages to the
   people!

   I have most solemnly sought to hear the speech of Jehovah in my own
   soul before I came into this pulpit, and pray that His Divine power may
   enable me to convey that speech to you. I have been afraid, this week,
   as I have heard the voice of God in this land. Trembling has taken hold
   upon me as Jehovah has spoken in thunderclaps and made the whole land
   to echo with His terrible accents! I may be to some of you as an
   interpreter, and you who are spiritual men, you will discern and judge
   whether I have heard the speech of God or not. If you shall find it to
   be God's voice to you, I hope you will be led to the farther carrying
   out of the language of the text in that much-needed prayer, "O Lord,
   revive Your work."

   There are three things in the text--an alarming voice, an appropriate
   prayer, and a potent argument--"in wrath remember mercy."

   I. Hear, with solemn awe, THE ALARMING VOICE! The speech of God demands
   your humblest attention. We need not enter into particulars of the
   heavy tidings which came to the ear of Habakkuk when he set upon the
   tower and watched to see what the Lord would say to him.

   Our business, this morning, is to tell you, in all solemnity, what the
   voice of God has been saying to us. In my lonely meditations I heard a
   voice, as of one that spoke in the name of the Lord. I bowed my head to
   receive the message, and the voice said, "Cry," and when I said, "What
   shall I cry?" the answer came to me as to Isaiah of old, "All flesh is
   grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
   the grass withers, the flower fades: because the breath of the Lord
   blows upon it; surely the people are grass."

   Then I thought I saw before me a great meadow reaching far and wide,
   and it was like a rainbow for its many colors, for the flowers of
   summer were in their beauty. In the midst of it I marked a mower of
   dark and cruel aspect, who with a scythe most sharp and glittering, was
   clearing mighty stretches of the field at each sweep and laying the
   fair flowers in withering heaps. He advanced with huge strides of
   leagues at once, leaving desolation behind him, and I understood that
   the mower's name was Death!

   As I looked I was afraid for my house, and my children, for my kinsfolk
   and acquaintance, and for myself also--for the mower drew nearer and
   nearer--and as he came onward a voice was heard as of a trumpet,
   "Prepare to meet your God." Moreover, as I mused on I heard a rumbling
   in the bowels of the earth, as though the Destroyer were traversing the
   dark pathways which the miner has dug, and doing his fearful work among
   the stones of darkness which are at the roots of the mountains. I
   wondered with sore amazement, and behold, there came up from the mouth
   of the pit a thundering cloud of vapor, of smoke and fire, and dust,
   and rushing whirlwind, which told to wailing women that they were
   widows and their children fatherless! And the Angel of Death again
   cried in my ears, "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof
   is as the flower of the field: the grass withers, the flower fades:
   because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are
   grass."

   I have come here this morning sorely afraid and much bowed down because
   of the mortality of man, and the certainty of death. We shall soon be
   gone, every one of us, to his grave. If not by such an alarming
   catastrophe as that which has amazed and troubled us during this week,
   yet by the common processes of decay. You whom I now see before me are
   the meadows, and death is in your midst! You are the flowers, and I
   hear the terrible blast, which, alas, must wither even you! I see you,
   but there is no joy in my eyes, for the cheek of beauty shall pale, and
   the eyes of youth shall grow dim, and the sinews of the strong shall
   fail them, and the arms of the mighty shall be powerless in the tomb!

   As the autumn leaves are gone, so are our fathers! And as the floods
   hasten to the ocean, even so are we hastening away. An irresistible
   torrent hurries us to our doom! A mighty wind from the Lord sweeps us
   forever onward. While we thus quietly consider it, the great mystery is
   being enacted--a thousand graves are being dug and a thousand corpses
   are being laid in new-made sepulchers! At this moment hundreds are
   wading into the cold, chill stream of Jordan--passing into the
   disembodied state to hear the judgment of the Great King.

   As I thought upon this matter, and desired to hear God's speech
   therein, I saw a precipice whose frowning steep overhung a sea of fire.
   Leading up to its brink I saw a road exceedingly broad. A road which
   was crowded from side to side with a thronging multitude who pressed
   and trod one upon another in their raging zeal to reach the summit of
   the crag. They went gaily on, merrily laughing, singing to sprightly
   music, many of them dancing, some of them pushing aside their fellows
   that they might reach sooner than was imperative upon them the end of
   which they knew so little. As I looked at that end which none of them
   could see, I saw a waterfall of souls falling in ceaseless, headlong
   stream into depths unutterably profound!

   As the crowd came on, rank by rank, to the edge of this precipice, they
   fell, they leaped over, or were dashed from the treacherous crag and
   descended amid cries and shrieks surpassing all imagination into a lake
   of fire where they were submerged with an everlasting
   baptism--overwhelmed with destruction from the presence of the Lord! I
   thought I heard their groans and moans, their shrieks and sighs as they
   first caught sight of the terrible abyss and would have shrunk back
   from it but were quite unable, for the time to pause was past.

   Even now I see before my eyes that terrific Niagara of souls descending
   by thousands every hour into the gulf unknown. This is the broad road
   of which we had heard so often, where multitudes delight to walk. "Wide
   is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many
   are they that go in it." Sure and terrible is the doom of everyone who
   treads there. Oh that men would forsake it at once and forever! Alas!
   Alas! Are not the great mass of our fellow citizens beneath the scepter
   of our Queen traveling on this broad road? Even if we could conceive
   that all who attend the places of worship were in the narrow way that
   leads to eternal life--if we could be charitable enough to believe
   that--yet look at the multitude of outsiders!

   Look at this city, with far more than a million for whom the sound of
   the church-going bell is meaningless! They know not God, neither regard
   Him! To them the name of Christ is but a word to curse or to ridicule!
   They are going, my Brethren, men of the same country as yourselves, men
   of the same race and tribe, speaking our own language--they are going
   downward to destruction! Among them your own children! Perhaps your
   wives, your husbands, your sons, your daughters, your parents--going in
   that motley crew, onward, swiftly onward, towards their dreadful end!
   My God will cast them away! Their end will be destruction! They will be
   driven from the Presence of the Lord forever!

   Let these two thoughts, my Brethren, burn in your souls until all
   coldness and indifference are consumed. Men die, and their souls are
   lost! Men die and their bodies are laid in the grave, but their souls
   descend into Hell! Scarcely were the first death a thing to be mourned
   over, if it were not for the second! It might be superfluous to shed so
   much as a single tear for all the men that died if we knew that they
   rested in the arms of Jesus and were forever blessed. But this is the
   sting of death, its bitterness, its wormwood and its gall--that sinners
   are condemned by Justice, and driven by Vengeance from the Presence of
   Mercy into the place where hope can never follow them! Christian
   Brothers and Sisters, hear this voice of God and be afraid!

   Over and above all this, there came upon me a horror of great darkness
   as I perceived something even more terrible than this! You will say to
   me, "How can it possibly be more terrible?" In certain aspects it
   seemed so to me. Hear it and judge. What if it is true that within the
   last twelve months the Church of the living God has scarcely made the
   slightest approach to an advance? What if this is true as respects a
   far longer period? Let the first sad fact rise before us with its
   proof. For the last twelve months no apparent increase has been made to
   the number of professed disciples of the Lord Jesus.

   Do you ask me for the proofs? I can prove it, alas, too surely. Our own
   body, the Baptist denomination, is, upon the whole, and all things
   considered, in as sound and healthy a state as any Christian community
   now existing. I am persuaded that in some respects it is more sound and
   more healthy. But do you know what will have been the increase during
   the twelve months of the entire denomination in England, Scotland, and
   Ireland, so far as we can ascertain it? Well, with the exception of
   London and the county of Glamorgan, in Wales, there will be no increase
   worthy of the name. In many parts of Wales, where we are strongest,
   there will be a positive decrease, and I think, in fifteen counties of
   England, we shall have lost numbers instead of making any advance!

   And when the whole are put together, the good with the bad, and this
   London of ours, wherein God has greatly blessed us of late, is counted
   with the rest, our entire increase for all the Churches with all their
   ministers will not make up four thousand souls. It is true that our
   statistics are not very accurate, but if they were more accurate I
   believe the result would be more unfavorable. This is the more fearful
   to me to contemplate, because the increase of the denomination, which,
   by God's Grace, we might naturally look for merely from the increase of
   population, should have been very much more than this.

   If other Christian Churches have not increased more, and I am persuaded
   that most of them have increased less, far less than we have, then I am
   correct in saying that positively the Church of God in Great Britain
   and Ireland, instead of making any real advance, has, in proportion to
   the increase of population, absolutely gone back! And I believe it
   would be accurate and truthful, and could be borne out by statistics,
   that if at this day there were taken a census of the number of persons
   who commune at the Lord's Table, it would be found to be smaller
   instead of larger than the number at the corresponding period of last
   year.

   As for abroad, what have our missions done? Brethren, if there were but
   one soul we ought to rejoice, but the result of missions has been of
   late so terribly little as to call for great searching of heart. Is it
   not a fact that there are missionaries of ten years' standing who have
   never had a convert? Is it not also a sad fact that the number of
   members in all our native Churches is probably less now than it was
   twelve months ago? Where is the nation that has been born in a day in
   this year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six? Where are the kings
   that have bowed down before King Jesus? Where are the nations that have
   called Him "Blessed"?

   Is there so much as one little tribe, however insignificant, that has
   owned Christ during the past year? Not one, not one! There has been no
   visible advance! The armies of the living God have rather suffered a
   repulse than gained a victory, and instead of the morning coming and
   the light arising, and the sun advancing to a noonday height, it seems
   as though at the best he stood still, if the light did not even
   retrograde. Surely there is a voice from God here, and as I hear it I
   am afraid.

   Meanwhile, what kind of an age has this been in which we have lived? Is
   it so impassive and thoughtless that progress is impossible? Are we
   living in one of those dark ages in which mind is rocked to sleep and
   the soul is stupefied? Has this last year been one in which the
   sleepiness of the human intellect has prevented our presenting the
   Truth of God to the sons of men? I think not! I believe, Brethren, that
   this year has been one of the most wakeful in the annals of human
   history! At this moment London is like the city of which the Prophet
   said, "It is full of stirs." There are political stirs in which the
   Christian minister finds no theme for sorrow, for when men's minds are
   but awake for anything there is then an opportunity for the propagation
   of the Truth of God.

   Truth dreads nothing so much as a sleepy audience! Give her but minds
   on the wing, and she will train them to the skies. This has been a year
   in which both upon politics and religion the human mind has been
   active, and had the Christian Churches been filled with the Spirit, and
   therefore zealous and faithful, I cannot comprehend that she would, at
   the close of the year, have had to cry, "Who has believed our report?"
   We have indulged the fancy that we have had a general revival, and that
   our churches are in a healthy state, but is it so? Let our non-success
   answer the question! In the meantime, while truth slumbers, the legions
   of evil spirits cease not their mischievous endeavors.

   How swiftly have the locusts of priest-craft ascended from the smoke of
   the bottomless pit and covered the land! While we are compelled to fear
   that evangelical Truth has made no advance, we cannot say this of
   ritualism, for its progress has been perfectly astounding! Though a
   Prophet should have told us that this Anglican Popery would have made
   so great an advance in so short a time, we would have said,
   "Impossible! England is soundly Protestant! She will never bear to have
   incense smoking under her nose, and to see the millinery of the Church
   of Rome flaunted before her face!"

   But she has borne it, and she likes it well. Despite much that has been
   said concerning Puseyism being non-English, we are inclined to question
   the statement. Where are the greatest crowds in the Establishment? Are
   they not at the feet of these priests of Baal? Do not rank and fashion
   gather most readily in those places where their senses are delighted
   while their souls are deluded? Yes, through the means of our Popish
   establishment there has been an onward rush of error which is perfectly
   appalling! Watchman, when they ask you, "What of the night?" can you
   say, "the morning comes"?

   You that love the Savior, will you open your ears to catch the meaning
   of all these things? Men dying! Men perishing! The Church slumbering
   and error covering the land--does not God say something in all this? Do
   you not hear out of this thick darkness the voice saying, "O My people,
   I have somewhat against you"? Did I not hear the Lord saying, "They
   shall perish, but their blood will I require at the watchman's hands?"
   I saw the Church of God folding her hands, given to slumber, saying, "I
   am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing."

   And all the while she was suffering multitudes to perish for lack of
   knowledge, leaving the banner of Truth to be moth-eaten, or to be
   trailed in the mire, and permitting the friends of error to ride
   roughshod over all the land! As I saw her thus I said within my heart,
   Surely the Lord will chasten such a people as this! And I feared that
   He would send judgments upon His Church, and perhaps take away her
   candlestick out of the place, and give the light unto another people
   that might serve Him more faithfully!

   Then I felt as Habakkuk did. I heard the voice of the Lord, and I was
   afraid. I was afraid for my fellow men, thinking of the multitudes of
   them that had already gone beyond recall to the land of darkness and to
   the regions of doom, and for the millions hastening to the same end! I
   was afraid for the Christian Church, lest it should have a name to live
   and be dead, lest the Lord should give up the Church in Britain as He
   did His Church in Shiloh, of which He said, "Go you now unto My place
   which was in Shiloh, where I set My name at the first, and see what I
   did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel."

   I feared lest He might do for the Church in Britain as He has to the
   church in Rome--given it over to become an antichrist, and an
   abomination before the eyes of God and men! I was afraid, with
   exceedingly great fear, for my fellow ministers, for I feared that all
   this people could not have perished without their being guilty of some
   of their blood! How could all this ignorance have remained in this land
   if the preachers had been faithful? I fear that the blood of souls will
   be required at the hands of many a minister. What do I see? A gathering
   of ministers. And what is this I see upon their garments? I see blood
   on them!

   I see blood sprinkled on gray heads, and alas, I see blood upon the
   brows of young men who have but lately entered into the work--blood
   upon them all! Here do I much fear for myself, lest I, also, addressing
   this multitude so constantly, should have much blood upon my clothes
   because of my many responsibilities! O God! It is enough to make us
   afraid! Why look, my Brethren, when God's servants were truly active,
   as the first twelve were, did the cause stand still? Did they win here
   and there a soul, and have now and then a conversion? Did the cause of
   Christ go back like an army put to the rout? On the contrary, did they
   not as soon as ever they received the Truth of God use it like a
   fire-brand to set the nations on a blaze?

   They met with persecutions which do not stand in our way. They were
   assaulted by threats of death which we have not to brave, and yet
   nothing could stand against their indomitable zeal! The Omnipotence of
   the Holy Spirit rested on them and they went on conquering and to
   conquer! And what are we? Oh we are cold and dead where they were full
   of fire and life! We are the degenerate sons of glorious fathers. Do
   you think the Church could have had it said that she remained a year
   without increase if there were not blame somewhere? You may remind me
   of Divine sovereignty, if you will, but I remember that Divine
   sovereignty always acts with wisdom and with love, and that the Lord
   has not said to us, "Labor in vain." If we had labored, and if all the
   Christian Church had labored as they should have labored, I believe the
   promise would have been proved, "Your labor is not in vain in the
   Lord."

   II. When one is thus bowed down with the voice of God, the most natural
   prompting of the regenerate soul is to pray. So we turn to the second
   part of the text which has in it AN APPROPRIATE PRAYER. I wish I had
   power this morning to make you feel the weight of what I have already
   brought before you! I know I have not put it in such language as I
   should have chosen, but it seems to me to be perfectly dreadful that
   there should be this constant dying, this constant ruin, this constant
   spread of error--and no progress in the Church. I am sure when I heard
   it, if a messenger had told me that I was a beggar, that I had lost
   everything on earth, I would have been more pleased with such an
   announcement than to know that God's Church had not increased in the
   space of twelve months.

   It seems to me to be a thing to mourn over, a thing to make us go to
   God with a humble heart and to feel as if one had been sorely chastened
   by the Most High. For the Lord knows some of us have worked with all
   our might, and we hope it is not pride when we say the blame does not
   rest with us, and yet the question must go to us all. We must deal
   faithfully with ourselves and not be flattered. We would honestly
   enquire, How much of this lies at my door? How much of this burden of
   God ought I to bear today?

   Certainly enough to lead us to such prayer as that before us! Habakkuk,
   being bowed down, first turns himself to God. His first word is, "O
   Lord." To the Most High we must carry both our own and our Church's
   troubles. Habakkuk turns not to another Prophet to ask of him, "My
   Brother, what shall we do?" He turns to the Master, "O Lord, what will
   You do?" It will be well for us to confer with one another as to the
   causes of defeat and the means for securing success, but all conference
   with flesh and blood is idle unless it be preceded by solemn
   conferences with God. For God's Church, God is needed! For God's work,
   God's own arm must be made bare!

   Is it not delightful to notice how heavy trials drive us to God when we
   might not have gone to Him otherwise? The little child, when walking
   abroad, runs before his father. But if he meets some strange man of
   whom he is afraid, he runs back and takes his father's hand--so should
   it be with us. If God had prospered all our Churches, and everything
   had gone on as we had desired, we might, perhaps, have grown
   self-confident, and have said, "O Lord, You have given us power in
   ourselves."

   But now that we see the contrary, let us run back to closer fellowship
   and nearer communion with our God than ever! And taking hold upon the
   arm of His strength, let us stir Him up by our continued and fervent
   prayers. Notice next that the prayer of Habakkuk is about God's Church.
   He knew that there were dark days coming over Palestine, but he does
   not pray about that land in particular. "O Lord," he said, "revive Your
   work." Certain would-be prophets tell us that many wonders will occur
   in 1866 and 1867, though I notice a propensity to postpone the whole
   business to 1877. Is this postponement intended that there may be ten
   years longer in which to sell their books?

   But whatever is to come--whether the Turkish empire is to be destroyed,
   or Louis Napoleon is to annex Germany or whether Rome is to be
   swallowed up by an earthquake--it does not seem, to me, to matter so
   much as the turn of a button! The great thing to a Christian is not the
   fate of earthly empires, but the state of the heavenly kingdom. As to
   what is to become of this principality or that empire--what have you
   and I to do with these things? We are the servants of a spiritual King
   whose kingdom is not of this world! Let the potsherds strive with the
   potsherds of the earth, and break each other as they will--our business
   is with King Jesus and His throne!

   It is delightful to see the Prophet rising beyond the narrow range of
   the Jew, getting out of nationalities and praying, "O Lord, revive Your
   work." That is the one ship we care for in the storm, that one vessel
   in which Jesus Christ is riding at the helm, the Captain of salvation,
   and the Lord High Admiral of the seas. Let the nations mix in dire
   confusion as they will, God rules over all and brings out His Church in
   triumph from all the strife of earth. The one anxiety of our souls
   should be the blood-stained banner of the Cross! Will it wave high?
   Will King Jesus get to Himself the crown, for we have neither will nor
   wish beyond that.

   So, Christian men, if you have heard God's voice in the great judgments
   that are abroad, let those judgments lead you to pray, "Lord, remember
   Your Church--Your Church in England, Your Church in America, Your
   Church in France, Your Church in Germany, Your Church anywhere, Your
   Church everywhere. O God, look upon Your elect ones! Let the separate
   ones, scattered through all nations, receive of Your benediction! As
   for all else, in Providence, we leave it to Your will, for You know
   what is best."

   Observe next that the Prophet uses a word which is singularly
   discriminative: "O Lord, revive Your work." He does not say, "Lord,
   prosper my work." How often do I go to God in concern about the work
   that is going on in this Tabernacle! I am thankful for all the blessing
   we have seen, and I grow increasingly anxious lest the Lord should
   withdraw His hand. But when one looks abroad upon the world, and upon
   all the Lord's people in different denominations, one cannot pray,
   "Lord, prosper my work!" At least, one can pray that, but then cover
   that over with another--"O Lord, revive YOUR work."

   For what about my work? Well, as far as it is mine it is very faulty.
   And what about the work of the Baptists? Well, there is doubtless much
   that is wrong about it. And what about the work of the Methodists, and
   the work of the Congregationalists, and so on? May God prosper them
   according as they walk in His Truth! But the way to come to the core of
   our prayer is to cry, "O Lord, revive Your work! Whatever is of You,
   whatever is Your Truth, whatever is Your Spirit's work in the hearts of
   men, whatever is genuine conversion and vital godliness--Lord, revive
   it!"

   Cannot you, dear Friends, in the presence of death which we have been
   speaking of, and in the presence of judgment, and in the presence of
   the fact that the Christian Church has not been increased these twelve
   months, shake off all the bitterness of everything that has to do with
   self, or with party, and now pray, "Lord, revive Your work, and if Your
   work happens to be more in one branch of the Church than in another,
   Lord, give that the most reviving! Give us all the blessing, but let
   Your own purposes be accomplished, and Your own glory come of it and we
   shall be well content, though we should be forgotten and unknown. 'O
   Lord, revive Your work.' "

   Note that the particular blessing he asks for is a revival of God's
   work, by which we mean, in our time, that there should be a revival of
   the old Gospel preaching. We must have it back! It comes to this--our
   ministers must return to the same Gospel which John Bunyan and George
   Whitfield preached. We cannot get on with philosophical gospels--we
   must bring together all these new geological gospels and neological
   gospels, and semi-Pelagian gospels, and do with them as the people of
   Ephesus did with the books--we must burn them, and let Paul preach
   again to us! We can do without modern learning, but we cannot do
   without the ancient Gospel! We can do without oratory and eloquence,
   but we cannot do without Christ Crucified! Lord, revive Your work by
   giving us the old-fashioned Gospel back again in our pulpits!

   It is to be lamented that there are so many who are considered not to
   be bad preachers who scarcely ever mention Christ's name, and are very
   loose concerning atonement by His precious blood. You will hear people
   say they have gone to such-and-such a Chapel, and whatever the sermon
   might have been about it certainly was not about the Gospel. Oh may
   that cease to be the case! May our pulpits ring with the name of Jesus!
   May Christ be lifted up and His precious blood be the daily theme of
   the ministry! Oh that thousands might be brought to put their trust in
   the Lamb slain, and to find salvation by faith in Him whom God has
   appointed to be the Savior of men!

   This, however, would not bring back a revival unless there came with it
   a revival of the Gospel spirit. If you read the story of the
   Reformation, or the later story of the new Reformation under Whitfield
   and Wesley, you are struck with the singular spirit that went with the
   preachers. The world said they were mad! The caricaturists drew them as
   being fanatical beyond all endurance. But there it was, their zeal was
   their power! Of course the world scoffed at that of which it was
   afraid. The world fears enthusiasm--the sacred enthusiasm which love to
   Christ kindles--the enthusiasm which is kindled by the thought of the
   ruin of men and by the desire to pluck the firebrands from the flame!
   The world fears the enthusiasm which believes in the Holy Spirit, which
   believes that God is still present with His Church to do wonders! This
   is what the world dreads, and what the Church wants. Pray for it! Pray
   to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire! O Lord, send forth
   Your unconquerable Spirit! O God, revive Your work!

   You perceive that the Prophet desires this gift at once. He does not
   say, "at the end of the years," but "in the midst of the years." His
   prayer is for a present and immediate revival of genuine religion. Let
   it be ours, not from the teeth outward but from the heart outward to
   pray for revival! Let us long for it with heart and soul and strength,
   and God will give it to us! Once more note that the prayer of Habakkuk
   is a very intelligent one, for he indicates the means by which he
   expects to have it fulfilled--in the midst of the years make known. It
   is by making known the Gospel that men are saved, not by mere thumping
   of the pulpit and stamping of the feet, but by telling out something
   which the understanding may grasp and the memory may retain.

   To publish the doctrine of a reconciled God! To tell men that the Lord
   has laid Hell upon Jesus by punishing Him instead of us! To proclaim
   that there is life in a look at the Crucified One! To tell them that
   the Holy Spirit creates men new creatures in Christ Jesus! To give a
   full and comprehensive view of the Doctrines of Grace--these are some
   of the surest ways, under God, of promoting a revival of religion! I
   cannot talk to you but I think I could pray to God, and I hope many of
   you will do so today. O God, send us a revival! This will purge the
   blood of souls from our garments-- nothing else will! This will roll
   back the tides of error--nothing else can! This will give to the
   Christian Church triumph of an unusual kind! This will cover the earth
   with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the deep--nothing
   else can or will!

   Gracious God, revive Your work!

   III. And now we close with A POTENT ARGUMENT. He uses the argument of
   mercy--"in wrath remember mercy." If God were to say to the Churches in
   England, "I will have nothing to do with you. You have been so idle, so
   worldly, so purse-proud, so prayerless, so quarrelsome, so inconsistent
   that I will never bless you again." If God were to say that, the
   churches of God in England might remain as astounding monuments of the
   justice of God towards the people who forsake His ways.

   Sorrowfully, not wishing to be an accuser of the Brethren, it does seem
   to me that considering the responsibilities which were laid upon us,
   and the means which God has given us, the Church generally, (there are
   blessed exceptions!), has done so little for Christ that if "Ichabod"
   were written right across its brow, and it were banished from God's
   House, it would have its just deserts. We cannot, therefore, appeal to
   merit--it must be to mercy. O God, have mercy upon Your poor Church,
   and visit her and revive her. She has but a little strength. She has
   desired to keep Your Word. Oh, refresh her! Restore to her Your power,
   and give her yet to be great in this land.

   Mercy is also wanted for the land itself. This is a wicked nation, this
   England. Its wickedness belongs not to one class only, but to all
   classes. Sin runs down our streets. We have a fringe of elegant
   morality, but behind it we have a mass of rottenness. There is not only
   the immorality of the streets at night, but look at the dishonesty of
   business men in high places! Cheating and thieving upon the grandest
   scale are winked at. Little thieves are punished, and great thieves are
   untouched! This is a wicked city, this city of London, and the land is
   full of drunkenness, and the land is full of fornication, and the land
   is full of theft, and the land is full of all manner of Popish
   idolatry!

   I am not the proper prophet to take up this burden, and to utter a
   wailing. My temperament is not that of Jeremiah, and therefore am I not
   well-called to such a mission. But I may at least, with Habakkuk,
   having heard the Lord's speech concerning it, be afraid and exhort you
   to pray for this land, and be asking that God would revive His work in
   order that this drunkenness may be given up. That this dishonesty may
   be purged out. That this great social evil may be cut out from the body
   politic as a deadly cancer is cut out by the surgeon's knife.

   God, for mercy's sake, cast not off this island of the seas! Give her
   not up to internal distraction! Leave her not in darkness and blackness
   forever, but "revive Your work in the midst of the years! In the midst
   of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy." While I have been
   addressing Christians, my object has been to bless the ungodly, too,
   and I do trust that some here who are not converted will enquire,
   "What, then, is God's voice to me?" May you be led to seek salvation,
   and remember you shall find it--for whoever trusts Christ shall be
   saved!

   If there is a man, woman, or child among you who will now humble
   himself under the hand of God and look to the crucified Savior, you
   shall not perish! Neither shall the wrath of God abide upon you, but
   you shall be found of Him in peace in the day of His appearing. God
   accept this humble weak testimony for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                  Life Eternal

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish,
   neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand." John 10:28.

   SOME will say that this is a mixed congregation and that such a
   doctrine as this should not be advanced in the presence of ungodly men
   and women. This shows how little such objectors read their Bible, for
   this very text was spoken by the Savior, not to His loving disciples
   but to His enemies! Read the thirty-first verse of the chapter, and you
   will see the temper of the congregation to whom Jesus Christ preached
   upon this subject--"Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him."
   So it was an indignant multitude of bigots that had this hurled into
   their face by the Savior, that although they might reject Him, and
   because of their willful obstinacy might miss the blessings of Divine
   Grace, yet those blessings were rich and rare.

   He would have them to know that what they lost was inexpressibly
   precious, and that His message was not to be despised without great
   damage to their souls. Thus, if there is a mixed multitude here--and I
   fear the allegation is true, that there are many here who cannot
   comprehend the preciousness of the things of God--yet, for the same
   reason which prompted the Savior to preach this doctrine to the wicked
   in His day, we will do the same now, that they may know what it is they
   lose by losing Christ! We want them to know what those comfortable
   things are which they despise, and what are the inestimable treasures
   which those must miss who seek after the treasures of this world, and
   let their God, their Savior, go!

   We have no time to loiter, and let us, therefore, as the bee sucks
   honey from the flower, seek after the sweet essence of the text, "I
   give unto them eternal life." The connection tells us that the pronoun
   "them" refers to Christ's sheep, to certain persons whom He had chosen
   to be His sheep, and whom He had also called to be such. Lest we should
   be in the dark as to whom they are, our Savior has kindly put us in
   possession of the marks by which His sheep may be discovered. We cannot
   read the secret roll of election, nor can we search the heart, but we
   can mark the outward conduct of men. The verse before the text tells us
   by what signs we are to know God's people--"My sheep hear My voice, and
   I know them, and they follow Me."

   The marks are the hearing of Christ, and then the following of Christ,
   first, by faith in Him, and then by an active obedience to His
   precepts. "Faith, which works by love" is the mark of Christ's sheep,
   and it is of true Believers that He speaks when He says, "I give unto
   them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck
   them out of My hand." Would to God that all of us wore the uniform of
   the elect, namely, active, sanctifying faith! Oh that we all listened
   to the Great Shepherd's voice! That we all received the Truths of God
   which He delivers! And then, resolved by His Grace, that we all
   followed Him wherever He goes, as the sheep follow the shepherd!

   Having thus explained to whom the text belongs, we will now handle it
   in a threefold manner. The text implies, first, somewhat concerning the
   past of these people. The text plainly states, in the second place, a
   great deal about the present state of these people. And, thirdly, the
   text not obscurely hints at something about their future.

   I. In the first place, the studious reader will observe that the text
   implies SOMEWHAT CONCERNING THE PAST HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD. It
   is said, "I give unto them eternal life." There is an implication,
   therefore, that they had lost eternal life. Every one of God's people
   fell in Adam, and all have fallen also by actual sin. Consequently we
   came under condemnation, and Christ Jesus has done for us what Her
   Majesty the Queen has sometimes done for a condemned criminal--He has
   bought us a free pardon. He has given us life.

   When our own desert was eternal destruction from the Presence of the
   Lord, Jesus Christ stepped in and He said, "You are forgiven. The
   sentence shall not take place upon you. Your offense is blotted out.
   You are clear." No, I think the text implies that there was something
   more than condemnation--there was execution! We were not only condemned
   to die, we were already spiritually dead. Jesus did not merely spare
   the life which ought to have been taken, and in that sense gave it to
   us, but He imparted to us a life which we had not before enjoyed!

   It is implied in the text that we were spiritually dead. We are not
   left here to our own surmising, nor even to our own experience, for the
   Apostle Paul has said, "You has He quickened who were dead in
   trespasses and sins." What? Paul, were we dead? Are you not mistaken?
   Perhaps we were only a little sick. We are ready to admit, O Apostle,
   that we were sick and near to death, but surely we had a little vital
   energy, a little power to assist ourselves! "No," says the Apostle,
   "you were dead. Dead in trespasses and sins."

   The work of salvation is tantamount, not only to the healing of the
   sick, but to the actual resurrection of a dead man from his grave. All
   the saints who are now alive unto God were once as dead as others,
   quite as corrupt and offensive as others, and as much an ill savor in
   the nostrils of Divine Justice by reason of their sins as even the most
   corrupt of their fellows. We had altogether gone out of the way. We had
   altogether become abominable, for "there is none that does good, no not
   one." When we were all shut up under sin, Jesus Christ came into the
   region of death and brought life and immortality to us!

   Life was forfeited by all the saints. Spiritual life they had
   none--Jesus the Quickener has made them alive unto God. Is it not also
   very clearly implied that, so far from having any life, these people
   could not otherwise have obtained life except by its being given to
   them? It is a rule well known to all Biblical students that you never
   meet in God's Word with an unnecessary miracle. A miracle is never
   worked where the ordinary course of nature would suffice. Now, my
   Brothers and Sisters, the greatest of all miracles is the salvation of
   a soul! If that soul could save itself God would not save it, but would
   let it do what it could do! And if the spiritually dead could quicken
   themselves, rest assured, from the analogy of all the Divine
   transactions, that Jesus Christ would not have come to give them life!

   I believe that it would be utterly impossible for any one of us to
   enter Heaven, let us do what we might, unless Jesus Christ had come
   from Heaven to show us the way--to remove the bolts and bars for
   us--and to enable us to tread in the path which leads to Glory and
   immortality. Lost! Lost! Lost! The race of man was utterly lost--not
   partly lost, not thrown into a condition in which it might be ruined
   unless it worked hard to save itself--but so lost that but for the
   interposition of a Divine arm, but for the appearance of God in human
   flesh, but for the stupendous transaction upon Calvary, and the work of
   God the Holy Spirit in the heart--not one dead soul ever could come to
   life!

   Eternal life would not be the peculiar work of the Lord Jesus if man
   had a finger in it, but man's power is excluded and Divine Grace
   reigns. It is clearly to be seen in the text, by a little thought, that
   eternal life was not the merit of any one of God's people, for it is
   said that it is given to us. Now a gift is the very opposite of
   payment. What a man receives as a gift he certainly does not deserve.
   If it is given to us, then it is no more a debt. But if it is a debt
   then it can no more be a gift. None of us merits eternal life, or ever
   can merit it. Mere mortal life is a gift of Divine mercy. We do not
   deserve it.

   And as for the eternal life spoken of in the text, it is a gift too
   high for the fingers of human merit to hope to reach! If a man should
   work ever so hard after it, yet upon the footing of the Law it would be
   impossible for him to obtain it. Man merits nothing but death, and life
   must be the free gift of God. "The wages of sin is death." That is to
   say it is earned and procured as matter of debt. "But the gift of God,"
   the Free-Grace gift of God, "is eternal life."

   Now this is a very humiliating doctrine, I know, but it is true, and I
   want you all to feel it. Children of God, I know you do. You see the
   hole of the pit from where you were drawn? Do you see it? Or have you
   grown proud of late? Those fine feelings and prayers of yours--have you
   stuck them like feathers in your cap? I pray you remember what you
   were! You, proud? Do not forget the dunghill where you once grew!
   Remember the filth out of which God took you, and instead of being
   scarlet with the garments of pride, your cheeks may well be scarlet
   with a blush! Oh, may God forbid, once and for all, that we should
   glory, for what have we to glory in? What have we that we have not
   received?

   It is clear, too, from the text, that those who are now righteous would
   have perished but for Christ. Christ says, "they shall never perish."
   Promises are never given as superfluities. There is a necessity,
   therefore, for this promise. There was a danger, a solemn danger, that
   every one of those men who are now saved would have perished eternally.
   Sin made them heirs of wrath even as others, so Scripture tells us. And
   justice must have overwhelmed them with the rest if distinguishing
   Grace had not prevented! Even now it is solemnly true that there is no
   reason why a truly righteous soul should not perish--except that Christ
   prevents it.

   You are alive, but you would not be spiritually alive an hour unless
   the Holy Spirit continued to pour His vital energy into your soul. You
   shall be preserved, but, mark you, it is stated as a promise, and
   therefore it is not at all a matter of natural necessity. Apart from
   Divine Grace you are in fearful danger of apostasy, and probably you
   have fears about it even now, like the Apostle who feared lest after
   having preached to others, he himself should be a cast away. A very
   proper fear--a fear which will often come upon sincere souls who feel a
   holy jealousy of themselves. But we need have no fear when we come to
   the promise of God, for if we are really in Christ we have a guarantee
   of security, since Christ's own words are, "They shall never perish."

   The promise was certainly given because it was needed. There is a
   danger of perishing. There are ten thousand risks of perishing. Only
   Omnipotence itself keeps off the fiery darts of Satan. The blessed
   Physician gives the antidote, or the poison would soon destroy us. He
   who swears to bring us safely home protects us from a thousand foes who
   otherwise would work our ill. "They shall never perish." It is also
   implied that naturally the people of God have ten thousand enemies who
   would pluck them out of Christ's hand. They were once in the hand of
   the enemy. They were once willing bond-slaves of Satan. All this they
   know, and all this they are willing to acknowledge.

   I would to God that some here would feel the truth of that which I have
   been saying. You self-righteous ones will say, "I am all right. I do my
   best, I go to a place of worship." Now, Soul, that is right enough in
   itself, but if you boast of it, it is an evidence that you know neither
   God nor yourself! When I have heard of some who have boasted that they
   felt no inbred sin, I have wished that they would read the story of the
   Pharisee and the Publican. At the Fulton Street Prayer Meeting, a
   Brother asked for the prayers of Believers because he felt so much the
   corruption of his own heart, the temptations of Satan, and especially
   the natural vileness of his own nature.

   A Brother stood up on the opposite side of the hall and said he thanked
   God that was not his experience! He did not feel any corruption and his
   heart was not depraved. The other one made no reply, but a friend
   present read these words: "Two men went up into the temple to pray. The
   one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed
   thus with himself, God, I thank You that I am not as other men are,
   extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast
   twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the
   publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto
   Heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a
   sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather
   than the other: for everyone that exalts himself shall be abased; and
   he that humbles himself shall be exalted."

   A sense of sin is a blessed sign either of pardon received, or of
   pardon to come. He that says he has no sin makes God a liar, and the
   truth is not in him! He who will not confess his sin shall never be
   absolved! But he who, with a broken and a trembling heart, goes to the
   foot of the Cross shall find forgiveness there. This much, then, upon
   the past estate of the heirs of Heaven.

   II. And now, to plunge at once into the subject. THE TEXT SHEDS A FLOOD
   OF LIGHT UPON THE PRESENT STATE OF EVERY BELIEVER. We shall have to
   give you hints rather than a long exposition, so kindly take the first
   sentence, which speaks of a gift received. "I give unto them eternal
   life." This gift is, first of all, life. You will make strange
   confusion of God's Word if you confound life with existence, for they
   are very different things. All men will exist forever, but many will
   dwell in everlasting death! They will know nothing whatever of life.

   Life is a distinct thing altogether from existence, and implies in
   God's Word something of activity and of happiness! In the text before
   us it includes many things. Note the difference between the stone and
   the plant. The plant has vegetable life. You know the difference
   between the animal and the plant. While the plant has vegetable life,
   yet it is altogether dead in the sense in which we speak of living
   creatures. It has not the sensations which belong to animal life. Then,
   again, if we turn to another and higher grade, namely, mental life, an
   animal is dead so far as that is concerned. It cannot enter at all into
   the mysterious calculations of the mathematician, nor revel in the
   sublime glories of poetry. The animal has nothing to do with the life
   of the intellectual mind--as to mental life it is dead.

   Now, there is a grade of life which is higher than the mental life--a
   higher life quite unknown to the philosopher-- not put down in Plato,
   nor spoken of by Aristotle--but understood by the very least of the
   children of God! It is a phase of life called, "spiritual life." It is
   a new form of life altogether which does not belong to man naturally,
   but is given to him by Jesus Christ. The first man, Adam, was made a
   living soul and all his descendants are made like unto him. The second
   Adam is made a quickening spirit, and until we are made like the second
   Adam we know nothing of spiritual life.

   This body of ours is by nature adapted for a soulish life. The Apostle
   tells us, in that wonderful chapter in Corinthians, that the body is
   sown--what? "A natural body." The Greek is, "A soulish body"--"but it
   is raised"-- what? "A spiritual body." There is a soulish body, and
   there is a spiritual body. There is a body adapted to the lower life
   which belongs to all men, a mere mental existence. And there is to be a
   body which will belong to all those who have received spiritual
   life--who shall dwell in that body as the house of their perfected
   spirit in Heaven.

   The life which Jesus Christ gives His people is spiritual life,
   therefore it is mysterious. "You hear the sound thereof but you cannot
   tell from where it comes, nor where it goes. So is everyone that is
   born of the Spirit." You who have mental life cannot explain to the
   horse or the dog what it is. Neither can we who have spiritual life
   explain to those who have it not what it is. You can tell them what it
   does and what its effects are, but what the "spark of heavenly flame"
   may be, you, yourselves, do not know though you are conscious that it
   is there! It is spiritual life which Jesus Christ gives His people, but
   it is more--it is Divine life!

   This life is like the life of God, and therefore it is elevating. "We
   are made," says the Apostle, "partakers of the Divine nature."
   "Begotten again by God the Father, not," says the Apostle, "with
   corruptible seed, but with incorruptible." We do not become Divine, but
   we receive a nature which enables us to sympathize with Deity, to
   delight in the topics which engage the Eternal Mind, and to live upon
   the same principles as the Most Holy God. We love, for God is love. We
   begin to he holy, for God is thrice holy. We pant after perfection, for
   He is perfect. We delight in doing good, for God is good. We get into a
   new atmosphere. We pass out of the old range of the mere mental
   faculties. Our spiritual faculties make us akin to God.

   "Let Us," said He, "make man in Our own image, after Our own likeness."
   That image Adam lost. That image Christ restores and gives to us that
   life which Adam lost in the day when he sinned, when God said to him,
   "In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die." In that sense
   he did die--the sentence was not postponed--he died spiritually as soon
   as he touched the fruit. And this long-lost life Jesus Christ restores
   to every soul who believes in Him! This life, you will gather from my
   remarks, is heavenly life. It is the same life that expands and
   develops itself in Heaven. The Christian does not die. What does the
   Savior say? "He that believes in Me shall never die."

   Does not the mental life die? Yes. Does not the mere bodily life die?
   Yes, but not the spiritual life! It is the same life here which it will
   be there--only now it is undeveloped and corruption impedes its action.
   Brothers and Sisters, nothing of us shall go to Heaven as flesh and
   blood, but only as it is subdued, elevated, changed, and perfected by
   the influence of the spirit-life! Know you not that "flesh and blood
   cannot inherit the kingdom of God? Neither does corruption inherit
   incorruption."

   Then what is the "I," the "myself" that shall enter Heaven? Why, if you
   are in Christ a new creature, then that new creature and nothing but
   that new creature! The very life which you have lived here in the
   Tabernacle. The very life that has budded and blossomed in the garden
   of communion with God. That life which has led you to visit the sick,
   and clothe the naked, and feed the hungry. That life which has made
   tears of repentance stream down your cheeks. That life which has caused
   you to believe in Jesus--this is the life which will go to Heaven! And
   if you have not this, then you do not possess the life of Heaven and
   dead souls cannot enter there! Only living men can enter into the land
   of the living. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, so also shall
   we bear the image of the heavenly." Even now the heavenly life heaves
   and throbs within us!

   I think it may also be inferred from all this that the life which
   Christ gives His people is an energetic life. If the spiritual life is
   poured into a man it raises him above his former state and lifts him
   out of the range of merely carnal comprehension. He himself is
   discerned of no man. "For you are dead, and your life is hid with
   Christ in God." You cannot expect the world to understand this new
   life! It is a hidden thing. It will be a mystery to yourselves, a
   wonder to your own hearts. But oh, how active it will be! It will fight
   with your sins and will not be satisfied until it has slain them! If
   you tell me you never have a conflict within, I tell you I cannot
   understand how you can have the Divine life, for it is sure to come
   into conflict at once with the old nature, and there will be perpetual
   strife.

   The man becomes a new man at home. His wife and family observe it. He
   is a different man in business. He is a changed man altogether--whether
   you view him in connection with his fellow men or with his God. He is a
   new creature! He feels that the new and wondrous life which has been
   planted in him has made him of a different race from the common herd,
   and he walks among the sons of men feeling that he is an alien and a
   stranger. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet
   appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear we shall
   be like He, for we shall see Him as He is." I wish there were more time
   to describe the inward life, but this must suffice to indicate the
   blessing which Jesus gives to the Believer by the work of the Holy
   Spirit.

   There is a word in the text, which qualifies it: "I give unto them
   eternal life." "Eternal" means "without end." If Christ puts the life
   of God into a man, that life cannot be taken away. It cannot die, that
   were impossible! When I have heard one say that you may be a child of
   God today but that next week may find you a child of the devil, I have
   supposed that the word "eternal," according to him, could only have
   meant five or six days. But according to the dictionary I use,
   according to the mind of the Spirit, "eternal" means "without end." If,
   then, a man says, "I had spiritual life once, but I do not possess it
   now," it is clear that either he is mistaken altogether or he never had
   it at all!

   If Jesus had said, "I give unto them life which shall last for seven
   years, but which may perhaps be quenched and put out under temptation,"
   I could understand a man saying that he had fallen from Grace. But if
   it is "eternal life," then it must be "eternal." There is no end to it,
   it must go on. The mere existence of the soul, we believe, will be
   never-ending. But it will be no gift to the ungodly that it will be so!
   It is not for Christ to give us mere immortality of existence, for that
   will be a fearful curse to some men! Lost souls would be glad enough if
   they could be rid of their immortal existence, but Christ gives an
   eternal, a holy life, a happy life, which is infinitely more than
   existence. Existence may be a curse, but life is a blessing.

   This life begins here: "I give unto them." Not, "I shall give," but, "I
   give." Not, "I will give it to them when they die," but, "I give it
   them here, I give unto them eternal life." Now, my Hearer, you have
   either got eternal life tonight, or you are still in death. If you have
   not received it you are "dead in trespasses and sins," and your doom
   will be a terrible one! But if God has given you eternal life, fear not
   the surrounding hosts of Hell nor the temptations of the world, for the
   eternal God is your refuge, and underneath you are the everlasting
   arms! This life is given as a free gift to every one of the Lord's
   people, and is bestowed by the Lord and by none else.

   2. Let us turn now to the second part of the blessing. Here is
   preservation secured. "They shall never perish." Certain gentlemen who
   cannot endure the doctrine of final perseverance manage to slip away
   from the next sentence, "Neither shall any pluck them out of My hand,"
   and suggest, "but they may get out themselves." No, no, no! Because the
   text says, "They shall never perish." Our present sentence, which we
   have now in hand, puts aside all suppositions of every kind about the
   destruction of one of Christ's sheep. "They shall never perish."

   Take each word. "They shall never perish." Some of their notions may.
   Some of their comforts may. Some of their experiences may. But THEY
   never shall! That which is the essence of the man, his true soul, his
   inward renewed nature, shall never be destroyed. See, then, Christian,
   you may be deprived of a thousand things without any violation of the
   promise. The promise is not that the ship shall not go to the bottom,
   but that the passengers shall get to the shore. The promise is not that
   the house shall not be burned--the pledge is that you who are in the
   house shall escape. "They shall never perish."

   Take another word: "They shall never perish." They shall go very near
   it, perhaps. They shall lose their joys and their comforts, but "they
   shall never perish." The life in them shall never be starved out, nor
   beaten out, nor driven out. If you once get leaven into a piece of
   bread you cannot get it out. You may boil it, you may fry it, you may
   bake it, you may do what you like with it, but the leaven is in it and
   you cannot get it out. Get the soul saturated with the Grace of God,
   and you can never eradicate it. The man himself shall never perish! He
   may think he shall. The devil may tell him he shall. His comforts may
   be withdrawn. He may go to his deathbed full of doubts and fears about
   himself, but he shall never perish!

   Now this is either true or it is not. You who think it is not true tell
   the Lord so. But I believe that it is a most sure and infallible fact,
   for Jehovah says it. I do not know how it is that they do not perish.
   It is a wondrous thing. But then it is all a marvel throughout from
   first to last. Now take the word "never." We have shown how long the
   preservation endures--"They shall never perish." "Well, but if they
   should live to be very aged, and should then fall into sin?" "They
   shall never perish." Oh, but perhaps they may be assaulted in quarters
   where they least expect it, or they may be beleaguered by temptation."
   "They shall never perish."

   "Well, but a man may be a child of God and yet go to Hell." How so, if
   he can never perish? That "never" includes time and eternity! It
   includes living and dying! It includes the mountain and the valley, the
   tempest and the calm--

   "They shall never perish. In every state secure, Kept by the eternal
   Hand."

   Beneath the wings of the Almighty God, night with its pestilence cannot
   smite them, and day with its cares cannot destroy them! Youth with its
   passions shall be safely passed. Middle age with all its whirl of
   business shall be navigated in safety. Old age with its infirmities
   shall become the land of Beulah. Death's gloomy vale shall be lit up
   with the coming splendor. The actual moment of departure, the last and
   solemn article, shall be the passing over of a river dry-shod. "When
   you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the
   rivers, they shall not overflow you: when you walk through the fire,
   you shall not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon you, says
   the Lord." "They shall never perish."

   There is a way of explaining away everything, I suppose, but I really
   do not know how the opponents of the perseverance of God's saints will
   get over this text. They may do with it as they will, but I shall still
   believe what I find here, that I shall never perish if I am one of
   Christ's people. If I perish, then Christ will not have kept His
   promise but I know He must abide faithful to His Word. "He is not a man
   that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent." Every
   soul that rests on the atoning sacrifice is safe, and safe
   forever--"they shall never perish."

   3. Then comes the third sentence, in which we have a position
   guaranteed--"in Christ's hand." We have not time to expound it. It is
   to be in a place of honor--we are the ring He wears on His finger. It
   is a place of love: "I have engraved you upon the palms of My hands;
   your walls are continually before Me." It is a place of power--His
   right hand encloses all His people. It is a place of property--Christ
   holds His people. "All the saints are in Your hand." It is a place of
   discretion--we are yielded up to Christ--and Christ wields a
   discretionary government over us.

   It is a place of guidance, a place of protection--as sheep are said to
   be in the hand of the shepherd, so are we in the hand of Christ. As
   arrows in the hand of a mighty man, to be used by him. As jewels in the
   hands of the bride to be her ornament, so are we in the hand of Christ.
   Now, what says the text? It reminds us that there are some who want to
   pluck us out of His hand! There are those who, with false doctrine,
   would deceive, if it were possible, the very elect! There are roaring
   persecutors who would frighten God's saints, and so make them turn back
   in the day of battle. There are scheming tempters--the panderers to
   Hell, the jackals of the lion of the pit--who would gladly drag us to
   destruction.

   Then there are our own hearts that would pluck us out of His hand. You
   know in the text before us we need not read the word "man," for it is
   not in the original. The translators have put the word "man" in italics
   to show that it is not in the Greek, and so we may read it--"Neither
   shall any pluck them out of My hand." Not only any "man," but any devil
   either. Nothing that is present shall do it, nothing to come--no
   principality, no power, nothing whatever that is conceivable. "None
   shall pluck them out of My hand."

   It does not merely include men, who are sometimes our worst foes, for
   the worst that we have are they of our own household, but it also
   includes fallen spirits. But none shall be able to pluck us out of His
   hand. By no possibility shall any be able, by any of their schemes, to
   remove us from being His favorites, His property, His dear sons, His
   protected children. Oh, what a blessed promise!

   Now, do you know, while I have been preaching to you about this, I have
   been thinking a little about my own history before I knew the Lord. One
   of the things that made me want to be a Christian was this. I had seen
   some young lads that I was at school with. They were excellent lads,
   and some of them had been held up as patterns of imitation to me and to
   others. I saw them, though only a very few years older than myself,
   turn out as vain and ungodly as could be, and yet I knew them to have
   been excellently well disposed as boys, no, to have been very patterns!
   And this kind of thought used to cross my young brain, "Is there not
   some means of being preserved from making a shipwreck of my life?"

   When I came to read the Bible, it seemed to me to be full of this
   doctrine: "If you trust Christ, He will save you from all evil. He will
   keep you in a life of integrity and holiness while here, and He will
   bring you safe to Heaven at the last." I felt that I could not trust
   man, for I had seen some of the very best wandering far from the Truth
   of God. If I trusted Christ, it was not a chance as to whether I should
   get to Heaven, but a certainty. And I learned that if I rested all my
   weight upon Him He would keep me, for I found it written, "The
   righteous shall hold on His way, and he that has clean hands shall wax
   stronger and stronger."

   I found the Apostle saying, "I am persuaded that He that has begun a
   good work in you will carry it on," and suchlike expressions. "Why," I
   reasoned, "I have found an insurance office, and a good one, too! I
   will insure my life in it! I will go to Jesus as I am, for He bids me.
   I will trust myself with Him." If I had listened to the Arminian theory
   I should never have been converted, for it never had any charms for me.
   A Savior who casts away His people, a God who leaves His children to
   perish were not worthy of my worship! And a salvation which does not
   save outright is neither worth preaching nor listening to.

   When I stand here and say to this assembled mass, Trust my Master,
   believe Him, and it is no matter of question as to whether you shall be
   saved, for He has said that, "he that believes and is baptized shall be
   saved." When I say that, I feel that I have something to say which is
   worth listening to! My dear Hearer, with a new heart and a right spirit
   you will be a new man! As you now are, if you were to be pardoned
   tonight you would be condemned tomorrow, for the tendencies of your
   nature would lead you astray. But if God shall put a new nature into
   you, your old nature shall not be able to control it.

   The new immortal principle shall get the mastery! You shall be kept
   from sinning! You shall be preserved in holiness, and though you will
   have to mourn over your imperfection, yet you will feel that you have
   God's own life in you! Though you will realize that you are not
   perfect, yet you will wish you were, and this wishing to be so will be
   a sign of Divine Grace in your soul! And these wishes and desires will
   go on waxing stronger and stronger, till, having mastered sin by the
   power of the Spirit, the day shall come when this body shall be dropped
   off, and the new life, disencumbered of the vile rags which it was
   compelled to wear while it was here, shall leap in its disembodied
   existence into perfection and then shall wait for the trumpet's sound!
   And the body itself, purified and made fit for the new and higher life,
   shall be again inhabited, and so both the body and the soul, delivered
   from all sin, shall be an everlasting testimony to the promise of
   Christ--for those who rest in Him shall have eternal life--and they
   shall never perish! Neither shall any pluck them out of His hand!

   III. I have anticipated the last point as to THE OUTLOOK OF MY TEXT
   INTO THE FUTURE. If God has given you eternal life, that comprehends
   all the future. Your spiritual existence will flourish when empires and
   kingdoms decay. Your life will live on when the heart of this great
   world shall grow cold, when the pulse of the great sea shall cease to
   beat, when the eye of the bright sun shall grow dim with age! You
   possess eternal life!

   When, like a moment's foam which melts into the wave that bears it, the
   whole universe shall have gone and left not a wreck behind, it shall be
   well with you, for you have eternal life! You have an existence that
   will run parallel with the existence of the Deity. Eternal life! Oh,
   what an avenue of glory is opened by those words--Eternal Life!
   "Because I live," said Christ, "you shall live also." As long as there
   is a Christ there shall be a happy soul, and you shall be that happy
   soul! As long as there is a God there shall be a beatified existence,
   and you shall enjoy that existence, for Jesus gives you eternal life.

   Spin on, old world, until your axle is worn out. Fly on, Old Father
   Time, until your hour-glass is broken and you shall cease to be! Come,
   mighty angel! Plant your feet upon the sea and upon the land and swear
   by Him that lives that time shall be no more, for even then every
   Christian shall still live, because Christ gives unto them eternal
   life! Does not the next sentence also look into the future?--"They
   shall never perish"? They shall never cease to exist in perpetual
   blessedness! They shall never cease to be like God in their
   natures--never! Think about your having been in Heaven a thousand
   years--can you imagine it? A thousand years' blessed communion with the
   Lord Jesus!

   A thousand years in His bosom! A thousand years with the sight of Him
   to ravish your spirit! Well, but you will have just as long to be there
   as if you had never begun, for you shall never, never perish! When the
   millennium shall come, or when the judgment shall sit--and when all the
   great transactions of prophecy shall be fulfilled, these need not
   distress you, for if you trust Christ you shall never--oh, turn that
   word over--you shall never, never, never, never, NEVER perish! What an
   eternity of glory! What unspeakable delight is wrapped up in this
   promise--"They shall never perish!"

   Then, surely, this is another glance into the future--"And none shall
   pluck them out of My hand." We shall be in His hand forever! We shall
   be in His heart forever! We shall be in His very Self forever--one with
   Him--and none shall pluck us out of His hand! Happy, happy is the man
   who can lay claim to such a promise as this! Oh, there are some of you
   to whom I wish this promise belonged! It is very rich, and very full of
   comfort. I wish it belonged to you. Do you say, "I, too, wish it
   belonged to me"? Oh, Friend, I am glad to hear you say that!

   Do you know, Soul, that there is but one key to open this precious
   treasure, and that key is the Cross of the Lord Jesus? What saves you?
   Can you trust Him? When one told me the other day she could not trust
   Christ, I looked her in the face and said, "What has He done that you
   should not trust Him? Can you trust me?" "Yes," she said, "I can trust
   my fellow creatures, but I cannot trust God." Oh, I thought, what
   terrible blasphemy! It was honestly spoken, and it was spoken by one
   who did not perceive the greatness of the offense in it, but I do not
   know that there is any worse thing that can be said than that--"I
   cannot trust God!"

   Well, Sir, you have made Him a liar, then! That is the practical result
   of it. For if you believe a man to be honest you can always trust him.
   Can I trust my fellow man and not trust God? Oh, the horror of that
   thought! There is such an amount of blasphemy in it that I must not
   quote it again! Not trust Christ? "Well," says one, "but may we not
   have a merely natural trust and so be deceived?" I do not know of any
   trust in Christ except a spiritual one, nor do I believe in any. If you
   trust Christ you have not done that of yourself. There was never a soul
   that trusted Christ unless he was enabled to do it by God the Holy
   Spirit!

   And if you wholly and simply trust Christ you need not ask any
   questions about natural trusting or spiritual trusting. If you trust
   the Lord Jesus wholly you are right. Rest on Him, then. Rest on Him
   only, wholly, and solely--and if you perish then I do not understand
   the Gospel, and I cannot comprehend what the Bible means. I will tell
   you one thing, and then close. If you trust Christ and you perish, then
   I must perish most certainly, and so must all my Brothers and Sisters
   here who have believed in Jesus.

   It is all over with us if it is all over with you! When there is a
   storm, one passenger cannot very well go to the bottom if he is in the
   ship unless the whole of the ship's company go, too. We must go
   together. We have got into the lifeboat, and if the lifeboat goes down
   with you, it must go down with all the saints, and all the Apostles,
   and all the martyrs, too. They went to Heaven resting upon Christ, and
   if you rest on Christ you will get there also. Oh, Sinner, may you be
   led today to rest on Jesus and on Jesus only, and then take the text.
   Do not be afraid of it--"I give unto My sheep eternal life; and they
   shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of My hand."
     __________________________________________________________________

                         God Incarnate, The End Of Fear

   DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 23, 1866, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT
   THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And the angel said unto them, Fear not." Luke 2:10.

   No sooner did the angel of the Lord appear to the shepherds, and the
   glory of the Lord shone round about them, than they were sorely afraid.
   It had come to this, that man was afraid of his God, and when God sent
   down His loving messengers with tidings of great joy, men were filled
   with as much fright as though the angel of Death had appeared with
   uplifted sword. The silence of night and its dreary gloom caused no
   fear in the shepherds' hearts, but the joyful herald of the skies,
   robed in mildest glories of Divine Grace, made them afraid.

   We must not condemn the shepherds on this account as though they were
   peculiarly timid or ignorant, for they were only acting as every other
   person in that age would have done under the same circumstances. Not
   because they were simple shepherds were they amazed with fear, but it
   is probable that if they had been well-instructed Prophets they would
   have displayed the same feeling. There are many instances recorded in
   Scripture in which the foremost men of their time trembled and felt a
   horror of great darkness when special manifestations of God were
   vouchsafed to them. In fact, a slavish fear of God was so common that a
   tradition had grown out of it, which was all but universally received
   as nothing less than the Truth of God.

   It was generally believed that every supernatural manifestation was to
   be regarded as a token of speedy death. "We shall surely die because we
   have seen God" was not only Manoah's conclusion, but that of most men
   of his period. Few, indeed, were those happy minds who, like Manoah's
   wife, could reason in a more cheerful style, "If the Lord had meant to
   destroy us He would not have showed us such things as these." It became
   the settled conviction of all men, whether wise or simple, whether good
   or bad, that a manifestation of God was not so much to be rejoiced in
   as to be dreaded. Even Jacob said, "How dreadful is this place! It is
   none other but the House of God."

   Doubtless the spirit which originated this tradition was much fostered
   by the legal dispensation which is better fitted for trembling servants
   than for rejoicing sons. It was of the bond woman and it gendered into
   bondage. The solemn night in which its greatest institution was
   ordained was a night of trembling. Death was there in the slaughter of
   the lamb. Blood was there sprinkled on a conspicuous part of the house.
   Fire was there to roast the lamb--all the emblems of judgment were
   there to strike the mind with awe. It was at the dread hour of midnight
   when the solemn family conclave was assembled. The door being shut, the
   guests, themselves, standing in an uneasy attitude, and awestricken,
   for their hearts could hear the wings of the Destroying Angel as he
   passed by the house.

   Afterwards, when Israel came into the wilderness, and the Law was
   proclaimed, do we not read that the people stood afar off and that
   bounds were set about the mount? And if so much as a beast touched the
   mountain it was to be stoned or thrust through with a dart! It was a
   day of fear and trembling when God spoke to them out of the fire. Not
   with the melting notes of harp, psaltery, or dulcimer did God's Law
   come to His people's ears! No soft wings of angels brought the message,
   and no sunny smiles of Heaven sweetened it to the mind! No, with sound
   of trumpet and thunder, out of the midst of blazing lightning--with
   Sinai altogether on a smoke--the Law was given.

   The law's voice was, "Come not near here!" The spirit of Sinai is fear
   and trembling. The legal ceremonies were such as rather to inspire fear
   than to beget trust. The worshipper at the temple saw bloodshed from
   the first of the year to the end of the year. The morning was ushered
   in with the blood-shedding of the lamb, and the evening shades could
   not gather without blood again being spilt upon the altar! God was in
   the midst of the camp, but the pillar of cloud and fire was His
   unapproachable pavilion.

   The emblem of His glory was concealed behind the curtain of blue and
   scarlet and fine twined linen--behind which only one foot might
   pass--and that but once in the year. Men spoke of the God of Israel
   with bated breath and with voices hushed and solemn. They had not
   learned to say, "Our Father which are in Heaven." They had not received
   the spirit of adoption, and were not able to say Abba, Father. They
   smarted under the spirit of bondage which made them sorely afraid when
   by any peculiar manifestation the Lord displayed His Presence among
   them. At the bottom of all this slavish dread lay sin.

   We never find Adam afraid of God, nor of any manifestation of Deity
   while he was an obedient creature in Paradise. But no sooner had he
   touched the fatal fruit than he found that he was naked and hid
   himself! When he heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden
   in the cool of the day, Adam was afraid and hid himself from the
   Presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Sin makes
   miserable cowards of us all! See the man who once could hold delightful
   converse with his Maker now dreading to hear his Maker's voice and
   skulking in the grove like a felon who knows his guilt, and is afraid
   to meet the officers of justice!

   Beloved, in order to remove this dread nightmare of slavish fear from
   the breast of humanity, where its horrible influence represses all the
   noblest aspirations of the soul, our Lord Jesus Christ came in the
   flesh! This is one of the works of the devil which He was manifested to
   destroy. Angels came to proclaim the good news of the advent of the
   Incarnate God, and the very first note of their song was a foretaste of
   the sweet result of His coming to all those who shall receive Him. The
   angel said, "Fear not," as though the times of fear were over, and the
   days of hope and joy had arrived! "Fear not." These words were not
   meant for those trembling shepherds, only, but were intended for you
   and for me, yes, for all nations to whom the glad tidings shall come!

   "Fear not." Let God no longer be the object of your slavish dread!
   Stand not at a distance from Him any more. The Word is made flesh. God
   has descended to tabernacle among men, that there may be no hedge of
   fire, no yawning gulf between God and man. Into this subject I wish to
   go this morning as God may help me. I am sensible of the value of the
   theme, and am very conscious that I cannot do it justice. I would
   earnestly ask God the Holy Spirit to make you drink of the golden cup
   of the Incarnation of Christ such draughts as I have enjoyed in my
   quiet meditations. I can scarcely desire more delight for my dearest
   friends.

   There is no antidote for fear more excellent than the subject of that
   midnight song, the first and best of Christmas chorales, which from its
   first word to its last note chimes out the sweet message, which begins
   with, "Fear not."--

   "It is my sweetest comfort, Lord,
   And will forever be,
   To muse upon the gracious truth
   Of your humanity.
   Oh joy! There sits in our flesh,
   Upon a throne of light,
   One of a human mother born,
   In perfect Godhead bright!
   Though earth's foundations should be mo ved,
   Down to their lowest deep.
   Though all the trembling universe
   Into destruction sweep.
   Forever God, forever man,
   My Jesus shall endure.
   And fixed on Him,
   My hope remains
   Eternally secure."

   Dear Friends, I shall first detain your attention with a few remarks
   upon the fear of which I have already spoken. Then, secondly, we shall
   invite your earnest attention to the remedy which the angels came to
   proclaim. And then, thirdly, as we may have time, we shall endeavor to
   make an application of this remedy to various cases.

   I. Turning to THE FEAR of the text, it may be well to discriminate.
   There is a kind of fear towards God from which we must not wish to be
   free. There is that lawful, necessary, admirable, excellent fear which
   is always due from the creature to the Creator, from the subject to the
   king, yes, and from the child toward the parent. That holy, filial fear
   of God, which makes us dread sin and constrains us to be obedient to
   His command is to be cultivated. "We had fathers of our flesh, and we
   gave them reverence, shall we not be in subjection to the Father of
   spirits and live?"

   This is the "fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom." To
   have a holy awe of our most holy, just, righteous, and tender Parent is
   a privilege, not a bondage! Godly fear is not the "fear which has
   torment." Perfect love does not cast out, but dwells in joyful harmony.
   The angels perfectly love God, and yet with holy fear they veil their
   faces with their wings as they approach Him. And when we shall in Glory
   behold the face of God, and shall be filled with all His fullness, we
   shall not cease humbly and reverently to adore the Infinite Majesty.
   Holy fear is a work of the Holy Spirit, and woe unto the man who does
   not possess it! Let him boast as he may, his "feeding himself without
   fear" is a mark of his hypocrisy!

   The fear which is to be avoided, is slavish fear--the fear which
   perfect love casts out, as Sarah cast out the bondwoman and her son.
   That trembling which keeps us at a distance from God, which makes us
   think of Him as a Spirit with whom we can have no communion--as a Being
   who has no care for us except to punish us--and for whom, consequently,
   we have no care except to escape if possible from His terrible
   Presence. This fear sometimes arises in men's hearts from their
   thoughts dwelling exclusively upon the Divine greatness. Is it possible
   to peer long into the vast abyss of Infinity and not to fear? Can the
   mind yield itself up to the thought of the Eternal, Self-Existent,
   Infinite One without being filled, first with awe and then with dread?

   What am I? An aphid creeping upon a rosebud is a more considerable
   creature in relation to the universe of beings than I can be in
   comparison with God! What am I? A grain of dust that does not turn the
   scale of the most delicate balance is a greater thing to man than a man
   is to Jehovah! At best we are less than nothing and vanity! But there
   is more to abase us than this. We have had the impertinence to be
   disobedient to the will of this great One! And now the goodness and
   greatness of His nature are as a current against which sinful humanity
   struggles in vain, for the irresistible torrent must run its course and
   overwhelm every opponent. What does the great God seem to us, out of
   Christ, but a stupendous rock threatening to crush us, or a fathomless
   sea, hastening to swallow us up?

   The contemplation of the Divine greatness may of itself fill man with
   horror and cast him into unutterable misery! Dwell long upon such
   themes, and like Job, you will tremble before Jehovah, who shakes the
   earth out of her place, and makes the pillars tremble. Each one of the
   sterner attributes of God will cause the same fear. Think of His power
   by which He rolls the stars along, and lay your hand upon your mouth!
   Think of His wisdom by which He numbers the clouds, and settles the
   ordinances of Heaven. Meditate upon any one of these attributes, but
   especially upon His justice, and upon that devouring fire which burns
   unceasingly against sin--and it is no wonder if the soul becomes full
   of fear!

   Meanwhile let a sense of sin with its great whip of wire flagellate the
   conscience, and man will dread the bare idea of God. For this is the
   burden of the voice of Conscience to guilty man--"If you were an
   obedient creature, this God were still terrible to you, for the heavens
   are not pure in His sight, and He charged His angels with folly. What
   are you that you should be just with God, or have any claims upon Him?
   You have offended, you have lifted the hand of your rebellion against
   the infinite majesty of Omnipotence--what will become of you? What can
   be your portion but to be set up forever as a monument of His righteous
   wrath?"

   Now such a fear as that being very easily created in the thoughtful
   mind, and being, indeed, as it seems to me, the natural heritage of man
   as the result of sin is most doleful and injurious. For wherever there
   is a slavish dread of the Divine Being it alienates man most thoroughly
   from his God. We are by our evil nature enemies to God, and the
   imagination that God is cruel, harsh, and terrible adds fuel to the
   fire of our enmity. Those whom we slavishly dread we cannot love. You
   could not make your child show forth love to you if its little heart
   was full of fear--if it dreaded to hear your footsteps and was alarmed
   at the sound of your voice it could not love you. You might obey some
   huge monster because you were afraid of him, but to love him would be
   impossible.

   It is one of the masterpieces of Satan to deceive man by presenting to
   his mind a hateful picture of God. He knows that men cannot love that
   which terrifies them and therefore he paints the God of Grace as a
   hard, unforgiving being who will not receive the penitent and have pity
   upon the sorrowful. God is love! Surely if men had but Grace enough to
   see the beauty of that portrait of God--that miniature sketched with a
   single line, "God is love!" they would willingly serve such a God. When
   the Holy Spirit enables the mind to perceive the Character of God, the
   heart cannot refuse to love Him.

   Base, fallen, depraved as men are, when they are illuminated from on
   high so as to judge rightly of God, their hearts melt under the genial
   beams of Divine love and they love God because He has first loved them.
   But there is the master- piece of Satan, that he will not let the
   understanding perceive the excellence of God's Character and then the
   heart cannot love that which the understanding does not perceive to be
   loveable. In addition to alienating the heart from God, this fear
   creates a prejudice against God's Gospel of Grace. There are persons in
   this place this morning who believe that if they were religious they
   would be miserable. It is the settled conviction of half of London that
   to trust in Jesus and to be obedient to God, which is the essence of
   all true religion, would be wretchedness itself.

   "Oh," says the worldly man, "I should have to give up my pleasure if I
   were to become a Christian." Now this is one of the most wicked
   slanders that was ever invented and yet it has current belief
   everywhere. It is the popular theology that to be an enemy to God is
   happiness, but to be the friend of God is misery. What an opinion men
   must have of God, when they believe that to love Him is to be wretched!
   Oh, could they comprehend, could they but know how good God is--instead
   of imagining that His service would be slavery, they would understand
   that to be His friend is to occupy the highest and happiest position
   which created beings can occupy!

   This fear in some men puts them out of all hope of ever being saved.
   Thinking God to be an ungenerous Being, they keep at a distance from
   Him. If there are some sweet attractions, now and then in a sermon,
   some gentle meltings of conscience, the good desire never matures into
   the practical resolve. They do not say, "I will arise and go unto my
   Father," because they do not know Him as a Father--they only know Him
   as a consuming fire. A man does not say, "I will arise and go unto a
   consuming fire."

   No, but like Jonah, he would gladly pay his fare, regardless of the
   expense, and go to Tarshish to flee from the Presence of the Lord! This
   it is that makes calamity of being a man at all, to most men--that they
   cannot get away from God, since they imagine that if they could but
   escape from His Presence they would then wander into bliss. But being
   doomed to be where God is, they then conceive that for them
   wretchedness and misery alone remain. The soft warnings of mercy and
   the thundering of justice are, alike, powerless upon men so long as
   their hearts are seared and rendered callous by an unholy dread of God.

   This wicked dread of God frequently drives men to extremities of sin.
   The man says, "There is no hope for me. I have made one fatal mistake
   in being God's enemy and I am irretrievably ruined. There is no hope
   that I shall ever be restored to happiness or peace. Then what will I
   do? I will cast the reins upon the neck of my passions. I will defy
   fate and take my chance. I will get such happiness as may be found in
   sin. If I cannot be reconciled to Heaven I will be a good servant of
   Hell." And therefore men have been known to hasten from one crime to
   another with a malicious inventiveness of rebellion against God.

   They act as if they could never be satisfied nor contented till they
   had heaped up more and more rebellions against the majesty of God whom
   in their hearts they dread with a burning Satanic dread mingled with
   hate. If they could but comprehend that He is still willing to receive
   the rebellious, that His heart yearns towards sinners! If they could
   but once believe that He is love and wills not the death of a sinner
   but had rather that he should turn unto Him and live, surely the course
   of their lives must be changed! But the god of this world blinds them
   and maligns the Lord until they count it folly to submit to Him.

   Dear Friends, this evil which works a thousand ills operates in ways of
   evil quite innumerable. It dishonors God. Oh, it is infamous! It is
   villainous to make out our God, who is Light and in whom is no darkness
   at all, to be an object of horrible fear. It is infernal! I may say no
   less. It is devilish to the highest degree to paint Him as a demon, who
   is Jehovah, the God of Love. Oh, the impertinence of the Prince of
   Darkness, and the madness of man to consent to him, that God should be
   depicted as being unwilling to forgive, unkind, untender, hard,
   cruel--whereas He is love--supremely and above all things, LOVE!

   He is just, but all the more truly loving because He is just. He is
   true, and therefore sure to punish sin, yet even punishing sin because
   it were not good to let sin go unpunished. This is base ingratitude on
   the part of a much-receiving creature that he should malign his
   Benefactor. The evil which is thus done to God recoils upon man--for
   this fear has torment. No more tormenting misery in the world than to
   think of God as being our implacable foe! You Christians who have lost,
   for a while, the spirit of adoption--you who have wandered a distance
   from God and nothing can be more tormenting to you than the fear that
   the Lord has cast you away and will not again receive you.

   You backsliders, nothing can hold you back from your heavenly Father
   like a dread of Him! If you can but really know that He is not to be
   dreaded with slavish fear, you will come to Him as your child does to
   you, and you will say,

   "My Father, I have offended--pity me! My Father, I am vexed and grieved
   for my sin--forgive me, receive me again to Your arms, and help me, by
   Your mighty Grace, that from now on I may walk in Your Commandments and
   be obedient to Your will." My dear Friends, you who know anything about
   spiritual life--don't you feel that when you have sweet thoughts of God
   breathed into you from above and have His special love to you shed
   abroad in your hearts--don't you feel that it is then that you are most
   holy?

   Have you not perceived that the only way in which you can grow in that
   which is morally and spiritually lovely, is by having your gracious God
   high in your esteem, and feeling His precious love firing your hearts?
   That they may be like little children is the very thing which God
   desires for His elect ones! It is this which His Spirit works in His
   chosen! It is to this that we must come if we are to be meet to be
   partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Slavish fear is so
   opposed to the child-like spirit that it is as the poison of asps to
   it. Dread and fear bring out everything in us that is of the man rather
   than of the child, for it stirs us up to resist the object of our fear.

   An assured confidence in the goodness of God casts out fear and brings
   forth everything that is child-like in us. Have you ever seen a child
   trust some big, rough man, and melt him down by its trustfulness? It
   trusted where there was no ground for trust, apparently, and made
   ground for itself. That same child, simply and implicitly trusting in a
   good and generous father is a noble picture. And if I, a poor, weak,
   feeble child, conscious that I am such--knowing that I am all folly and
   weakness--can just believe in my good, great God, through Jesus Christ,
   and come and trust myself with Him and leave Him to do as He likes with
   me, believing that He will not be unkind, and cannot be unwise--if I
   can wholly repose in His love and be obedient to His will--why then I
   shall have reached the highest point that the creature can reach! The
   Holy Spirit will then have worked His finished work in me and I shall
   be fit for Heaven.

   Beloved, it is because fear opposes this, and prevents this, that I
   would say with the angel, "Fear not." II. I fear I weary you while I
   speak upon this somewhat dolorous theme, and therefore with as much
   brevity as the abundance of the matter may permit, let us notice in the
   second place, THE CURE FOR THIS FEAR, which the angel came to proclaim.
   It lies in this--"Unto you is born this day in the city of David, a
   Savior, which is Christ the Lord."--

   "Till God in human flesh I see,
   My thoughts no comfort find.
   The holy, just and sacred Three,
   Are terrors to my mind.
   But if Immanuel's face appears,
   My hope, my joy begins!
   His name forbids my slavish fear,
   His Grace removes my sins."

   That is the remedy--God with us--God made flesh. Let us try and show
   this from the angel's song. According to the text they were not to
   fear, first of all, because the angel had come to bring them good news.
   How does it run? It says, "I bring you good tidings of great joy." But
   what was this Gospel? Further on we are told that the Gospel was the
   fact that Christ was born! So, then, it is good news to men that Christ
   is born, that God has come down and taken manhood into union with
   Himself. Verily this is glad tidings! He who made the heavens slumbers
   in a manger!

   What then? Why, then God is not of necessity an enemy to man because
   here is God actually taking manhood into alliance with Deity! There
   cannot be permanent, inveterate, rooted enmity between the two natures,
   or otherwise the Divine Nature could not have taken the human into
   hypostatical union with itself. Is there not comfort in that? You are a
   poor, erring, feeble man, and that which makes you afraid of the Lord
   is this fear that there is an enmity between God and man--but there
   need not be such enmity--for your Maker has actually taken manhood into
   union with Himself!

   Do you not see another thought? The Eternal seems to be so far away
   from us. He is infinite and we are such little creatures. There appears
   to be a great gulf fixed between man and God, even on the ground of
   creatureship. But observe, He who is God has also become Man. We never
   heard that God took the nature of angels into union with Himself--we
   may therefore say that between Godhead and angelhood there must be an
   infinite distance still--but here the Lord has actually taken manhood
   into union with Himself! There is, therefore, no longer a great gulf
   fixed. On the contrary, here is a marvelous union! Godhead has entered
   into marriage bonds with manhood!

   O my Soul, you do not stand, now, like a poor lone orphan wailing
   across the deep sea after your Father who has gone far away and cannot
   hear you! You do not now sob and sigh like an infant left naked and
   helpless, its Maker having gone too far away to regard its needs or
   listen to its cries! No, your Maker has become like yourself! Is that
   too strong a word to use? He without whom was not anything made that
   was made is that same Word who lived and walked among us and was made
   flesh--made flesh in such a way that He was tempted in all points like
   as we are--yet without sin. O Manhood, was there ever such news as this
   for you! Poor Manhood, you weak worm of the dust--far lower than the
   angels--lift up your head and be not afraid!

   Poor Manhood, born in weakness, living in toil, covered with sweat, and
   dying at last to be eaten by the worms--be not abashed even in the
   presence of seraphs--for next to God is man, and not even an archangel
   can come in between! No, not next to God, there is scarcely that to be
   said, for Jesus who is God is Man also! Jesus Christ, eternally God,
   was born and lived and died as we also do! That is the first word of
   comfort to expel our fear.

   The second point that takes away fear is that this Man who was also God
   was actually born. Observe the angel's word, "Unto you is born." Our
   Lord Jesus Christ is in some senses more man than Adam. Adam was not
   born--Adam never had to struggle through the risks and weaknesses of
   infancy. He knew not the littlenesses of childhood--he was full grown
   at once. Father Adam could not sympathize with me as a babe and a
   child. But how man-like is Jesus! He is cradled with us in the manger.
   He does not begin with us in mid-life, as Adam, but He accompanies us
   in the pains and feebleness and infirmities of infancy! And He
   continues with us even to the grave.

   Beloved, this is such sweet comfort! He that is God this day was once
   an Infant! So that if my cares are little and even trivial and
   comparatively infantile, I may go to Him, for He was once a Child.
   Though the great ones of the earth may sneer at the child of poverty,
   and say, "You are too mean, and your trouble is too slight for pity," I
   remember with humble joy that the King of Heaven did hang upon a
   woman's breast, and was wrapped in swaddling bands--and therefore I
   tell Him all my griefs. How wonderful that He should have been an
   Infant, and yet should be God over all, blessed forever! I am no longer
   afraid of God! This blessed link between me and God, the holy Child
   Jesus, has taken all fear away!

   Observe, the angel told them somewhat of His office, as well as of His
   birth. "Unto you is born this day a Savior." The very object for which
   He was born and came into this world was that He might deliver us from
   sin. What, then, was it that made us afraid? Were we not afraid of God
   because we felt that we were lost through sin? Well then, here is joy
   upon joy! Here is not only the Lord come among us as a Man, but made
   Man in order to save man from that which separated him from God!

   I feel as if I could burst out into a weeping for some here who have
   been spending their living riotously and gone far away from God their
   Father by their evil ways. I know they are afraid to come back. They
   think that the Lord will not receive them, that there is no mercy for
   such sinners as they have been. Oh, but think of it--Jesus Christ has
   come to seek and to save that which was lost! He was born to save! If
   He does not save He was born in vain, for the object of His birth was
   salvation! If He shall not be a Savior, then the mission of God to
   earth has missed its end, for its design was that lost sinners might be
   saved.

   Lost One, oh, lost One!--if there were news that an angel had come to
   save you there might be some cheer in it. But there are better tidings
   still! GOD has come! The Infinite, the Almighty, has stooped from the
   highest Heaven that He may pick you up, a poor undone and worthless
   worm! Is there not comfort here? Does not the Incarnate Savior take
   away the horrible dread which hangs over men like a black pall? Note
   that the angel did not forget to describe the person of this Savior--"A
   Savior which is Christ." There is His Manhood! As Man He was anointed!
   "The Lord." There is His Godhead.

   Yes, this is the solid Truth of God upon which we plant our feet. Jesus
   of Nazareth is God! He who was conceived in the womb of the virgin and
   born in Bethlehem's manger is now, and always was God over all, blessed
   forever! There is no Gospel if He is not God. It is no news to me to
   tell me that a great Prophet is born. There have been great Prophets
   before. But the world has never been redeemed from evil by mere
   testimony to the truth, and never will be. Tell me that God is born,
   that God, Himself, has espoused our nature, and taken it into union
   with Himself! Then the bells of my heart ring merry peals, for now may
   I come to God since God has come to me!

   You will observe, dear Friends, that the substance of what the angel
   said lay in this. "Unto you." You will never get true comfort from the
   incarnate Savior till you perceive your personal interest in him.
   Christ as Man was a representative man. There never were but two
   thoroughly representative men--the first is Adam--Adam obedient and the
   whole race stands. Adam disobedient and the whole race falls. "In Adam
   all die." Now, the Man Jesus is the second great representative man. He
   does not represent the whole human race--He represents as many as His
   Father gave Him--He represents a chosen company.

   Now, whatever Christ did, if you belong to those who are in Him He did
   for you. So that Christ circumcised or Christ crucified, Christ dead or
   Christ living, Christ buried or Christ risen, you are a partaker of all
   that He did and all that He is, for you are reckoned as one with Him.
   See then, the joy and comfort of the Incarnation of Christ! Does Jesus,
   as Man, take manhood up to Heaven? He has taken me up there! Father
   Adam fell, and I fell, for I was in him. The Lord Jesus Christ rises,
   and I rise if I am in Him. See, Beloved, when Jesus Christ was nailed
   to the Cross all His elect were nailed there, and they suffered and
   died in Him.

   When He was put into the grave the whole of His people lay slumbering
   there in Him, for they were in the loins of Jesus as Levi was in the
   loins of Abraham. And when He rose they rose and received the foretaste
   of their own future resurrection! Because He lives they shall live
   also! And now that He has gone up on high to claim the throne, He has
   claimed the throne for every soul that is in Him. Oh, this is joy,
   indeed! Then how can I be afraid of God, for this day, by faith, I, a
   poor undeserving sinner, having put my trust in Jesus, am bold to say
   that I sit upon the throne of God? Think not that we have said too
   much, for in the Person of Christ every Believer is raised up together,
   and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Because as
   Jesus is there representatively, we are each one of us there in Him.

   I wish that I had power to bring out this precious doctrine of the
   Incarnation as I desire, but the more one muses upon it, the more happy
   one becomes. Let us view it as an all-important Truth of God that
   Jesus, the Son of God, has really come in the flesh. It is so important
   a Truth that we have three witnesses appointed to keep it before us
   upon earth. We have been insisting many times in this place upon the
   spirituality of Christian worship. We have shown that the outward in
   religion, by itself, avails nothing. It is the inward spirit that is
   the great thing.

   I must confess that I have sometimes said in myself, I hope not
   rebelliously, "What is this Baptism for, and what is this Communion of
   the Lord's Supper for?" These two outward ordinances, whatever may be
   their excellent uses, have been the two things around which more errors
   have clustered than around anything else! And I have heard it said, by
   friends inclined to follow more fully the teachings of the Quakers,
   "Why not put aside the outward and visible altogether? Let it be the
   Spirit Baptism, and not the water. Let there be no bread and wine, but
   let there be fellowship with Christ without the outward sign."

   I must confess, though I dare not go with it because I hope to be held
   fast by the plain testimony of Scripture, yet my heart has somewhat
   gone with the temptation and I have half said, "Men always will pervert
   these two ordinances. Would it not be as well to have done with them?"
   While I have been exercised upon the point, conscious that the
   ordinances must be right, and must be held, I have rested upon that
   text, "There are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, the
   water, and the blood." And what do they bear witness to? They bear
   witness to the mission of Jesus as the Christ, in other words, to the
   real Incarnation of God.

   They bear witness to the materialism of Christ. Have you ever noticed
   that when people have given up the two outward ordinances, they have
   usually betrayed a tendency to give up the literal fact that "God was
   made flesh"? The literal fact that Christ was really a Man has
   generally been doubted or thrown into the background when the two
   outward ordinances have been given up. I believe that these two
   symbolical ordinances, which are a link between the spiritual and the
   material, are set up on purpose to show that Christ Jesus, though most
   gloriously a Spirit, was also a Man clothed in a body of real flesh and
   blood like our own, so that He could be touched and handled even as He
   said, "Handle Me and see. A spirit has not flesh and bones as you see I
   have."

   When I think of the Holy Spirit who bears witness that Christ was
   really a Man, I thank Him for that witness! Then I turn to the water,
   and when I read that Christ was publicly baptized in the Jordan, I
   perceive that He could not have been a phantom. He could not have been
   a mere spectral appearance, for He was immersed in water. He must have
   been a solid substantial Man! The preservation of the ordinance of
   Baptism is a witness to the reality of the Incarnate God. Then comes
   the blood. He could not have shed blood on Calvary if He had been a
   specter. There could have been no blood streaming down from His side
   when the spear pierced Him if He had been only a ghostly apparition. He
   must have been solid flesh and blood like ourselves--and as often as we
   come to His table, and we take the cup and hear it said--"This cup is
   the New Covenant in My blood"--there is a third witness on earth to the
   fact that Jesus did appear in very flesh and blood among men!

   So the Spirit, the water, and the blood are the three standing
   testimonies in the church of God that Christ was God, and that He was
   also really, solidly, and substantially Man. I shall delight in the
   ordinances all the more because of this. Those two ordinances serve to
   make us remember that Christ was really flesh and blood, and that
   religion has something to do with this flesh and blood of ours. This
   very body is to rise again from the tomb! Jesus came to deliver this
   poor flesh from corruption! And so, while we must ever keep the
   spiritual uppermost, we are prevented from casting away the material
   body as though that were of the devil. Christ purified as well the
   realm of matter as the realm of spirit! And in both He reigns
   triumphant! There is much comfort here.

   III. Lastly, we can only occupy a few seconds in APPLYING THE CURE TO
   VARIOUS CASES. Child of God, you say, "I dare not come to God today, I
   feel so weak." Fear not, for He that is born in Bethlehem said, "A
   bruised reed I will not break, and the smoking flax I will not quench."
   "I shall never get to Heaven," says another, "I shall never see God's
   face with acceptance. I am so tempted." "Fear not," for you have not an
   High Priest which cannot be touched with a feeling of your infirmities,
   for He was tempted in all points like as you are." "But I am so lonely
   in the world," says another, "no man cares for me." There is one Man,
   at any rate, who does so care--a true Man like yourself. He is your
   Brother, still, and does not forget the lonely spirit.

   But I hear a sinner say, "I am afraid to go to God this morning and
   confess that I am a sinner." Well, do not go to God but go to Christ.
   Surely you would not be afraid of Him. Think of God in Christ, not out
   of Christ. If you could but know Jesus you would go to Him at once! You
   would not be afraid to tell Him your sins, for you would know that He
   would say, "Go, and sin no more."

   "I cannot pray," says one, "I am afraid to pray." What? Afraid to pray
   when it is a Man who listens to you! You might dread the face of God,
   but when you see God in human flesh, why be alarmed? Go, poor Sinner,
   go to Jesus. "I feel," says one, "unfit to come." You may be unfit to
   come to God, but you cannot be unfit to come to Jesus! There is a
   fitness necessary to stand in the holy hill of the Lord, but there is
   no fitness needed in coming to the Lord Jesus! Come as you are--guilty,
   and lost, and ruined! Come just as you are and He will receive you!
   "Oh," says another, "I cannot trust." I can understand your not being
   able to trust the great invisible God, but cannot you trust that dying,
   bleeding Son of Man who is also the Son of God?

   "But I cannot hope," says another, "that He would even look on me." And
   yet He used to look on such as you are. He received publicans and
   sinners and ate with them! And even harlots were not driven from His
   Presence. Oh, since God has thus taken man into union with Himself be
   not afraid! If I speak to one who by reason of sin has wandered so far
   away from God that he is even afraid to think of God's name, yet
   inasmuch as Jesus Christ is called "the sinner's Friend," I pray you
   think of Him, poor Soul, as your Friend!

   And, oh, may the Spirit of God open your blind eyes to see that there
   is no cause for your keeping away from God except your own mistaken
   thoughts of Him! May you believe that He is able and willing to save to
   the uttermost! May you understand His good and gracious Character, His
   readiness to pass by transgression, iniquity, and sin! And may the
   sweet influences of Divine Grace quicken you to come to Him this very
   morning! God grant that Jesus Christ, the hope of Glory, may be formed
   in you! And then you may well sing, "Glory to God in the highest; on
   earth peace, and goodwill toward men." Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Genesis

   [1]4:10   [2]21:19   [3]41:9

   Exodus

   [4]17:8

   Numbers

   [5]5:22

   Deuteronomy

   [6]7:10   [7]7:20   [8]29:18

   1 Samuel

   [9]15:2

   1 Kings

   [10]1:36

   2 Kings

   [11]10:31   [12]20:12   [13]20:13

   Job

   [14]23:3-4

   Psalms

   [15]11:3   [16]18:35   [17]51:14   [18]65:10   [19]72:15   [20]78:9
   [21]89:13   [22]147:9   [23]147:16-18

   Isaiah

   [24]6:8   [25]9:6   [26]28:29   [27]39   [28]53:6   [29]55:8
   [30]55:9   [31]57:10   [32]59:19   [33]66:6

   Jeremiah

   [34]18:12

   Ezekiel

   [35]20:41

   Amos

   [36]3:3-6

   Habakkuk

   [37]3:2

   Matthew

   [38]4:5-7   [39]4:18   [40]4:19   [41]10:1   [42]10:2   [43]10:28
   [44]13:41   [45]15:27   [46]25:31-36   [47]26:36

   Mark

   [48]8:22-25

   Luke

   [49]2:10   [50]5:17   [51]12:46   [52]19:37-40   [53]24:31   [54]24:31

   John

   [55]1:12   [56]1:37   [57]4:23-24   [58]4:35   [59]10:28   [60]17:20
   [61]17:21   [62]18:8   [63]18:9

   Acts

   [64]9:5   [65]20:28

   Romans

   [66]8:3   [67]8:28   [68]15:13

   1 Corinthians

   [69]15:26

   2 Corinthians

   [70]5:7

   Ephesians

   [71]1:3-6   [72]3:16-19   [73]5:14

   2 Timothy

   [74]19

   Hebrews

   [75]10:15-18   [76]10:31   [77]11:34   [78]12:24   [79]12:27

   1 Peter

   [80]1:8   [81]1:9

   1 John

   [82]5:11

   Jude

   [83]1:1

   Revelation

   [84]3:14   [85]16:9   [86]20:11   [87]21:8
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture Commentary

   Genesis

   [88]4:10   [89]21:19   [90]41:9

   Exodus

   [91]17:8

   Deuteronomy

   [92]7:20   [93]29:18

   1 Samuel

   [94]15:2

   2 Kings

   [95]10:31   [96]20:12-13

   Job

   [97]23:3-4

   Psalms

   [98]11:3   [99]18:35   [100]51:14   [101]65:10   [102]72:15
   [103]78:9   [104]89:13   [105]147:9   [106]147:16-18

   Isaiah

   [107]6:8   [108]9:6   [109]28:29   [110]53:6   [111]55:8-9
   [112]57:10   [113]59:19

   Ezekiel

   [114]20:41

   Amos

   [115]3:3-6

   Habakkuk

   [116]3:2

   Matthew

   [117]4:5-7   [118]4:18-19   [119]10:1-2   [120]15:27   [121]25:31-36
   [122]26:36

   Mark

   [123]8:22-25

   Luke

   [124]2:10   [125]5:17   [126]19:37-40   [127]24:31

   John

   [128]1:12   [129]1:37   [130]4:23-24   [131]4:35   [132]10:28
   [133]17:20-21   [134]18:8-9

   Acts

   [135]9:5

   Romans

   [136]8:3   [137]15:13

   1 Corinthians

   [138]15:26

   2 Corinthians

   [139]5:7

   Ephesians

   [140]3:16-19   [141]5:14

   2 Timothy

   [142]19

   Hebrews

   [143]10:15-18   [144]10:31   [145]11:34   [146]12:27

   1 Peter

   [147]1:8-9

   Jude

   [148]1:20

   Revelation

   [149]3:14   [150]20:11
     __________________________________________________________________

            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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